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chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now. Joy and rage and wild animal gladness and shame become tangled together in the multicolored skein of fourteen-going-on-fifteen as I recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly more woman than child, years ago in Miss Lottie’s yard. I think of those marigolds at the strangest times; I remember them vividly now as I desperately pass away the time. ...
3 I suppose that futile waiting was the sorrowful background music of our impoverished little community when I was young. The Depression that gripped the nation was no new thing to us, for the black workers of rural Maryland had always been depressed. I don’t know what it was that we were waiting for; certainly not for
the prosperity that was “just around the corner,” for those were white folks’ words, which we never believed. Nor did we wait for hard work and thrift to pay off in shining success, as the American Dream promised, for we knew better than that, too.
4 Perhaps we waited for a miracle, amorphous in concept but necessary if one were to have the grit to rise before dawn each day and labor in the white man’s vineyard until after dark, or to wander about in the September dust offering some meager share of bread. But God was chary with miracles in those days, and so we waited—and waited.
5 We children, of course, were only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty. Having no radios, few newspapers, and no magazines, we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community. Nowadays we would be called culturally deprived and people would write books and hold conferences about us. In those days everybody we knew was just as hungry and ill clad as we were. Poverty was the cage in which we all were trapped, and our hatred of it was still the vague, undirected restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free.
6 As I think of those days I feel most poignantly the tag end of summer, the bright, dry times when we began to have a sense of shortening days and the imminence of the cold.
7 By the time I was fourteen, my brother Joey and I were the only children left at our house, the older ones having left home for early marriage or the lure of the city, and the two babies having been sent to relatives who might care for them better than we. Joey was three years younger than I, and a boy, and therefore vastly inferior. Each morning our mother and father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around the bend, she
to her domestic job, he to his daily unsuccessful quest for work. After our few chores around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free to run wild in the sun with other children similarly situated.
8 For the most part, those days are ill-defined in my memory, running together and combining like a fresh watercolor painting left out in the rain. I remember squatting in the road drawing a picture in the dust, a picture which Joey gleefully erased with one sweep of his dirty foot. I remember fishing for minnows in a muddy creek and watching sadly as they eluded my cupped hands, while Joey laughed uproariously. And I remember, that year, a strange restlessness of body and of spirit, a feeling that something old and familiar was ending, and something unknown and therefore terrifying was beginning.
9 One day returns to me with special clarity for some reason, perhaps because it was the beginning of the experience that in some inexplicable way marked the end
of innocence. I was loafing under the great oak tree in our yard, deep in some reverie which I have now forgotten, except that it involved some secret, secret thoughts of one of the Harris boys across the yard. Joey and a bunch of kids were bored now with the old tire suspended from an oak limb, which had kept them entertained for a while.
My Notes
grit: toughness, determination chary: ungenerous, wary
WORD CONNECTIONS
Etymology
The name marigold comes from Middle English, around the 1300s, and is a conflation, or blend, of the name “Mary” and the word “gold.” Gold refers to the brilliant yellow-gold bloom that is most characteristic of the plant. In some cultures, the marigold’s strong, musty scent is believed to attract the spirits of the dead. The bright yellow- orange blooms are prominently used during the November Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.
inexplicable: unable to be explained or understood
ACTIVITY 1.5
continued
Unit 1 • Coming of Age 17
3. Craft and Structure (RL.9–10.5) What do you learn about the narrator through the author’s use of flashback? Cite text evidence to support your answer. Read paragraph 1. What evidence does the first sentence provide that explains when in the author’s life the story takes place? What word is repeated numerous times in paragraph 1 that speaks to the narrator’s use of flashback?
ACTIVITY 1.5 continued
7 As students are reading, monitor their progress. Be sure they are engaged with the text and annotating words or phrases that create interesting imagery or the narrator’s voice. Evaluate whether the selected reading mode is effective.
SCAFFOLDING THE TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS
1. Craft and Structure (RL.9–10.5) In the 9781457304651_TCB_SE_G9_U1_B1.indd 17
first paragraph, what two images does the narrator juxtapose for contrast? What are the connotations of these juxtaposed images? What image is most vivid in the first sentence of paragraph 1? What image is most vivid in the last sentence of paragraph 1? What does each image represent?
2. Craft and Structure (RL.9–10.4) What is the meaning of “amorphous” in paragraph 4? Read paragraph 4. What is the theme of the
paragraph? What context clues help you understand what “amorphous” means?
10/6/15 12:37 PM
Unit 1 • Coming of Age 17
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.