Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

we don't use enough. You'll need some new shoes. too."
"I don't want to cut my hair. Mama."'
"I already made your beauty parlor
appointment. It's tomorrow at nine."
"Tomorrow at nine? But be in school. Mama."
"Not tomorrow, you won't."'
"But--"
"You don't ever miss a day. Ice. You can miss one and don't tell me you can't. I see some of the girls in your class hanging around here during the school day, pretending to be sick or something and having a good old time of it. No one comes around to check on them either. At least you have a good reason not to go."
"Getting your hair done is not a good reason to cut school. Mama."
"It is to me, especially when you don't ever go and get it done, and especially when you have an important occasion coming up," she insisted.
"Important occasion." I mumbled under my breath.
"Yes." she said wagging her head. "it is an important occasion. It's like what they call those debutante balls or something, a coming-out."
I started to smile and her face turned hard and cold. "Are you laughing at me. Ice?"
"No, Mama."
"Don't you go showing your stuck-up face to me."
"I'm not being stuck-up. But Mama, this is not anything like a debutante ball."
"It is to me and it should and will be to you. Now that's it. You can thank me later." she added and left me stunned and anxious about what she had don't.
It was almost like the old days when parents arranged the marriages their children would have. If any of my classmates found out what she had dont. I would really be the object of ridicule. I thought. Knowing Mama's girlfriends. it wasn't hard to believe the gossip would fly.
"Ice's mother has to find her a date. She can't get one on her own." they would say. They'd tease me and ask if my mother could find them a date. too.
I've got to find a way to get myself out of this. I thought. I could go to Daddy, but if I went to him, it could become a big blowup between them and they had been having quite of few of those lately. The last thing I wanted to do was be the cause of another. Maybe I could pretend to be sick. I thought.
No, she wouldn't go for that. She's so excited about this, she'd send me out with a temperature of a hundred and five and a face covered in measles.
Maybe Louella's brother wouldn't show up. Maybe he would change his mind. Maybe he wouldn't like being made to go out with a high- school girl on a blind date. Maybe...
Maybe you might just have a good time, another voice inside me said. Maybe you'll like him.
Just maybe, your mother might be right. Don't try to tell yourself you never dreamt of having a nice time with a really nice young man.
Yes, your mother might be right.
I'd soon know. I thought and settled back into the inevitability of what was to come like someone floating on a raft toward Niagara Falls.

2 The Makeover
    From the way Mama talked and behaved, anyone would have thought I really was being prepared for a debutante ball. She couldn't wait to tell my daddy when he came home from work that evening, a little after ten. When he worked the later shift, he would have a sandwich for dinner, but that was never enough for a man his size. so Mama would prepare leftovers for him if she was home when he returned. If she wasn't. I would come out of my room as soon as he was home and warm up his dinner.
    "Ice has a date Saturday night." I heard her tell him at the table.
We had a small, separate dining room and a four-chair yellow Formica breakfast table in the kitchen. She served the late dinner in the kitchen, ostensibly because she didn't want to mess up a clean dining room just for a leftover dinner. It made no sense to me because she would have to clean up the kitchen again anyway.
Despite her complaints, our apartment was a good size for the rent we paid and Daddy was always pointing out that the building was rent-controlled and we wouldn't get as much for our money if we did what Mama wanted and looked for another place to live. He tried to make it nicer to please her. He had