Dutch Read Free Page A

read Black Owned .
    No they didn’t!
Delores stared in disbelief.
Black Owned. How can it say that?
Delores knew better. She knew all too well that the store wasn’t black owned. Everybody knew that. She knew the old white
     man who owned it, Mr. Reilly. She knew how he smelled when he leaned too close to her and how his yellowed teeth sickened
     her when he leered at her openly, like she was a piece of meat. He knew how hard her mother worked and how she always had
     to scrape and scramble to pay her weekly grocery bill, but still Mr. Reilly would take every opportunity to humiliate her
     whenever she was as much as a day late in payment.
    “Do you think I run a charity, girl?” he would ask, addressing her as if she weren’t a woman.
    “No, sir, Mr. Reilly. I have asked you before to address me with the same respect I address you,” her mother would reply.
    Mrs. Murphy was a proud black woman. She knew that for the sake of keeping food on her table she would have to swallow a little
     pride now or swallow nothing later. Little did she know that Delores would have rather starved.
    “You people don’t know the meaning of responsibility,” he had spat on more than one occasion.
    “I am not ‘you people,’ Mr. Reilly.”
    “You’re all alike, beggin’ bastards,” he could be heard mumbling as he wrapped her order.
    Delores remembered it like yesterday as she trembled with a rage inside her as she read the sign again and her head began
     to spin. Black Owned.
    Behind her, people dashed along as broken glass shattered, policemen shouted through bullhorns off in the distance, and sirens
     sounded, creating the backdrop for the maddening situation she felt herself in. She looked around on the ground frantically,
     the anger mounting by the minute until she found a large rock, so large she needed both hands to lift it. Hoisting the rock
     over her head with all the strength she could muster, she threw the rock through the door, shattering the bottom half of the
     glass just enough for her to scurry in. Looking around for something to smash, she ran for the cooler where she knew Mr. Reilly
     kept all the dairy products and started smashing cartons of eggs. Then she picked up a Snickers bar and bit into it, giggling
     like a lunatic. With candy all over her mouth and chin, it was that moment that she knew how it felt to be free.
    Looking around for something to drink, her eyes landed on a bottle of charcoal fluid. She stared at the label with the picture
     of flaming steaks and she imagined the store burning, in flames. She tore off the cap and doused everything with the entire
     bottle of fluid, forgetting about her thirst. Grabbing another bottle, she did the same, until she had emptied every bottle
     of charcoal fluid she could find in the store. She looked for matches, finding some behind the counter. She lit the first
     match, but the deep breaths she was taking blew it right out. Striking another match, she held it to a paper bag, which she
     used as a torch to set small fires in the store. She backed up and staggered through the hole in the door she had come through.
     She watched the small fires turn to dark clouds of gray smoke as the flames began to leap and dance higher and higher like
     happy slaves on Juneteenth.
    Delores found a spot under a large shade tree and sat down with her knees pulled tightly against her chest as she watched
     her work. She thought of her mother. She knew she could never go back there. Her mother had raised her in a strict Christian
     environment. She had taught Delores respect for people and their property. She had taught her love and, most important, the
     moral value of turning the other cheek. But all it had gotten her mother was a maid’s job scrubbing white people’s floors.
     Delores decided if she ever turned the other cheek, it would be the one that the world could kiss. She was seventeen years
     old.
    In 1971, by the time Delores was twenty-one, she had forgotten when