“Pete likes his job. I ain’t found one yet. They say there are plenty here. But they’re about as hard to come by as they are in Mississippi. They say plenty of white women are hiring maids. But I didn’t come all the way to Chicago to be no maid.
“Baby Sister came from Saint Louis last week to see us. She said she’s going to Mississippi on the twenty-first to see y’all. She will be there for a couple of weeks. Pete says it’ll be a while before we come back. We got to get our money back right.”
I stopped reading and folded the letter. The rest was about how she missed me and Fred Lee. I would’ve felt stupid reading it out loud.
“Folks want you to raise they chi’ren,” Ma Pearl said, “but they don’t want to send you nothing to help raise ’em with. She better hurr’up and get her money right.”
That last sentence seemed to be the only thing Ma Pearl heard in the whole letter. Funny how she never said a word to Aunt Clara Jean when she and Uncle Ollie always seemed to have plenty. Even though they, too, lived on Mr. Robinson’s place, their house was bigger than ours, and it even had a bathroom, of sorts. Plus Uncle Ollie owned a car. Not many coloreds living on somebody else’s land could make that claim.
Queen took her ear from the radio long enough to ask, “So Baby Susta coming on Sunday?”
“That’s what Mama says.”
Queen held out her hand. “Lemme see that.”
“No,” I said sharply, pressing the letter to my chest.
Queen sneered. “Girl, I already know yo’ mama can’t write no better than Ellie out in the barn.” She jumped up, snatched the letter from my grasp, and rolled her eyes. “And I know she don’t talk near ’bout as proper as you just made her sound in this letter,” she said, scoffing as she glanced at the letter. “I don’t even know how you can read this chicken scratch anyway.”
She tossed the letter back at me. It hit the floor.
Then she quickly switched from putting down Mama to criticizing Aunt Belle, who was referred to by everybody, except me, as Baby Susta, or Baby Sister, if you chose to say it right. “Hope she bring me something good,” she said as she flopped back down in her chair. “I couldn’t even wear half that junk she brought the last time.”
I picked up the letter from the floor and placed it in the front pocket of my dress. It wasn’t worth the fight to insist that Queen pick it up. “Maybe if you quit eating and sleeping all the time and tried a little work, that behind of yours wouldn’t spread so fast,” I told her.
With her nose in the air, Queen said to me, “Don’t worry ’bout my behind. Worry ’bout them sticks you call legs. Besides, don’t nobody wanna be po’ as a pole like you.”
“I’d rather be po’ as a pole than have a behind that sits up like a couple of muskmelons,” I said.
Queen sucked her teeth and said, “Git on out there in the field and scare some crows, lil’ ugly girl.”
“Crows eat corn, not cotton, stupid.”
Queen nodded toward my dress pocket, which held Mama’s letter. “I wouldn’t be so quick to call people stupid if I was you.”
Before I could set my mouth to respond, Ma Pearl butted in. “You done cleaning that kitchen, gal?”
“Almost,” I muttered.
“Almost ain’t never got nothing done. Get on in there and quit running yo’ mouth. Today Friday. Baby Susta be here Sunday. And you know how she like to bring folks down here with her, like Mississippi some kinda zoo that the whole world jest gots to see.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.
Queen, snickering, relaxed in her chair and turned up the volume on the radio.
“Aren’t you glad you use Dial?” the radio announcer said. “Don’t you wish everybody did?”
As I ambled toward the kitchen, my heart stinging from the letter, my hands stinging from the lye soap, I hated Mama even more for marrying Mr. Pete.
Chapter Ten
FRIDAY, AUGUST 19
THE ONLY BRIGHT SPOT IN MAMA’S LETTER WAS THE announcement that Aunt Belle, the youngest of Ma Pearl’s children, was coming from Saint Louis that Sunday, the twenty-first. Only two days away. Of course that meant extra work for me. But I didn’t care. Having relatives visit from up north was worth the extra labor of scrubbing down everything in the house. Everything had to be bone clean, including the front yard, which would be swept until it was nearly as clean as the kitchen floor.