Getting Mother's Body Read Online Free PDF

hold it off the floor.
Be small, baby,
I says, talking to my baby without opening my mouth.
Be small, baby, be small.
    The dress fits.
    â€œLook at you,” Mrs. Jackson says. Her voice is thick like she is about to cry but I can’t tell for sure in the dim light.
    I look down at my pink pumps. “I used to wear these when I worked over at Miz Montgomery’s,” I say. “I guess they’ll do.”
    â€œPink shoes with your wedding dress will not do,” Mrs. Jackson says.
    â€œI can’t afford no nice ones,” I says.
    â€œYou wear size 6?” she asks.
    â€œSize 5,” I says.
    She goes to the back, walking backwards and turning her head this way and that to get a good look at me. When she’s out of sight I do a slow twirl. Snipes didn’t say nothing about the rings and he don’t know what size I wear but I guess we’ll get them when I get up there. I can’t expect him to think of everything. He had his new coffins on his mind today, plus that dying old Doctor Wells.
    â€œThe baby looks like it’s growing pretty good,” she hollers from the back.
    â€œYes, ma’am,” I says. No one has said nothing about the baby but I guess, since she knows I’m gonna have a husband to go with it, it’s OK to mention now.
    â€œYou lucky you got such small feet,” Mrs. Jackson says coming back into the main room with a shoe box. “I don’t carry many shoes but I did have these.”
    â€œI don’t got enough for shoes,” I says.
    â€œTry them on and hush up,” she says.
    I pat myself on the back for having the intelligence to wash up before I came here. Sometimes smelling good can make all the difference. Mrs. Jackson brings me a chair and I sit, trying on the shoes like a lady would. When I get them on she helps me up.
    â€œLook at you,” she murmurs.
    â€œDo I look all right?”
    â€œYour poor mother,” she says.
    â€œI only got sixty-three dollars,” I says.
    â€œAnd here it is 1963,” she says.
    I pick up my pocketbook, fish through it and hold the bills in my hand.
    â€œCan you promise me something?”
    â€œWhut?”
    â€œDon’t go telling all of Lincoln, Texas, how you got yrself a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes off of Mrs. Jackson for sixty-three dollars. People would accuse me of playing favorites.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    She takes the money from me, counting it quickly, then sticking it underneath the pincushion on her wrist. “And when I say don’t tell no body I mean don’t tell no body, you hear? If word gets back to Mr. Jackson, Lord today, I won’t never hear the end of it.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œNow turn around and style it for me,” she says.
    I tell the baby to stay small again. It stays small. I turn all the way around one way then around the other way.
    â€œI look all right?”
    â€œYou as pretty as you can be,” she says. “Just as pretty as you can be.”
    WILLA MAE BEEDE
    This next song I’ma sing is a song I wrote about a man I used to know. It’s called “Big Hole Blues.”
    My man is digging in my dirt
    Digging a big hole just for me.
    He’s digging in my dirt
    Digging a big hole just for me.
    It’s as long as I am tall, goes down as deep as the deep blue sea.

    He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.
    He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.
    He says he’ll put me down there in it
    And put my boyfriend in it too.

    He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe
    He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe
    I done packed up all my clothes, I’m gonna leave this big old holey place.

    Everybody’s got a Hole. Ain’t nobody ever lived who don’t got a Hole in them somewheres. When I say Hole you know what I’m talking about, dontcha?