The Black Rose by Tananarive Due Page A

after the war, when I figgered I wanted to come out to Vicksburg with the little money I’d saved an’ start takin’ in wash, I knew I had to find a way to stand out from all these other washerwomen or I’d make nary a cent. An’ you think this child was gonna keep the name of the man that owned me? No, Lord! So I said I’d come up with a name for myself folks would remember. I looked down at my skin an’ said, ‘What color is that?’ Ain’t black, it’s brown ! An’ the Christian name …” At that, Miss Brown began laughing again. Finally she paused long enough to go on. “Well, these folks were so mad at the Union Army, the way they marched in here an’ blew things to bits an’ freed up their slaves, and I named myself America after the U-nited States of America. What happened is, white folks couldn’t cotton to a Negro named America. Seemed to them like I didn’t have the right to it. So you know what they did?”
    Eagerly, Sarah shook her head. Miss Brown’s story had her mesmerized.
    Miss Brown leaned closer, practically whispering in Sarah’s ear. “They started to callin’ me Miss Brown rather’n have to say it! Lord’s my witness!” Then she shrieked with laughter, until she had to dab at her eyes to dry them. “I just stuck by the name after that.”
    Laughing with Miss Brown, with their voices echoing against the walls in the empty kitchen, Sarah was as happy as she could remember being in a long time. She felt a sudden longing to give the woman a hug, but she didn’t dare.
    After a moment, Miss Brown was silent, and she gazed back down at Sarah. Her smile vanished, and she slowly shook her head. “Oh, child, Lord have mercy …” She tugged gently at the plait hanging near Sarah’s face, then she flicked at Sarah’s scalp. Sarah saw a flake of dandruff float down, landing on the tip of her nose. “You’ve got all this dander showing. You don’t go out looking like this. Don’t you know how it shows up? It’s ugly.”
    “But it itches me, Miss Brown.”
    “So you scratch it out . Doesn’t your sister scratch your head out?”
    Sarah shook her head. She wanted to say her mama used to sit her on the floor and scratch the itching dandruff out of her head when she had time, since the dryness was so uncomfortable in the hot sun that Sarah had felt like her head was on fire, but that had been a long time ago. And Mama used to braid her hair, too, winding tight braids across her scalp that stayed neat for weeks and weeks. But Sarah felt too embarrassed to open her mouth, as if she were sinking into the floorboards.
    Miss Brown went on. “These plaits look like they ain’t been tended to since the days of Methuselah. You’re a right mess, Sarah. It’s a shame. There’s no need for all you colored children to be runnin’ ’round looking so homely. You aren’t monkeys in a tree. Don’t you know you’re gonna be a young lady soon? What man will want to look at this? Put some cornrows in here, or somethin ’. Don’t you move, hear? I’ll be back.”
    But Sarah couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, hearing Miss Brown’s hurtful words ringing in her ears. A boy at school said hurtful things about her hair all the time, but it was far worse to hear the criticism from Miss Brown. Slowly, Sarah felt her eyes growing hotter until they began to sting. She prayed Miss Brown wouldn’t come back and find her crying.
    Sarah heard thumping and then the swishing of Miss Brown’s dress as she made her way back into the kitchen with several small white ribbons in her hand. “My little niece left these here,” Miss Brown said, and she began pulling on Sarah’s braids, grouping them together, then tying them with the ribbon. “Now, this won’t help much, but at least it’s somethin’. My niece is bright-skinned and got that good hair from her Creole daddy, so her hair doesn’t get like this. But that’s no excuse for you not to look neat. Why do you want to look like you got