Free Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns by J. California Cooper Page A

you got a man to help you carry your burden. You betta count your blessins! I wish a good man would come take care me!
    “You got to r’member, Lily Bea, you ain’t no pretty woman! I’m your mama, and I’m gon to tell you the Lord’s truth. You a ugly woman and you lucky you got any man at all!” Sorty believed these words. Both of them did.
    The morning the order arrived with the books Lily Bea had been thinking of all these things as she cleaned. “I’m so glad I don’t have a child from this man.” She tried to picture a life of love and happiness, but her mind couldn’t make the picture come alive for her. “Soon I will be old, and . . . something . . . there must be more to life than this. Life will have passed me by. Just an ugly, nobody wants, woman in this world.”
    The tears were rolling down her cheeks when Maddy called out to her about the package.
    Holding back her eagerness to run to the books, she began dusting a half-blackened mirror and, looking up, she saw herself: ugly. She sighed, saying, as she moved away, “Lord, I’d rather be alone. But how? Where? I don’t have more than a hundred dollars hidden away. And I’m not going back to my mama’s.” She began to silently cry from her heart. Her body and her heart were so lonely. So hungry and so lonely.
    She felt so disheartened her body started moving to the waves of her sorrow. A slow, swaying, dirge. Her body moved smoothly, even in the cramped space. Her eyes closed. She was thinking to herself, “My life and I are one big zero. Every day.” She prayed, “Deliver me, please God. Deliver me.”
    Maddy was jealous of Mr. Forest’s request for Lily Bea, but he respected him too much to try to deny the request. “Besides,” Maddy thought, “I am getting older, my leg givin me more trouble lately. I’ma have to let her do more round here. Let her take care me for a while! Let her see how she like that! I have a wife don’t like no lovin! So, work fool!” (He had never explained to anyone how his leg came to be crippled. He was not born with it that way. It was an angry leg and his whole face was angry with the movement of that leg. He was pitiful in his own right. But, one wondered, if he did not blame an accident? or someone else? had the fault been his own?)
    When Lily Bea came to him, Maddy said, “Mr. Forest sent this order over here to my shop, and he sent a package, a book, for you to read about how to do your work better. So if you finished cleanin and cookin, you can read it. I’ll take care the regista.”
    He gave the books to Lily. “You take these work books and go head. Study and see what he talkin bout. I’ll do this order. You forget I taught you most all you know, and I don’t need you to do everything I do.”
    I don’t have to tell you, when Lily Bea took the package of books, she felt both pleasure and importance. She made a cup of tea, and went to her pallet to settle down and read. She opened the smallest book first: the fabric systems book. It looked interesting. Then she opened the art book, and was lost for several hours in beauty, history, and dreams. She thanked Weldon Forest from her heart. Maddy didn’t pay her any attention because he wasn’t interested in books.
    The Epitome Cleaners’ order was finished in three days; the books had been read, and it was time for Lily Bea to deliver.
    When Lily arrived to see Weldon, her hair was done neatly, and she was wearing a secondhand, simple but good, dress. She was smiling and looked nearly happy. Weldon smiled down at her as he shook her hand. He held it awhile as they spoke.
    She was carrying a book in her hand she had read on the bus. Maddy hadn’t wanted the driver-man to pick her up. “Ain’t no sense in botherin that man! You can make it over there on your own!”
    Weldon Forest was, unexpectedly, nervous. After he indicated to the counterperson to take the basket, he saw the book Lily took out of it. “What is that book, Lily?”
    “Fairy