I
was in the yard playing with Bonnie when Betsy came to get me.
"Come on," she said, "let's go find that colored
man's house." I didn't really feel like working, but she
said we'd get five dollars out of it. Betsy was smart. She was
about to start high school at the end of the summer and everyone
who lived on our street used to pull me aside when no one else
was around and say, "You watch what your sister does and
do the same, and you girls will turn out right." Our neighbors
were real nice, and besides, they felt sorry for us.
But that summer they
quit being nice. At first I thought it was because our momma left
us, and they felt so bad they didn't know what to say. But when
I asked Besty she said it wasn't that. She said, "You're
right that they ain't talking to us cause momma left, but it ain't
cause they feel bad for us." She wouldn't tell me why though.
It was too bad that they quit being nice because we had to go
work on the other side of town. If people aren't gonna stop and
talk to you no more then they sure aren't gonna pay you to clean
their windows. Besides, I sure did miss talking to everyone.
At first I didn't like
working on the other side of town because it was a long walk over
there, and I used to get real hot. Everyone knows how hot Georgia
gets in the summer. At least everyone who lives there does. Having
to carry ammonia, towels, and a bucket didn't make it any cooler
neither. But Betsy told me she was happy about working there,
and so from then on I was too. Betsy's real smart and she doesn't
even make fun of me when I'm wrong about something. Like when
momma left us I told Betsy how sad I was, and she just shook her
head and said, "Don't be." "Why shouldn't I be
?" I said. "She wasn't no good anyway." I couldn't
believe Betsy would say this, being so smart and all. "Betsy,
I think you might be wrong. You're talking about momma, right
?" And then she got real sad and came over and hugged me
and whispered, "The only one who isn't right is momma, O.K.
?" and I nodded my head, "You ain't wrong and I ain't
wrong, so there ain't no reason for nobody to feel badly except
momma." When she said this I started cryin' which kind of
made me feel silly cause she wasn't cryin', so I smiled and said,
"What about daddy ?" Talking about daddy always cheered
me up. "Daddy's just who he is and that's that." Betsy
was right about that. Daddy used to be a boxer. He was good too
because he had his picture on posters. I used to go to the market
with momma and right there on the door would be a big picture
of daddy looking like he was about to hit somebody. Every time
he fought it was like a big party on our street. But that don't
happen no more either. Last time daddy fought there wasn't a party
and since he hasn't fought again, there hasn't been another. I
don't mind though because I think daddy's more fun now that he
doesn't fight no more. Now he's home all the time, and he ain't
nearly as serious as he used to be. All he does is goof around
with me and Bonnie all day. He even stopped askin' me about my
homework.
When Betsy first told me we'd
have to start working on the other side of town I didn't think
we'd ever find anyone willing to let us clean their windows. Boy
was I wrong about that. Here's what I mean about Betsy being so
smart: When momma left us she left almost everything she owned
behind. That's why I thought she was coming back at first. Betsy
didn't, but I thought she was wrong because daddy and I both thought
we saw her one day when we were walking Bonnie. I think Bonnie
thought it was momma too because she even started wagging her
tail. It couldn't have been her, though, because she never showed
up. So once Betsy convinced daddy and me that it wasn't momma
and that she was never coming back, we went and cleaned up her
stuff. Daddy didn't. Betsy told him to play in the yard with Bonnie.
Betsy got a whole bunch of boxes that she brought home from the
market and we started filling them with momma's stuff. We took
everything that momma once owned and shoved it into boxes and
then taped those boxes shut. Then we took those boxes down to
the pawn shop and sold everything we could, and gave the man the
rest of the stuff he wouldn't pay for. He looked like he needed
the stuff anyway because whenever he smiled he was missing some
of his teeth. He was smiling a lot when we were in there.
Now I'm not gonna say how
much money we got 'cause Betsy told me not to tell anyone, not
even daddy, and if I can't tell daddy then I sure can't tell you.
But I will tell you what we did with the money. If it had been
me and not Betsy, I would have spent all the money on candy apples
and pixie stix, but luckily for both of us Betsy was in charge.
The day after we got all that money for momma's stuff, Betsy told
daddy to play in the yard with Bonnie some more while me and her
went to the market. Only, we didn't go to the market. First we
went to a clothes store I never been in before and Betsy bought
us each the prettiest dress I've ever seen. My dress was smaller
than hers, but they looked the same other than that. They both
were white and had small pink flower petals that went all along
the edges of the dress. She also bought us the same straw hat.
Not the kind of hat that a scarecrow wears, this hat was as pretty
as the dress. It was round, and white, and had a pink bow in the
front of it. The last thing Betsy bought us in that store were
some white shoes. They were even nicer than the shoes momma used
to make me wear to church, but Betsy said we wouldn't be wearing
them to any church.
I guess all those clothes
didn't cost too much cause we went to another store after that
and bought more clothes. These clothes weren't fancy like the
others, but they still matched. That made me happy because anything
Betsy would wear, I would wear too. We got a pair of red shorts
and white tee shirts with collars. None of my other shirts have
collars on them but Betsy said we had to have them. We also got
brown leather shoes with white rubber soles. I didn't like these
either, but Betsy said we needed them, so that was all I needed
to know.
When we were walking home
I thought Betsy was nervous about daddy seeing us with all those
new clothes, but when we got home he and Bonnie were sleeping
under a tree in the yard. Bonnie woke up and saw us, but she couldn't
say nothing anyway. We hid our fancy clothes under Betsy's bed,
but the next day we were wearing our new shorts and collared shirts.
Daddy didn't even notice, but he did say he liked my shoes. That
was the first day we started working on the other side of town.
Before we knocked on our first door Betsy stopped me and said,
"What we're gonna do is really simple, O.K. ?" I nodded.
"I'm gonna knock on the door, and when it opens I want you
to say, 'Good morning, we were wondering if you'd like to have
your windows washed ?'" I nodded again as I mouthed the words.
"Good." Then Betsy paused, and said, "After you
say that, don't say anything else." Then she looked right
at my eyes, "No matter what I say, just nod your head and
look at your shoes, O.K. ?" "I won't say anything. I
promise." And with that we knocked on our fisrt door.
It's a good thing Betsy warned
me about not saying anything because some of the stories she told
those women were just as new to me as they were to whoever they
were being told to. We were either new in town, or we lived down
the street, or we went to the school nearby; once we were staying
with our grandparents who lived on the next block, and another
time we were travelling across the country with our father who
sold Cadillacs throughout the South. I've never been so many different
people in my life. That's what I liked most about it. After a
while it didn't even seem like we were lying. Besides, nobody
thought we were lying. They just told us how cute we looked together,
and almost everyone let us clean their windows. That was the thing
I liked second most about it. The houses across town are a lot
bigger, and have a lot more windows. The people there sure paid
us more than our neighbors did. Everytime they were paying us
Betsy would say, "A colored man asked us if we'd clean his
windows earlier today but I never learned his name, and I forgot
where he lives. Do you know if a colored man lives around here
?" It didn't matter whose house we were in, or what kind
of people lived in it, Betsy always asked that question right
as we were leaving. I couldn't understand what she was up to,
so I asked, "Betsy, why do you keep asking these folks if
they know where a colored man lives ?" She didn't answer
me right away so I said, "Besides, we ain't never had no
colored person ask us to clean his windows anyway." She still
didn't say anything for a minute but then finally she said, "I
heard there was a colored man who had a really big house with
a lot of windows. I want to go there." "How many windows
?" I said. "At least five dollars worth, maybe more."
That's a lot of windows, so I didn't mind her asking, but a lot
of the people didn't seem to like Betsy's question. Most people
just shook their heads and shrugged. One woman looked almost frightened
and got very nervous, and then finally a nice man, who told us
he was a teacher, said he knew of one colored man who lived in
town.
Like I said before, when Betsy
told me we were gonna go and look for that colored man's house,
I didn't really feel like working. But five dollars is enough
to make anyone change into their working clothes and walk across
town. The thing is, we didn't change into our normal working clothes.
That's when I should have known Betsy was up to something. But
like I also said before, Betsy's smart, she'll be in high school
soon, so who am I to question her ? Besides, I'd been waiting
to put on those fancy clothes, so it didn't seem all that bad
to me anyway.
Daddy was asleep again. He'd
been reading the funnies and sometimes they make him tired, so
we took our time getting dressed. Betsy was acting like momma
used to act before she took us to church. She made me take a bath,
then she brushed my hair, and she even clipped my fingernails.
All this just to clean windows. I couldn't believe it. "Betsy,"
I said, "I don't see why we have to look so nice if all we're
gonna do is clean windows?" "Listen, if we look nice
enough maybe he'll let us clean his windows every day." Now
I thought this was a strange thing that Betsy was wishing for,
because everybody knows that windows don't need cleaning everyday,
but I didn't say nothing. I just sat there and let her brush my
hair. It felt good. Nobody had brushed my hair since momma left
and it kind of made me think of her. "Hey Betsy ?" I
said, "Don't you think momma would think we looked pretty
if she could see us in these clothes ?" I couldn't see Betsy
because she was behind me brushing my hair, but I think if I had
turned around I would have seen tears in her eyes. "You know
what, honey ?" She called me honey. "I think momma would
think we look like the two prettiest girls in all of Georgia.
Now come on, let's go."
We must have looked like something
else walking down the road in our fancy clothes carrying all our
cleaning stuff. People sure were looking at us funny, but they've
been doing that ever since momma left, so I was kind of used to
it. Besides, I just pretended like my bucket was a fancy purse
that my husband had brought back for me after being a hero in
one of those far away wars. Betsy said no bucket could make us
look any less pretty anyway. So on we walked.
The colored man's house was
in the middle of a long, wide road that had big trees going down
both sides of it. Betsy was right, his house was big, and I couldn't
wait to see what it looked like inside. I'd never been in a colored
person's house before so I didn't really know what it would be
like. Betsy didn't want to go in right away. She made us stand
across the street for a while. "Betsy," I said, "what
are we standing here for? I think he's home, let's ask him before
he leaves." "I want him to leave," she said. "I
want to ask the woman. She's the one we have to ask." "How
do you know there's even a woman in there ?" I couldn't tell
just by looking at the house that there was a woman in there,
and I don't think anybody's smart enough that they can just look
at a house and know who's there. Not even Betsy. "Because
there just is, O.K. ? Now get behind that tree before somebody
sees you." When Betsy said this I was through asking questions.
She had us dressed up in our fancy clothes hiding behind a tree
waiting for a colored man to leave his house so we could go ask
if we could clean it. There'd been things in my life before that
people said I was just too young to understand, so I just figured
this was one of them. Finally the colored man left and once he
was out of sight we crossed the street and rang the doorbell.
Betsy said she was gonna do all the talking.