Read Online River, cross my heart by Breena Clarke - Free Book Online

up from the South, Alice wouldn't consider being away from her children and husband for six days at a time. Most o{ the women who did live-in work and had children found somebody else to care for the children or left them to care for themselves. This was a change from what they were used to. Back home, when a colored woman took care of a white woman's children and cooked and cleaned her house, she brought her own babies with her to play in the yard while she was working and to help her out when they got up a size to. Here in Washington, the white woman didn't want no little

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    chickens pecking around in her yard and associating with her children. It was much stricter here about how you worked and how you dressed and how you conducted yourself while you were working. And the white folks here were scared about spreading sickness among the children. They would hardly let a colored woman enter their house if they suspected her children were at home with the croup.
    Some women who were well established told Alice she was being foolish to pass up live-in work. They said the good families would only want a colored woman who was willing to live in and wear a uniform. You could expect a good pay and tips and holidays from these families. But you had to live on premises. The "best" families expected it. They wanted it. They required it.
    Some lucky women worked and lived in a place where their man worked too. The luckiest ones, it looked to Ina and Alice, were the ones who worked out and came home to their children at night. But days work could be hard to get at times and often not regular enough. The pay was lower too. Oftentimes the families that couldn't afford a complete live-in staff, the ones that used day workers, were the ones who lived above their true means and might come up short on payday. But Alice and Ina decided that they would risk it in order to come home to their own place at night.
    Alexis St. Pierre considered Alice attractive, for a colored woman. She was not thick or plain or blue-black. Alexis, Mrs. Douglas St. Pierre, preferred a yellow or medium-brown colored woman to work in her house because she thought dark-black colored people were difficult to communicate with. It

    was sometimes difficult to discern their reaction to one's words; their very dark faces appeared so dense. The slightly brown or yellow maids seemed more amenable. Alexis especially liked Alice because she was not fat, only pleasantly round and filled out.
    Alice had never wanted to work solely for one woman. But Alexis St. Pierre had been gentle and persistent in her request. She'd said she would fix a good weekly rate and Alice would never be obliged to stay late. She'd said she would hire out for parties. Taking care o( children would be unnecessary because she and Douglas were never going to have children. Alexis had told Alice that she would have half a day off on Saturday and all day Sunday because Douglas was Catholic and believed that no one should work on Sunday. She'd said airily that Alice should take the silk kimono Douglas had given her for her last birthday because it was the wrong color for her but would be just right for Alice. This gift had sealed the bargain. Alice would come to work for Alexis and Douglas and work for them only.
    Alice's sudden, tragic loss was confusing to Alexis. It was hard to know how to respond. Alexis had known the child. She had seen both of Alice's girls briefly. She recalled them perched on the top step oi the back porch. The day she saw them, they had been chattering like magpies and had started when she opened the screen door and walked onto the porch. She had been surprised by them too. She was, perhaps, more surprised by them than they were by her. Oddly, they hadn't looked like they could be Alice's children and Alexis had had to question herself as to what she had expected. They sat that day on the top step like two small brown birds — Alice's two.

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