X Read Online Free Page B

with me.” She grabbed each of us by an ear and marched us straight down the road into town. Soon enough, we realized that she was taking us toward the dress shop where Mom worked, sewing clothes in the warehouse.
    At the rear entrance, Mrs. Stockton let go of my ear long enough to pound her fist on the door. After a moment, a blond woman, hair knotted atop her head, answered. She wore a thicker, darker smock than the one Mom would come home wearing. She must have been the shop owner or at least the head seamstress.
    “Yes?” she said. Her gaze flicked up and down, appraising Mrs. Stockton.
    “These niggers were down by the creek causing trouble,” she reported.
    “How is that my problem?” the head seamstress asked, appraising us, too.
    “Their mother works here,” Mrs. Stockton said. “She needs to know what they’re up to.”
    The head seamstress glanced at us, brow wrinkled. “No. I don’t employ any Negroes.”
    Mrs. Stockton shook her head. “I’m just sure . . .”
    The door to the workroom opened wider. A stream of women dressed in the paler blue smocks began to exit. Mom emerged, along with the others finishing the day shift. “Ah, there she is,” said Mrs. Stockton. “Louise!”
    Mom’s steps faltered. Her brow furrowed. She swallowed hard.
    The head seamstress balked, looking from Mom to us. “These are your children?”
    Mom drew herself up straight. “They are.” The gaze that pointed to us promised a significant whipping to come. My backside smarted in anticipation.
    The head seamstress paced around Mom, peering more closely at her features — her fine bones, creamy skin, and straight dark hair. “You’re a Negro!”
    “Yes, I am.” Mom didn’t blink.
    Philbert and I dropped our heads in shame. Mom didn’t flinch, didn’t shy away from the discomfort of it. Stood firm as the woman poked her skin and squeezed the ends of her hair while the other seamstresses looked on. Mom had never looked prouder to me.
    Finally the head seamstress stepped back. “I don’t know how you fooled me,” she said. “But I don’t employ niggers. Take your lot and go.”
    Mom nodded curtly. She stepped toward Mrs. Stockton, who had released our ears and now stood with her hands over her mouth.
    “Louise, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Stockton whispered.
    Mom ignored her. She spun Philbert and me each around by a shoulder.
    “Home,” she ordered us. “Now.”
    “They thought you were white?” Philbert said to Mom on the long walk home. He should have known better than to speak. Mom smacked him on the back of the head. We both knew there was a good paddling awaiting us at home.
    How could anyone mistake Mom for white? Mom was a proud black woman, the proudest I knew. She hated us having to take welfare food, hated accepting anything we needed but did not earn. We had a picture of Marcus Garvey on the living-room wall, talking about going back to Africa, talking about the power of blackness and the strength of the Negro heart. I couldn’t imagine looking at Mom and not seeing that.
    “They all think I’m white,” she said after a moment. “That’s how I keep a job.”
    Trudging down the road that day, I didn’t give what Mom said all that much thought. I was more worried about what punishment she’d lay down when we got home. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice until later how, in the space of that instant, everything Mom and Papa ever told me became a little less true.

On the Bus, 1940
    The fact of the matter was you had to be white to keep a decent job in Lansing during the Depression. Mom was just doing what she had to. It stung like a betrayal, but I know better now. Mom talked a good game about the power of blackness, but she knew that the white world held even more power. You just needed to find a way to break in.
    Out the bus window, the air is somewhere between black and brown and gray. Rural Michigan looks like a landscape on ink-stained canvas. There’s day and there’s night, and