one of her closest friends. I had overheard her tell Mama that the judge was the main reason she always got out of trouble with just a “talking-to” every time her house got raided.
The judge was a tall, gray-haired, barrel-chested white man with a narrow face and bushy mustache. He reminded me of Jed Clampett on my favorite program at the time, The Beverly Hillbillies. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and thin lips that were always smiling. He lived in a big blue house on a hill with an enclosed swimming pool, and he owned houses all over town. Every time I saw him he had on an expensive-looking suit.
“How do you like school, Annette? Your mama tells me you get straight A’s,” he said to me one night when he dropped Mama off.
I broke into a grin when he slapped a one-dollar bill into my anxious hand. “Oh I have some real good teachers, and I like to learn,” I told him proudly, walking behind him as he strode like a cowboy across our living-room floor.
Mama and Judge Lawson sat down on our living-room couch and popped open cans of beer. I sat on a chair across from them, caressing my dollar. Mr. Boatwright was in bed.
“Hmmm. Ever consider going into the teaching profession when the time comes?” Judge Lawson asked, taking a long swig from his can.
“Oh no, Judge Lawson. I hope I can get a good secretarial job after I graduate,” I replied excitedly.
“Well if there’s anything I can do to help, all you got to do is let me know and I’ll fix it,” he said firmly. Then he put his hand on Mama’s knee and started rubbing it.
Judge Lawson’s offer impressed and stunned me, but I didn’t take him seriously. I knew he was rich, didn’t have any kids, and was not on good terms with his family. But he had a lot of friends. Mama told me that he entertained a lot. He often had lavish poker parties. Every time he did, Mama had to stay late cooking and running around serving his guests.
Something happened shortly after Judge Lawson’s offer, and Mama was forced to call on him for a favor. An inspector came snooping around our neighborhood, and our house was one of the ones he condemned because the place had extremely bad and dangerous wiring, termites and roaches sliding up and down the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling, and holes everywhere he looked. We had thirty days to find a new place to live.
Mama couldn’t afford to take time off from work, so Mr. Boatwright and I went out looking for a new house. We took buses when we could, but we did most of our searching on foot. With Mr. Boatwright’s leg situation it was a long, exasperating experience. Because of him I couldn’t walk as fast as I normally did. And every ten or fifteen minutes we had to find a bench for him to rest.
The next day we looked at three more places. The ones we could afford looked worse than the one we were in and were located in neighborhoods even rougher and more run-down.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mama moaned one evening. She had just come in from work and still had her coat on. Her eyes appeared to be in pain. They were red and swollen from all the crying she had done over our knotty problem. “We ain’t got but ten more days to vacate these premises.”
“What happens if we don’t move by then?” I asked. I was on the living room couch with Mr. Boatwright. An hour earlier he and I had prayed out loud on our knees asking God to help us find the right house.
With a worried look on his face, Mr. Boatwright replied, “The sheriff will come out with a crew, set our stuff on the ground, and put a lock on the door.”
Time was running out, and we still had not found a suitable house to move to.
“What are we going to do, Mama?” I was getting scared. I was not that crazy about our house, but it was all we had.
“Well, Scary Mary done already told me, I can stretch out on a pallet on her livin’-room floor, you can sleep with Mott, Brother Boatwright can pile up on her livin’-room couch ’til we find a place.”
It was never discussed, but I knew that Mama was tired of having to fall back on Scary