Precious Child

...

finally responds “ thirty minutes now.”

Tyann and Arianna hit me on the shoulder. We all gather our things and start to run.

We arrive to Ms. Simmons house out of breath from running.. This time Annie opens the door shaking her head. Ms. Simmons comes from behind the door and smacks me right in the face.

I fall to the ground saying “ why you do that for?”

Ms. Simmons says “ don’t ever speak to me like that again.”

Tyann picks me back and I look dead at Ms. Simmons with a closed fist. I keep staring at her with my nostrils flaring, my face red, sweat dripping down my face, and a closed fist. Instead of punching her in the face I punched the door. We get our list of chores for the day, and I go extremely slow.

By lunchtime I have only finished one thing. Again Annie comes to join us and she starts asking questions about where we live and what we like to do. Little does she know that women didn’t have real jobs. We informed her about our lives and

she says “ so all women are maids?”

We chuckle and say “ majority are because that is the only thing we are good at. Cleaning.”

Ms. Simmons comes and we know what that means, time to get back to work. Today we only finished half our chores. On the way out the door Ms. Simmons stops us and says “ you guys are not done. Nobody is going home until you finish your chores,” We sigh and fuss with her. It is 7’o clock.We finish our chores mighty quickly but the floor isn’t spotless, the dishes aren’t done, and the house is not dusted.We managed to leave her house by 10 at night.

1/8/1938

We were so tired and sore, but we still had to walk home in the dark and cold. I get home at 2 am, so I decided to just stay up since I have to wake up at 5:30 am anyway. This time I call Ms. Simmons and I insist to her I am not going to work today. She says “okay.” I found this very funny so I decided to go to work anyway so I don’t get fired. We get to her house and we automatically get to work fast so that we won’t have another late night. This time during lunch, it was silent. I knew something was up with Tyann because she wasn’t eating or talking.

I ask her “whats wrong?”.

Tyann burst out in tears and says “ Last night my husband raped me in front of our son.”

Arianna and I wrap our arms around her and try to confront her as best as we could.

Soon after Annie comes in and asks Tyann “what is rape?” We all look at each other. How do we explain what rape is to a seven year old white girl. We sat her down and explained that during this time men did not care about their wives and that we were only good for cleaning, cooking, and looking after the children. Annie then starts to pout.

I ask “what wrong now?”

She responds “Why do Black women get treated like this, but my mom gets treated like a princess.”

We all just get back to work. The whole day we work in silence while Annie just sits on the couch looking at all of us. For the first time in the day we see Ms. Simmons. She has this mean look on her face. She looks surprised to see.

I immediately stand up and say “good morning Ms. Simmons.”

She looks at me as if she is disgusted and says “ oh you made it work this morning.”

As I’m cleaning the living room, Annie is still sitting on the couch. She keeps asking me questions about a black home and about the way we are treated. She was very interested in this topic.

I asked her “why do you want to learn about black women?”

She tilts her head “ I want to be a black women.”

I look at her and say “ Why would you say that?”

She acts surprised and says “Black women are strong, my mom just lets people run over her. She acts ill and mean towards you guys because she wants to run over you guys but she can’t.”

I go the whole day thinking about the conversation Annie and I had. At night when we are done cleaning, we are all saddened by Tyann’s misfortune. I tell them about Annie’s remarks on wanting to be black because we are strong women.

Tyann and Arianna both look up to me and say “really?”

I say “ yes, because we are strong and independent, she wants to black.”

We all chuckle because she has no clue what we go through on a daily basis. Tyann insists that we invite her to the Women Rights march this weekend so she can get a glimpse of our struggles. We all agree to that idea.

1/9/1938

Today was different than the others. We weren’t as drowsy and tired as the others. In fact we had lots of energy. We couldn’t wait to get to Ms. Simmons house. As soon as we got there we started cleaning. We are singing, laughing, and dancing including Tyann. Ms. Simmons didn’t like this though, she told us to stop our foolery. During lunch time we told Annie that we thought she should come to the Women’s March with us this weekend.

In a heartbeat she said” yes!” She was elated with emotion she started crying.

We chuckled and said “why are you crying?”

She says “I’m going to a march with black women! I’m so excited.”

Towards the end of the day we decided to ask Ms. Simmons if we could take tomorrow off to go the march. When we asked she looked at us like we were stupid. She says “ Why would you ask me this? You guys have chores to do.” We beg and beg her but she stands her ground and still says no. Annie comes running towards her. She asks if she can go to the march with us. When we told her that we couldn’t go because we had to clean, she pulled on her mom’s skirt and asked.

Ms.Simmons say, Annie you are too young to be going to a march and plus you aren’t even black, while chuckling.

Annie say, Please mom I want to learn about black people and what they do.