Perfect Peace by Daniel Black Page A

giggled.
    “He’s tall, and lean, and got some soft curly hair. Oh my God! He’s so gorgeous!”
    “He’s all right,” Gracie said, “but he ain’t cuter’n Phillip Hampton.”
    “Phillip Hampton?” Pearlie cried. “That boy ain’t cute. His head is round as a plate!”
    “Yeah, I know, but he’s still cute to me. Momma said he got some Indian in him.”
    “He does have some good hair,” Pearlie conceded, “but he ain’t cuter’n Virgil.”
    Gracie noticed Emma Jean’s silence. “Who you like?” she asked.
    Emma Jean shrugged. “Nobody.” She ate a handful of overripe blackberries.
    “Don’t you think Virgil’s cute?” Pearlie asked.
    “He’s okay I guess. Look kinda mean most of the time. Don’t never smile.”
    “You mean he don’t smile
at you
?”
    “He don’t smile at nobody!” Gracie said.
    “He smile at me. And anyway you can’t ask a man to like
everybody
.”
    “Well, I’m just sayin’ I wouldn’t choose him,” Emma Jean said, and continued berry picking.
    “You
couldn’t
choose him, even if you wanted to!” Pearlie sneered.
    “Guess not.”
    Emma Jean filled her bucket, then began filling her sisters’. “Do y’all think I’m pretty?”
    Pearlie hollered. “Of course not. But you nice, and that counts for somethin’.”
    Gracie agreed. “Everybody ain’t gotta be pretty, Emma Jean.”
    “But I wanna be pretty.”
    They couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    “Momma’s dark like me, and she’s pretty, ain’t she?”
    Their silence surprised her.
    “You not ugly,” Gracie said. “And, like I said, you’re real smart and sometimes that’s worth more.”
    “But I wanna be pretty, too.”
    “Your looks come from your daddy,” Pearlie explained, “and
your
daddy’s people are real black jes’ like you. He jes’ happens to be yella.”
    “But cain’t chu be dark
and
pretty?”
    The sisters frowned and said in unison, “No.”
    Emma Jean’s head fell as though guillotined.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Gracie said. “Everybody’s pretty in their own kinda way.”
    “You jes’ look like yo’ folks,” Pearlie repeated. “You cain’t help that.”
    “How you know how my folks look?”
    “ ’Cause I done seen ’em! They live down in de Bottoms. It’s a lotta dem Lovejoys runnin’ ’round. They breed like rats, Momma said.”
    Emma Jean was glad she didn’t live among them.
    “Yo’ daddy jes’ happen to be light, but de rest o’ his folks is real black. That’s where you get it from.”
    Gracie softened Pearlie’s blow. “You can still make somethin’ outta yo’self though. If you try real hard. Like you could be a hairdresser or somethin’. They make good money!”
    Emma Jean wanted to be a dancer, but Mae Helen wouldn’t hear of it. She’d said, “Is you ever heard of a black nigga dancer, girl? Huh? Is you?” Emma Jean shook her head slowly. “Well then! Do somethin’ you can do.” When Emma Jean mentioned nursing, Mae Helen clutched her hips and said, “Girl, find a man who’ll have you and have as many babies as you can. Good as you sweep and clean up, you oughta be somebody’s wife. If they’ll have you.”
    Emma Jean told Gracie, “I don’t wanna do hair!”
    “Well, you oughta want to!” Pearlie interjected. “Then maybe you could do somethin’ with that briar bush o’ yours! And who knows? Maybe you could help all your people
down there
.” She pointed toward the Bottoms.
    Emma Jean swore she’d never step foot in the Bottoms long as she lived. The last thing she needed was to encounter, in the face of some ashy black woman, her own spitting image. Maybe her daddy was one of the bottom people, but she promised not to be caught dead down there.
    “What if Claude Lovejoy ain’t my daddy?” she mumbled.
    “Then who is?” Pearlie asked.
    Emma Jean didn’t say. She certainly couldn’t claim Sammy Hurt since she shared none of her sisters’ features, and, anyway, Mae Helen reminded her