Lunch-Box Dream Read Free Page A

brown suitcase, too.
    â€œUncle Frank and Aunt Olivia will meet you at the bus station,” I told him when we took our places on the platform, “so don’t be afraid.”
    â€œI’m not afraid,” Jacob said. “I’m not afraid of anything. Poppa will be with me.”
    â€œThat’s right, as soon as he gets off night work.” I saw the time on the waiting room clock, and I remembered thinking that since I had money only for Jacob’s ticket, Hershel still needed to buy his. But I  wasn’t worried. Hershel wouldn’t be late for this. I kissed Jacob twice while we waited on the platform.
    Jacob calls Hershel Poppa, but Hershel is not his poppa. Jacob is my little brother, not our son.
    Hershel has a big family. His mother Ruth and stepdaddy Ellis live with us in Atlanta. His brother Frank is married to a nice girl named Olivia, and they live outside Dalton with Olivia’s family, including her mother and father and her younger sister Cora, who is fifteen.
    I have only my Jacob.
    I am Louisa.
    Weeza.
    Then Hershel hurried onto the platform, shaking his head and waving his ticket. “Just in time,” he said. “They made me do extra.”
    â€œWe weren’t worried,” I said to him.
    â€œNaw,” Jacob said. “We weren’t worried.”
    I kissed Jacob once more before he went up the steps onto the bus with Hershel. I watched him go to the back and find a seat near the last open window. Hershel sat on the inside of him. Then the white passengers got on, then the driver.
    â€œGoodbye, Jacob,” I said up to him.
    â€œBye, Weeza.” He waved. The window was open a crack at the top. There was a man in one of the front seats, and I could tell he looked at me from the window because I have a figure and I can’t hide that. I knew Hershel saw him looking because he stared at the back of the man’s head when he was looking at me. “Bye-bye,” I said to Jacob. I blew a kiss to Hershel, too. Then the man looked back at Hershel, but Hershel looked only at me then.
    The bus drove off. I watched until it was out of sight. Then I left the platform.
    Jacob is nine years old and tall for his age, but he is still a boy to me. Hershel loves Jacob like I do. They grew up hard together, Hershel and his brother, Frank, and they don’t always get along now. I know stories about their daddy hitting them, but Hershel won’t say much about it.
    Like Hershel and me, Frank and Olivia have no children, but they did have one who died a baby. A boy. That’s why Jacob is visiting them now that school is over, to be like a family with them. There are creeks in Dalton, and the country is cooler in the summer and open, and safer. Jacob has known only Atlanta, though he might remember a little of Mobile from when he was very young.
    He has lived with Hershel and me now since Momma went to Ohio to be with my grandma when she got sick. Hershel said Jacob would stay with us until Momma returned. But Momma never left Ohio when Grandma died five years ago; she just stayed in Columbus. She says it’s because up north she can work at the counter in a white store and not have so many problems.
    Hershel and I were married not long after she left, and it has been fine having Jacob live with us like our own son. I don’t talk to Momma as often as I should, and Hershel never does.
    I love Jacob with all my heart and want him to have a good stay in the country, but I already miss him. He promised he would call every day from Dalton, and I know he will.
    Frank and Olivia don’t have a telephone, though there is one in a Negro clothing store, which they’ll let Jacob use every afternoon. I’ll wait anxiously for his call just before supper, except for Sunday when the store is closed.
    What else? Well, we have been to Dalton a few times over the years, all of us together, but not since the car has stopped running. I laugh