Mama looked around my room, frowning. I was a neat person, so everything was in place. Well, almost everything. There were a few magazines and the latest Sears and Roebuck catalog on the floor next to some chicken bones on a plate. She shook her head when she saw a stack of Gothic romance novels on my dresser that I had recently ordered from a mail-order company in New Jersey. “Lord have mercy. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you spend so much money on reading material.”
“So I can learn more about life,” I muttered.
“Learn more about life? If you ain’t figured life out by now, you never will. Besides, everything you need to know is in the Bible. If you read it more often, you wouldn’t need to be wasting money on all them books. Did you wash up real good? We don’t want Odell to think you ain’t clean.”
“Mama, I took a bath right after I got home this evening. Don’t you remember how you fussed up a storm about me using up all the hot water?”
“You wash under your arms? A long, tall, strapping gal like you can get right musty in the armpits if you sweat.”
“I’m old enough to know how to take a bath.” I rolled my neck and eyes at the same time as I plopped back down on my bed.
Mama stood in front of me with her arms folded, looking me up and down. “Well, just to be on the safe side and make sure you don’t get too ripe, you can rub some of my rose sachet up under your arms too.” Odell must have really made a big impression on her because she never let me use any of her sachet. “Put a dab of baking soda behind your ears and on the back of your neck. That’ll keep you from sweating too much.”
When I shuffled into the living room a minute later, the first thing Odell said to me was, “You look even more beautiful than you did this afternoon.”
Either he was crazy after all, or my ears were playing tricks on me.
Chapter 5
Odell
DURING THE RIDE TO THE RESTAURANT, I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT Joyce. She chatted away like a myna bird. It didn’t take long for me to realize that she was not shy like she had seemed when I met her. She even seemed more confident and relaxed now.
I could already tell that she was a fairly intelligent woman because she spoke like one. Since she read books, listened to the radio every day, and worked in a school with folks that had even gone to college, she didn’t use as much bad grammar as me, and most of the other folks I knew.
Since she seemed to enjoy conversating so much, I wasn’t going to say too much about myself until I had to. And I’d be particular about what information I shared. I only told people what I wanted them to know and never anything that would make me look even slightly bad, lazy, or trifling in any way. When people asked if I had kids, I always said no. But the truth of the matter was, I didn’t know for sure. I’d started having sex when I was thirteen, so it was possible that I had a few kids out there somewhere. One girl accused me of getting her pregnant when I was fourteen and she was thirteen. She moved to Detroit to live with her grandma while she was still pregnant, and I never heard from her again. The only other time was ten years ago when a woman I’d slept with just once claimed she was pregnant by me. She died in a car wreck a week later. I thought about them two a lot, especially in the last few years. The older I got, the more I wanted to know what it was like to be a daddy.
Right after me and Joyce slid into one of the back booths at Mosella’s we started discussing politics, the church, and our jobs. I read the newspapers a few times a week and listened to the radio often enough, so I could hold my own when it came to certain subjects. “Do you think President Roosevelt is doing a good job?” It was one of the first questions she asked.
I hunched my shoulders. “He could be, but it don’t mean nothing to us colored folks. Everybody ought to know by now that whatever goes on in the White House is set up to help white folks. Just like the Jim Crow laws. We ended up in America by default, so it’ll never really be our home.”
I couldn’t tell from the deadpan expression on Joyce’s face what she was thinking. “Well, I’m sorry to hear you feel that way, Odell. I was born in America, so it’s the only home I know.”
“You got a point there and I’m sorry I said what I said. Me and you is just as American as Roosevelt. Did you vote for him?”
“No. When I tried to register, the white folks I had to deal with treated me so mean and evil, I gave up and came back home.”
“I ain’t surprised. Some of my friends got threatened when they tried to register, so I didn’t even try.”
“Do you think colored people will ever be treated like human beings in this country?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but probably not in our lifetime. In the meantime, all we got is one another. I think that as long as we work together and look out for other colored folks, and don’t piss off the wrong white folks, we’ll make more progress.” I paused and cocked my head to the side and gave Joyce a serious look. I didn’t want the night to end, because I was enjoying her company. She made me feel so comfortable and gave me so much hope; I had to
