Page 43 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade6_Flipbook

icebox: refrigerator
aCtiVitY 2.3
continued
My notes
interpret the text Using Close reading
35 The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.”
36 There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he frowned.
37 The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.” Pause. Silence. “I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son—neither tell God, if he didn’t already know. So you set down while I fix
us something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look presentable.
38 In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner of her eye, if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted now.
39 “Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy, “maybe to get some milk or something?”
40 “Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to make cocoa out of this canned milk I got here.”
41 “That will be fine,” said the boy.
42 She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa,
and set the table. The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, red-heads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
43 “Eat some more, son,” she said.
44 When they were finished eating she got up and said, “Now, here, take this ten
dollars and buy yourself some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my pocketbook nor nobody else’s—because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in.”
45 She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. “Goodnight! Behave yourself, boy!” she said, looking out into the street.
46 The boy wanted to say something else other than “Thank you, ma’am to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large woman in the door. He barely managed to say “Thank you” before she shut the door. And he never saw her again.
20 SpringBoard® English Language Development grade 6
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