7
The Day Sister Quinn Gave My Solo
To Mozella Spriggs
Jennie Franklin
I knew my sister had a secret-love, but I thought he was across the water with the Navy. So, when she didn’t come directly home after her Sunday School class at the Presbyterian Church, I grew anxious. I had been waiting by the front door for her to bring me the pretty, patent-leather shoes we shared, so I could wear them to the Baptist Church, where I was to sing a solo. That Sunday, I waited. I waited!
My mother’s voice cut into the room.
“Girl, you still in here!? I thought you was already at that church! Where your sister at? Didn’t you tell me Sister Quinn wanted you there early to practice the song or she was gonna give it to that Spriggs girl? You gonna stand there all day like a dummy? You see your sister ain’t gonna get here in time! ‘Much as I had to go through to get your daddy to agree to come to that church to hear you sing, don’t you have me dragging him all the way there to hear you and you ain’t up there singing! I’ll never hear the end of his mouth! Go on get your school-shoes and wear ‘em, Addie...the Lord don’t care what’s on your feet! You can sulk all you want to, but you going to that church and you gonna sing that song even if you have to sing bare’feeted!”
My mother knew the school-shoes were ugly! She’s seen how my father had sliced them up mercilessly, at all the pressure points, to make room for my growing feet, making them look as if they’d been in a Saturday night knife-fight!
How could I ask for new shoes for myself, when I’d seen the cardboard in the bottom of my father’s shoes?
But how could I be seen at church in my scruffy shoes, after strutting around in the pair of patent-leather pumps my sister and I had been sharing?