The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara Read Free Book Online Page A

corridor.
    *   *   *
    “I don’t want to belabor the point,” Velma said, clearing her throat, not sure where they were on the agenda, “and I certainly don’t want to antagonize or polarize—”
    “Let the chips fall where they may, Vee.”
    “Ruby, hush.”
    “—but a review of the history is important if we’re to map out with some intelligence and fairness the agenda of the organization. As Ruby said, we’re at the crossroads, and what we decide tonight will be … decisive. It’s not just a matter of who’s taken responsibility in the past for carrying out the work, for getting out the press releases, the mailings, for doing the canvassing, for organizing a base among campus forces, street forces, prison forces, workers, gathering the money, arranging for transportation …”
    She was hanging by her nails on the slippery material of the hotel counter, her legs trembling with fatigue, her nose stopped up, her skin caked with mud, her face, her hair dusted with insect wings and pollen. Hanging by her nails, her backbone on fire, her bowels boiling. The switchboard cables a fabulous Indian rope trick she’d have to deal with to make the calls. The clipboard a confounding puzzle of glyphs and ciphers. And slanting across the mirror over the key rack the men without their sunglasses, hair glistening fresh from under stocking caps and fro cloths, the men carrying silver ice buckets and laughing with the women, the women clean and lean and shining, prancing like rodeo ponies—roans, palominos tossing their manes and whinnying down the corridor. And the man who would be leader.
    Trying not to see them, but seeing them anyway, her eyes swimming in the mirror, slipping and sliding over a field of red silk. No bib overalls. No slop jars here. Just red silk loungingpajamas and silver ice buckets and those women. Losing her grip, the phone too heavy to hold against her ear, her eyes floating in the mirror, skidding over the raised threads that worked out a dragon of white and gold with blazing fangs and fire. Any minute she’d be a heap on the floor, a puddle of red mud in the carpet but for two hands that were holding her up up under her armpits. James? Had he come for her at last? Come to merge the ranks? Someone had broken away, had come crashing through the mirror to lift her, to drag her away, hustle her out of the door. An ice bucket banging her in the knees, the cold stabbing her in the thighs. The shoelaces strangling. Her head snapped back in the rush and shove and all she could see, the landscape of her world, was a blond hair between green threads on a field of red.
    “Be cool.” Palma was patting her, one of the bracelets sliding off into Velma’s lap. “Don’t get overheated, Vee girl.” Palma was winking, being their grandmother. “Be still, girlie.”
    Velma ghosted a smile and leaned back, her stocking feet clutching at tufts of the carpet that softened the debate in Patterson’s office.
    “Be still, Velma. Just relax now,” Ruby was bending with the basin, trying not to bump against the tent, damp with rain. “One monkey don’t stop no show. Not one, not six. The struggle continues. Haste not, waste not. Not to mention a stitch in time. Et cetera and so forth. Just get your feet to cooperate and everything’ll be just fine.”
    Ruby was trying to put her feet in the basin. Daisy Moultrie was brushing her hair. Velma had no control over her feet. No control over her head either. It seemed to bang around on her shoulders one minute, loll and bob the next. She feared the cronie had broken her neck shoving her out of the hotel. But the water was cool, it calmed her. The stroking of her legs wassoothing too. The washcloth soft and fragrant with something Ruby always wore. But Daisy Moultrie was brushing too briskly. And the sparks that flew threatened to ignite her all over again, catch the tent on fire, burn up the stack of fliers waiting on a camp stool for her to distribute. She