Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel The Friends by Rosa Guy (©1973 by Rosa Guy)

"Mother said that I was like you, and now I know what she meant. I don't know you. I never did. And you don't know me. You never tried. Now you are sending us away so that you don' t have to know or care who we are and what we think.“

My tone, rather than the words, surprised me as much as it did him. It forced me to keep on talking and him to stand there and listen. "I don't want to go away, " I said. "I don't want to go away because I promised my friend that I would come to see her every week while she is in the orphanage."

“And what that got to do with me?” His anger, which surprise had lessened for a moment, rekindled.

"I promised Edith. I'm the only one she has in the world to come to see her. She's my friend. I love her."

"What stupidness. Love? What you do for her with that? If you did love her so much, you would have given her some decent clothes to visit with your mother. Then maybe I wouldn't think she had jinx on she tail and have to chase she out."

He was hard. I would never have believed that anyone could be so hard. Change? How could I change this man? It would take forever. Yet this was the man that Mother had said she loved and whom Mr. Charles and Cousin Frank admired. Even Ruby acted funny about him. I would never understand what made some people love other people.

"Look, " he said, pointing at the clock. "The plane leave at seven. You cant wait for your sister to come to pack. Start now." He moved to pass around me, but I stood firm. Knowing I had already lost, there was nothing more to do but try. "Daddy, " I said in desperation. "You said you wanted us with you. You said so to Cousin Frank and Mr Charles the other night."

"I was wrong. I'm a hard-working man. I work night and day to take care of you two. I cant do that and have to worry about where you are and what you doing night and day. New York is a big city, too big to have my worries walking around it. That’s what he was, a hard-working man. Loud, bragging, sometimes brutal, but a hard-working man.

"I was wrong too, Daddy. I've been staying out late because I wanted to spite you. But it was because you were so mean and unreasonable. You said such bad things to Ruby that night. And it wasn't true those things you said, Daddy. Not one word of it was true.

”But you wouldn' t listen. You never listen. And I agree, if we can never talk it's no use us staying here. I want you to know, though, I will never be spiteful again. And Daddy, I—I—I'm much older today than I was yesterday.“

He looked at me strangely. His entire face underwent a change and I knew that for the first time he was regarding me as a person, apart from himself. But then he shook his head. "I—I—I don‘t know ..." He looked at the clock and repeated, "I—don't know what you talking.“

"And what about Ruby?” I asked.

"What about she?"

"She doesn't want to go either."

"So, she don't want to go. So what? Look, I make reservations on the seven o'clock plane. I'm not taking even one chance that it might leave late. At seven I want you and your sister and all of my headache on that plane. How you talking? I must change my plans just like that because you get grown in one night, and because your sister don't want to go. You talking stupidness."

"Ruby doesn't want to go because she wants to take care of you.”

"Of me? " He put his astonished hands to his chest again. "But what you think happen to me overnight? I ain't still grown? I can't take care of me?"

"You see how you never understand anything that we say to you?” I cried. "Ruby wants to take care of you because she loves you, Daddy!"

His face quivered at the words, it quivered and quivered, his eyebrows, the muscles of his cheeks twitched and jerked. "Get out of me way, " he said gruffly, and he pushed me aside.

I stood listening as he walked heavily down the hall to the kitchen, then to his room, then back up the hall, passing me, still standing in the doorway of my room. He went to the living room and I heard him as he walked to the front door and stood. I could feel him waiting, searching his mind for that final command.

"Look, " he finally barked down the hall at me, "You see all those things you have piled up on that bed. Put them away, nuh? I can't understand it at all, at all. Two grown-up young ladies keeping their room in such a state. I don' t want to see it like that again, you hear me?" Then he went out slamming the door angrily behind him.