*****

  Mama, my sister and I are staying here while Daddy finishes fighting the Korean War. We left our house on the military base, the only home I've known.  This is where Mama grew up. The big white house still has her dolls sitting on the chest in the room where she slept as a child.

Ladies in South Georgia retire to the coolness of the house in the heat of summer afternoons. Windows and doors are closed to keep the heat out and the trapped smell of collard greens mixes with that of furniture polish and cologne inside the dark rooms. The ladies go to rest on top of crocheted coverlets for afternoon naps. My sister Vicki loves being a lady.  She stinks from the cologne dabbed behind her ears and on her wrists as cooling poultice.  I'm no lady; I'm five years old and I don't nap.

            I'm a vexation to the ladies.  They pull my hair into tight braids in the morning that slant my eyes like an Oriental's as I scream in pain.  White scented kerchiefs are pulled from bosoms and moistened with spit to rub at my smudges while I squirm to escape - climbing high in the chinaberry tree where they can't reach.  I eat boiled peanuts until my belly hurts and drip watermelon juice down my chin. I'm the child with skinned knees and snarled hair.  I cannot be trusted while they nap.

            Annaliza comes to work at the house every morning as a maid.  Her mother Annabelle used to work for my grandmother. Last Christmas we came here to visit and Annabelle hugged Mama and cried happy tears.  Mama said Annabelle raised her.  Now she's crippled by the arthritis that makes her hands claws and so she sends her daughter to do the housework. My grandmother isn't happy about this.  She thinks Annaliza is too young and irresponsible to keep the house in order.  Annaliza moves in a slow shuffle as she works in the house only saying "yes'm" or "no'm" to the ladies.  She polishes and scrubs until everything meets inspection and then goes home.  Now that I'm here, she's told to stay and watch me in the summer afternoons to keep me quiet and out of trouble. 

We become conspirators, kicking off our shoes to air our hot feet as soon as the doors close.  Her pink palms and soles of her feet fascinate me. Her skin is the color of chocolate and she covers her hair with a colorful bandanna.  I have never known a person of color and think she is beautiful. 

            We go to the forbidden places while the ladies nap. In the bamboo thicket where cottonmouths hide, I'm told stories about talking tigers and men with spears while bamboo rustles background music.  At the railroad tracks we wave at the men in the red caboose when the train passes, then play a game of balance on the rails. She reveals herself to be quick and graceful, usually winning the game.  She finds Mama's toy cast iron stove and we build a fire in the tiny firebox to bake mud pies in the oven.  She shows me the colored stones in her gris-gris bag she wears hung on a string around her neck and hidden by her clothes.  I think of her more as a friend than a maid or a babysitter. She doesn't expect me to be a lady.

 All the manners I'm constantly reminded of keeping and the ladies say Annaliza can't sit at the table when we eat.  She will cook the food, wash our dishes and sweep the floor, yet cannot sit at the table.  When I object to my friend being uninvited, I'm told I don't understand and to keep quiet.  I will not be quiet.  What don't I understand, I insist as my indignation grows. My grandmother tells me that colored people do not sit at the table of a white.  I mimic my grandmother's Southern lady voice, "Proper ladies would not be so rude."  She is outraged by my insolence and slaps me hard for talking back. Mama and Vicki watch with shocked round eyes as Annaliza stares at her feet.  I hold my tears in hot fury.   That afternoon Annaliza says not to ask them why anymore. Says she doesn't want trouble and that's my name.

            I watch her scrub the bathroom the next morning.  She kneels beside the toilet as if in prayer as she scours the hard water stains. That afternoon, when we go out to the yard at naptime, Annaliza tells me to stand under the pecan tree and wait until she gets back.        I follow her, of course.  She goes behind the garage shed and lifts her skirt to squat and make water in the dry dust. My movements catch her eye and she looks up with shame that pales in the heat of my shame.

***** 

It is a harsh reality, for one so young, that the world is broken into black and white.   My grandmother's slap is felt again hot and deep within my soul.  Because it reminds me of what I will not be, I cherish the pain.