The Return of Buddy Bush by Shelia P. Moses Read Free Book Online Page B

to do in Rich Square so she started this talent show every Saturday night at Creecy School in the gym. Ain’t no need to enter the talent show if Dorothy is in it because you can’t outsing her and you sho’ can’t outdance her. Shemoves like she ain’t got no bones in her body. Miss Novella said she better not be shaking her bottom parts. Honey, please! Everything on that Dorothy girl shakes. She got talent like her mama, who sang so loud at Grandpa’s funeral that I know he heard her. Yes, he did.

7
The Walk
    I ’m all dressed now and all I have to do is get past Miss Sylvines door downstairs without getting caught. I’m wearing my red short pants that Uncle Buddy gave me and a white blouse that was too big for Chick-A-Boo. She said I can wear it until she is big enough to wear her own blouse. Then she said I got to give it back to her. I might and I might not.
    I am just about to open the door when I hear folk talking downstairs.
    â€œGood morning.”
    â€œGood morning, Gloria.”
    â€œWhere you off to so early in the morning, Miss Sylvine?”
    â€œI’m going to a meeting over at the church.”
    Well, they just made my day. Miss Sylvine is leaving and this Gloria person ain’t nobody that BarJean ever mentioned to me. So I’ll just leave when they finish gossiping in the hallway.
    Soon as Miss Sylvine leaves, I make my escape.
    This street feels like it is paved with gold. I want to cry. You don’t know what it is like to want to be in a place like this while you in a hot peanut field chopping weeds. Sometimes I think I just chopped up a half a row of peanuts daydreaming about Harlem. Now I am here. Thank you, God. Look at these people. They don’t know what my little twelve-year-old heart has been through. Ohhhhh, they so dressed up. I am glad I got Chick-A-Boo’s new blouse on. I don’t know if I look like a city girl, but I feel like one.
    Everyone in Harlem must have a job because ain’t too many folks walking the streets this morning. The few that are walking around ain’teven noticed me. Even if they do, they don’t know me from Adam.
    One thing for sure, folks here ain’t as nosy as folks back home. Let me just try to walk down Main Street at home without Ma. Before my heels could hit the ground, someone would be on Rehobeth Road to tattle to Ma. If they can’t find her, they going straight to Jones Property to tattle to Grandma.
    Look at this place. Look at all these stores. There is even a grocery store on the bottom floor of BarJean’s building. I better not go in there because I bet you the shoes I’m wearing BarJean has told everybody in there to keep an eye on me.
    Uncle Buddy said all these people in Harlem are from down South, but they don’t look like it. They look like they been up here all they lives. They come here so they can get some respect. Uncle Buddy said he didn’t know what it felt like to be treated like a man until he came up here to Harlem. Maybe he should have stayed up here. Yep, maybe he should stay here now. Maybe itain’t right for me to want him to come back home with me. If Uncle Buddy had not come back to Rehobeth Road in 1942, he would have never got in the mess he in today. Till this day, we don’t really know why he came back. He wrote us a letter one day and said he was coming home soon. Home! That very next Sunday morning, there he was. For five years he lived on Rehobeth Road in peace and worked at the sawmill in Rich Square. At least he did until that terrible Friday night. That would have never happened to him here in Harlem. Now I have to find him and tell him they caught the white men who tried to kill him. I have to tell him they going to give him a trial too. At his trial Uncle Buddy can tell them that he didn’t try to hurt that white woman. He can’t tell the truth if he don’t want to go home.
    It sure feels nice walking down this street