Chapter 6
Some days are sad face days because Mama cries so much. She says nobody loves her, nobody cares about her and nobody ever even helps her. Then she keeps huggin’ on us, sayin’ we’re all she has. I hate sad face hugs.
Mama works in a mill makin’ cotton. She comes home tired all the way to her bones and we ain’t never got no money.
You know how some big people say things like how when they was little they had to walk a hundred miles through the snow just to get to their school bus stop and how when they was little kids like me they didn’t even know they was poor, least not ‘til they grew up anyways. Well they must be plumb dumb because I sure know that we’re poor.
For one thing Mama is always talkin’ about not havin’ a pot to pee in, only she don’t say the pee word she says the bad one. But if I say the bad one she will ring my jaws good. I don’t know why she even talks about not havin’ a pee pot though because we do, it sits on the back porch beside the mop bucket. But I ain’t about to remind Mama that we do have one because I hate that pot.
But even if Mama didn’t talk about us bein’ poor I would still know that we are. All I have to do is walk up the road to where my cousins live, open the door and right away know that I’m poor. They have way more nicer stuff than we do, like number one and most important, they have a daddy. Then there are the pretty clothes, cars, toys and furniture they have. Plus they all have their very own house! They don’t gotta live with nobody else. And they have even looked at the ocean with their very own eyes!
I saw it in a picture at school and I wanna taste it so bad. My teacher was there and she said it’s real salty. That’s fine by me because I love salt, especially on mashed up potatoes.
I worry about my Mama all the time, though. I don’t know why she cries so much. I wish I was rich so she don’t have to make no cotton and she wouldn’t be so tired and she could come home and be happy to see me. I would buy her a beautiful dress with shoes to match and she would be the prettiest woman at church and then people wouldn’t look down on her like she says they do when she’s cryin’. She says they do it because they have a husband and much nicer things than she does.
One time I was just tryin’ to make her feel better so I told her that they don’t think she’s poor, they only think that me, Jason, and Phil are poor because I heard one of ‘em say, those poor kids, but they never mentioned nothing about Mama.
She got so mad when I told her that. My Mama cries way more than she smiles.
