where I would be the head cook. The kind of dream you talkin’ about—you might as well be talkin’ about gettin’ elected president of the U.S.A. It ain’t goin’ to happen. Except in your dreams. You ain’t got the moxy Scary Mary got. She didn’t get where she at that easy.”
“They put her in the jail—again,” I gasped.
Mama mauled the side of my head with her fist.
“Fix your lips! Anyway, you got to be…a certain type to get one of them uptown office jobs. Folks runnin’ offices, they don’t set girls like you at no desk to answer phones and greet folks. You…”
“I know I’m ugly, Mama,” I said seriously. “I hear people saying so all the time. And, I’m fat.” Somehow I managed a smile. “I see ugly people all the time, and they get good jobs. Like Miss Garra, that dog-face lady you worked for. You told me she work with the mayor now in his office.”
“She white.”
“Well, Reverend Snipes say beauty only skin-deep. Real beauty come from the inside.”
Mama chuckled and shook her head. Then she moved across the floor and snatched a bowl from the table and started mixing some corn bread on the counter. “Oh, child, that’s just somethin’ plain people say to make them feel better.” She sighed, waving the bowl at me. “There ain’t a handsome person alive would trade places with no ugly person.”
“You think I’m ugly, too, Mama? People say…God don’t like ugly.” I left the sink and slid into a chair at the table and folded my arms.
Mama stirred the corn-bread mix with a long-handled spoon so hard she started sweating. She glanced at me for a moment with an exasperated look on her face. “You beautiful inside and out to me. It’s ugly ways God don’t like. Worry ’bout bein’ good, not ugly.” She paused long enough to pour the corn-bread mix into a greased skillet and slid it into the oven. “If you goin’ to fantasize, fantasize about somethin’ practical. A husband with a good job, good friends, a nice home full of young’ns that mind you and know the Lord.” Mama’s voice got real low, and she kept her eyes on the floor while she talked. “I only got one fantasy,” she revealed. “And it’s as big a fantasy as yours about workin’ in a big fancy office. It’ll never come true. At least not for me…”
“What is it?” I left the table and went to stand in front of Mama next to the hot stove. She sighed, then went to the sink and started cutting up the greens.
She shrugged. “Oh…it ain’t nothin’. Just a pipe dream that ain’t got no chance of comin’ true. I don’t care about no minks and furs and mansions like all them white folks I work for got. Compared to the white folks, I want so little out of life and seem like it’s goin’ to take me my whole life to get it, if at all. Just a whiff of luxury. Luxury all the white folks I work for knowed all their born days. Me, I’d be happy livin’ just two or three days of the good life, praise the Lord.”
Mama left the room and returned moments later with her hands full of travel brochures. Very shyly and without looking in my eyes, she said, “Other than runnin’ my own restaurant, the only other thing in life I want is to see the Bahamas before I die.”
“The Bahamas?”
“All them white women I worked for in Florida went there all the time. And for days after they got home, that’s all they talked about. Remember?”
“I remember that time Mrs. Jacobs brought me some seashells back from the Bahamas,” I replied.
“It ain’t just the money. I know I could scrape up enough to go…if I let a few bills slide for a few months or…uh…be nice to Scary Mary and do her a few favors. It’s just that I can’t afford to take the time off from work. White folks is so fickle and helpless. I was to leave for a day or two, and I’m liable not to have no job to return to. I can’t take that chance.”
“But, Mama, you can always find maid work. And even the meanest white folks would probably let you take a few days off if you asked.” Mama went to work even when she was sick. Sunday was the only day she had off, and she sometimes worked up to twelve hours a day.