She did a double-take and blinked real hard, which told me she was not used to getting compliments. “You think so?”
“Sure enough. They remind me of marbles. I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to spend time with you. You made my day.”
“You made mine, too.” Her voice was so low I could barely hear her. I couldn’t tell if the look in her eyes was sadness or desperation. Probably a little of both. Well, I was going to fix all that—if she’d let me get far enough into her dreary life. She dropped her head and stared at the top of the table.
“You shy, ain’t you?” I accused.
She looked up and shook her head. “Who, me? Uh-uh. I don’t think so.” Her voice cracked over each word. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“You don’t have to be shy or nervous with me. I want you to let loose and enjoy yourself.”
Mosella’s service was always as slow as molasses, even when there was no crowd. It could take up to a whole hour to get served, another fifteen to twenty minutes to get the check, and a half hour more for the server to bring you your change. People complained all the time, but nothing ever changed. This restaurant was still the most popular colored-owned place to eat. For the first time, I was glad that the service was so slow. It would give me more time to conversate with Joyce. If I was going to get my future off the ground, I needed to get busy and start picking her brain. I hoped she’d give me enough information so I’d know where to go next with my plan to make her fall in love with me. I wasn’t about to turn my back on all the benefits I could enjoy by being her man.
I was impressed when she told me she had finished high school and completed a six-month education training program, whatever the hell that was. She seemed proud of the fact that she had decided in her junior year of high school she didn’t want to keep working in her parents’ store after graduation, like she had been doing since she was thirteen.
“I don’t mind working at all. I love my folks to death, but working in the store with them breathing down my neck was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I tried a few other jobs after I finished high school, but when they offered me a position as a teacher’s aide at the same elementary school I went to, I jumped on it and I love what I do.”
“What is a teacher’s aide’s job?” I asked.
“I help Miss Kirksey, the fourth-grade teacher I’ve been working with since I started, plan the daily activities. I’m more patient than she is, so I give the kids the individual attention they need. And, you know how rowdy kids in elementary school can be. I help keep the troublemakers under control.”
“It sounds like a good job, but it must be a lot of hard work, too. That can be a heavy burden.”
“It is, but I love kids so much I think of it as more of a blessing than a burden. And they pay me a decent salary.”
“I wish I could have stayed in school long enough to graduate.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My mama brung in half of the household money, so when she died, I had to drop out of school in eighth grade and get a job so I could help Daddy pay the bills.”
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“Both older and long gone. They took off while I was still in my teens. My sister, Maybelline, live in Birmingham with her husband and their retarded adult son. They got their hands full taking care of him and struggling with low-paying jobs just to get by, so she never helped out. My brother, Donnie, live in Birmingham too. He shine shoes in a hotel lobby. Him and his wife got six kids, so he sure can’t do nothing to help Daddy. My siblings never got along with Daddy to begin with, so once they left home, they never looked back. Maybelline send him a Christmas card with a letter included every year. But she ain’t been back to visit but four or five times since she left home, oh, twelve or thirteen years ago. Donnie ain’t been back but twice and he left home a year before Maybelline did.”
“What happened to your mama?”
“Tuberculosis killed her when I was ten. Daddy married my stepmother Ellamae a year later. That woman is a bitch on wheels. Two days after I turned sixteen, I threw some clothes in a bag and left that house running. I already had a job picking cotton, but I struggled for a long time before things got better. I go visit my daddy at least once or twice a week just to make sure Ellamae ain’t mistreating him. She’s another reason my brother and sister don’t come around no more.”
“Where does your daddy and his wife live?” Joyce was real interested in what I was telling her, but it was painful for me to relive my past, so I hoped we’d move onto a different subject soon.
“Out on Route One down in the boondocks near the cane and cotton fields. In the same miserable shack I grew up in.” I cleared my throat to keep from groaning.
“Is he happy?”
I hunched my shoulders. “Well, he ain’t dead, and after all he’s been through, he should be happy he still alive. So, to answer your question: He’s happy. He wasn’t the best daddy in the world when I was growing up, but I love him to death, and I’m going to do all I can to make his last years better on him.”
“That’s nice of you to be so concerned about your daddy. Is he the reason you never married?”
I scratched my
