children were reading comic
magazines and their mother
had gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast
so we won't have to look at it
much," John Wesley said.
"If I were a little boy," said the
grandmother, "I wouldn't talk
about my native state that way.
Tennessee has the mountains
and Georgia has the hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly
dumping ground," John Wesley
said, "and Georgia is a lousy
state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the
grandmother, folding her thin
veined fingers, "children were
more respectful of their native
states and their parents and
everything else. People did
right then. Oh look at the cute
little pickaninny!" she said and
pointed to a Negro child
standing in the door of a shack.
"Wouldn't that make a picture,
now?" she asked and they all
turned and looked at the little
Negro out of the back window.
He waved.
"He didn't have any britches
on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any,"
the grandmother explained.
"Little niggers in the country
don't have things like we do. If
I could paint, I'd paint that
picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic
books.
The grandmother offered to
hold the baby and the children's
mother passed him over the
front seat to her. She set him
on her knee and bounced him
and told him about the things
they were passing. She rolled
her eyes and screwed up her
mouth and stuck her leathery
thin face into his smooth bland
one. Occasionally he gave her
a faraway smile. They passed a
large cotton field with five or
six graves fenced in the middle
of it, like a small island. "Look
at the graveyard!" the
grandmother said, pointing it
out. "That was the old family
JOY FEELINGS | DECEMBER ISSUE
232