The Cares of The Day - Excerpt

Esther. "Little Man, why don't you come out of those overhalls and act like some kind of woman? With your bulldagger-looking self, I don't know what folks are s'posed to think. You trying to scare somebody, Has, with your skinny, mannish self? Running around here in some ol' piece of leather you call a aviator jacket. It's something Kim gave you from outta all of his junk. Nobody in this world knows where he gets all of that junk. And you don't think nothing of putting it on and wearing it 'cause it makes you look like some shif'less bum off the street. Come from nowhere and nobody knows where you going. You're trying to be like that piece of man jumped off the train last week Mama fed out on the back porch. Beetsy wasn't scared, but I've got a baby girl ain't scared of nothing. I was scared, but Mama's baby wasn't, were you, Beetsy sugar? See, Has, now this little chile of mine got her some nerve, you understand what I'm saying? She just went out right on the porch and stood there and watched that man eat that plate full of grits and gravy Mama gave him. Ate like he didn't eat nothing for days. Jumping on and off trains! Mama's little Sugar Beet went right up to him and asked him where he was from and where he was going. Said he was from 'Way yonder' and going 'Down the line'. Down the line! Railroad nigger going down that ol' railroad line to Chicago, where he was gon' beg on the streets. And you, Has, around here looking like something the train left, in overhalls, beat up tennis shoes and a leather jacket. I don't know what you think you look like, Hassalia, but, girl, I wish you could see yourself. Ain't no man gon' be following behind no woman dresses like him and talks like him, all low down in your throat, like you might go up'side his head if he jumps wrong. You're just acting out, Little Man, that's all you're doing.