Kizzy Ann Stamps Read Online Free

happen. (I didn’t think much about how Mrs. Warren had to give up her job — since she’s as old as Methuselah, I just thought she might
want
to stop working. She
ought
to want to stop working.) I got to say, that did make Granny Bits hush in a hurry.
    I know how the others are feeling. Before you wrote, I’d never had a letter from a teacher before. It’s a little like getting a letter from God! Don’t tell Granny Bits I said that, though — I’m pretty sure I’d get a switching for that! Those must be some great schools, that teach all the teachers. Y’all’s handwriting looks exactly the same, you and Mrs. Warren’s, and I admit, it is always easy to read, not like my scribble-scrabble. It’s almost like a handwriting machine, churning out same-shaped letters and numbers. I’ve watched Mrs. Warren write on our papers before, and she is as precise as any farm machinery we own, all sharp and sure, taking the time to touch lines and form those loops. I don’t think I’ll ever have that kind of patience, but it sure is like watching an artist at work. Did it take you hours to write all those letters?
    Did you write letters of welcome to your white kids, too? I guess you have to, to make things fair, but I hope you didn’t. They are always welcome. We’re the ones trying something new, being made to go where we aren’t wanted and aren’t really wanting to go. But maybe I don’t really want you to answer the question, so don’t tell me, okay? I’m just going to pretend you wrote to only us. I know that’s kind of being a baby, but I think this one time I want to believe you’d treat us more special than the others.
    It’s very interesting to hear more about you. I realize you’ve mostly just written to me about me in your other letters. I guess I thought you’d have come from far away, not grown up right over in Lynchburg. Still, I don’t think your world has been exactly like mine. I won’t hold that against you, though. I hope you won’t hold it against me.
    Sure, I could tell you about our farm, since you asked. I tend to skip describing things sometimes — when I read a story, once I know where it happens, snap, I can figure out what it looks like and I don’t need the author to go on for four pages with all that flowery description, you know what I mean? But Mrs. Warren says some readers like to be “grounded in the place,” and I suppose you could be one of those readers. So, our farm has a smallish farmhouse built by Stamps folks over the years. The earliest part was just one room, built by the Stamps who got the land when they scraped together some money after they were slaves. That room is now the kitchen (they used it for everything back then, according to Granny Bits). The ceiling in there hangs low — my daddy is about six feet tall and he kind of stoops in there, but in a friendly way. The walls are a soft yellow, and it is my favorite room because it is always warm and it smells like toast and tomatoes even when nothing is cooking. Granny Bits spends lots of her time there, when she cooks and when she irons. We often seem to gather there to tell each other about our day after things have happened. We often go there to get a little silly talk. It’s where we play board games and where I usually get my homework done, since I don’t have a fancy desk in my room. The other rooms in the house sort of got added on as needed, so the house feels like a quilt to me. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s how it seems to me, like a quilt with pieces all patched together, fitted just so.
    Our land is spread around twenty acres, and we have some crops, a garden, and some milk cows, a few pigs, chickens, a rooster, and one meat cow, sometimes two in a good year. I help with the crops, the garden, and the milking. The chickens and some of the cooking are my jobs too. Mama and Daddy respect that I don’t want to help much with the pigs and meat cows — I don’t want to get on a