“Just shut up, Stanley. And you’re going to pay for this suit, remember that. It cost seventy-nine dollars. I’m going to get a tetanus shot. Get out of my way. Take your hands off this car.” I sank back into May Garth’s sturdy arms. Sheffield began to drive toward Tuscaloosa. “He’s just white trash,” May Garth said. “He comes from real trashy people.”

“I want to go to the hospital,” I answered. “I want a tetanus shot.”

“What are you going to do?” Sheffield asked. “Are you going to tell on him?”

In the end I didn’t tell on him. It wasn’t done to tell on people in 1955. That is to say I didn’t tell on him to the grown people. I didn’t tell on him in the emergency ward of the Tuscaloosa General Hospital and I didn’t tell our housemother when May Garth and Sheffield finally got me back there. “I was frightened by a bunch of cows,” I told her. “We went out into a pasture to look at some things for a science report and these cows chased us and I lost my shoes.”

“Where was this?” the housemother asked. “Where’s your date, Rhoda? Where’s the boy you checked out with?”

“He had a flat tire,” May Garth put in. “So we brought her home. I’m taking her upstairs now, Sheffield. You stay here with Mrs. Clark.” May Garth held on to me as I hobbled up the stairs. They had cleaned out the cuts on my feet and bandaged them at the hospital but it hurt to walk. “You want me to stay here with you?” she asked, when we had arrived at my room and she had tucked me into my bed. “I’m so glad I was there, Rhoda. I think there’s a reason I was there tonight. I think we will always be friends and be there to help each other. The minute I met you I knew you were going to be my friend.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. She held my hand. She stroked me like a mother. “Oh, May Garth, I don’t know if I deserve a friend. I barely even came to see you when you had your appendix out.”