The Return of Buddy Bush by Shelia P. Moses

Author:Shelia P. Moses
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2006-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

7

The Walk

I ’m all dressed now and all I have to do is get past Miss Sylvines door downstairs without getting caught. I’m wearing my red short pants that Uncle Buddy gave me and a white blouse that was too big for Chick-A-Boo. She said I can wear it until she is big enough to wear her own blouse. Then she said I got to give it back to her. I might and I might not.

I am just about to open the door when I hear folk talking downstairs.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Gloria.”

“Where you off to so early in the morning, Miss Sylvine?”

“I’m going to a meeting over at the church.”

Well, they just made my day. Miss Sylvine is leaving and this Gloria person ain’t nobody that BarJean ever mentioned to me. So I’ll just leave when they finish gossiping in the hallway.

Soon as Miss Sylvine leaves, I make my escape.

This street feels like it is paved with gold. I want to cry. You don’t know what it is like to want to be in a place like this while you in a hot peanut field chopping weeds. Sometimes I think I just chopped up a half a row of peanuts daydreaming about Harlem. Now I am here. Thank you, God. Look at these people. They don’t know what my little twelve-year-old heart has been through. Ohhhhh, they so dressed up. I am glad I got Chick-A-Boo’s new blouse on. I don’t know if I look like a city girl, but I feel like one.

Everyone in Harlem must have a job because ain’t too many folks walking the streets this morning. The few that are walking around ain’t even noticed me. Even if they do, they don’t know me from Adam.

One thing for sure, folks here ain’t as nosy as folks back home. Let me just try to walk down Main Street at home without Ma. Before my heels could hit the ground, someone would be on Rehobeth Road to tattle to Ma. If they can’t find her, they going straight to Jones Property to tattle to Grandma.

Look at this place. Look at all these stores. There is even a grocery store on the bottom floor of BarJean’s building. I better not go in there because I bet you the shoes I’m wearing BarJean has told everybody in there to keep an eye on me.

Uncle Buddy said all these people in Harlem are from down South, but they don’t look like it. They look like they been up here all they lives. They come here so they can get some respect. Uncle Buddy said he didn’t know what it felt like to be treated like a man until he came up here to Harlem. Maybe he should have stayed up here. Yep, maybe he should stay here now. Maybe it ain’t right for me to want him to come back home with me. If Uncle Buddy had not come back to Rehobeth Road in 1942, he would have never got in the mess he in today.

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