Free Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood Page A

Carolina, too?” he asked.
    “Yes, sir,” Jesslyn answered. And I was almost glad to hear her lie because lying to a policeman wasn’t nearly as bad as what Emma and our daddy would’ve done if he’d dragged us home in his big car with that bright red light shining for all the world to see.
    Then the policeman looked hard at me and Jesslyn. “You’re sure you’re not from around here?”
    “No, sir,” Jesslyn’s voice squeaked out.
    “You look kind of familiar.” The policeman shined his flashlight around the backseat again.
    Jesslyn didn’t answer the policeman. Neither did I.
    Pretty soon, he nodded at Robbie. “Son, you get these girls home. It’s too late to be out on the highway. Whoever their daddy is, he’ll be worrying.”

W hen Robbie’s car started up again, I was shaking . My fingernails dug into the backseat.
    “You think that policeman’s gonna get us in trouble somehow?” I finally asked. “Daddy will skin us alive if he finds out you’re not shopping with Mary Louise and that we got stopped by the police.” I dug my fingernails even deeper. “Once Daddy is done with us, it’ll be Emma’s turn to skin our hides.”
    “We didn’t do anything wrong,” Robbie answered.
    “If you don’t count Jesslyn lying to a policeman,” I said.
    We were back in town now. Robbie stopped the car in front of our house.
    “Not here! Y’all better let me out by the library,”I told him. “I’ll walk home.” The last thing I needed was for Emma to see me getting out of Robbie’s car.
    “You know, Glory,” Jesslyn said, without even turning around to look at me, “you shouldn’t go sneaking into people’s business. Don’t tell anything about today. Anything you saw. Or anything you heard.”
    “I didn’t hear anything.” I was gonna try real hard to keep Robbie’s secret. Not like the time I blabbed to Emma that Jesslyn had broken our mama’s china cat statue when I’d promised I wouldn’t tell. Or when I let it slip to Frankie that Emma had sewed lace to Jesslyn’s underpants for pep squad tryouts. Nope, not like that. This time I was keeping a real secret.
    As long as I lived, I’d never tell this story. If I lived long enough to stand a shakedown by Emma or Daddy.
    Robbie let me out around the corner from the library. “Glory, I’ll be back at the house soon after you get there,” Jesslyn said.
    When I got home, Emma was waiting on the front porch. “You been at the library all this time?”
    “Yessum.”
    “Get in here, Glory. Where’s Jesslyn? She promised she’d be back before dark.”
    “It’s not quite dark yet. I don’t know where she is.” I kept my eyes on the grass.
    “Brother Joe’s got a meeting at the church. He’s due back any time now. When he finds out Jesslyn’s not here —” Emma’s voice stopped. “I never liked the idea of that child going off to Memphis shopping. When do you reckon your sister’s getting home?”
    “Don’t know, don’t care.” I caught myself before another word popped out of my mouth. Jesslyn might get in trouble — but I wouldn’t be the one telling on her. I walked into the kitchen like it was any other night of the summer. I sat at the table, eating a stick of Emma’s warm corn bread. I turned the pages of Jesslyn’s magazine and looked at the movie star Sandra Dee, with not one single solitary blond hair where it didn’t belong. I focused my mind on how she’d have to sleep on brush rollers all night long to get that flipped-up hairdo.
    When Emma walked in, she set down a plate of fudge big enough to feed half of Hanging Moss. I closed the magazine. “Can I have a piece?”
    She handed me a tiny bite and covered it up. “I’m taking this home to my company,” she said.
    “Who’s your company? Must be a heap of people to eat all that candy.”
    “Just visitors,” she said. Emma didn’t ever have visitors. I’d been to her house over on the other side of town. There wasn’t room for anybody but