“If only they had sent us boys.” Enid runs her bare toes over the periwinkle blue carpet as she talks to Marsha on the telephone. From her second-floor bedroom window, her two campers are a picture of restless desolation down on the brick patio, picking at their brown knees as they nod in time to WBLS on their transistor radio. Beneath the straightened, chopped-off hair, Java’s broad face seems insolent and stormy. Which reminds Enid that the girl is still wearing the T-shirt that proclaims, “It’s a black thang—you wouldn’t understand.” What is the point of coming outfitted like that for a month with suburban strangers? Yet Rainy, the elfin, pigtailed seven-year-old, is as endearingly good-natured as Java is difficult; and her dark, heart-shaped face is always sweet with patient admiration for her stocky, belligerent older sister.
“Maybe you could call and point out their mistake,” Marsha suggests.
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