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My mother danced all night and Roberta was sick. That's why we were taken to St. Bonne's. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were in a shelter, but it really wasn't bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like Bellevue1. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and I came, there was a shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every night and for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as our own permanent bed.
It didn't start out that way. The minute I walked in and the Big Bozo introduced us; I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race. And Mary, that's my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. Smell funny, I mean. So when the Big Bozo nobody ever called her Mrs. It kin, just like nobody ever said St. Bonaventure when she said, "Twyla, this is Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Make each other welcome." I said, "My mother won't like you putting me in here."
"Good," said Bozo. "Maybe then she'll come and take you home."
How's that for mean? If Roberta had laughed I would have killed her, but she didn't. She just walked over to the window and stood with her back to us. How's that for mean? If Roberta had laughed I would have killed her, but she didn't. She just walked over to the window and stood with her back to us.
"Turn around," said the Bozo. "Don't be rude. Now Twyla. Roberta. When you hear a loud buzzer, that's the call for dinner. Come down to the first floor. Any fights and no movie." And then, just to make sure we knew what we would be missing, "The Wizard of Oz2"
Roberta must have thought I meant that my mother would be mad about my being put in the shelter. Not about rooming with her, because as soon as Bozo left she came over to me and said, "Is your mother sick too?"
"No," I said. "She just likes to dance all night."
"Oh," she nodded her head and I liked the way she understood things so fast. So for the moment it didn't matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that's what the other kids called us sometimes. We were eight years old and got F's all the time because I couldn't remember what I read or what the teacher said. And Roberta because she couldn't read at all and didn't even listens to the teacher. She wasn't good at anything except jacks, at which she was a killer: prow scoop prow scoop prow scoop.
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