Free Clover by Dori Sanders Page A

she says it. She’s really pretty when she laughs. She wears her long black hair pulled back off her dark-skinned face, and has the prettiest eyes you ever saw. “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” she says about her dark skin color.
    Everleen is still laughing. “I hear tell Miss Sara Kate Hill is looking for somebody to clean her house. Like she’s some kind of rich white woman.”
    Mary Martha shakes her head. “Girl, I may be hard up, but I’d eat water and bread before I set foot in that woman’s house to clean. To this day I ain’t got over Gaten marrying her instead of Miss Kenyon. Seems like every time one of our fine girls have the chance for a good catch, some cracker comes along and messes it up. I’ll bet the new white principal who took Gaten’s place won’t marry one of our black teachers.”
    â€œHe won’t marry a white one, either,” Everleen says. They both laugh.
    They wave at a passing car and moan, “Oh Lordy, Lord.” It’s Rooster Jones, breezing by in his brand new Pontiac.
    â€œI’m surprised he even waved with his fine self,” Mary Martha says. “Talk in town is, he’s started taking up with them trashy white gals with their long dirty hair, thin lips, and slim hips. They hang around the mill every night. He’ll lose the shirt off his back now.”
    â€œGirl, you are telling the Lord’s truth,” says Everleen, shaking her head. “If our menfolk make a plug nickel, they get the hots for them. And Lordy me, if they can shoot a basketball, those girls trail behind them like a hound dog running a coon. And when they catch them, they cling to them tighter than a green cocklebur.”
    â€œEither that, or they wise up, get their teeth fixed, and get all gussied up, then marry some old man of their own race, in his eighties with more money than they can spend. They can then live so grand, they can make their born rich sisters look pitiful, pitiful.”
    Everleen may be kind to Sara Kate’s face, but she sure can’t stand her behind her back.
    They start talking about my daddy again. They must have forgotten that I was sitting right there all the time. They can’t know how much it hurts me to have them talk like that about my own daddy. I thought that all the talk about Sara Kate and Gaten would all be over by now. Before Gaten died, I had to listen to all the talk he and his brother did.
    People in Round Hill may not know it, but my daddydidn’t just up and marry the woman with no thought. It wasn’t even an easy thing for him to do. It gnawed at his gut. And my actions sure didn’t help, either. I would be so different now if I had the chance. It’s too late now. My daddy is dead.
    I happen to know my daddy thought long and hard before he married Sara Kate. Maybe if all these women knew what the man went through, they would stop talking so bad about him.
    I am only ten years old, but certainly old enough to know that my daddy had to make a choice. There is nothing else you can do, when you have people pulling at you from every side. One thing is for sure, you can’t go with everybody at the same time. So Gaten had to make a choice.
    I still think of the day he brought his lady to meet me. Gaten was nervous. More so than I had ever seen him. I may not know a lot of things, but I do know a lot about my daddy’s ways.
    The eyes of the woman by his side clocked his every move. She was waiting for him to tell me something. Gaten tried to, but he seemed as if he could not speak. His tongue seemed to press against his teeth. He stood mute before us. I suppose he wasn’t prepared for the way I treated his lady. I could tell, he really wanted me to take to her. He should have known you just can’t cram that kind of thing inside aperson’s head and mind and make them like someone no matter what.
    I cannot understand why Gaten always seemed to