Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say. I says you’re lucky if her playing out of school is all that worries you. I says she ought to be down there in that kitchen right now, instead of up there in her room, gobbing paint on her face and waiting for six niggers that cant even stand up out of a chair unless they’ve got a pan full of bread and meat to balance them, to fix breakfast for her. And Mother says,
“But to have the school authorities think that I have no control over her, that I cant—”
“Well,” I says, “You cant, can you? You never have tried to do anything with her,” I says, “How do you expect to begin this late, when she’s seventeen years old?”
She thought about that for a while.
“But to have them think that … I didn’t even know she had a report card. She told me last fall that they had quit using them this year. And now for Professor Junkin to call me on the telephone and tell me if she’s absent one more time, she will have to leave school. How does she do it? Where does she go? You’re down town all day; you ought to see her if she stays on the streets.”
“Yes,” I says, “If she stayed on the streets. I dont reckon she’d be playing out of school just to do something she could do in public,” I says.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“I dont mean anything,” I says. “I just answered your question.” Then she begun to cry again, talking about how her own flesh and blood