A Piece of Mine by J. California Cooper

Author:J. California Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307778604
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-11T23:00:00+00:00

Color Me Real

IT DOES not matter what year it was or where, it would have been just as terrible and tragic at any time. Minna, a 13 year-old child, was seduced by a grown white man her mother worked for. She had a man child that he never recognized. A year later she had a girl child by the same seducer. It would seem strange and suspect, this second child, except that money, that old cross, was almost nonexistent in the child-mother’s family and she was trying to get money for food from the babies’ father and he gave it to her “on condition”. Minna was in need. Her whole family was hungry. Her last intention was to sell her body, but the whole world knows what can happen to the best intentions in a mother’s mind when it comes to her hungry child, a hungry, sickly grandmother, brothers and sisters lining the cold hearth and empty cupboard. An empty coal bin results in a cold stove. Few things are worse than four or five hungry people alternately staring at and looking away from the others that hold no answers, only needs.

By rights, money was owed them by this particular white man for work done for him, but he had decided to hold off paying. His intent was to have Minna again. After the first time he had seduced her he thought she would cease holding off in her child-like fear and come sleep in his cold lonely bed, but she did not. So he added hatred to his lust for her. He made his plan and did not pay Minna’s mother, nor Minna for helping her, the cooking and cleaning pay for two months. He locked his cupboard and coal bin and everything else they could use or sell, then sat back, picking his teeth and belching after his dinner. He ate at the little greasy “Addies Eats” diner and gave them just enough for one person to eat and sat and watched them fix it so they would have none in his absence. He watched them grow nervous, hungry and afraid, but he did not see the anger. I don’t know why. His power blinded him, I guess.

He kept them there, working, by saying his money was held up and he would be getting it any day now and would pay. They knew he lied, at least they thought so, but what could they do? The judge and the sheriff were white. So Minna was forced to take her baby boy over to him to ask for help. Money she had already earned. He tied the little boy gently to a wicker chair. The white-skinned child with his own face was his child, he thought, as he finished tying him and patted him on the head. He then lay Minna down on the bed and rode her all morning into the afternoon. The baby, tired from crying, had fallen asleep, head hanging over the ropes tied around him

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