【正文】 ad to them.　　When she was courting Jimmy T she didn39。ll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man39。t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.　　Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school。 a look at concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house tall in toward the redhot brick chimney. Why don39。 I can eat pork liver cooked over the open tire minutes after it es steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Car – son has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.　　But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one toot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.　　How do I look, Mama? Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she39。Everyday UseAlice WalkerI will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yester day afternoon. A yard like this is more fortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can e and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never e inside the house.Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that no is a word the world never learned to say to her.　　You39。s there, almost hidden by the door.　　Come out into the yard, I say.　　Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind of him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.　　Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She39。t you do a dance around the ashes? I39。 black pumps to match a green suit she39。20090930 18:43 I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don39。s job. 1 used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in 39。t have much time to pay to us, but turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a family of ignorant flashy people. She hardly had time to repose herself.　　When she es I will meet but there they are!Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her with my hand. Come back here, I say. And she stops and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.　　It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neatlooking, as it God himself had shaped them with a certain style. From the other side of the car es a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath. Uhnnnh, is what it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your toot on the road. Uhnnnh.　　Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie go Uhnnnh again. It is her sister39。s hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back. It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don39。Dee39。s about as far back as I can trace it, I said.　　Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the branches.　　Well, said Asalamalakim, there you are.　　Uhnnnh, I heard Maggie say.　　There I was not, I said, before 39。t want to, said Wangero.　　Why shouldn39。ll get used to it, I said. Ream it out again.　　Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told me to just call him Hakimabarber. I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn39。t tell me, and I didn39。s butter dish. That39。t hear her.