Silver Sparrow Read Online Free

said. “Let me wrap it for you. We have a nice floral paper that just came in.”
    “Wait.” He took the knife back. “I ch-changed my mind.” He headed toward the escalator, with his hat stil clamped under his arm.
    The next customer in line was a white woman who had purchased a set of baby’s pajamas for her pregnant sister.
    “Men,” the customer said. “Who can understand the way their minds work?”
    Mother knew what the white lady was talking about, but she couldn’t laugh at a black man with her, even though she was only laughing at him for being a man.
    James returned more than two hours later as the store was closing and my mother was tidying up the gift-wrap counter, throwing away bits of string, lining up the tape dispensers, and counting the shirt boxes. He handed her the carving knife again.
    “It’s a good knife,” my mother said, tearing a rectangle of floral paper from the rol . “I didn’t mean any harm.”
    He didn’t speak, but she noticed his neck bulging as she squared the corners and rol ed the tape to make it sticky on both sides.
    Mother handed him the box, so pretty now with a double bow, wondering if she hadn’t overdone it. She imagined his wife undoing the ribbons, assuming the contents were as lush as the wrapping, but she decided that it was not her concern.
    “And this,” he said in a rush of air, handing her a smal box containing a compact of solid perfume.
    “Your wife wil like this,” Mother said. “She’l love pul ing it out of her purse in front of her friends.” She felt like she was speaking too much, but this odd man was staring at her, and she felt that someone should do the talking. She wrapped the compact in a saucy red wrapper and used a simple gold tie. “Look at that. It’s got a little cha-cha.”
    She slid it across the table to him and he shoved it back.
    “I-i-i-t’s . . .” He paused and tried again. “Th-th-th . . .” He stopped.
    “Is there something wrong? Do you want me to put them both in the same paper?”
    His shoulder jerked in a little spasm, and he said, “It’s for you.”
    Mother glanced at her left hand, where she wore her own wedding ring, although her husband, Clarence, was a year behind her and already engaged. She wore the ring to say that she believed in certain things.
    My mother read
Life
magazine every week, so she knew that the rest of the country was enjoying free love and unkempt hair, but she didn’t admire the young people who let themselves go. She pictured herself more like Mrs. Parks or El a Baker. Dignified and proper, like a strand of pearls.
    “Take it please,” he said, nudging the red-wrapped present her way again.
    And she did accept it, not only because it was a lovely gift; she’d admired the golden compact several times, sneaking her finger in for a sample to dab at her temples. Mother says she appreciated his effort, that he had won a fight with his stammer to give her this present. “Thank you, sir.”
    “Don’t cal me sir. My name is James Witherspoon. You don’t have to be scared of me. I just wanted to give you something.”
    My mother spent the next week and a half expecting James Witherspoon to emerge at the top of the escalator. She agreed with Wil ie Mae, who pointed out that men do nothing without a reason. That compact was more expensive than the carving knife. If he spent more money on her than on his wife, he’d be back.
    “Some men,” said Wil ie Mae, “would be back if al they bought you was a Peppermint Pattie. Money is for buying company, and they know it.”
    (Lovely Wil ie Mae, whom I cal ed Auntie, stood up for my mother at her il egal wedding to my father, four months after I was born. She was my godmother, sweet to me when I was just a little girl. She died right after everything happened, shot to death by her boyfriend, a pretty man named Wil iam. I miss her very much.)
    But Mother didn’t feel that James Witherspoon was trying to buy her. She thought that, for some