Cottonwood Whispers Read Online Free PDF

end repeated when I asked to speak to her. “I ain’t seen her all day.”
    I knew it was Miss Taffy I was talking to. She was a large colored woman who had a bold tongue and an impatient nature. People didn’t push Miss Taffy’s buttons without getting their ears boxed, and I didn’t feel like hearing her yell at me just then. But I pressed her a little bit more.
    “She wasn’t supposed to be there until now, though, Miss Taffy. I was just makin’ sure she got there safe.”
    “Makin’ sure she got here safe?” she repeated. “Land’s sake, ain’t you white folk got better things to do than checkin’ up on people every time they leave the house?” Without warning, I heard her drop the telephone and walk off with loud, clomping footsteps. “You seen Gemma Teague?” I heard her ask someone. “What d’you mean, ‘huh’? I said, you seen Gemma Teague? . . . Speak up louder, girl! Ain’t a body two inches away from you could hear what you’re sayin’ in that little mouse voice of yours.” Then I heard hersay, “Uh-huh. Well, get on back to work. You waitin’ for me to give you a trophy or somethin’?”
    Luke pushed the door open and looked at me questioningly.
    I shrugged in response. “I’m waitin’ on Miss Taffy,” I whispered. “I think she near about beat information out of one of her kitchen help.”
    He smiled widely and leaned against the doorjamb.
    “You there, Jessilyn Lassiter?” Miss Taffy called into the phone. I leaped back a little as her booming voice bounced off my ear.
    “Yes’m.”
    “Winnie says she done seen her get in no more’n a minute ago. Makes me wonder why she ain’t checked in with me yet, then. Don’t everybody know they’s supposed to check in with Miss Taffy first thing they get here? Lord, give me patience with these ornery workers I got to put up with day in and day out.”
    That was the last thing I heard from Miss Taffy because she hung up the phone then without so much as a “good evenin’.”
    I hung up and ambled toward Luke, chewing my lip thoughtfully. “She says Gemma’s there. Though she ain’t seen her herself, and she’ll probably lay into Gemma for not lookin’ in on her right off. Hope I didn’t get her in trouble.”
    “You was just checkin’ in ’cause you were concerned, is all. Ain’t no reason to worry.”
    I looked at the clock and sighed. “Guess I’ll get somesupper started. Ain’t got no idea what’s keepin’ Momma and Daddy.”
    I sent Luke out to pick some tomatoes, and I watched through the kitchen window as he walked by, thinking of a day when I’d be making dinner for him every evening.
    “Someday,” I murmured. “Someday, Luke Talley. You just wait.”
    Momma and Daddy came home a few minutes later, and Momma was full of apologies about running late.
    “I’ll tell you, Miss Jessilyn,” she rattled on as she pulled pans out of the cabinets. “Bart Tatum passed us on the road to home, and don’t you know he had to stop us to say hey? That man can talk a body’s ear off. Here I am thinkin’ I’ve got to get this chicken on, so I tell him so, and what do you think he does? He decides it’s a fine time to tell us about his eatin’ habits, every detail. ‘Ain’t no way to eat chicken but boiled,’ he says. Boiled! And you can’t have chicken without potatoes, of course, so he proceeds to give me his wife’s recipes for hashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes . . . Ain’t got enough hours in a day for all the ways that man eats his potatoes. And as if I don’t know such things. I been cookin’ since I could reach a stove.”
    All the while, I stood at the kitchen window, mindlessly mixing up the corn bread batter.
    “You’re awfully quiet, Jessilyn,” Momma said, though she hadn’t left me much room to fit any words in. “You got things on your mind?”
    “Just thinkin’ about Gemma,” I murmured.
    “What about her?”
    I shrugged, deciding I didn’t want to say much about