Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange

the decision Vida reached. If Jane understood young folks,she’d know that Regina was introducing the girls, and that ruffian Charlie, to more than orderly living. Regina carried the children all around the town, every time one of those colored singers with straightened hair like a white woman’s came to town. Why, once the girls did a whole routine from somebody called Mary Wells or Baby Washington. Something about “Bells.” The problem was not that Regina didn’t have a hold on the household, but that she had too much a hold on the children. They quoted everything she said, and Regina was hardly more than a child herself, all dolled up in jewelry and perfumes.
    Where Regina came from the curtains in the windows hung limp from heat and lack of care, and it wasn’t unheard of for youngsters to rear children of their own. The Johnsons lived over by St. Mary’s Hospital, that’s how Greer had met them, clinic patients. Every one of the Johnsons had something wrong with them. Something that came from too little of everything. Not enough food, not enough exercise, not enough light, not enough love. Got to the point that old man Johnson most gave up, that’s why Greer invested so much time and energy with them. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing another colored family to the pressure, not just high blood pressure but the pressure of little rooms smelling of too many people and little wants feeding big hungers for light and air. Stairs had to smell of more than oldness and urine. There was a way to raise a girl to be a lady who was not a lady of the night. Greer’d made the Johnsons his special project, despite Vida’s complaints that Regina was bringing what she came from to where it didn’t belong, the ears and imaginations of her grandchildren. Even Charlie, who should have known better, was walking like he belonged to one of those bunches of bad boys, wielding knives and pipes in thealleys that made the not so grand thoroughfares of St. Louis a world unto themselves.
    Regina’s longtime boyfriend Roscoe was studying to be a mechanic. He was going to have his own gas station one day. He’d told Regina so. He’d told all the children. Charlie couldn’t stand him, his presence, or his plans for Regina.
    â€œYeah, I’ma get Regina a fine house and I’ma take her to New York City one day,” Roscoe boasted. He was a chunky, good-natured, muscular guy with a short neck and a straight back. His hands were rough, but he whittled the grease out of his nails each evening. He thought on the colors of his gas station, Regina opening the door for him each day with an apron on, a kiss and hug good-bye. Sometimes Roscoe would get a little edgy, wondering if he could manage to support a wife and get a business started at the same time. Sometimes he thought he wanted to see the world before it all got away from him, but in high school he’d promised Regina his heart and a way out of her grandfather’s house.
    When Vida napped and the children were off at play or at school, all that autumn Roscoe whistled up to Regina’s room. She’d come on down and hot kisses in each other’s arms and rolls and grabs wheeled them bout the yard. Regina enjoyed Roscoe’s visits. She imagined she was Jane and her husband was home for some loving. Regina took no mind of her body when she was with him. Her woman gave into his man and there was a hush, subduing her throbs and moans in the midst of a sepia rush that was Roscoe. Mrs. Brown had told her specifically, “No callers,” but Roscoe wasn’t a caller. He was the world, her future.
    â€œI’ma wear your kisses round my neck. I’ma feel your hands up and down my spine. They gonna say ‘there’s Roscoe’s gal’ andthey won’t be lying. I’ma swing my hips with this gold round my ankles. They gonna say ‘ever since that Roscoe got holdt to that gal aint no