Don't call me Grandma

Once I got my breath back, I crawled along the railroad embankment to the road and sat down to wait for Mom and Dad to come back. My whole body felt sore. The sun was small and white and broiling-hot. A wind had come up, and it was roiling the dust along the roadside. I waited for what seemed like a long time before I decided it was possible Mom and Dad might not come back for me. They might not notice I was missing. They might decide that it wasn't worth the drive back to retrieve me; that, like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden they could do without.I did try to talk to Mom. I couldn't bring myself to tell her Womens MBT Shoes about the beatings, fearing that if I did, she'd try to butt in and she'd also only make things worse. I did say that these three black girls were giving me a hard time because we were so poor. Mom told me I should tell them there was nothing wrong with being poor, that Abraham Lincoln, the greatest president this country had ever seen, came from a dirt-poor family. She also said I should tell them Martin Luther King, Jr., would be ashamed of their behavior. Even though I knew these high-minded arguments would get me nowhere, I tried them anywayartin Luther King would be ashamed!nd they made the three girls shriek with laughter as they pushed me to the ground."Don't call me Grandma," she snapped. "Name's Erma.""She don't like it none 'cause it makes her sound old," said a man who appeared beside her. He looked fragile, with short white hair that stood straight up. His voice was so mumbly I could hardly understand him. I didn't know if it was his accent or if maybe he wasn't wearing his dentures. "Name's Ted, but you can call me Grandpa," he went on. "Don't bother me MBT Shoes 2012 none being MBT Shoes 2012 a grandpa."Behind Grandpa was a ruddy-faced man with a wild swirl of red hair pushing out from under his baseball MBT Shoes 2012 cap, which Mens MBT Shoes had a Maytag logo. He wore a red-and-black-plaid coat but had no shirt on underneath it. He kept announcing over and over again that he was our uncle Stanley, and he wouldn't stop hugging and kissing me, as though I was someone he truly loved and hadn't seen in ages.