Blackberries, Blackberries by Wilkinson Crystal

Author:Wilkinson, Crystal [Wilkinson, Crystal]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2011-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

Mules

“Come on, you chicken?” Lottie said. “It ain’t gonna hurt you. It’s just gonna make you into a real woman. It’s what women do. Your mama’s done it. My mama, Aunt Fannie, they all done it before. All he gonna do is like this.” She reached out and pinched both my titties real hard and then grabbed between my legs and smiled. “See that’s all you got to do. Just stand there while he does it. You don’t have to smile or nothing and he’ll give us both a dollar. Course if you let him feel you up under your clothes he’ll go as high as three but I ain’t thinking you quite ready for that.”

“No, not quite,” I says back, looking at her like Mama does Daddy when she ain’t believing he had the nerve to say what he says. “I just don’t think it’s right to be lettin nobody touch your privates. Lessen it’s your mama washing you. And we both too old for that. It just ain’t right. A fully grown man too. Girl you done fell plumb out your tree. That don’t make you no woman. If it does I’ll just stay right like I am.”

“Well, I might be crazy all right,” Lottie says. “But you tell me where else you gonna get five dollars round here without cleaning up some white folks’ house from sun up to sun down or takin in a bushel barrel of washing or doin some kind of other white folks’ work.”

“How you hide all that money from Aunt Sophie?”

“Well, I hide my money up under a board this side of the corn crib in the barn. There’s this one loose board and I got a cigar box up under it. Got close to fifteen dollars saved up now. Course, all that didn’t come from old man Wesley. Most of it I just saved up myself from takin in washin, gatherin black walnuts, diggin for ginseng roots, blackberries …”

I don’t believe a word the girl is saying. I can tell by the way her forehead’s wrinkling right between her eyes that she’s lying. I been knowing Lottie all my life—all our lives. I suspect that every penny in that cigar box done come from dirty carryings-on with old man Wesley and my stomach commences to turn flip-flops at the thought.

I could just picture Lottie all skinny and straight up like a tree standing half naked in a cornfield or a field somewheres letting some old chapped-face geezer touch her in a nasty way.

And I had done heard Mama and Aunt Fannie talking in the kitchen bout what a pretty girl Lottie would grow up to be if her being high yellah and having good hair didn’t ruin her.

And it didn’t seem like being high yellah and having good hair had ruint her as far as I could tell, but I was beginning to wonder about this meeting in the cornfield. I knew deep down that being a woman just couldn’t have nothing to do with letting some old man feel up under your skirt.

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