Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom Read Free Book Online Page A

give me a ride. My daddy always waits for me at the barns behind the tavern, then takes me to his shelter in the woods that he keeps moving around.
    â€œWhy don’t you stay put?” I ask. “Then I could come find you on my own.”
    â€œI got to keep movin’ ’case that ol masta come lookin’ for me,” he says.
    â€œBut Daddy, don’t you think he forgot about you by now?”
    â€œThat old masta is sly, and I ’spect I see him any day. I’s ready to head out soon’s I catch sight a him.”
    â€œYou’d just go and leave me?” I ask.
    â€œSon, the best chance you got is stayin’ with Mr. Burton. All we’d be doin’ is runnin’.”
    â€œWhat was it like bein’ a slave?” I ask.
    â€œIt nothin’ I like to talk ’bout.”
    â€œBut was it bad?”
    â€œIt bad enough that I’d sooner die as go back to livin’ like that.”
    â€œBut what if they ever get you again?” I ask.
    â€œThey never gon’ get me again. They got to kill me before that happen,” he says.
    After he tells me that, when I go to meet him, my head is always hurtin’ till I see him waitin’ in the trees. Then I run to him, and when I give him a hug, I always got to stop myself from crying. I count on seeing him every Sunday, ’cause that’s how it was all of my life. The rest of the time it was just me and Mama. The best times we had was when my mama’s friend Sheila came by. Then I’d sit back and listen to the two of them talk. I liked to hear them laugh, even though Sheila had troubles of her own. Her two boys, both of them bigger than me, were always getting in a mess, and then her girl, just fourteen, goes out and gets her own baby.
    One day after Sheila leaves, I ask Mama, “Why that girl of hers go out and bring in another baby? Sheila say she can’t feed the ones she got.”
    â€œThose folks don’ know no better ’cause they was slaves, comin’ here to Phil’delphia from the farm where they don’t have nobody tellin’ them how to live free,” Mama says. “It hard on them, tryin’ to figure out how to make a livin’ when they can’t read or write. Mos’ come from workin’ in the fields and don’ even know how to serve in a big house. Too, a lot a them still scared a the white folks.”
    I was six or seven when Mama first got sick. I did my best to help her out, but I was always happy when Sheila came over at night, sometimes bringing us food when we got none. One day she comes when I’m fussing over Mama, who was real sick that day. Sheila takes over and settles Mama, then pulls me on her lap and says, “Anybody tell you that you a good boy?”
    Don’t know why, but that gets me cryin’.
    â€œThat’s fine, chil’, you go head and cry,” she says. “I knows this got to be tough on you.”
    I cry for a long time before she gives me a squeeze. “Come on, now,” she says, “you got to be a lil man here. Your mama countin’ on you.”
    â€œBut I ain’t no man,” I say, “I jus a chil’.”
    â€œThat’s right,” she say, “but sometimes we got to grow up fast. Why, when I was your age, I was takin’ care of a whole house a white people.”
    â€œYou was?” I ask, but I don’t see her face ’cause her chin was on my head.
    â€œUh-huh,” she say.
    â€œWhen was you a chil’?”
    â€œIf I ever was, I forgot,” she said.
    O NE S UNDAY S HEILA comes over when my daddy’s there and she gets to scoldin’ him. “What you gonna do?” she asks. “This woman’s not gonna make it through the winter. You can’t leave the boy alone to take care a her like this!”
    â€œWhat I gon’ do here?” Daddy says. “I leaves the tavern, I don’ have no money to help out. She