Ellen Foster Read Online Free PDF Page A

after them. I try to see what Starletta leaves on the lipof a bottle but I have never seen anything with the naked eye. If something is that small it is bound to get into your system and do some damage.
    They clean this house all the time but it is still dirty. They got dirt and little sticks all between the floorboards. They either need a rug to hide it or a thing to suck it all up. Her mama says you can sweep and sweep and sweep until you is blue in the face.
    All three of them stay in one room. I myself could not stand it. They do their business outside and when it is cold they do it over in the corner in a pot. I guess they hide their eyes and hum while somebody goes. I hold myself until I get home.
    And they never have had a television set.
    The only one that can read is Starletta and she misses words.
    Her mama works on quilts right much. She can do flowers, dutch boys and girls, just square blocks, anything you order. She sells them to white women from town and they turn around and sell them again for a pretty penny. That would gall me.
    I do not know where Starletta and her mama and daddy came from. Maybe town. They live regular but most colored people have a grandmama or two and a couple dozen cousins in the same house. A family up the road had fifteen people in one house and when they ran out of plates they ate off records. Records like you play. I know that for a fact.
    Starletta’s daddy wears a green coat and a matching hat. Castro has a hat just like it. He, not Castro, has never bothered me and he is the only colored man that does not buyliquor from my daddy. I do not know what he spends his money on.
    Come on and see what Santa Claus brought Starletta is what he says for me to do.
    She looks at me and grins. She has one hand in a bucket of Lincoln logs and the other one headed for her nose.
    She has a right to grin. Her toys look good. I would be proud my own self. A orange and green town that folds up in its own carry case, a colored baby big as a live one in a cradle, picture books, some socks and clothes, and the Lincoln logs.
    Starletta still had on her nightgown and she needed to be washed.
    You got to wash before I will play with you is what I told her.
    She went and stood by the stove while her mama wiped her down and put her on a outfit.
    I am too grown to enjoy most of Starletta’s toys but if they are new I can make do. I know how long her toys last. Her baby dolls smell like her in a day or two and if she gets any crayons she breaks them just to hear them snap. I will not color with a broke crayon. I had her bring her last box to my house and I taped them back together like they are supposed to be. She did not like it.
    We played and put the little block-headed people all about in the town. She does not go to town like I do so she had to be told where everything went. But even I had a couple people left over and had to look on the front of the carry case to see how they had it all set up. After I got it done I told her to get a hard look at it so next time she would know. She leaned inclose and looked up one street and down the other but I knew it would not stick in her head.
    Her daddy asked me if I want to stay and eat with them.
    No. I’ll just stick around until you finish if that would be OK with you.
    You know you are welcome to stay. You know it’s OK, her mama said to me. You know it is.
    My mama
    I stay and mess with the little town while they eat.
    Do I have to watch?
    I could go.
    Starletta slides out of her chair and her mama says to take something you better eat.
    Starletta is not big as a minute.
    She came at me with a biscuit in her hand and held it to my face. No matter how good it looks to you it is still a colored biscuit.
    Her mama and daddy get up from the table and one said they got something for me.
    For me?
    You have been a good girl. Right?
    Lord yes. What is it? Is it in the box? What could it be in a box for me?
    Open it up. Forget the hocus-pocus said the