The two little girls played just off to the side of the house at the bottom of the old wooden steps. The main door to the house was open, but the screen door remained closed to filter the crisp early spring breeze as it whizzed through to the inside of the house. The breeze carried with it the faint scent of buttercups from the field just across the way, and the entire house had the unmistakable smell of spring in the air, mingled with the sweet aroma of homemade cookies still baking in the oven. Behind the door, hidden from view, a woman stood watching the little girls while they played. Her breathing was light, almost imperceptible, and unheard by the two girls.
Devonie, a rather cherubic looking child who, although cute, somehow looked a little too pudgy for her own good, sat with her legs outstretched in front of her on the bald patch of lawn where lush green grass had once grown. Her golden curls, held away from her face with a dainty pink barrette festooned with butterflies, caught the rays of the sun and, from a distance, looked almost as yellow as the sunflowers that dotted the porch which circled three-fourths of the house.
"You got moxie, ya know," Devonie stated matter-of-factly.
The woman behind the door laughed quietly, delicately.
"Mossies?" the other little girl asked, clearly perplexed.
Devonie giggled and buried her face in her hands. It was apparently one of the funniest things she had ever heard in her young life. "Noooo, not mossies, moxie."
"Spell it," the little girl challenged as she placed her tiny hand on her imaginary hip defiantly.
"I dunno how to spell it."
"I ain't never heard that word. Moxie, huh?"
"Uh-huh." Devonie poked a long, thin stick into the ground. She twirled the discarded tree limb back and forth, trying to force it into the ground faster than it wanted to go.
The little girl chewed on the tip of her finger for a few seconds as if in deep reflection, then repeated, “Nope, never heard of it.”
* * *
Alisha and Devonie spent almost every spare moment together playing since the day they cemented their friendship by pricking their tiny index fingers with a stickpin from Devonie’s mother’s sewing box, drawing blood, then joining fingertips and proclaiming themselves to be blood sisters. However, the two little girls had been wary of each other when they first met.
Each was something new to the other, but soon their natural curiosity proved too strong a force to keep them apart. Alisha had seen white folks of various sizes – tall and short, fat and skinny, wide and narrow – whenever she went with Mama Betty to the Woolworth's store in the center of town to buy the sweet-smelling hand cream that she loved, but she had never seen a little white girl up close and personal before. She spotted Devonie a few feet ahead of her on the opposite side of the aisle, casually rooting around in her nostril with her finger. She noticed the little girl's skin and hair was different from hers. In contrast to her own russet-hued complexion, it looked like the biscuit dough that Mama Betty would knead furiously and roll out on wax paper at the kitchen table every Sunday. Her hair looked like it came off of one of the doll babies on display in the store window, while Alisha’s was thick and bushy, yet as soft to the touch as anything she’d ever felt. As she would often do when Mama Betty's back was turned, Alisha had pinched the skin on Devonie's arm to see if it would squish like dough between her fingertips. Despite her best efforts, it didn't. And so began their newfound friendship.