Kizzy Ann Stamps Read Online Free PDF

drumming his fingers on the wood. He is not a sitter, if you know what I mean — he is a mover. Not many people can be sitters when a farm has so many things need doing. One look at his face told me to keep my mouth shut, though. My brother is usually an easygoing person, but lately, he only has to hear one word to feel an anger that sets his body shaking. I went to my granny with the peas. She dumped out what I’d shelled and returned the empty bowl to me.
    “That enough for supper, Granny Bits?” I asked.
    “Keep shelling, Kizzy Ann,” she said. “We got hungry folk to feed around here.”
    I must have brushed against James, because his hand shot out and knocked that bowl clear across the kitchen. Shag, always at my side, growled and moved at James. I put my hand up to keep her from trouble before I scrambled to grab that bowl. “Keep your temper,” Granny Bits warned my brother. James cut his eyes at me, then mumbled a sorry my way. He doesn’t usually snap at me, to be fair, Miss Anderson. Not like lots of brothers do. I suspect that thing about football has him a mite more than worried.
    Yesterday I learned how you weren’t the teacher at your school last year, that you’re the new teacher. I heard the teacher who’d taught that grade quit because we were coming — how she wasn’t about to teach no “uppity black kids.” I heard a lot of teachers quit the white school and there are a lot of new young teachers there. I knew a lot of white kids had quit and were going to private schools, but I never knew that a lot of teachers had quit. Daddy is talking all the time about how Mrs. Warren had to give up her job, a job she fought to get, a job she worked so hard for, and there are teachers at your school just quitting at the drop of a hat because they won’t work with a certain type of kid. I never even thought that you wouldn’t want to be my teacher, Miss Anderson. I didn’t see that one coming — I told you right off how much I didn’t want to come and I guess I should have been thanking you for being there when I get there. Thank you, ma’am.
    You asked how things are going for me, and I hate to sound like a whiner after that last paragraph, but I have to say, things are not good for me. My mother is trying too hard. She asked for some hand-me-downs for school from Mrs. Patsy. (Mrs. Patsy has a daughter a little bigger than me — maybe you know her, Laura.) Mama doesn’t like to ask Mrs. Patsy for anything, but she would do whatever she has to for me.
    I wish she wouldn’t. Yesterday we tried on the dresses, three of them, and I’ll tell you, I felt a fool.
    They’re frilly and satiny and my heart dropped to my knees when Mama pulled them out of the Miller & Rhoads shopping bag Mrs. Patsy had sent.
    “Look, Moon Child, you are going to look like a strawberry sundae in this pink dress. And the green one will show off your lovely arms, with these cap sleeves. And oh, the white one! Like a dream.” She went on and on. My mama is usually a quiet soul, so when she’s prattling, you know something’s wrong.
    I put them on, each in turn, and they fit pretty well, with Mama only having to pin a little here and there. As I told you, we only have a small mirror, just a sliver of shine, but I didn’t need to see my reflection to know how out of place I looked.
    I haven’t written in a while because seeing myself in those dresses (even if it was just in my mind’s eye) threw me into a daze even Shag couldn’t pull me out from. The dresses meant this was really going to happen. Maybe dresses aren’t that much of a problem for you.
    When I wore dresses to school with Mrs. Warren, I wore them because girls have to wear dresses to school and to church. Those are the rules. My granny makes most of my clothes out of leftover material she sews with, and so my dresses are just that, leftovers. I put them on of a morning and took them off as soon as I could to switch them for my work clothes. The dresses