Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott

driving up for me. I wonder if she would ever let me sit on those white seats.
    The minute she saw me standing out there, Aunt Ruth growled and shooed me back in the house to help Weeza wash up the breakfast plates. I ran!
    But I didn’t stop looking.
    That car must ride pretty nice. I know I would drive it right out of here. Kansas City here I come!
    Cora laughs behind her hand when I say funny things. She hides her teeth when she laughs. She says funny things, too, and almost made my nose explode in church with what she told me.
    I get an idea sometimes. You know what I mean. I’ve lived in Atlanta my whole life, and that’s a big city not a little town. I’m practically ten, or will be in a few months. And I’m tall for my age. Sometimes I think a thing and I’ll say it. I’ve always been that way. I remember something about Poppa and my old momma. One day, he comes in and I say, “Poppa, why did Old Momma leave me here with Weeza and you and never come back?” And he blinks his eyes at me and says, “Never mind about that. You’re with people who love you now.”
    Now.
    He said “now.” Like Momma didn’t love me. Well, lots of people love me now.
    Sure I know Poppa is not really my poppa. Once when I was supposed to be sleeping I saw him cry. Some white people did something to him. I’ve never cried but maybe once.
    Being nearly ten I have seen a few things. I have friends down in Atlanta and they’ve seen things, too.
    At three o’clock I’ll go into town to an office in a store. Cora will walk down the sidewalk with me, but I know what to do. I just go left and left and right and left and into the store. Then I walk between the racks of clothes to the office behind the wall in the back and sit on the chair next to the desk. I know the number by heart, and I dial the telephone myself. There’s a man there who’s white. He probably has a car like Mrs. They all do.

Sixteen
Bobby
    They stopped at a place called the Cumberland Motor Inn in a city called Wartburg. Funny name, he thought. Wartburg. Only it wasn’t a city, but a small town that lay just off the highway in a valley surrounded by overlapping hills. The hills were covered with brown trees, but looked more like giant mounds of mud that rain had washed into peaks and creases that dried dusty brown.
    The man at the front desk called a name and whistled sharply as his mother came out of the office, and a Negro girl with towels in her arms ran from somewhere to what Bobby suspected was going to be their room, but it wouldn’t be ready for an hour, his mother said, so they ate lunch.
    The cheery waitress at the restaurant up the street from the motel hovered over the table, first with water, then with her order pad, then with sodas, then with food, then just to see how things were going. They weren’t going well. Bobby wasn’t at all hungry, but his mother told him to eat, so he ordered the Sputnik Special from the children’s menu. “Yes, little sir,” the waitress said, which annoyed him. The Special was described as a “a meal to send any kid into orbit!” but was only a grilled cheese and coleslaw. Ricky ordered a sandwich and potato salad said to be “just like Mama used to make before television.”
    â€œYes, sir!” said the waitress, smiling as she wrote on her pad, then leaving the table. Ricky chuckled. “They probably don’t even have television in these mountains—”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” his mother said, sounding as if she was talking to herself. A blanket of quiet settled over them then, as if they were all too tired to speak. After the waitress slid the plates on the table and left once more, no one breathed a word. People at the other tables glanced at them when their own conversations faded. Bobby did not meet their eyes, but leaned over his plate.
    In the motel room, his mother slept. So