Mama was tall, shapely, caramel complexioned, and movie-star beautiful. Except for the height, I looked nothing like her. I was string-bean skinny and as black as the ace of spades, as Ma Pearl liked to say. In her crisp green dress, Mama looked fancier than some of the ladies in Mrs. Robinson’s fashion magazines. As pretty as an angel, some folks said. Even the afternoon sun seemed to form a halo around her freshly pressed and curled hair.
But according to Ma Pearl, her daughter was definitely no angel. Having had me at fifteen and Fred Lee at sixteen, Mama was what the old folks labeled “ruint”. And Ma Pearl never let me forget it. She was so strict on me that I was allowed around only two boys—?Fred Lee and Hallelujah Jenkins, the preacher’s boy.
Mama smoothed a curl from her pretty face and said, “Sister, why you ack’n shameface?”
She’d begun calling me Sister when I was ten, and calling Fred Lee Brother when he was nine. We hated those pet names more than we hated the old-folksy names, Aunt Rose and Uncle Fred.
I shielded my face from the sun with my hand. “I ain’t acting shameface,” I said, squinting at Mama. “I just don’t wanna come in right now.”
With a wide grin plastered on her face, Mama gestured toward the door. “Well, you better git on in here and say bye to us ’fore we leave.”
I cringed. Those were the exact words she’d used the day she pranced off to the courthouse in Greenwood and married Mr. Pete. I had stayed awake all that night, lying in the bed we shared, worried. Waiting for her to come home. Of course, she never did. Now she was heading to Chicago, and she’d probably never come back from there, either.
Instead of following her through that squeaking screen door, I wanted badly to make a run out back to the toilet to settle my gurgling stomach. Plus, with Ma Pearl’s cheerful chatter flowing from the parlor, I knew I didn’t want to go in there and watch her awe over Mama’s new family as if they were a collection of Mrs. Robinson’s fine china.
Yet somehow I managed to stand and stumble toward the screen door. Then I stopped, my stomach flipping, my heart pounding, as I hesitated before Mama.
She smiled. Her brown eyes, warm, glowing like a welcome fire on a cold night, beckoned me, as always, to do what I didn’t want to do. But before I took two steps inside the parlor, Ma Pearl, with her ample frame crammed in the chair right next to the door, took one look at me and frowned. “Gal, what the heck jest happened to you?”
Chapter Two
SATURDAY, JULY 23
THE CHATTERING STOPPED. AND EVERYONE—?Mr. Pete, Sugar, Li’ Man, Fred Lee, Papa, and Mama—?all stared at me. They knew Ma Pearl wasn’t one to reckon with. She’d as soon give any one of her fourteen grandchildren a taste of the backside of her hand if we just smiled too long.
“Why is you so dirty?” she demanded.
When my eyes shifted to my stained beige dress, handcrafted by Ma Pearl herself from old croker sacks that had once held flour, my mouth fell into an O. The tobacco splashes on my legs were the ones I felt when Ricky spat at me. The splotches on my dress—?from the bottle hitting the tree—?were the ones that caught me by surprise.
I reshaped my mouth to explain, but the look on Ma Pearl’s fleshy face made the incident with Ricky feel about as scary as a church picnic. If she was that upset about my dress, I knew she wouldn’t take lightly to those cracked eggs frying on the side of the road.
With no other options, I smoothed down my soiled dress and muttered, “I accidentally fell when Sugar and Li’ Man ran out to meet me.”
When Ma Pearl’s nostrils flared, I braced myself for a scolding.
Luckily, Sugar pointed at Li’ Man and said, “He did it.”
Not so lucky for Li’ Man.
Mr. Pete squinted at him.
Li’ Man fidgeted.
Sugar smiled.
Mr. Pete, a huge man with heavy hands and an even heavier voice, creased his forehead and said, “Christopher Joe, apologize to your Aunt Rose. You got her dress all dirty.”
Li’ Man dropped his head to his chest and muttered, “Sorry.”
Before I could defend him, Ma Pearl cut me off. “Go take off that nasty dress.” She pointed toward the porch. “Don’t come in here. Go through the front room.”
Humiliated, I backed out of the parlor doorway, took three steps across the porch, and entered the house through the front room as I had been commanded. I hurried to the back of the house, to the bedroom I shared with my fifteen-year-old cousin Queen, to change into clothing more suitable for entrance into Ma Pearl’s parlor.
The parlor was a space she reserved for special people, like Mr. Pete—?or for herself and Queen, her favorite grandchild, when they wanted to sit and listen to their daily radio programs. The parlor also held Ma Pearl’s good furniture: the worn powder blue sofa, settee, and chairs that were no longer welcome in Mrs. Robinson’s parlor. As a matter of fact, everything in Ma Pearl’s parlor, from the sofa to a pair of melted-down white candles, all came from the Robinsons’ grand white house up the road.
Papa always said, “Don’t never turn down nothing the white folks gives you. And make sure they sees you using it.”