Wyoming Read Free Page B

you?”
    “No, I was alone. There was a Chinese couple who took care of the house and me. Chang and Li were their names.”
    “How long were you there?”
    “Six weeks. I was so happy, just by myself, reading, resting, swimming in the Caribbean Sea, It really was the best time of my life. I never felt better, until, of course, I had to leave.”
    “Why did you have to leave?”
    “To make sure you were a healthy baby. I needed to be near my doctor, who was in Chicago.”
    “The ground is so beautiful here, Mom. It looks like snow, but the air is very hot.”
    “That’s cotton, baby. Cotton is the main crop in Alabama. The temperature doesn’t stay high long enough up north to grow it there. Also, the cost of labor is much cheaper in the South, and picking cotton is extremely labor-intensive.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It takes a lot of people to handpick the buds. That’s why slaves were brought here from Africa, to work in the fields.”
    “They didn’t want to come.”
    “No, baby, they didn’t,”
    “There aren’t slaves now, though, right?”
    “Not officially, no. But too many people still live almost the same way as they did a hundred or more years ago. There’s no work here, really, except in the cottonfields, and it doesn’t pay much. The difference between then and now is that people are free to come and go, they’re not owned by another person.”
    “I wouldn’t like to be owned by someone.”
    “Nobody does. Slavery is against the law in the United States, but it still exists in some parts of the world.”
    “Let’s not go there.”
    “We won’t, Roy, I promise.”
    “Were there slaves in Cuba?”
    “At one time, yes.”
    “Were there slaves when you were there before I was born?”
    “No, baby, that was only a few years ago.”
    “Chang and Li weren’t slaves, right?”
    “Certainly not. They were caretakers of the property. Chang and Li were very happy to be working there. They were wonderful people and very kind to me.”
    “How did they get from China to Cuba?”
    “I don’t know. By boat, probably. Or maybe their parents came from China and Chang and Li were born in Cuba. They spoke perfect Spanish,
    “Roy?”
    “Yeah, Mom?’
    “Are you all right?”
    “I’m okay.”
    “Something’s bothering you, I can tell. What is it?”.
    “I think I'd like to learn to speak perfect Spanish.”
    “You can, baby. You can start taking Spanish lessons whenever you want.”
    “Mom?”
    “Yes, sweetheart?”
    “I bet the slaves didn’t think the cotton fields were so beautiful”.

Seconds
    A RE WE GOING TO SEE Pops and Nanny soon?”
    “Yes, baby, we’ll be in New Orleans for three or four days, then we’ll go to Miami. I don’t know if Pops will be there, but Nanny will.”
    “Why isn’t Pops there so much?”
    “I never told you this before, but I think you’re old enough now to understand. Pops and Nanny haven’t always been together. There was a time when I was a girl—more than ten years, in fact—when they were each married to another person.”
    “Who were they married to?”
    “Nanny’s husband was a man named Tim O’Malley. His family was in the trucking business in Chicago. Pops married a woman named Sally Price, and they lived in Kansas City, i used to go down on the train and visit them there. This was from when I was the age you are now until I went away to college.”
    “Why did they marry other people?”
    “In those days Pops was a traveling salesman for a shoe company, and Kansas City was part of his territory. Sally was a girlfriend of his for a couple of years before Pops and Nanny got divorced. When he decided to spend more time with Sally than with Nanny, my mother divorced him and she married O’Malley, who’d always liked hen”
    “So O’Malley was like your other father.”
    “In a way, but we were never close. I lived most of the time at boarding school, Our Lady of Angelic Desire, so I didn’t really see him so much. He