--New Orleans, November 1910



Four weeks have passed since I left, and still 

I must write to you of no work. I've worn down 

the soles and walked through the tightness 

of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, 

their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking 

my plain English and good writing would secure 

for me some modest position Though I dress each day 

in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves 

you crocheted--no one needs a girl. How flat 

the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. 

I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet 

industry, to mask the desperation that tightens 

my throat. I sit watching-- 



though I pretend not to notice--the dark maids

ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive 

anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown 

as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite 

what I pretend to be. I walk these streets 

a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes 

of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, 

a negress again. There are enough things here 

to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through 

the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall 

the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard 

at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking 

their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads 

on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots 

and irons of the laundresses call to me.



I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending 

and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days

at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How 

I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced 

to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up

or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until

I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field,

I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart,

spelling each word in my head to make a picture

I could see, as well as a weight I could feel

in my mouth. So now, even as I write this

and think of you at home, Goodbye



is the waving map of your palm, is 

a stone on my tongue.