Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns by J. California Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

got better, he would still do the washing: just put the clothes in and press the right buttons. He could not do the pressing, though. It was too hard on his leg and back to stand there, pulling down and pushing up the heavy lid of the press.
    He showed Lily how to do the pressing. Pressing was hard on her because you had to lift that heavy press and bring it down, then lift it again. All day. She sweated and ached over that press. He lay in his bed, sick, resting, and miserable, wondering, “Lord, a man don’t deserve this kind’a bad treatment from no wife! I been a good man! I don’t do no sinnin no more!”
    Two more years passed in that way. Maddy was still “sick,” Lily Bea wasn’t singing as she worked anymore. Hadn’t for a long time. She never danced, all of a sudden, anymore either. She didn’t go to school for any classes anymore. Didn’t even think of it.
    She was a drudge, and looked it. Her hair stayed wet from the steam so she just kept it wrapped in a rag. The steam didn’t hurt or help her skin, but she kept her usual good care of it. We were still friends so we still talked. I told her to always use cold water on her face, to keep her pores from gettin ruined. Her nails were chipped and broken. Who cared? She didn’t. She was tired, tired, tired, all the time. She was such a run-down drudging slave, she had given up on life.
    One day Sorty came by, smiling, to pick up a “little change.” In semiprivate, Maddy told Sorty, “You got to find you a new place to get you some money! We can’t trade on this lazy-ass daughter of yours no more.” He had taken to swearing at her. “Maybe she helps me a little in the shop, but she don’t do nothin in the bed! I got to take care of her, and you ain’t helpin me none by comin by here to ‘borrow’ no money that you don’t never tend to pay me back no way!”
    Sorty got close to Lily before she left the shop that day. Told her, “What’s wrong with you, girl? Don’t you see what you got here?! You betta grow up, and get some sense! If you don’t, somebody gonna take all this right out from under your nose!”
    For the first time, Lily talked back to her mother, “Who? You? Hell, take it, take him! Take the whole damn place, Mama. This what you wanted for me? Well, now this is what I want for you. Take it!” She turned back to the steam press. She slammed the steam press down; it billowed angrily, blowing steam into Sorty’s face.
    Sorty just looked off into space a quick minute, took a deep breath with no steam in it, slurred her eyes at Maddy, and sauntered on out of the shop. “I was livin fore I knew either one of ya!” The door had almost closed behind her when she stuck her head back in, saying, “I’ll be back next week, my rent is gonna be due.” She smiled Maddy a “good-bye.”
    Maddy always took care of all things outside the shop, except for shopping for food. Lily always cooked, so she always had to shop. “The kitchen is a wife’s domain!” Maddy said.
    Because Lily never did much outside of the shop, Maddy told her, “You don’t need to go spendin good money for clothes you don’t wear noway.” Lily couldn’t even afford clothes from the secondhand shops. Again, Maddy told her, “Wear some of these clothes we have done cleaned and ain’t never got paid for. Them people ain’t never comin back to get em. I ought’a have a sale on em. You pick some of them, fore I sell em.”
    The only time Lily Bea got money to spend was when she had to shop for food. It was also the only time she had choices she could make for herself; what she wanted to cook. She really relished the few days a month she had to shop for food. It was a time when she would be alone.
    Lily Bea would slowly walk by all the little shops with their windows full of food and sundry things. Thinking. “My marriage to a ‘businessman’ was supposed to make my life better. Now, I’m working harder than I ever have in my life. And . . . it may never