Rain, Rain, Go Away

By Lucille Perkins Robinson

“Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.”

Susie K. Lumsey didn’t really want the rain to stop. She enjoyed playing in the deluge. Susie spread her thin arms wide and looked up into the stormy sky. The rain fell into her eyes until they began to burn, all the while she twirled ‘round and ‘round. Her feet stirred the puddle until muddy water sloshed into her shoes.

“Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.”

Dick Harper bent into the rain as it pounded his thin frame, barely covered by the too-small raincoat and dirty baseball cap turned backwards. He splashed his way by Susie’s front gate. As he drew even with Susie, he looked up, a malicious grin on his lips.

“Hey, K…lumsy, what’s you doing, huh? Praying to the rain gods?”

Susie stopped turning and faced Dick as he leaned on the top of the fence, a leer on his freckled face. Her heart burned within her. Anger, white hot and pulsing inside her chest, caused her tiny hands to ball into fists. She refused to say anything because she knew it would only provoke more scathing comments. One of these days, she vowed, he would no longer be laughing.

Susie knew Dick was twelve years old like her, but he was twice her size. They had attended the same school for the last two years. During that time, Dick had made her life miserable. As the school bully, Dick might stop her anywhere; on the school grounds or on the way to or from school; with his two buddies. They would pick at her until she cried out. But her crying out didn’t stop them. Her reactions only made them add shoving or slaps to their banter. Sometimes the slaps hurt, but they never left a bruise. Dick was too smart to leave bruises. A time came when she refused to show any reaction. She would clamp her mouth shut and walk away.

She had tried reporting him to her teacher, but after Dick was brought in to the principal’s office, he was worse. Her mother couldn’t or wouldn’t, Susie wasn’t sure which, do anything to stop it, although her mother claimed she’d talked to Dick’s father. She didn’t bother to report Dick anymore.

Susie had no idea what she could do to stop him, but there had to be some way. She was at the end of her endurance. As her mind sought a way out of her dilemma, she turned her back on him and went around her house. Behind her house ran a deep bayou that ran like a river when it was flooded. Susie knew the bayou was flooded now because it had been raining all day. After getting home from school, she’d thrown her books onto the bed and dashed outside to play in the rain. As her focus returned to the rain and the bayou, the anger inside her began to cool.

As she passed the opened window to their kitchen, her body recoiled at the sounds going on inside. She looked through the screen just as Bob, her mother’s latest boyfriend, slammed a pot down on the table. Evidently the pot was empty because nothing sloshed out. He stomped to the left just out of sight and, in seconds, returned to the table. Her mother drew water into a glass and poured it into a pot on the burner, picking up the large spoon to stir.

“You’re just like that crazy daughter of yours,” he yelled.

“Sh-h-h, she’ll hear you,” her mother said. Her voice was low, but Susie had her face to the screen now so she could hear it despite the sound of the rain on the roof.

Susie could feel her body tightening just at the sound of Bob’s voice. He sounded so much like Dick Harper, she wondered if all men and boys were like them. She wiped at rain dribbling into her eyes and watched the couple in the kitchen.

“She’s so crazy she don’t even know to come in out of the rain,” Bob said. He jerked out a chair and sit down at the table. Her mother was standing in front of the stove stirring a pot.

She had heard them argue many times and the arguments always came down to her. Each of her mother’s three boyfriends she’d had in the last year since Susie’s father’s death seemed to find something wrong with Susie. Susie had went from crying into her pillow to gritting her teeth to hold the tears away. Nothing stopped the pain and nothing stopped the anger that had started with Bob’s insults. Turning away from the window before anymore could be said by the couple, Susie continued on her way to the bayou.

It wasn’t a large bayou, but Susie knew the water went over her head when the bayou flooded. Trees lined the other side and most of this side except right behind her house. A single old oak, which must have been terribly old because it was so large its branches leaned out over the now swirling water, grew about seven feet from the bayou’s edge.

One end of a rope had been looped twice and tied around its huge trunk while the other end was tied to a tree near the edge of the bayou. She used the rope to get down the bank without falling in. Leaning against the trunk on the far side was a long-handled ax her father used to use to chop off branches that got in the way. Through the years a pathway had been cleared down to the water’s edge and this afternoon the downpour made it slippery. She grabbed the rope and began slowly descending, taking careful sidesteps while her hands alternated on the rope.

“Hey, Klumsy, what you doing down there?”

Susie nearly lost her hold on the rope, and her feet slid a couple steps before she was able to straighten and look up behind her. A frown crinkled her brow. Dick had followed her. Now what? She stared briefly at the soaked figure above her and continued down the incline at a faster pace. The rope suddenly jerked in her hands and she began to slide. Just before falling into the bayou she reached out and grabbed a tenuous twig, then threw her arms around the small-trunked tree, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

A raucous laugh overhead split the storm sounds and reverberated in her head like thunder. When she chanced a look behind her, Dick was nowhere in sight. Her gaze slid to the water’s edge. She stared at the little rivulet pushing mud before it as it ran down the slope. Her eyes followed the incline to the top. It wasn’t all that steep but the rain made it slick and dangerous. An idea came to her and she smiled that wide smile again.

“Rain, rain, go away come again another day,” she whispered as she made her way a few yards along the bayou to where the trees grew closer together and where tree roots popped up out of the ground. Using the roots as braces she made her way back to the top and rushed around her house. Running out the gate, she paused and looked both ways. Dick had made it at least a block away.

“So the fraidy cat runs, huh?” she hollered. When he turned and saw her, she laughed aloud. “Fraidy cat, fraidy cat, won’t you come and play?”

As Dick began running back to her he shouted, “I’ll teach you who’s a fraidy cat, Klumsy.”

She ran through the gate, around the house, and hid behind the huge oak. In the space where the knot was made, she slipped in her fingers and grasped the rope. Reaching out with her free hand, she jerked on the rope stretched out between the two trees and turned it loose quickly so that it was till vibrating when Dick came running around the house.

She heard rather than saw him reach the tree. Carefully, she stepped around the tree to get behind him.

“Where are you, Klumsy,” Dick sang out as he reached for the rope. “I’m coming for you.” Dick started down the slope, one hand on the rope.

Susie picked up the ax and stood just out of sight watching Dick’s progress. When he reached the halfway point, she chopped through the first wrap of the rope around the tree. Dick screamed.

“What are you doing, you crazy huzzy?”

Susie watched as he grappled for a new hold on the rope. A second chop sent the end of the rope after Dick. His feet slipped out from under him and he slid down the embankment. Unable to gain his feet, he missed the twig Susie had caught earlier and landed in the water. She leaned the ax against the trunk and watched Dick floundering in the roaring bayou. When he went down the third time, she turned and ran back to the front of her house.

“Rain, rain, go away come again another day,” she sang as she twirled ‘round and ‘round, arms extended, face up to the sky, letting the cool rain slide down her face and into her collar, cooling the anger that had burned so hot.