12

We go in. Ahh, it’s good. I look for the heater; there ’gainst the wall. One of them little brown ones. I just stand there and hold my hands over it. I can’t open my hands too wide ’cause they almost froze.

Mama’s standing right ’side me. She done unbuttoned her coat. Smoke rises out of the coat, and the coat smells like a wet dog.

I move to the side so Mama can have more room. She opens out her hands and rubs them together. I rub mine together, too, ’cause this keep them from hurting. If you let them warm too fast, they hurt you sure. But if you let them warm just little bit at a time, and you keep rubbing them, they be all right every time.

They got just two more people in the café. A lady back of the counter, and a man on this side the counter. They been watching us ever since we come in.

Mama gets out the handkerchief and count up the money. Both of us know how much money she’s got there. Three dollars. No, she ain’t got three dollars, ’cause she had to pay us way up here. She ain’t got but two dollars and a half left. Dollar and a half to get my tooth pulled, and fifty cents for us to go back on, and fifty cents worth of salt meat.

She stirs the money round with her finger. Most of the money is change ’cause I can hear it rubbing together. She stirs it and stirs it. Then she looks at the door. It’s still sleeting. I can hear it hitting ’gainst the wall like rice.

“I ain’t hungry, Mama,” I say.

“Got to pay them something for they heat,” she says.

She takes a quarter out the handkerchief and ties the handkerchief up again. She looks over her shoulder at the people, but she still don’t move. I hope she don’t spend the money. I don’t want her spending it on me. I’m hungry, I’m almost starving I’m so hungry, but I don’t want her spending the money on me.

She flips the quarter over like she’s thinking. She’s must be thinking ’bout us walking back home. Lord, I sure don’t want walk home. If I thought it’d do any good to say something, I’d say it. But Mama makes up her own mind ’bout things.

She turns ’way from the heater right fast, like she better hurry up and spend the quarter ’fore she change her mind. I watch her go toward the counter. The man and the lady look at her, too. She tells the lady something and the lady walks away. The man keeps on looking at her. Her back’s turned to the man, and she don’t even know he’s standing there.

The lady puts some cakes and a glass of milk on the counter. Then she pours up a cup of coffee and sets it ’side the other stuff. Mama pays her for the things and comes on back where I’m standing. She tells me sit down at the table ’gainst the wall.

The milk and the cakes’s for me; the coffee’s for Mama. I eat slow and I look at her. She’s looking outside at the sleet. She’s looking real sad. I say to myself, I’m go’n make all this up one day. You see, one day, I’m go’n make all this up. I want say it now; I want tell her how I feel right now; but Mama don’t like for us to talk like that.

“I can’t eat all this,” I say.

They ain’t got but just three little old cakes there. I’m so hungry right now, the Lord knows I can eat a hundred times three, but I want my mama to have one.

Mama don’t even look my way. She knows I’m hungry, she knows I want it. I let it stay there a little while, then I get it and eat it. I eat just on my front teeth, though, ’cause if cake touch that back tooth I know what’ll happen. Thank God it ain’t hurt me at all today.

After I finish eating I see the man go to the juke box. He drops a nickel in it, then he just stand there a little while looking at the record. Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong. I turn my head like she say, but then I hear the man coming toward us.

“Dance, pretty?” he says.

Mama gets up to dance with him. But ’fore you know it, she done grabbed the little man in the collar and done heaved him ’side the wall. He hit the wall so hard he stop the juke box from playing.

“Some pimp,” the lady back of the counter says. “Some pimp.”

The little man jumps up off the floor and starts toward my mama. ’Fore you know it, Mama done sprung open her knife and she’s waiting for him.

“Come on,” she says. “Come on. I’ll gut you from your neighbo to your throat. Come on.”

I go up to the little man to hit him, but Mama makes me come and stand ’side her. The little man looks at me and Mama and goes on back to the counter.

“Some pimp,” the lady back of the counter says. “Some pimp.” She starts laughing and pointing at the little man. “Yes sir, you a pimp, all right. Yes sir-ree.”