Ellen Foster Read Online Free PDF

magician.
    Open it up!
    Oh my God it is a sweater. I like it so much. I do not tell a story when I say it does not look colored at all.
    I think I would like to put it on now if that is OK I can slip it over my shirt and wear it I say and I think I need to cry a little.
    You want to open your gift while I look or do you want to wait for me to leave?
    That was mighty sweet of you. You didn’t have to do it.
    I had to.
    Well well well, the mama says and gets up to put it on her stove.
    I can see from here it does look good. It really brightens up the place.
    I have to go now. I need to get on back home.
    Stay here. What are you going to do when you get back?
    Lord I stay busy.
    You come on back when you want to, he says. Then he wants to know if my daddy is at home today.
    I have not seen hide nor hair.
    If he’s there when you get home you come on back here if you want to. Come on back here, he says.
    When I do get home he is still gone. I wonder if he has not drove off in the ditch somewhere and froze to death. Nobody would be out on Christmas to find him before he got blue and solid. If he is just hurt and gets froze can they thaw him out to normal?
    Ask me what I would do in this case.
    While he is gone I stay in the living room and watch the television. Whenever I hear him drive up the path I go to my room and stay until he leaves or I think of somewhere to go out the window.
    It is much better if he is gone. If nothing jumps out at you to do then you walk around until something looks good.
    I could dress in my mama’s clothes but they are gone. A while back my mama’s mama sent one of her girls here andshe loaded up everything of my mama’s in a big box and hauled it to the car herself. I just stood looking. Oh all the shoes and stockings worn and not worn. All the dresses and underthings and necklaces I never saw my mama in. She said to tell my daddy the message was plain and simple. Now get it right. It was she had rather some real niggers have my mama’s things than any of us that drink and carry on like trash.
    That is hard to figure out because you know I do not drink and I would not even eat in a colored house.
    So I do not have the clothes to dress myself in. And I have run out of books.
    The bookmobile does not run on the holiday so I cannot go down to the crossroads to meet it.
    There is nothing in the world like that bookmobile. A bus from town full of stories to check out and take home. You take them back in two weeks and get some more. It costs to be late.
    They get the books from the big library and it is like you are really there except you are in a bus.
    Now I like that.
    When I run out of borrowed stories I look through the encyclopedias. I know they cost some money and I do not know how they got in this house. I do not even know if they are mine or exactly who they belong to.
    The S book under sneeze has a picture of a man and his sneeze froze in mid air. They took the picture fast and the droplets number in the millions.
    The P book has two poems and then they tell you what the poems mean. I do not understand why because they are writtenin English. They tell you all about poetry and list some poems you might look up on your own and enjoy.
    Sometimes I read the Shakespeare poem slow and out loud with feeling because that is the way it sounds best. The one they have about flinging a scarve over the arc makes me want to whirl around and say it. Say it and whirl around and if I had my mama’s scarve I would fling it and pull it over the arc and half over it and say it.
    Dolphin and I have been in these woods too long. I have no idea how long we have been gone from home but it seems like a while. I thought this was a fine idea and it would have been if I had brought something to read.
    We could go on back. You know they are all doing something in a group this afternoon. My new mama likes for us to do that every now and then but she does not push me.
    There are five of us here. I like everybody but I do