About the Author Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a poet and fiction writer. Her work has appeared previously on the internet and in several print journals.

You could always find her with her nose in the Black-eyed Susans growin out in the fields or in the heart of a rose bloomin in Mrs. Abernathy’s garden.

In the mercantile, she’d be lookin over the shoulders of them white children, at the Sears & Roebuck catalog, as they turned the pages. Her eyes dreamin of the black patent leather shoes with the gleamin buckles she’d one day own. Those dresses in rainbow choices.

Though most of us colored folks could never afford them, she was a girl who liked very pretty things.

Goin to school, she heard about places different from here. Prettier, she’d
say. And she was goin; just waitin for money and time. Course when the chance came, I asked her to stay, though I knew I was bein silly. Although she never turned me away when I went callin — and I never went to her door with empty hands — she looked at me as if my black face was suddenly a mystery, and then she laughed.

Leanin in toward me, she said, “Why, Skeeter, you know I can’t stay here.
And not with you,” she added, her sweet sound piercin my heart. “Cause the only thing pretty about you is that you are pretty ugly.”

So she left Texas. Headed out to California, determined to show Lena a thing or two. Changed her name to Chantelle Monroe. Least that’s what I heard.

She didn’t visit home; there was always bits of gossip and we all thought
she was doin well. For years, I watched the marquee at the theater, waitin for her name to ignite. One time I heard she’d gotten her picture in a magazine but when I asked her mama, I couldn’t get no answer outta her.

Turned out to be one of them kind with stories nasty enough to shame the devil. Some of them guys at the barber shop passed it around, but I didn’t look.

It was on a Saturday evening, even more years later, when I was sittin on my porch and twice I had to rub my eyes — just to be sure.

There she was, sashayin up the street!

I ain’t heard no news of her comin but it was cause she wan’t stirrin up no dust in no Cadillac.

I watched her, glad she’d returned, if only to get some of her mama’s
cookin, put some meat on those bones. And I was gonna let her pass; hopeful that I’d be seein her another time, but my heart was just carryin on so.

I called out and she looked up. Studied me a long while like she was tryin to remember.

“Why Skeeter!” she said finally. “You ole coot!” She smiled big, though a
front tooth was missin.

“Well, you’re still here,” she cackled. “I shoulda known you wouldn’t do
nothin to change your life.”

I was intentional when I told her, “But I knew you’d be back. Couldn’t leav
e and miss the chance to tell you, ‘I tol’ you so.’”

I let her see the truth of herself reflected in my words. It was not a
pretty picture.

She stood on the sidewalk, looking away as if there was somewhere else she should be headin but she wasn’t quite sure of where it was.

“Why don’t you come up here and sit a spell, Mary Alice?” I called out to
her, and she considered it only a little while before she turned up the walk and did.