The Red Rose Box Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part 1

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Part 2

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  It was my first love letter.

  I got a chair, reached up high for my red rose box, and took it down. I opened it, looked at the picture of Mama and Daddy, emptied my pocket of the four seashells I’d been carrying most of the day, put the letter and the shells in the box, decided not to cry on a Saturday night, and wondered what happens to swallowed tears.

  I locked the box, put it away, and got undressed. I sank into the tub, put my head under the water, and washed my hair with Ivory soap like Mama used to. The sweetness of the soap, like the smell of perfume, brought a smile to my insides and I thought, Mama wouldn’t want me to be a sad girl.

  It felt like I was a million miles from Sulphur and crayfish, cotton fields and hand-me-down clothes, a one-room schoolhouse, segregation, and Jim Crow. But I knew one thing. I knew that I would gladly give up this new comfort and freedom to be in my mama’s arms, to feel the tenderness in my daddy’s touch one more time.

  “Delicately and richly drawn.... A quietly touching story of a girl’s survival.”

  —BCCB

  A CORETTA SCOTT KING AWARD HONOR BOOK

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  Acknowledgments

  I thank God, who always helps me. Special thanks to

  Barbara Markowitz, a great agent and good person. She

  never stopped believing. Special thanks, also, to Victoria

  Wells, Nancy Paulsen, Kathy Dawson, and everyone at

  Putnam for their guidance, patience, and clarity.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, NewYork, NewYork 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books forYoung Readers, 2002

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers

  Group, 2004

  Text copyright © Brenda Woods, 2002

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Woods, Brenda (Brenda A.) The red rose box / Brenda Woods.

  p. cm. Summary: In 1953, Leah Hopper dreams of leaving the poverty and segregation of her home in

  Sulphur, Louisiana, and when Aunt Olivia sends train tickets to Los Angeles as part of her tenth

  birthday present, Leah gets a first taste of freedom.

  [1. Segregation—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4. Louisiana—Fiction.

  5. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W86335 Re 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2001018354

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07812-9

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my sons,

  Jordan and Elliot

  Part 1

  I would always remember my daddy, tall and brown, the tenderness in my mama’s touch.

  One

  The first thing you need to know about the red rose box is that I wasn’t expecting anything. I suppose that’s when most good things come, when you’re not looking.

  It was the middle of June 1953, nearly noon, my tenth birthday. Ruth, my sister, was eight. We were sitting out front, Ruth and I, watching the day go by, when Gramma’s gentleman friend, Elijah, drove up. Gramma was sitting in the back of his rusty black truck, her legs dangling. She was holding a big box wrapped in brown paper, and we ran up to her, buzzing like bees around a peach tree in bloom, because we thought our third cousin Lettie had sent us more pralines and plum preserves from New Orleans. Gramma stumbled out of the truck and Elijah drove off, not saying anything, like he usually did. All we saw was his brown hand waving.

  Ruth tugged on Gramma’s worn yellow skirt and asked, “What you got in there?”

  Gramma replied, her tone made snappy by the heat, “Nuthin for you,” so I just stepped aside.

  I ran to the screen door, opened it for Gramma, and walked in after her.

  Gramma looked around and asked, “Where’s your mama?”

  “She gone to Lake Charles with Miss Lutherine, shoppin,” I replied. Miss Lutherine was our nosy neighbor.

  Gramma sat down and put the box on the front room table. Ruth and I looked and waited. Sweat dripped from Gramma’s forehead. She reached in her pocket for her handkerchief, wiped her brow, then the back of her hot, toasted neck, and asked for a cold glass of water. I went to the kitchen because Ruth was too short to reach the faucet and I had longer legs. I filled the glass with water, took two cubes of ice from the icebox, and put them in the glass. The ice crackled, made three pops, and I jumped, startled.

  Gramma took the glass from my hand and drank her water slowly like it was a pale green mint julep. I looked at her, then the box, wishing I had four eyes instead of two. She put her glass down, told me to sit next to her, put her hands on my face over my ears, pulled me to her, and kissed my forehead, the way she had a habit of doing to me and Ruth. She said my name twice and it sounded like an echo. “Leah ... Leah, this is for you ... from your aunt Olivia.”

  All I knew about Aunt Olivia, Mama’s only sister, was that she lived in California and that she and my mama had stopped talking to each other before I was born and that no one mentioned her name in our house unless they wanted to go home hungry or wearing a frown. Once, Olivia had sent me and Ruth a postcard from Paris and we had taped it to the wall inside our closet.

  I tore at the paper. There was a cardboard box underneath. A card was taped to it. The card had a picture of a hot air balloon, red and orange, green and yellow, the kind that floats up high in a clear blue sky. It said “Happy Birthday” on the outside and on the inside Olivia had written some words.

  Ruth said, “Lemme see,” and stood close to me. Her head touched my shoulder and I smiled at her.

  “Dear Leah,” I read. “This is a very special gift. It has a lock and key and it’s only for you. One day, you will be a woman, a wonderful woman. This is your box of ...” I didn’t know the next word and I asked Gramma for help before I remembered she couldn’t read. I tried again. “This is your box of fem-i-ni-ni-ty.” I stopped reading and asked Gramma, “What’s femininity?”

  She replied, “Somethin inside that makes us dif‘rent from mens, like Eve was dif’rent from Adam.”

  I said, “Oh,” and read the next line. “Happy birthday to you. Love, Olivia.”

  I put the card down and Gramma told me to open the box. I opened it, pulled out the packing paper, and didn’t expect to see what I did. It was a traveling case with a lock and key, but what made it beautiful was that it was covered with red roses. Nobody who lived way out in the country, who walked the dirt roads in Sulphur, Louisiana, like we did, had
ever seen anything like this, let alone had one to call their own. I almost didn’t want to touch it. So I put it on the table and stared.

  Gramma said, “Open it up, girl. Open it up, Leah Jean.”

  I put the key in the lock and turned the key and it popped open. Then I looked at Ruth sideways before I lifted the top. If you think the red rose box was something, it’s only because you weren’t there to see what was in it. In the top of the case there was jewelry. Gramma picked it up in her hands, looked at each piece extra hard, and said, “It ain’t real, just costume jewelry, but most folks, even down in New Orleans, would think it is and some would even swear it is.”

  It didn’t matter to me whether it was real or not. All I knew was that it was pretty and that it belonged to me. There was a string of pearls and two pair of earrings. One pair had a pearl and a ball of what looked like real diamonds. The other had three purple stones set in the middle of yellow metal. Ruth touched them with her hand, and I let her because I loved her and her birthday didn’t come until four days after Christmas. So if Olivia was going to send Ruth a box, it probably wasn’t coming until then.

  Gramma took the pearls out of the box and put them around my neck. She smiled and said, “You look all growed up, Leah Jean.”

  There was a small black jewelry box and I opened it. Inside there was a real watch, not like the ones that get tossed at Mardi Gras by costumed people. It was a watch with a pink band and a white pearly face like the inside of an oyster shell. I saw Gramma’s eyes fill up with tears as she helped me wind it, and I went into the kitchen to look at the clock that was sitting high above the stove and set the time. Ruth and I took turns putting it to our ears, listening to it tick, listening to it tock, and we almost forgot about the red rose box. Almost.

  Two

  The watch, earrings, and pearls would have been enough for me but not for Ruth. I knew because she went over to the red rose box, looking inside for more.

  “Ruth!” Gramma fussed.

  But by then, Ruth had opened the inside top and was staring into the box like there was a big, fat daddy cockroach inside. I went over to the box and Gramma could tell from the upward curl on the ends of my lips that there was no bug inside. I reached into the box and pulled out something that was store-bought and pink with white lace. Gramma took it from my hands and looked at it all over, even the sewn-in tag.

  She told Ruth and me, “Thissa hundred percent silk bed jacket, like a robe, like what rich white womens wears b’fore bed at night when it ain’t too cold.”

  Ruth, still looking in the box, replied, “We ain’t kin to no rich white folks.”

  I paid Ruth no mind, reached in the box, and pulled out a bottle of purple water. The glued-on paper said it was Lavender, Lavender for the Bath. There was another bottle and this one said, Gardenia, Lotion for the Skin. It seemed like I kept pulling one thing after the other out of the red rose box.

  I held up pink satin slippers. Ruth said, “Ooh,” and Gramma was still smiling.

  But when I pulled out the red nail paint, red lipstick, and two pair of underpants, both with red polka dots, Gramma’s smile left her and she said, “Your mama gonna have a fit.”

  There were only two other things in the box, unless it had a secret place. There was a letter with Mama’s name on it and a silk scarf that was white with black flowers.

  Gramma said, “Silk and satin good to tie round your hair at night so it won’t be wild, stickin up all over in the mornin. Learned that from a white woman I used to work for in Baton Rouge after the war.” She tied the scarf around my head and I must have looked like I was ready for Mardi Gras in the bed jacket and slippers, pearls and earrings, when Mama opened the door, our neighbor, Miss Lutherine, behind her.

  Mama had both feet over the threshold, Miss Lutherine only one, when one of my earrings fell off. It dropped before I could catch it. Mama looked at me, then Gramma, then Ruth, then at the red rose box, and only one word came from her mouth. “Olivia,” Mama whispered.

  Mama walked into the kitchen. Miss Lutherine started smiling, and Ruth and I smiled back. Mama put her bags down and closed the kitchen door. Miss Lutherine laughed and we, Ruth and I, couldn’t keep from joining her.

  Gramma pushed herself up from the sofa and told me, “Take those things off.” She went into the kitchen and the door swung shut, sending a warm breeze.

  I took everything off, like I’d been told, folded the scarf and the bed jacket, placed them in the red rose box along with everything else except Mama’s letter, closed the box, and locked it with the key. I went into our room, Ruth behind me like a shadow at noon, and put the key under the birthday card in the drawer where we kept our underclothes. We opened the closet, pulled the light string once, and closed the door so we wouldn’t have to listen if Mama started up. We looked at the postcard from Paris that was still taped to the wall and sat down.

  I was wondering what Paris was like, when Ruth broke the spell.

  “You oughta go get your box b’fore Mama do somethin with it,” Ruth said.

  I opened the closet door and tiptoed into the front room where Miss Lutherine was sitting, nosy as always, looking at the box like it was a warm rhubarb pie. I picked it up by the handle, walked back into our room, brought it into the closet, sat down on the floor, and waited. We didn’t think we were going to get a whipping, because we didn’t ask Olivia to send the red rose box, but we thought that Mama might have heard us giggling. We thought we might be invited out back to pick us a switch from the tree for that, birthday or no birthday.

  We sat there for one whole hour. We knew because I had on the real pink watch and Ruth and I both knew how to tell time. It was one o’clock when we opened the closet door and peeked into the front room. Miss Lutherine was gone.

  Ruth was sucking her thumb and I pulled it out of her mouth and told her, “Stoppit, cuz your thumb gonna fall off and never grow back. It ain’t like no lizard tail.” Ruth put her thumb back in her mouth and smiled.

  The kitchen door was wide open and Mama and Gramma were cooking. I could tell because the flavors filled the house the way honeysuckle on the vine fills the air around it. We stood in the doorway and watched Mama open the oven door and put the cake tins inside, one chocolate, one vanilla. Gramma was frying chicken. Potatoes and eggs were boiling on the stove for salad.

  A pitcher of lemonade sat in the middle of the table, round lemon slices floating at the top like lifesavers from a boat, and Mama said, “Pour you a glass and drink it cuz y’all didn’t have no lunch.” I poured it hastily and spilled a little but Mama didn’t get mad. She kept humming and looked over and told me to get a dishrag. That’s when I knew that something had changed.

  Ruth got up from the table and went into the front room, looking for the letter. She came back into the kitchen, walked up to Gramma, tugged on her yellow skirt again, and told her, “Miss Lutherine took Mama’s letter.” Then she tugged on Mama’s green-and-white gingham apron string and said, “We was only laughin cuz Miss Lutherine made us.”

  Mama pulled the letter from the pocket of her apron and told Ruth, “Stop blamin Miss Lutherine.” Then she put the letter back in her pocket.

  Ruth sat down and we looked at each other hard, grinning because our behinds had been spared. I took a sip of lemonade. It was bittersweet.

  “What did the letter from Olivia say?” I asked Mama.

  “Aunt Olivia, Leah,” she replied.

  “What did the letter from Aunt Olivia say?” I asked.

  “It was just a short note along with some train tickets,” Mama replied.

  Ruth asked, “Train tickets? Can we see them?” Mama took out the note, slipped it into her apron pocket, and then let her have the envelope. Ruth took out the tickets, placed them on the table, and counted aloud, “One, two, three, four.”

  Then I counted them again, “One, two, three, four.” I looked at the tickets and remembered what our teacher, Mrs. Redcotton, had told us about the train trip she had taken to Chica
go last summer. She called the train a “Jim Crow train” and said that colored had to sit separate from white until they crossed a line. I didn’t remember what the line was called but I remembered that she told us that in Chicago there were places where colored could go most anywhere they wanted. She told us that in Chicago there were no white and colored drinking fountains and that colored didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus unless they wanted to. She said that in some places white and colored children went to school together. She called it “freedom.” I wondered why.

  I looked at the tickets closely. They each said New Orleans to Los Angeles. Mama opened the oven door, pulled out one of the cake tins, stuck a toothpick in the middle to see if the cake was done, closed the oven door, and sat down with me and Ruth at the table. Gramma stood at the counter, crying over chopped onions, whistling to radio music.

  Mama poured herself a glass of lemonade and I asked her, “Isn’t Los Angeles in California?”

  “Yes ... near Hollywood. Your aunt Olivia lives there,” she answered.

  “Who’s goin?” I had two fingers crossed under the table.

  She drank the entire glass of lemonade, taking large gulps, before she looked at the tickets and replied, “You, Ruth, Gramma, and me. Daddy cain’t cuz he’s workin in Houston, be gone till sometime in July. We gonna havta borrow some travlin bags from Sister Goodnight, down the road. I’ll sew y‘all some new things so you don’t look like country ragamuffins, even though that’s what folks calls you b’hind your backs, mine too.” She kept talking. “Gotta buy a pressin comb and trim your hair. Havta call your daddy, make sure it’s all right with him for us to go travlin without him.”