Ellen Foster (7 page)

I myself am dying to put on the froufrou skirt and slick top Jo Jo dances around in. Not for somebody to see me but to stand in the hall mirror and observe myself private and practice my style of posing.

She has been taking lessons at the lady’s school all year and
does she evermore love it. You can see her dancing even when she is only in one place or eating supper.

I myself can dance like I already said but not like Jo Jo. I had rather shake a leg.

My new mama says for me to wash the flour off my arms and do my homework. If you are like me you will put it off until the last minute and then Wild Kingdom comes on but that is just too bad.

I have a donated desk and chair in my room.

If the door is not shut good the baby Roger will crawl in here by mistake. That low it is hard to tell where you are at.

If I do not feel like company I turn him back toward the door and motion for him to leave. If he stays he is always hot to find something of mine to break or gnaw on. I keep my old microscope and art supply out of reach.

I usually hand him my gloves because they will not fit down his throat.

When it dawns on him to leave on his own will he heads off for another room. He has a mama here but he did not get a daddy.

10

When it turned summer I went to my mama’s mama’s house. All that summer was a bad time and no matter how hard I try I still remember her sad.

I told Roy and Julia I had rather go to the reform school or even get on the chain gang than go stay with her. I did not know her good but she caused a knot in me just thinking about her face.

They said they sympathized but there was not a thing they could do anymore. They said they would see me on visits which we did not have because Julia got fired and they had to move away.

She sends me a letter now when you least expect it.

It makes me slow down and sad to think about my mama’s mama’s house. All the time was like a record you play on the wrong speed.

Before I left I packed all of my things that would fit in one
box and willed the rest to Julia and Roy. Some of these things might come in handy I said to them.

Maybe it is wasteful to scatter your worldly goods from hither to yon but I never wanted to have more than would tie up or tape down in the box. All I really cared about accumulating was money. I saved a bundle.

My mama’s mama picked me up in her long car that was like the undertaking car only hers was cream. I told Roy and Julia one more time I did not need to go.

If we have to live together the least you could do is talk to me like you know I am in your car is what I thought to say to her. I figured she would warm up to me.

But all she asked on the way to her house was when does school start again?

Lord it just ended and I sure am looking forward to the summer at your house I said for the icebreaker.

I asked you when school starts. I do not need the commentary is what she said back to me hot.

So September. I said September.

I said my answer quick and on time like the army way. I saluted in my head.

I just kept guessing she was nervous around strangers and she would soften up. But if I knew then all I know about her now I would have jumped out of her car moving and hightailed it.

For a while I figured she might have liked the idea of having a girl around the house but when she saw my actual self and my box she changed her mind.

You cannot blame her. I am not exactly a vision. But Lord I have good intentions that count.

I decided I would make the best of the situation because you can generally adjust to somebody with money to burn. She might be a witch but she has the dough is what I decided to tell myself.

But by July I called her the damn witch to myself and all the money she had did not matter anymore. That is something when you consider how greedy I am.

The first few days at her house I mainly walked around and looked but did not touch.

God she had it all.

A colored woman just to cook and another one to make up your bed and dust the what-nots. Not dime store what-nots you could tell but costly items. Collectibles I know now to call them. Egyptian type candy jars. She could sell museum tickets I thought. All this stuff collecting dust could go to good use. She could turn a profit I thought.

Her furniture was chiseled out of wood and the chairs had curvy figures on them not just brown or worn out. The colored lady said the pieces had aged and appreciated. And she said it like it was all part hers. Ha I said to myself and looked some more.

The curtains were not sheets sewed either. You could wrap yourself up in one and stay warm.

My mama sewed sheets for my old house. I always figured that was using your head.

My room was my mama’s room she had when she was little. It had a canopy bed and a fireplace for show. My mama’s mama said she gave me that bedroom because I deserved it. It took me a while to figure out that the room was not a prize or a present for being sweet. I started to think she knew what
all I would see dancing around in that fireplace and how I would need the lights on all night.

She would catch me snooping around sometimes and say to me I’ll break your little hand if you touch that vase! Not joking but serious to make me think of how a broke hand might feel.

I would go off by myself and imagine turning my buddy Starletta loose in here. She could have a rampage in one room and out the other.

Or maybe I will invite the whole family that eats off records. Nobody needs four sets of dish plates anyway. They can visit while you are at the beauty parlor I thought and I felt better to imagine it all. At least it was funny to me.

And all the time I was dying to know why she was so mean.

Some days I felt like it was a torture chamber and I counted the days until school.

I was there for a week when she said she had found something to do with me.

Finally I thought.

On the first Monday in June she woke me up with the sun and said it is time to get to work.

She has found a job for me I thought. I figured we were going out to deliver the newspapers. She would drive and I could pitch the papers out the car window. But she drove me instead to the cotton field and said to come home for lunch. Ask a nigger what to do is what she said before she drove off.

Five or six people were already chopping and they were way far down the rows and not noticing me.

I just looked.

Then the biggest lady yelled you better get on a row!

And I’ll be damned if I’ll do it I said to myself.

You better get on a row! she yelled again. The bosslady left you here to work not to stand. And I needs to make sure you do it. Now get you a hoe. When I gets to the end of mines I’ll catch you up to the rest of us.

That was the first thing I had heard reasonable so I started chopping my row.

I lived on a farm with my mama and daddy but they hired colored people to do my part of the slave labor. I was too small to work right. I used to play in the fields with Starletta and watch her mama and daddy chop but I never figured it would be me one day.

Lord how did they stand it so hot? I wondered.

The big lady helped me catch up to them and they all told me their names that sounded alike except for hers. Mavis.

All I could think to say after my name was did they know Starletta’s mama and daddy?

They go to the same church!

We started chopping again and I did not feel sick until the afternoon. I had to sit down and every time I tried to stand up I just had to sit back down.

Mavis fanned me with her apron and I felt much cooler.

Then she said what the bosslady is up to is her business but it must be a mighty bad debt you is out here working off. They is no sense in a white chile working in this heat. I can hardly stands it my own hot self.

I’ll feel better in a minute.

You sit here and rest some. And you is not wearing a hat on your head. What you think that sun won’t fry your brain? Lord chile.

The next morning I got a straw hat out of the garden shed
and wore it all day. I felt cooler all over and did not get sick anymore.

While I worked I mainly counted in my head or recited the poems I knew good to myself. You can keep time with the hoe chopping around a plant. It breaks up the day that way.

I tried not to think and work at the same time because that made me slow. If I did think though I wondered about Roy and Julia and how the chickenshit worked out. Then I would need to get back on the beat of my poem.

Whenever I fell behind Mavis would catch me up. She said they were born to chop and that is how they could work so fast and steady. She would say that and laugh but it was not funny to me.

One day when I had gotten to know her pretty good she asked me why my mama’s mama sent me out to the fields and why I was not in Vacation Bible School or at least somewhere out of the sun.

I told her exactly what I was told. My mama’s mama said I was under her feet and besides that she could not bear to look at my face day in and day out. Also she said I might learn a thing or two out there.

Which I did.

I bet she never counted on me learning everything old Mavis had to teach me. The hotter the summer got, the more Mavis loved to talk. And I loved to listen.

One day she said flat out you look just like your mama. Lord chile you got that same black hair all down your back.

Did you know my mama?

Yes chile! I was raised up beside her on this farm. I knowed her good as I know my own self. I never knowed anybody sweet like your mama. Smart as a whip too!

She was?

Lord yes she said and laughed at the same time.

Did her mama make her work too?

Lord no! She won’t cut out for hot work. Her mama made the other ones work like dogs but not your mama. You don’t plan to tell the bosslady I been telling you anything do you?

Oh no I said so maybe she would tell me more.

She told me enough that summer to let me know I was not the only one who thought my mama’s mama was off the rocker.

She said the bosslady had always been peculiar but ever since my mama died she had acted touched.

I did not need to ask touched with what because I already knew.

But still it is hard to believe in your head what you feel in your heart about a person. Especially somebody you know good. I figured one day I would do some encyclopedia research and see if there is a name for what ailed my mama’s mama. But that was like trying to look up a word you don’t know how to spell. What would I look under? Meanness? Angry? Just crazy? Then I figured it was a little bit of everything. And anyway, my family never was the kind that would fit into a handy category.

By July I was like a boy. When I started out both my hands were a red blister but then I toughened up good.

I thought while I chopped from one field to the next how I could pass for colored now. Somebody riding by here in a car could not see my face and know I was white. But that is OK now I thought to myself of how it did not make much of a difference anymore.

If I just looked at my own arms and legs up to where my
shorts and shirt started I said I could pass for colored now. I was tan from the sun but so dark I was just this side of colored. Under it all I was pinky white.

At the end of each day the colored workers went to their shack and I walked to my mama’s mama’s. On work days she left a plate of something for me on the stove. That might not sound social to you but it was perfect for me.

We ate right many miniature chickens or turkeys. I do not know the difference. But they were baked and not crunchy the way I most enjoy chicken. When we both ate at the same Sunday table we both picked at our little individual chickens or turkeys and did not talk. And still it was OK by me.

After supper each night it was not raining I walked up the colored path and spied on Mavis and her family.

It looked like slavery times with them all hanging out on the porch picking at each other. They fought strong as they played and laughed.

I looked regularly but they never saw me or at least they did not mention to me to stay away from their house. I wondered right much about them and the way they got along.

My mama’s mama did not pay them doodly-squat. I saw the amount she had written on the envelope she handed Mavis every Friday.

She did not pay me a cent except room and board. I kept figuring up how much I was worth by the hour.

But Mavis and her family showed up in the field every day when I was thinking of how I would save up my money and leave if I was old as them. I guess it never dawned on them just to pack up and leave.

While I was easedropping at the colored house I started a
list of all that a family should have. Of course there is the mama and the daddy but if one has to be missing then it is OK if the one left can count for two. But not just anybody can count for more than his or her self.

While I watched Mavis and her family I thought I would bust open if I did not get one of them for my own self soon. Back then I had not figured out how to go about getting one but I had a feeling it could be got.

I only wanted one white and with a little more money. At least we can have running water is what I thought.

The whole time I stayed at my mama’s mama’s I thought about giving that judge a piece of my mind.

Look. You made a mess. Now clean it up and put me on the right road is what I would say to him.

One solution I figured was to sell off some household items. It is hard for somebody like myself to be surrounded by all that and not think about how much cash it could turn into. I could make a catalog of her merchandise and let folks pick them out a ashtray, some brandy snifters, or one of the many vases. Piece by piece her house would disappear and she would be unable to do a thing. But I would be on easy street.

I would keep her tied up in this particular plan.

You would think that when you get older you get weak but that was not true in her case. Meanness made her quick like a jungle animal.

I started to think she wanted me around as a substitute for my daddy. And each day I was not exactly him but just enough of his eyes or nose to tease her oh she boiled violent inside.