Free The Red Rose Box by Brenda Woods Page B

thing you can’t take from a man, his word.”
    Ruth and I replied, “Yessir.”
    â€œLeave those girls alone with that old man talk.... Old man talk, that’s all it is.” Olivia laughed.
    Uncle Bill put his arm around his wife’s waist and said, “Old man nuthin, pretty brown gal.”
    We approached Lady Liberty, holding her torch high.
    I smiled, squinting into the sun, and thought that I was still just a poor colored girl, used to walking barefoot, catching fish with nothing but a string and a piece of crayfish on a hook.
    I felt happy when I looked around and saw land, happier still when my feet touched it.

    During our trip, we tried to behave like we were the well-brought-up young ladies that Aunt Olivia intended us to be, and she asked us not to slip back into our old habits once we got back on southern soil.
    Ruth informed her, “That’s gonna be hard because everyone in Sulphur, everyone cept the schoolteachers, talks like that.”
    Olivia said, “Except, Ruth, not cept.”
    Ruth echoed, “Except.”
    I knew that as soon as we got back to Sulphur we would again be accused of being high-minded, trying-to-forget-you‘re-colored, mama-ain’t-got-but-one-washtub girls. I pictured myself taking off my country ways, saving them in a place where they’d be safe and sound, in case I needed them to make me warm and comfortable.
    It was August. The New York City air was hot and our clothes stuck to us as we drove past broken fire hydrants. Water poured into the sky and fell back down like buckets of rain. Children ran in and about, smiling and cool. I wished I was with them.

    Dinner was served. Uncle Bill pulled his wrinkled white handkerchief from his shirt pocket, wiped his brow, and took a sip of ice water.
    â€œWhat a lucky man I am to be in the presence of three lovely Negro women,” he said.
    â€œI’m not a woman. I’m a girl,” Ruth replied. “Why do some people call us Negroes and others call us colored?” I asked.
    â€œColored and Negro, same thing,” he replied.
    Olivia added, “Same as colored. Colored is colored, nearly white to black as midnight, colored is colored.”
    Uncle Bill folded his damp handkerchief. “I don’t care what they call me, so long as they don’t call me a nigger.”
    I said, “White folks call us niggers, drive by in their trucks and tell us to get out the way, little barefoot niggers.”
    The waiter served the strawberry ice cream I’d ordered.
    Aunt Olivia dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “God doesn’t seem to mind what color skin you wear.”
    Someone began to play the piano in the hotel lounge. The music floated into the dining room and found us.

    â€œGood night! Good night!” Ruth said as she bounced around the room like a big brown cricket. She settled on the bed and asked, “What you readin?”
    I showed her the cover of the book that Uncle Bill had given to me. “The Time Machine. It’s about this man who makes this machine and goes to other places without a boat or train.”
    â€œFlyin in a airplane?” Ruth questioned.
    â€œNo.” I explained, “He gets in a machine and turns on the electricity and the machine takes him to other places.”
    â€œThat can’t happen, he musta been dreamin.”
    â€œSome things come from imagination,” I told her.
    Ruth put her head on the pillow and said, “I’m not gonna be a teacher. I’m gonna be a lady lawyer.”
    â€œNo such thing as a colored lady lawyer,” I told her.
    â€œYessirree. Uncle Bill told me he knowed a colored lady lawyer once.”
    â€œKnew, not knowed.”
    Ruth closed her eyes and fell asleep fast. I covered her, turned off the light, and fell faster.
    I fell into a dream, a dream about birds sitting in a weeping willow tree. They were sleeping until a flock of crows came, shiny and