Read Online Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange - Free Book Online Page A

have to screen these ladies more carefully from now on. Really, Betsey, I don’t believe the house has ever been quite this much a mess. All because I didn’t check the references, I guess. Can’t be too careful nowadays.”
    â€œBut, Mama, don’t you want me to help? It’s my fault. I didn’t do what you asked me to do.”
    â€œBetsey, you go back to school where you belong. I never expected you to run this house all by yourself. That’s why I hired that Calhoun woman. But you live and you learn.”
    â€œMama, that’s not what I meant.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter, sweetheart.” Jane rose from the floor, wiping her hands on the back of her pants she’d rolled above her knees, and went to the table to write a note. She looked like a teenager, with a scarf over her bangs and a short-sleeved cotton shirt tied at the waist. “Just get along back to school beforeyou’re marked truant, okay? Here’s a note to give to Mr. Wichiten that says you’ve been home helping me.”
    â€œMama, it was all my fault.”
    Jane drew Betsey close to her, tugging her ponytail, and said in a soft voice: “I don’t want to hear any more of that, you understand? You did the best you could.” With that Jane patted Betsey on the rear: “Off to school with you now. Be good.”
    Betsey didn’t want to go back to school. Veejay’d be there, who usedta be her friend. She didn’t want to go to her room either, or the basement where she’d made all the hateful plans to get rid of Bernice. She stole past her mother up the back stairs and out her window to her tree. The same tree that had started it all.
    Closer to the sky and clouds, Betsey felt some of the pain wear away. She swore she’d do her best not to hurt or embarrass another Negro as long as she lived. She prayed Bernice would find another place with children not half so bad as she was. She asked God to let Veejay be her friend again. She decided not to go back to school, but to do penance instead. She sat in her tree on her knees till every bone in her body ached. Then she curled up on her favorite branch and wept for having cared so little. It could have been Veejay’s mama. Maybe Veejay’s mama talked funny too, but that didn’t make her less a somebody, or liable to the antics of a whimsical girl who sometimes put dreams before real life, or confused them completely. It was absolutely impossible for her to have anything in common with nasty white children who bothered Veejay’s mother. It was absolutely impossible for the colored to have somethin so much akin to the ways of white folks.
    Seemed like her tree’d made a cradle for her and rocked her off to sleep. Betsey was nigh on heaven’s doorstep with the rustlingand caws of the approaching evening, but a foreign motion interrupted her dreams. Swish. Blop. Blop. Swish. Blop. Blop. Charlie and none other than Eugene Boyd were throwing the ball over her curved body through the leaves, the limbs, the wind. Quite a challenge to Charlie’s mind: make Betsey the basket and not wake her. That was the game. If his simple-minded cousin was asleep in a tree at her age, she deserved whatever a body could think up. Eugene on the other hand had every intention of waking the beauty up. If he needed a basketball, so be it. Charlie took the girl for granted, maybe cause she was his cousin or maybe cause she was not his type. Eugene wasn’t exactly dawdling neath the awakening Betsey, who almost lost her balance when she realized that indeed it was the very Eugene Boyd from Soldan leaping up the tree trunk to dunk the ball on the other side of her head.
    â€œWhat are y’all doing? Do I look like a basketball court to you, Charlie?”
    Betsey immediately thought that Charlie’d brought Eugene over just to taunt her and make her look bad. Suddenly she changed her demeanor.
    â€œHi, Eugene. I’m