MY FRIEND

She knew I was coming so she put on her red dress and painted her lips and darkened her eyebrows.

I pulled the crumbling wicker chair close to her.  "I used to keep that chair on my front porch with the table that is in the bathroom," she said.  And the memories, told in her precise, midwestern, school teacher voice, began to flow, like a slow pleasant stream. It was as if she reached out her hand and we walked together along that stream, two people from different centuries and much different backgrounds. She was born in a small Ohio town in a large farmhouse to a well-respected family, close friends with a future President. I was born in a small Alabama town, in a two-roomed house on a hill surrounded by kinfolks where someone once said, only boot-leggers, whores and poor people lived.

It seems we met by chance but I think it was by God's grace, a blessing, a prayer for a friend, answered.

I was hired to care for her while her daughter worked. As we passed the days in the cramped, one room apartment, through the routine of breakfast, lunch, bathtime, naptime and supper she opened up a window on the past and let me look through, down a long, long road that led to the big farmhouse and her first memories.   The sound of her brother's buggy wheels on the dirt road as they raced home late on a Saturday night.  The pet billy goat who pulled their little wagon around the farm. And the sound of the neighbor's feet tramping past her Papa's coffin in the front room downstairs.

How strange, yet so wonderful it was, our friendship. Two people from such different backgrounds and such a wide space of years, sitting side by side, laughing and crying together, agreeing on so many things.

She was in her last years, her hair gone from jet black to white, her skin from smooth white satin to yellowed crepe. Her spine, once so straight and proud was weak and bent, needing help from a walker to hold her upright.

" I never wanted to live this long."she said.

But I'm glad she did. I thank God that our paths crossed. I felt privileged and blessed to have her for my  friend.

 

In memory of Susan Gaberson Byrd

1896-1994

Denver, Colorado

THE RIVER

All my life we have"gone to the river."  We didn't call it camping or vacationing or anything else. Just "going to the river."

A large part of going to the river involved fishing. And fishing meant a trot line. This is a line with hooks tied all along it, strung out into the river. The hooks were baited with either doughballs or worms.  Mama made the doughballs at home. She stirred milk and meal and flour into a pot and cooked it until it was like paste. When the paste cooled we took a small piece and rolled it between our hands until it formed a round ball. When it dried it was firm enough to stay on a hook.

If we wanted worms we went "fiddling." Daddy would take us to the shady, damp woods with a tub and a handsaw. He sawed down a sapling about as big around as his wrist, leaving a stump two or three feet tall. Then he ran the saw, lightly, back and forth across the top of the stump, making shallow cuts again and again. In a few minutes worms would begin to poke their heads out of their holes. As Daddy continued fiddling they would crawl out all over the ground. The worms were everywhere. Once one even crawled up between my toes. Our job was to pick them up and plop them into the tub. We always gathered a big tub full of worms to take to the river. We didn't mind gathering the worms but we hated baiting the hooks. Some of the worms were nearly a foot long and we had to thread them in loops on the hooks. Our fingers got sticky with smelly worm juice that glowed in the dark.

Daddy ran the trot line at night.  He paddled along the line, raising each hook. If there was a fish he took it off and baited the hook again. I  can remember waking in the tent at night and hearing the boat motor crank up way across the water and I knew that Daddy was coming back. When I heard the splashing of water and the sound of the boat being dragged upon the bank, I could hardly keep from jumping up and running to see what he had caught.   It would usually be catfish which I loved to eat because there were no little bones to choke on. I was deathly afraid of choking on a fish bone, having heard tales of people who choked on one and died. I always kept a piece of bread handy, just in case, because Daddy said you could eat the bread and the bone would stick in it and you wouldn't choke and die.

We spent many, many happy days at the river.  My cousin Snookie would find out when we were going and he would follow around after my Daddy, offering to help him do things, hoping Daddy would let him go with us, which Daddy usually did. Snookie spent the night with us and we had a contest to see who could get ready to go quickest in the morning. Sometimes we slept in our clothes and once Snookie beat me by sleeping in his shoes.

Once we got to the river, Snookie would not help do anything, not even bait hooks. All he wanted to do was stay in the water. Mama got aggravated but she always let him go because she felt sorry for him.  Loretta, Snookie and I liked to paddle around the shore in Daddy's boat. Once Snookie was in the boat alone and it started drifting out. Loretta and I waded out as far as we could and shoved the paddle to him. The three of us agreed that we had saved his life and talked about it for days.

There was a deserted boat house near where we camped and we liked to lay on the walkway inside and look down into the mysterious, yellow-green water where the sun never shone. We dropped bread down to the minnows swimming about but we never could catch any of them. 

We fished for bream along the river bank with bamboo canes and catgut and tiny red and white bobbers. Once while wading in the shallow water along the edge, we saw what looked like eyes closing  in the sand just as we would start to put our foot down. Everytime we took a step, another eye would close. We dug down into the sand and found mussels. They lay with their shells slightly open, hoping to catch something to eat and what looked like closing eyes were their shells snapping to when we disturbed them.

We swam for hours with old innertubes around us, twisting our legs in such a way that we would spin around and around in the water until the earth seemed to tilt and we were so dizzy we couldn't tell in which direction we were going. Late in the afternoon we sat on the river bank, eating supper and watching the fish leap from the water. The whole river would be covered with silvery circles where the fish broke through the water and the air filled with the sound of their splashing.

I always hated when it came time to go home and would keep looking back as our truck climbed the mountain, to catch the very last glimpse of the river. Once home,  I would hang upside down from a tree limb and pretend that the sky was water.

THE CREEK

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go

But I go on forever.

 

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there, a grayling.

 

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery water-break

Above the golden gravel.

 

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget me nots

That grow for happy lovers.

 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeams dance

Against my sandy shallows.

 

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars,

 I loiter round my cresses;

 

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

(author unknown)

An Old Woman of the Roads

Oh! to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!

The heaped-up sods upon the fire

The pile of turf against the wall!

 

To have a clock with weights and chains

And pendulum swinging up and down,

A dresser filled with shining delph,

Speckled and white and blue and brown!

 

I could be busy all the day

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor

And fixing on their shelf again

My white and blue and speckled store!

 

I could be quiet there at night

Beside the fire and by myself,

Sure of a bed and loath to leave

The ticking clock and shining delph!

 

Och! But I'm weary of mist and dark,

And roads where there's never a house nor bush

And tired I am of bog and road,

And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

 

And I am praying to God on high

And I am praying him night and day,

For a little house, a house of my own-

Out of the wind's and rain's way.

 

by padraic colum  (Irish poet)

 

should you go first

Should you go first and I remain

To walk the road alone,

I'll live in memory's garden, dear,

With happy days we've known.

In spring I'll wait for roses red,

When fades the lilac blue,

In early fall, when brown leaves call,

I'll catch a glimpse of you.

 

Should you go first and I remain

For battles to be fought,

Each thing you've touched along the way

Will be a hallowed spot.

I'll hear your voice, I'll see you smile,

Though blindly I may grope,

The memory of your helping hand

Will buoy me on with hope.

 

Should you go first and I remain

To finish with the scroll,

No length'ning shadows shall creep in

To make this life seem droll.

We've known so much of happiness,

We've had our cup of joy,

And memory is one gift of God

That death can not destroy.

 

Should you go first and I remain,

One thing I'd have you do:

Walk slowly down that long, lone path,

For soon I'll follow you.

I'll want to take each step you take,

That I may walk the same,

For someday down that lonely road

You'll hear me call your name.

by a.k. rowswell

MAW'S APPLE TREE (cont)

The next spring a wind storm came down across the hill, passed between the big rocks in Snookie's yard and blew away their outdoor toilet. It cut a path through Maw's back yard and headed straight for her apple tree.

The next morning Snookie and I stood in her backyard looking at the tree laying there, it's roots reaching up toward the sky like clawing fingers.  And you know what? We were glad!

MAW'S APPLE TREE (cont)

I hadn't been paying any attention to Snookie, but turned around to look at him when I heard him laugh.  There, wedged in the crotch of a branch sat Snookie with a big buck-toothed grin spread over his freckled face. Hanging right in front of him was an apple core still attached to the tree by it's stem. It was cleanly eaten all around. I sat there looking at him with admiration for his cleverness.  Then, hearing Maw's back door slam, we grabbed the nearest apple and slid down the tree and was off up the trail to Snookie's house.

MAW'S APPLE TREE

My grandmaw had a big apple tree growing in her back yard. Every summmer it was loaded down with crunchy red apples. But Maw was stingy with her apples. Considering the number of grandchildren she had living around her, if she had given us free access to the tree it would have been stripped in two or three days. But we weren't old enough to care about that. We just thought she was stingy.

One day my cousin, Snookie and I begged and begged until Maw finally said, "You can pick one apple apiece, no more than that and don't break any branches while you are about it. I'm saving them apples to dry."

Snookie and I went up that apple tree like two monkeys, eyeing every apple, trying to find the biggest one with no specks, worm holes or bird pecks.

SAILING (cont)

As she sails across the waves she looks like a dainty butterfly, wings folded, sipping from a sea of nectar.

When I turn into the wind, the jib flaps and flails itself until I pull it to the other side and it fills again, with the gusty,salty air.

As I turn to go downwind, she is like a bird with wings outstretched to dry, skimming over silver flakes of reflected light.

The only sounds are the creaking of halyards. the silky swish of the water, the sea gulls cry and the music I play, spreading its notes back behind me over the white-capped, sunlit sea.

I like to sail on a slant until the boat's edge is in the water, the mast leaning, horizontal with the sea. Everything down below goes crashing to the other side. Sometimes I scare myself.

Looking up to check the wind-vane,  I see a toy jet drawing a line across the sky. People being carried along by noisy, powerful engines. As two leaping grey dolphins pop up beside the boat, clearing their airholes, I do not envy the jetting people.

 

SAILING

She lies, angrily, at the dock waiting for me. She was not meant to be tied, bow and stern like a prisoner,  while seagulls sit on her shrouds and taunt her, the rude waves slap her about and barnacles chew her bottom.

I throw off the coverings, like blankets on a horse. As I leave the dock, her mooring lines look like a broken spider web which a captured fly has escaped.

Carefully I guide her out, past the pilings and rocks.  In open water I point her sharp, white nose into the wind and dress her.  I raise a white, crackly triangle up the mast. I unfurl the sunset colored jib. She hesitates. Her sails catch the wind. She shudders all over, like a horse getting rid of flies. She heels a little to one side, then she is moving.

The waves curl from her bow like ruffles.  The sound she makes as she moves through the water is like the sound of someone brushing silk.

 

 

tHIEVES AND LIARS (cont)

Daddy took us to the fair and when he gave us our fifty cents, we didn't beg for any more. But once through the gate we lost Snookie. But I didn't care. Somehow it just didn't seem much fun anymore. The music didn't sound as pretty as I had imagined or the lights as bright.

I got in line to the spook house, but the closer I got to the entrance the more I decided I didn't want to see the spooks and maybe even the devil that day. Just as I was about to enter, I turned and ran back down the wooden walkway.

As the Ferris wheel went round and round high into the sky overlooking all the other rides and the shouting, laughing people, the workers selling popcorn and cotton candy, the thought of what we had done went round and round in my head

I was glad when Daddy came and got us.

A few days later Evelyn asked Loretta and me about the money and we told her that we had been at her house that day, that we didn't go in but Snookie did. Now we were liars too. Since that day I have never stolen anything else and my sister, Loretta says she hasn't either, but I have known her to lie.

THEIVES AND LIARS (cont)

" I know where she keeps some silver dollars hidden."he said.

My sister and I sat there looking at him. He stood with his head down, his hands in his overall pockets, scuffing the ground with his bare foot.

" Well, she would have paid us," we agreed, " If she had been here."

So we went to the back of Evelyn's house and raised a window. Snookie soon had the three silver dollars in his pocket.  Outside,again we talked some more.

Loretta, who was two years older said, "I think we should put them back. I think she will get mad."

A vision of that street fair came into my head, the many colored flashing lights, the Ferris wheel turning, the merry-go -round with it's pretty brightly painted horses, like the horse the prince rode when he carried Cinderella to his castle. The booths where  you threw nickels and won pretty dishes to take home to your mama. The music was in my ears, the music that we could hear from across town, all the way to our house. My daddy said the music was saying, "Toot! Toot! bring me your nickels and your dimes.

" Oh no" I pleaded, " Let's do something else for her and she won't get mad."

So we gathered up some rocks and made a circle around one of her flower beds. Surely she would be so pleased, she couldn't get mad.

 

THIEVES AND LIARS

One day my sister, Loretta, my cousin, Snookie and I were playing around my Aunt Evelyn's house when we noticed her baby calf come into the yard. We went banging on her door yelling, "Evelyn, Evelyn, your calf is out of the pasture." But she wasn't home. We got sticks and ran the calf back into the pasture to it's mama. We were very proud of ourselves and talked about how happy our aunt would be that we had saved her calf.

"She might even pay us," Snookie said. And then we became really excited.

The street fair had come to town. It came every summer during the hot, dragging days of July and caused a lot of excitement among all the children. Everybody wanted to go. Daddy had promised to take us and if Evelyn gave us some money, maybe we could ride every ride.

" But what if she doesn't come back in time?' I asked and our happy smiles went away.

And then that old demon who sits and listens to little children's conversations crept into my cousin's heart.

 

A Certain Smile

A certain smile,

A certain face,

Can lead an unsuspecting heart on a merry chase.

A fleeting glance

Can say so many lovely things.

Suddenly you know why my heart sings.

You'll love awhile

And when love goes,

You try to hide the tears inside with a cheerful pose.

But in the hush of night exactly like a bittersweet refrain,

Comes that certain smile

To haunt your heart again.

Sung by Johnny Mathis,

Dedicated to Patrolman Anthony John Scozzaro

April 15th, 1939- December 13, 1961

ON SEEING THE OCEAN (cont)

Then Fred ran past me down to the water, jumping and yelling and running in and out with the waves, getting his britches legs wet. I hiked my coat and skirt up as high as I could and ran down and joined him. The water was cold, but we didn't care. We danced and played along the ocean's edge in the moonlight until our clothes we wet almost to our waists.  My uncle had a light and he showed us the little sand crabs running along, sideways, down the beach. The whole family joined us in chasing them.

Soon Mama said we needed to go to bed so I reluctantly left the beach, my coat and skirt sopping wet, the hem of my skirt flapping around my ankles.

That night I slept with Maw on a single bed, her arm around me to keep me from falling off.  I lay looking at the moonlight shining in the window of the little cabin and listening to the washing in and out of the waves.  I said to myself, " I have seen the ocean." And went to sleep, very satisfied.

ON SEEING THE OCEAN (cont)

When it got good daylight, Daddy pulled over on the side of the road at a picnic table and Mama and Evelyn and Maw cooked breakfast. Mama has a picture of us huddled around the table eating. We all have on coats and Maw has a head rag on her head.

When we got to the prison we went through one set of gates and they locked behind us. We went through another set and they locked too. A guard searched the picnic lunch we had brought to share with Uncle George and took away the knife we brought to cut the ham.

My brother and I didn't care about Uncle George or the picnic so we were glad when at last Maw hugged him goodbye and we were on our way to see the ocean.

When we got to Pensacola it was already dark. Daddy rented a cabin on the beach. When we got out of the car, I was amazed at the sand. I had never seen so much sand in my life, white sand that looked almost like snow. It  was deep and filled my shoes until I could hardly walk.  I pulled off my shoes and ran up the slight rise and there it was.  Spread out before me as far as I could see in any direction was water. Black water topped with white foam. And as the water came up onto the shore there was a loud roaring and when it went back there was a soft tinkling of tumbling seashells. The wind blowing off the water was cold and moist and salty tasting.  And hanging right on the horizon was that same silvery moon I had left behind that morning. There was a silver flecked path leading straight from me across the water to the moon. I felt the urge to follow it across that beautiful eternal sea.

 

ON SEEING THE OCEAN

I was in the ninth grade before I ever saw the ocean. My daddy had told me about it. He had seen the ocean when he was stationed  at Dauphin Island near Mobile, during the war.  I wanted very much to see it for myself.

My daddy had a brother in prison near Mobile who had shot and killed a man. He was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison. My grandmaw, although she knew Uncle George had done a terrible thing, never stopped loving her son and went to see him every chance she got.

One day my daddy and my uncle, Lewis decided to take Maw to see Uncle George. "We'll all go, ' Daddy said, "and then  drive on to Pensacola and see the ocean. I was wild with excitement. I was going to see the ocean.

The night before we were going to leave, my brother, Fred and I couldn't sleep. After Mama and Daddy had gone to bed , we sneaked up and ran the clock ahead two hours. So the next morning when the alarm went off at six it was really only four and still dark. I remember how the sky looked that morning. It wasn't black but a deep, deep velvety blue and right on the horizon hung a perfectly round big pearl colored ball, the most beautiful full moon I had ever seen.

We loaded the car and drove next door to Evelyn and Lewis's house. They couldn't understand why we were so early but good naturedly got ready and soon we were on our way. Daddy's old Ford was jam-packed with my mama and daddy, Evelyn and Lewis, Maw, my brother Fred and me, and enough clothes and food to last two days.

 

RELEASE (CONT)

Having fed the chickens, she starts up the porch steps as an old red dog comes slinking out from beneath them, his head hanging down as if he is afraid to look anyone in the face. His tail curls  in between his legs and he walks as if he has been crippled at one time. The old lady pats his head and says to him, "You poor cowed down thing. You come right on in the house with me. Come on, it's okay."

Gently she coaxes the old hound up the steps and into the kitchen where a stingy little fire burns in the fireplace grate.  That same smile crosses her lips and she heaps the fire high with shiny, black lumps of coal until it is roaring and casting lovely colors and shadows all about the room. The old dog slowly lowers his haunches to the floor and resting his head on his paws, is soon asleep, soaking up the welcoming warmth.

She looks out the window and sees that it has begun to snow. " Oh how I do love snow," she says. She loves to watch it fall and cover the ground, hiding all the ugliness, turning everything into a shimmering fairyland. Her face glows in the light of the fire as she goes and throws the back door open and drags up a straight chair. She sits there for hours, just watching it snow.

" Tomorrow I will go and buy myself a new coat and a pretty pair of slippers."

The defiant little smile is a wide, happy grin now.

Creative Writing

Exercise One Fiction

RELEASE

"Oh, my!" the old lady groans, holding her back. " I feel like I've been drug through hell and beat with a soot bag." She is weary after the events of the last three days.  She pauses at the porch steps, turns, and looks out over her back yard. She pulls her thin, worn coat tighter around her as the blustery winter wind whips around the edge of the porch.  Some white rose petals blow across the yard, strangely out of place in the dead grass and dirt.

She hears a screeching sound, like an angry voice, and looks toward the old apple tree by the chicken lot.  It's crooked branches move restlessly in the wind. One limb is broken and reaches down toward the ground like a cane, as though the tree needs help to stand upright. It's trunk is bent like a humped back, gray and covered with moss.  The screeching of the two branches rubbing together continues as if complaining about the cold, the sunless sky and the loss if it's leaves and apples.  The old woman shudders and steps upon the porch, her clumsy, old woman shoes thudding heavily on the wooden boards.

The chickens hear the sound and come rushing from the hen house to the fence, squawking for food.  She pauses for a moment.

"It's too early to feed them," she thinks and then she says to herself, "I can do as I please." She goes to the shed nearby and dips up a meager pan of cracked corn.  Then with a defiant little smile, she dips deep down into the bag and brings up a brimming pan full and leaves a trail of yellow all the way to the lot.

To Where You Are

To Where You Are

Who can say for certain?  Maybe you're still here.

I feel you all around me, your memory's so clear,

Deep in the stillness, I can hear you speak,

You're still my inspiration, can it be?

That you are mine, forever love? And you are watching over me from up above?

Fly me up to where you are beyond the distant star,

I wish upon tonight to see your smile.

If only for a while to know you're there.

A breath aways not far to where you are.

Are you gently sleeping, here inside my dreams?

And isn't faith believing, all power can't be seen?

As my heart holds you, just one beat away,

I cherish all you gave me, everyday.

Cause you are mine, forever love, watching me from up above.

And I believe that angels breathe and that love will live on and never leave.

Fly me up to where you are above the distant star,

I wish upon to night to see your smile.

If only for a while to know you're there,

A breath aways not far to where you are.

I know you're there. A breath aways not far to where you are.

Song sung by Josh Gorban

Dedicated to Patrolman Anthony John Scozzaro

MY BLANKET OF DEPRESSION

MY BLANKET OF DEPRESSION

My blanket of depression

is the color of mud.

Like the army blanket

my daddy brought from the war.

I creep beneath it

and gather it

around me.

The blanket is old and ragged,

The way I feel.

The sunlight comes through

in little pinpricks,

like the pinpricks of anxiety

that cover me.

I crouch beneath the blanket

like a turtle in it's shell.

The shell protects me,

Yet it is my prison.

Sometimes the depression lifts

like the edges of the blanket

when the wind blows.

Then I spread my blanket

and sit atop it,

coming untangled for a while

in the healing sunshine.

But then the fear comes again

and I pull my blanket even tighter

to smother the pain.

Someday I will take my blanket

And shake it.

Shake it free of the fear and pain

And the tear stains.

 I will make a little boat

And for a mast I will use a tall sapling.

 I will fasten my blanket for a sail

And I will sail away upon an ocean.

Please God, an ocean of joy.

 

MOVING

I didn't want to move, anymore.  I didn't want to leave the hills and hollows and the house that I had known most all my life. I didn't want to move and leave my little brother, Jr. asleep in the graveyard.

I have lived in Ft. Myers, Florida and have picked oranges right off the trees. I have smelled the orange blossoms and gone all winter without putting on a coat. But I have never moved away from home, because home is where the heart is and my heart has always been there with my mama and the little house on Chastain Hill.

MOVING ( CONT) 2

It was almost dark when I noticed the smoke rising above the hills behind our house. Old Red and I ran out of the yard and up through John Lomac's cotton field. We came out on the top of Violet Hill and away across the hollow I could see the fire.  It looked like a ruby necklace strung out along the ridge of the mountain. It lit up the sky with a crimson glow. The fire was too far away for me to hear the roar and crackle of the flames but when the wind blew toward me I could smell the hot, smothery scent of burning leaves and underbrush. I stood and watched as the fire leaped and danced among the trees. Suddenly I felt scared. I turned and ran back down toward the house with Red at my heels.

I looked down at our little house nestled, safe, underneath the hackberry trees. I saw Daddy's workshop where he let me build my playhouse and would come and visit me.  I saw the old barn where the cow stayed and our outdoor toilet with it's rusty roof. We liked to wait until our brother Gene got in there and then throw rocks on the roof and make the rust fall down on him. I could see my sister, Betty in the kitchen and my little niece standing at the kitchen door looking for me.

MOVING (CONT)

I went to school and told everybody that I was moving to Florida. They didn't believe me. Back then hardly anyone ever moved away. I had been living in the same house since I was four years old. We had swapped our old house to Aunt Johnnie for her land up on the other side of the hill. Daddy built us a house there but he made a mistake and built on another man's land instead of his. Daddy had to buy the lot where our house was from him. Anyway, I was tired of living in the same house, in the same town and wanted to move to Florida.  In Florida it never got cold and you could pick oranges off trees right in your back yard. I also wanted to see the big pink birds with long legs and black bills.

I was so disappointed when Mama wrote that Daddy couldn't find a job and that they were coming home. I went out and sat on the edge of the back porch. Our old hound dog named Red came and laid his head in my lap and looked up at me with sad eyes. Maybe he had been looking forward to moving too.

MOVING

When I was in the ninth grade my daddy got laid off at the steel plant. He waited and waited to be called back. My aunt Bertie, who had moved to Ft. Myers, Fla. wrote and said why didn't Daddy come down there. She believed he could get a job driving a bulldozer because that is what he did at the steel plant.  She said Mama could get a job working where she did, packing gladiolus for shipping to florists. So Mama and Daddy decided to go look around.

 I was very disappointed when they said my brother Fred and I couldn't go, that we didn't need to miss school.  My sister Loretta was going.  She had quit school after getting a job at the Magic Grill. Mama got my sister Betty and her husband to come stay at the house with Fred and me.

" Y'all behave and mind what Betty says," Mama told us that morning before they left. "And keep your fingers crossed that your daddy finds a job."

"Bring us back some oranges." I said. That was the main reason I wanted to go. I wanted to see the orange trees and smell the blossoms.

The Color (cont) 3

When we got home that day, the fun was forgotten when Daddy yelled at Mama for letting us go to that place with our cousins who had bad reputations all over town. He took off his belt to whip us but I slipped out the door and went and hid in the barnloft in the playhouse that my sister and I made. I sat peeking out the window towards the house. I could still hear my daddy yelling but he never came out.

There was an old, rusty tube of lipstick, discarded by Mama and saved by us, sitting on the windowsill. I took my little finger and stuck it into the tube and got out the last little bit of lipstick and smeared the bright red color on my mouth. I sat and waited until I thought my daddy had forgotten about me.

To me, anger is red, bright red and it tastes like rusted metal in your mouth and it smells like old lipstick. And it feels like a question in your mind and heart.

AND SO IT WAS

And three years later, though not in that spot, he was buried.

ME

And this is me, back then.

MAY DAY (cont)

I am over 60, my children are grown and my hair is turning gray. My old school is still standing, run down,empty and silent. But today is May 1st. The lawn is green and still slopes gracefully down to the old cedar tree and I wish, Oh! how I still wish that I could be Queen and walk down that lawn in front of my classmates. And I would have a yellow sequined dress with a big full skirt reaching down to the ground, covering my bare feet.

MAY DAY (cont)

The King and Queen came out the front door of the school and walked down a long sloping lawn to a side yard. They were seated beneath a big cedar tree and then the music and dancing began.

Oh, how I wished I could be the queen.  I never was but I was a butterfly once with yellow and orange crepe paper wings that my mama made. I danced round and around with other girls all dressed in lovely colored wings.  The day ended with the Maypole dance, girls holding bright ribbons, the colors of the rainbow, weaving in and out so that when the dance was finished the streamers were plaited around the Maypole.

MAY DAY (cont)

The second thing I loved about May 1st was the grand celebration we had at school. Each class chose a boy and girl to be prince and princess and from them a May Queen and King was chosen. The rest of the class dressed in costumes and danced for the King and Queen's pleasure. The princesses wore long evening gowns.

One girl who lived near me was chosen a princess and she wore a yellow dress with a long, full,sticking out skirt. Her grandmother made it and she had sewn big, round golden sequins all over it. They sparkled so pretty in the sunshine.

MAY DAY

MAY  DAY

When I was a little girl there were two things I loved about May 1st.  One was that on that day my mama let me go barefoot for the first time in the year.  No matter how warm it got in April or how hard I begged, she would always  say," No. It will make make you sick, you have to wait until May."

So when May 1st came around, no matter how cold it was I went barefooted and Oh, how good it felt to my winter tender feet to walk on that new spring grass.