The Future Has a Past Read Online Free PDF Page B

time, she clung to him, even as he danced her across the green grass to the darkened trees, into the black of the night.
    We few who had watched, finally lost interest when we couldn’t see them no more and we went back to our own heartthrobs and dancing. I was with my future husband, chile.
    When Wiley finally came back in, a little rumpled with grass sticking to his clothes a bit, he was smiling. A few people gathered round him to hear and laugh. He sure could talk, that boy could. He had us laughing so hard, til I realized Sedalia was still out there by herself and I got sad for her. I went to look out the window to see if she had enjoyed being part of the prom anyway, but didn’t see her anywhere; she was gone and I could only see the blackness of the night off up under them trees.
    Then . . . graduation was over. Sedalia didn’t attend, but I thought it might be because of a graduation dress. In all that flurry of school ending and life, at last, beginning, I forgot about her because soon I was sayin good-bye to my fiancé, my beau, and going off to that junior college my folks had saved so hard for.
    When I came home for vacation, I saw Sedalia. I saw her walking home from the big market in our area, owned by a white man. Lord, she was big with child. I ran up to her, like a fool, asked her, “Sedalia! When did you get married? Did you marry Wiley?”
    Sedalia stopped and shifted her brown paper bags and just looked at me. Hard. With angry, hurt eyes. She never answered me. She just turned and continued on her, now weighted, uncomfortable way.
    I learned Sedalia had her baby at home. A girlbaby. That was Luella. Her mother helped her with the cord cutting and such, while her father cussed her out. Sedalia gave birth as she cried. Wiley didn’t show up to see his baby girl. Never. When Sedalia got up from there she just went right on outside and began her life of bending over them tin tubs washing clothes for a living for her and her baby, Luella. By herself. I heard Wiley left town bout that time.
    Now Mattie . . . Mattie was fast as they come. She was a nice girl, but a fast girl too! She was cute as a button and the boys surely liked her and she liked them back. I think she been married two or three times now. Got about five kids; three of her own, grown and gone out the house now (cept off and on), and two grandchildren. But, she don’t have no real man. Yes, she’s alone now. Raising them children for her daughters. Oh, she has a man-friend, but he don’t stay there much. He says it’s too many children and too much noise for him. Mattie had plenty brothers and sisters, a big family. But Mattie done run them all away now, cause she needs that house. They all still kinda friends, but Mattie done let them know there ain’t no room in that house for them. They tried to sell it a few times since the parents died, but Mattie goes down to that city hall and cry and slobber and yell all over them white folks and they want her to leave so bad, they give her her way.
    Anyway, two years of junior college was enough for me. I was closer than ever with my fiancé-beau and it seemed like I was pregnant, so we got married. He had a decent job and I got a job as an assistant teacher of kindergarten. We moved in with my parents cause I’m an only child myself and I didn’t want to leave my mama no how! It’s what people do in this little town anyway, cause we need to put our money together to keep the family going and keep the taxes and upkeep on the house they done sacrificed for already. You know, family.
    As I be going to work or something, I would see Sedalia going out with baskets of washed and pressed clothes and coming in with bags of dirty clothes. I had Saturday and Sunday and holidays off; she didn’t, except for church on Sundays. That preacher kept her coming to atone for her “sins.” But, she would have gone anyway. She told me often, “God is the only friend I have, sides my mama, sometimes.”
    Her