Diary of a Wildflower Read Online Free Page B

says that Willy Starr
might be her brother, but she’s got no more use for him than for a
two-hundred-pound slug.  I freeze to my seat.  Who would believe that
Aunt Sue has the nerve to say such a thing?
    Then
Nell says a two-hundred pound slug would be of some use.  You could charge
people a nickel to look at it.  Next thing you know we’re all giggling,
even Aunt Sue.  That’s our Nell.  When you need a little laugh, she
can give it to you.
     
    June, 1920
    Since
our cousin Grace got married, Trula has boys on her brain and nothing
else.  She and Grace's sister, Pearl, are both sixteen.  Pearl comes
over to see Trula, and they hole up in the
    kitchen together, whispering about Grace and Ken blissfully
wallowing in the holy state of macaroni, and they giggle, giggle, giggle.
    They
also talk about boys they know, who fancies who, and who’s getting
married.  I know Trula wants a husband of her own, but when will she ever
find a beau?  All she does is work and take care of Mommie's babies.
    Pearl
is a sweet girl.  She tells me things that happen down in the bottom where
people live in houses close together and drive around in cars.  She's been
to Skylark a few times, and once she went all the way to Bluefield where she
saw some colored people.  She brung back a piece of oil cloth for Mommie
to put on the eating table.  It was mostly white with red berries for
decoration.  Mommie thanked her nicely and said she’d pay her back. 
But Pearl told Mommie no, it was a present.  I could tell Mommie was
tickled.  She loves pretty things, and does not get to see many. 
There was a bit of a smile on her faces as she spread the oil cloth over the
table.
    ********************
    We
are all outside after a big noontime dinner.  Dad and Luther are having a
belching contest.  Trula is bouncing Daniel on her knee while she and
Roxie look through a magazine Samuel brung to us.  President Woodrow
Wilson is on the cover.  Dad calls him the worst president ever was. 
He’s a Democrat.
    While
Nell and I patiently wait our turn to look at the magazine, we watch Charles
tormenting a big fat June bug.  He has tied a string to its poor little
leg.  He likes to watch it trying to fly away.
    Mommie
is sitting on the side of the porch, fanning her face with a funeral fan. 
She’s not feeling good.  Since Daniel came, she’s been falling off so bad,
she’s down to nearly nothing.  Samuel is beside of Mommie, and he says to
Dad that Mommie needs to see a doctor, but Dad says he does not have money for
doctors.
    We
see somebody coming up Willy’s Road with a horse and wagon.  We know it’s
a peddler because we can hear his goodies clanking around in the wagon a long
time before he gets to the house.  When he reaches us, we’re all standing
around in the yard, waiting for him.  Everybody says hello, and the
peddler climbs down off his seat and commences hauling things out for us to
look at.  In a few minutes we are clustered about him.
    He’s
got skillets and pots and knives and plates and aprons and clothes pins and
nails and screw drivers and slop jars and coal buckets and I don’t know what
all.  He's got toys too, and they are real toys, not June bugs on a
string.  Dad has to slap Jewel’s hands away from a baby doll, and
Charles's hands away from a set of make-believe six-shooters in aholster. 
The rest of us hold our hands behind our backs.
    The
horse hauling the wagon is an old white good-for-nothing swayback, with red
bows and tinkly bells on its head.  But I can’t look at it for the pity I
feel.  There is too much sadness in its old moldy eyes.  It stands
there jerking around, making the bells tinkle as it swishes the flies away with
its tail.
    Mommie
is looking at the sewing notions, and after a while she says she’d like to have
her a new embroidery pattern.  We look at the patterns.  They are
fifteen cents apiece.  There are sunsets and evening stars and all kinds
of flowers.  But Mommie