Miss Billie was fatter. She still had the two gold earrings and the wooden bracelets. She hugged Mama, calling her “girl”, and then she hugged me. She had a little front room. When they first came there she wrote and said they lived up above a store, but about five years ago they moved into a house. The front room had a fireplace and a mantelpiece, a couch and coffee table and a couple of armchairs and an upright piano.
Miss Billie was still hugging me, and then stood back, with her hands on my shoulders.
“This caint be that little girl?”
“Yeah, that’s Eva.”
“Naw, this ain’t that little girl. How long has it been? About twelve years, ain’t it? Honey, I wouldn’t know you, you growed so . . . Y’all have something to eat?”
“Maybe a little later,” Mama said. “We had some sandwiches on the bus. It’s still with me. Maybe Eva might want something.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Y’all sit down . . . Honey, I just don’t believe that’s you.
Marie, you ain’t aged none. Still looking pretty.”
“Yes I have aged too,” Mama said, laughing.
“Well, it ain’t the kind you can tell. Maybe little round the eyes. You still thin. Me, I done got all fat. Don’t even eat that much and look like a cow.”
“Naw you don’t. What you got looks good on you.”
Miss Billie sat down in a chair. She was sticking out around the waist like older women do, but her legs were still thin.
“I finally got my piano,” she said.
“Yeah, I see you have,” Mama said. “It’s real nice.”
“You know I always did want a piano.”
Mama said, “Yeah.”
“You know, if y’all tired, you can go on back in the house and lay down. Sweet Man ain’t home yet.” She laughed. “Aw, I call my man Sweet Man.”
Mama laughed.
“That’s his picture up there on the mantelpiece. He’s good-lookin for a old man, ain’t he?”
Mama said yeah he was good-looking.
“Yeah, he’s out working and Charlotte’s out working too. She work as a seamstress.”
“How is Charlotte?”
Miss Billie shook her head. “I don’t know. She twenty-seven, but she don’t act twenty-seven. Ain’t got a man or nothing. Ain’t got a man one . . . I tell you about it.”
Mama said nothing.
“Yeah. Sweet Man works out there for James Beam, you know. Jim Beam we call him, like that whiskey. Works in tobacco. He be home around suppertime. Charlotte too . . . Yeah, that girl’s something else. I tell you about it. Y’all don’t wont to lay down?”
Mama said maybe a little bit before supper, but she was enjoying talking to her now.
“Eva, you tired?” Mama asked me. “No ma’am.”
“Eva, where’s your bracelet?” Miss Billie asked.
“She lost it when she was playing around the playground. Not more than a couple of weeks after you gave it to her.”
Miss Billie frowned. “I should’ve told your mama to keep it for you. It was too big for you anyway.”
She sounded like she was angry, but then she looked at me. “Eva lookin all hurt. I ain’t mad at you, baby,” she said. She reached over and touched my arm. “That a girl. You sho have growed. You know, I see y’all coming up the walk. I recognized you, Marie, but I said naw, that ain’t that little girl that used to sit up in my lap. Taller than me now.”
“Taller than me too,” Mama said.
“Well, Charlotte ain’t gon get her bracelet till she get married,” Miss Billie said, sitting back.
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend?” Mama asked. “Naw, she ain’t got no boyfriend.”
“Eva doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but Eva ain’t no twenty-seven neither.”
“That’s true,” Mama said.
“I know it’s true,” Miss Billie said. “You got to be true to your ancestors and you got to be true to those that come after you. How can you be true to those that come after you if there ain’t none coming after you.”
I remembered just before we left, Daddy said he was glad he wasn’t going because that woman would drive him crazy in two days with her crazy talk.
“But that’s the times for you,” Miss Billie said. “They ain’t like they used to be.”
“Naw, times change,” Mama said.
“They sho do. My mama had ten children. And I ain’t had but one. But a lot of that’s on account of Sweet Man and me getting split up the way we did, and then when we did get back together, I felt like I was too old to start bringing children into the world again. And Sweet Man said he didn’t wont to be no old man raising no babies. But then if I had’ve had another child, I’d have somebody else to count on, cause Charlotte ain’t gon do nothing.”
Mama said nothing.
“I’ll tell you about it,” Miss Billie said again. She reached over and touched Mama’s knee. “It’s good to see you.”
Mama said it was good to see her too.
“It’s good to see both of y’all,” Miss Billie said.
After supper me and Charlotte went for a walk in the woods. It was June and didn’t get dark early. Sweet Man had stayed
talking to Mama for a little while—he hadn’t met her
