laughing up a storm at what the old folks would think if they could hear us.
Mama is so mean. She don't like nothing I do. Tells me I'm too prissy just because I like things clean and neat and go around behind where she has worked and straighten things up. She'd rather work in the fields with the coloreds than the house. She's best friends with most of 'em. She does like to do the cooking.
Me? No Sir Ree Bob. I wear a bonnet that covers my face and neck and one of Daddy's old long sleeve shirts when I go to the fields. Otherwise, I'll get brown as dirt and ever body will know I'm a farm girl. That's about the worst thing in the world. That is the main reason I quit school when I did. I really loved school, but when it came time for me to go to high school I had to go into town and the town kids teased me so much. You'd think I'd be tough skinned from all the teasing my brothers did but I wasn't able to handle them town kids and their uppity ways. So I went for one day and then quit cold.
Daddy is the best friend I've ever had. He loves me and my ways, I believe because I'm shy like him. He has high hopes for me, protects me from Mama's temper and talks to me in a gentle tone, never demands anything from me, just asks in a sweet voice. He's not like that with the boys. He has to raise his voice to them....all three of 'em Jack and Buddy and John Terry.
Daddy is kind to others too. Pure strangers some of 'em. He's never whipped his boys like most people do and he goes out of his way to help needy people even coloreds. Him being almost in the same class as them. Daddy is so good-hearted he'll even help a no 'count nigger ever so often. His family and Mama's family have never owned their own land, always either sharecropping or tenant farming. It's the only life they've ever known, so when it comes to coloreds they feel more equal than not.
During the war between the states, Mama's grandmother always fed anybody who came to the door hungry, Colored, Yankee or Rebel. They was just hungry people and if she had food she shared it.
I met a orphan boy from Martin and I aim to marry him. He is so handsome, he just melts my heart the way he smiles. We've had to be secret about ourselves in the love department 'cause he is a poor orphan. No body likes him because of that. But I do. I love him.
I'm sixteen now and we are not gonna wait no longer. It'll be fun slipping around as a married couple and with nobody knowing it. His married sister, Naomi and her husband Carlton will carry us over the state line late one February evenin'.
I've gone with a couple a boys, but nobody like W. Nobody. Myrna, my one girlfriend knows about us, but she won't talk. Myrna and me sleep over at Mildred Sherril's ever so often and talk about our love lives. There's nothing like visiting with girlfriends and telling each other our most heartfelt feelings and
