I love them. What you'll find in this forum will be short stories that have moved or inspired me in some way.

Heck, I may even post a few short stories of my own.

Early Lessons from a Kitchen Stool

My mother, Vivian Baxter, was a great believer in self-reliance. Each tub should sit on its own bottom and each shoulder should be pressed to its own wheel.

My six-year-old son, Guy, and I were between addresses. That was how we described our condition when we lost one apartment and before we found another. In the meantime, of course, we went across town to my mother's house.

When I was seventeen and Guy was two months old, we lived with my mother in her fourteen-room house on Post Street in San Francisco. Then one morning I announced my plans to move. I told her that I had found a job and two rentals with cooking privileges and that the landlady would babysit my child. She controlled surprise and said, "All right, but when you cross over my doorsill, remember you have been raised. Throughout life you will have to make many adjustments and even some compromises, but don't let anybody raise you. You know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. You've been raised.

"And remember this," she added. "You can always come home. "

Whenever the world was too much with me late and soon, I returned to Vivian Baxter's house. I didn't savor not sitting on my own bottom and not putting my own shoulder to my own wheel, but I was never made uncomfortable returning to her.

She treated each return as a welcome opportunity to teach me something she had overlooked or that I had not understood. She relished one incident, which she said could only have taken place in her kitchen.

Guy sat at the kitchen table, watching her cook. He kept up a running chatter about school, his playmates, and his teachers, and he filled his conversation with his requests that his grandmother make a dessert for me.

He told her how hard I worked, how at this very moment I was probably seeing about an apartment, and how I deserved a dessert. A good dessert made for me by my mother.

Mother had had just about enough of that. "If she needs a dessert why don't you make it for her?"

"Oh, Grandma, I'm only six years old."

Mother said, "If you are old enough to try to bully me into making something for your mother, then you are old enough to make it yourself. Do you want to try?"

He laughed and said, "Sure."

She said she would show him how to make a bread pudding, after he washed his hands. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" was my mother's mantra. Mother set him on a kitchen stool so he could reach the sink.

"A good cook washes his hands ten times an hour; a great cook, twenty times."

Each time he touched a piece of food he climbed up onto the stool and washed his hands.

She let him butter stale bread, which was then place in the oven to toast, and she showed him how to break eggs without dropping shells into the mixing bowl.

He whisked milk and then sugar into the eggs. He put raisins in warm water so they could plump.

There was an undeniable air of secret happenings when I entered the house that night. I looked at Mother, and her smile was like a promising but sealed envelope, and Guy was about to explode. I had to give them their due.

"What's going on? What have you people been doing?"

Mother said, "Ask your son."

"Well, Guy? What's the news?"

"Mom, well . . . I can't tell you until after dinner. Are you ready to eat right now? We can sit down and have dinner. Then we can have dessert. Oooo-weee." He spoke so fast he hardly had time to breathe.

He could not sit still at the dinner table.

Mother finally told him the dessert was cool enough and he could bring it out.

The baked bread pudding was puffed up and toasty brown, but I only had eyes for Guy. He strutted and preened. Pride and self-congratulations were his shoulder pads, and he nearly had to put both hands over his mouth to keep from blurting out his achievement.

When Mother place the bread pudding in front of her to serve it, he could hold off no longer.

"I cooked this for her, Grandmother. My mother should serve it." Vivian Baxter agreed and slid the dessert over to me. Guy asked, "Is it good, is it good? I made it myself."

I had not tasted one bite, but I answered, "My son, this is the best bread pudding in the world."

It was true then, and even as you read about it today it is still the best bread pudding in the world.

Written by Maya Angelou

Chester Himes
dirty deceivers
1948


All of his family were very fair. The most through examination of any sort could not have disclosed their Negro Blood. Yet in the small town in Tennessee where he was born his family were known as Negroes. This is not uncommon in the South. His family accepted their position as Negroes without obvious rancor and worked diligently to secure a comfortable living.

Following high school he attended Fisk University, and was graduated in 1931. He came to New York City seeking employment and worked for a year as a Red Cap. But he did not like the job; it was too demanding. The hours were long and the pay was short.

In the Spring of 1933 he was offered a job as deck hand on a freighter bound for Italy. He took it. When the freighter docked in Lisbon, Portugal, for supplies, he jumped ship. He avoided discovery by going inland immediately.

For the following seven years he lived in Portugal, engaging in a number of casual occupations. He assumed the name of Ferdinand Cortes, and in time learned the language quite proficiently. In 1940 he forged papers, proving himself a native of Portugal, and applied for a passport and U.S. visa. He returned to this country as a Portuguese and when war broke out he enlisted and was stationed in Lisbon as an interpreter, where he remained for the duration.

After the war he got a job as an interpreter on Ellis Island and immediately applied for naturalization papers.

There was a beautiful young Spanish girl, named Lupe Rentera, who worked in his department. He was attracted to her on sight, but the knowledge that he was part Negro restrained him from making the first advance. She was also attracted to him. Finally, one day, she gave him an encouraging smile. He responded by asking her to lunch.

He learned that she roomed with a family of Mexicans on the fringe of the Spanish community in Brooklyn: delightedly he announced that he roomed nearby. They discovered that they rode the same line to work and wondered how they had missed seeing each other. After that he waited for her in the morning and rode home with her at night. He began dating her regularly and in a month they were engaged.

Two months later they applied for their marriage license. He recorded his race as white, his nationality as Portuguese; she recorded her race as white, her nationality as American. Their fellow workers gave them an office party when they were married. The spent their honeymoon in Brooklyn looking for an apartment.

Two places were offered them, but both were in communities mixed with Negroes, and they declined. Finally they found a place in South Brooklyn that suited them and they spent all of the savings furnishing it.

They should have been blissfully happy, but there was a strain in their relationship. He was continuously fearful that his Negro blood would be discovered. Since his discharge he had been communicating with his relatives in Tennessee, but to avoid discovery he had rented a post office box where he received his mail. They did not know his assumed name, his address, nor his occupation. As soon as he read their letters he destroyed them.

But he was afraid that Lupe might discover signs of his Negro blood in his appearance. He kept himself scrupulously clean and used an after shave lotion which contained a slight bleach. Each week he got a haircut and a massage. But fearing that the neighborhood barbers might guess his Negro origin from the texture of his hair, he patronized a Negro barbershop uptown in Harlem. Each Saturday afternoon when they returned from their half day at work, he departed for his jaunt uptown and did not return until dark. After getting his haircut and massage, he spent the rest of the time wandering about the streets of Harlem. It was the only time during the week that he felt comfortably relaxed.

Unknown to him, Lupe also had a problem. She, too, felt strained in their relationship for she was also part Negro. And as with him, she was fearful of his discovering it. She took the same precautions against its discovery as did he. She bathed frequently, used quantities of bleach creams, and patronized a Negro hairdresser uptown in Harlem. Each Saturday she left the house exactly a half-hour after his departure, used the same transportation, and arrived at her beauty parlor at the time he was in his barbershop not more than four blocks away. She also spent part of the afternoon visiting friends in Harlem before returning, although she managed always to get home a few minutes before his arrival. But for those Saturday afternoon sessions with her Negro friends, she could not have endure the strain.

To be continued.....

Note: This story was taken from the book: hokum - edited by paul beatty

Chester Himes
dirty deceivers
1948

pt.2


He told her he spent the time in school, taking a course in electronic engineering. He never knew that she went out at all. In fact he did not know that her hair was the type that required straightening. He was too preoccupied with his own fear of being discovered to notice.

To make matters worse, both exhibited extreme prejudice against Negroes. Of course, they did so in an effort to hide their identity. But the effect it had was only to increase their trepidation. As they labored ore and more desperately to avoid detection, the strain between them increased. In time they became the most prejudiced people in all of New York City. Due to his excellent war record, some of the red tape concerning his application for citizenship was avoided, and he became a naturalized citizen of the United States sooner than he had expected. It had an immediate effect of security on him. But her fears increased proportionately. She had visions of being discovered and put in jail for falsifying her race on the application for a marriage license. He would have the marriage annulled. He was so prejudiced against Negroes he might even kill her for deceiving him. Her days became filled with constant dread.

Shortly after this when he stopped at his box for mail he found a letter saying his mother had died. He father had died years before. It was from hi elder sister. She wanted him to come home for the funeral.

He was so upset he forgot to destroy the letter. He slipped it into his side pocket. Then he began to scheme how he could make the trip without Lupe discovering his destination. At dinner he told her he'd have to spend a week in Cincinnati to complete his engineering course. She thought it strange but said nothing.

Then she noticed the tip of the letter extending from his pocket. This surprised her more than the other. She had never known him to receive a letter before.

That night, after he was asleep, she got out of bed and read the letter. To her complete astonishment she learned that he had Negro blood. In fact, he was from the same little town in Tennessee where she'd been born. As she continued to read she recognized his family. She had known them well. They were distantly related to her family. She even recalled having seen him when she was a child, but he was ten years older and wouldn't remember her.

She was so happy and jubilant over the discovery she awakened him. Waving the letter, laughing and crying at the same time, she cried, "I'm one, too, Ferdy! I'm one, too, darling." She fell on the bed and began kissing him passionately.

But he pushed her roughly aside and jumped to his feet. His face was white and stricken: he was shaken to the core. "One what?" he yelled. "What are you talking about?"
I'm like you," she said, laughing at him. "See, I read the letter. I'm from Pinegap, Tennessee; I'm a Williams, too. My Mamma was Dora Williams. I'm Sadie. I even remember you---you're Clefus."

The color came back into his face. He sat down on the side of the bed. "Well, what do you know!" he exclaimed.

For the first few days they were jubilant over the discovery that they both had Negro blood. Now they would not have to live in a constant state of dread and apprehension. they would not have to take so many baths or spend so much on bleach preparations. They could go together uptown on Saturday afternoons, he to the barbershop, she to the hairdresser. Afterwards they could stop at the Savory and dance tot he good hot rhythm of the Negro bands.

They felt they had discovered the happy combination of being white and colored too.

Of course, he took her with him on the trip to Tennessee. They visited their families and told them the whole story. Everything worked out perfectly.

On their return they looked forward to a life of bliss. It was such great fun fooling all the white people with whom they worked. They laughed about it at night and felt like great conspirators.

But after the jubilance wore off, and they had settled down to the daily routine of living, a strange disillusionment came. They began feeling betrayed by each other. Each experienced bitter disappointment in the knowledge that the other was not "pure white." They realized that had they known of the other's Negro blood they would not have become married.

Each became furious at the other's deceit. In fact, they got so mad at each other they quit speaking and are now suing for divorce on the grounds of false pretenses.

The End.

Fab: Now ain't that nothing?!? lol. Oh what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive. smh.

I'm Coming Out . . .

To think that I denied hip-hop so that I wouldn't lose my status as a member of the "popular" crowd in a high school full of gun-toting, dip-chewing, blue-eyeliner wearing children makes me sad. At the time, I was a die-hard U2 fan (still am today) and made bold declarations that hip-hop, this new music that was drawing attention to my blackness, would die. I thought that by rejecting the beats that I secretly danced to as I heard them seeping form my brother's bedroom, I could prove that I was just as good as all the white kids that I went to school with in Marietta.

The problem was that my skin color (light and questionable as it is) and ability to follow an eight count better than most were stereotypes that they used to measure my suspected blackness. The more stereotypes they could check off their lists, the closer I would move from eating with the "in crowd" to moving to the "colored" table in the lunch room.

This music had to die. It was ruining my social life. It was 1985, and I was hoping and praying that it would all be over by the time I was a senior.

Things didn't look good. In 1986, DJs started scratching my favorite Tears for Fears song, "Shout," into the mix of popular hip-hop songs. I was doomed. I couldn't hide the fact that this music started to move me. It started to excite me. I wanted to come out. I loved hip-hop! Should I out myself and show the world that I was a black girl posing in a white girl get-up, usually in the uniform of a cheerleading outfit? If I came out, I could lose everything, my white boyfriend, my popularity as "A team" cheerleader and my elusive position as "weird-llooking" girl.

I wasn't ready to come out yet, even though I was diggin' the Salt and Pepa remix of "Push-It." I knew every word.

Then, on top of everything, my younger brother became a huge break-dancer. He was in the papers and everything. We had the same last name. It was okay to ignore him in the halls at school, but I couldn't ignore the headlines he was getting. High fives in the hall. Newspaper articles. People started to ask questions. Our "head cheerleader" asked me point blank, "Is that break-dancer your brother?" I sheepishly replied, "Maybe."

Cut to 1987. I am a senior in high school and have been named "dance choreographer" with none other than the two other black girls on the cheerleading squad. I made sure to keep my contact with them to a minimum because otherwise everyone would look at me as, well . . . black.
But the music of Dougie Fresh's "The Show," Run DMC's "Walk This Way" and The Beastie Boys' "Brass Monkey" brought me closer to these women. We "snaked" and "wopped" our way to being one of the best cheerleading teams that year.

I bonded with these girls. We shared cultural traditions like dancing our dances, braiding one another's hair and talking about things in our community that only a young black girl would know. I never confessed my "blackness" but hid behind "mixed" identity labels that kept me feeling safe. I will never forget the knowing looks in their eyes that told me if I wanted to come over to their side, they would be there with open arms. I loved them for that. They offered true friendship despite my self-denial. I refused them, hip-hop and blackness once again.

After high school I went to Europe and took a long look at my self. How I had passed throughout high school is still a mystery to me. I found that hip-hop was all over the world. I met Africans in Paris who encouraged me to love myself and the hip-hop inside of me. My grandfather was Algerian, and I connected with African people for the first time in my life. The "real" me was a black me. If people didn't like me because I was African American, then they weren't my friends. I released all of the images projected on me about how to measure blackness. I accepted the fact that as a black woman, I had more to offer my community and the world by being myself, than I had if I pretended I was someone else.

In Paris, I came out. I was a black American woman and a hip-hop fan. I would support my brother in his music tastes and embrace the beauty of my family and community. I would never answer a question about my race or ethnicity with uncertainty. I was part of a legacy that was rich and beautiful. I would never hide from that again.

Written by Nicole Hodges Persley

Greetings everyone, the following is one of my favorite stories written by Maya Angelou, and the book (from which the story was taken) is called "hallelujah! the welcome table."

Enjoy! I certainly did.

This particular story is called: The Assurance of Caramel Cake

Quilting Bees were eagerly anticipated by southern black women. They offered the only nonlabor, nonreligious occasions where women could gather and exchange all the communities' good and bad news. The women planned for weeks. Then they selected and cooked their favorite dessert dishes and brought them to the gathering. The bees were always held in the back of the store, which meant that Bailey and I could look forward to some delicious cakes and pies and, if the event took place in the summer, some luscious hand-cranked strawberry ice cream. Usually cranked by us.

Mrs. Sneed, the pastor's wife, would bring sweet potato pie, warm and a little too sweet for Momma's taste but perfect for Bailey and me. Mrs. Miller's coconut cake and Mrs. Kendrick's chocolate fudge were what Adam and Eve ate in the Garden just before the Fall. But the most divine dessert of all was Momma's Caramel Cake.

Momma would labor prayerfully over her selection, because she knew but would never admit that she and all the women were in hot competition over whose culinary masterpiece was the finest.

Momma could bake all the other women's dishes and often made them for the family, but not one of the other cooks would even dare the Caramel Cake (always to be spoken of in capital letters). Since she didn't have brown sugar, she had to make her own caramel syrup. Making her caramel cake took four to five hours, but the result was worthy of the labor. The salty sweetness of the caramel frosting along with the richness of the batter made the dessert soften and liquefy on the tongue and slip quietly down the throat almost without notice. Save that it left a memory of heaven itself in the mouth.

Of course Bailey and I were a little biased in Momma's favor, but who could have resisted the big-hearted woman who was taller and bigger than most men yet who spoke in a voice a little above a whisper? Her hands were so large one could span my entire head, but they were so gentle that when she rubbed my legs and arms and face with blue-seal Vaseline every morning, I felt as if an angel had just approved of me.

I not only loved her, I liked her. So I followed her around. People began calling me her shadow.

"Hello, Sister Henderson, I see you got your shadow with you as usual." She would smile and answer, "I guess you got that right. If I go, she goes. If I stop, she stops. Yes, sir, I have me two shadows. Well, three by rights. My own and my two grandbabies."

I only saw Momma's anger become physical once. The incident alarmed me, but at the same time it assured me that I had great protection. Because of a horrible sexual violence I experienced when I was seven, I stopped talking to everyone but Bailey.

All teachers who came to Stamps to work at Lafayette County Training School had to find room and board with black families, for there were no boarding houses where they could gain admittance.

All renting families acted as individual chambers of commerce for the newcomers. Each teacher was told of the churches and the preachers, of the hairdressers and barbers, of the white store downtown and the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store where they were likely to get accounts to tide them over between paychecks. The new teachers were also alerted to Mrs. Henderson's mute granddaughter and her grandson who stuttered seriously.

Summer was over and we returned to school with all the other children. I looked forward to meeting the new teacher of the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classes. I was really happy because for the first time Bailey and I were in the same classroom.

To be continued. . .

Continued pt 2 (the assurance of caramel cake). . .

>>>>>>>I was really happy because for the first time Bailey and I were in the same classroom.<<<<<<<<<

Miss Williams was small and perky. She reminded me of a young chicken pecking in the yard. Her voice was high-pitched. She separated the classes by row. Sixth-graders sat near the windows, fifth-graders were in the middle rows, and the fourth-graders were near the door..

Miss Williams said she wanted each student to stand up and say his or her name and what grades they received at the end of the last semester.

She started with the sixth-graders. I looked at Bailey when he stood and said, "Bailey Johnson, Jr." At home he would make me fall out laughing when he said what he wished his whole name was: "Bailey James Jester Jonathan Johnson, Jr."

Because I didn't talk I had developed a pattern of behavior in classrooms. Whenever I was questioned, I wrote my answer on the blackboard. I had reached the blackboard in Miss Williams's room when the teacher approached me. We were nearly the same height.

She said, "Go back to your seat. Go on."
Bailey stood up over by the window.
He said, "She's going to write her name and grade on the blackboard."
Miss Williams said to me, "I've heard about you. You can talk, but you just won't talk."

The students, who usually teased me relentlessly, were on my side. They began explaining, "She never talks, Miss Williams, never." Bailey was nervous. He began to stutter, "My. . .Maya can't talk."

Miss Williams said, "You will talk in my classroom. Yes, you will." I didn't know what to do. Bailey and the other children were trying to persuade her to allow me to write on the blackboard, I did not resist as she took the chalk out of my hand. "I know you can talk. And I will not stand for your silliness in my classroom." I watched her as she made herself angry. "You will not be treated differently just because your people own a store."

"Speak, speak." She was fairly shouting. Her hand came up unexpectedly and she slapped me. Truly, I had not known what to do when she was winding herself up to hit me, but I knew what I had to do the second her hand landed on my cheek. I ran. I ran out of the classroom with Bailey following shouting, "Wait, My, wait." I couldn't wait. I was running to Momma. He caught up with me on the porch of the store.

Momma, hearing the noise, opened the screen door.
"What happened? Why aren't you in school? Sister, why are you crying?"
Bailey tried to answer her, but his brain moved faster than his tongue could form the words.
I took my notebook and pencil and wrote, "Miss Williams slapped me because I wouldn't talk."
"She slapped you? Slapped? Where?"
Bailey said, "Fa. . .fa. . .fa. . .face."

To be continued. . .

Pt.3

(the assurance of cararmel cake). . .

>>"She slapped you? Slapped? Where?"
Bailey said, "Fa. . .fa. . .fa. . .face."<<

Momma told Bailey to go back to school. She said she and I would be coming soon.
Momma's calm voice and unhurried manner helped Bailey to settle down enough to speak.
"You want me to tell Miss Williams that you are coming?"
Momma answered, "I want you to go back to school and get your lesson." He looked at me once, saw that I had stopped crying, so he nodded and jumped off the porch and headed back up the hill.

"Sister, go the well and put some fresh water on your face." I went around behind the store to the well.
When I returned to the porch Momma had put on one of her huge freshly washed, starched, sun-dried, and ironed aprons. In her hand she had the board that was slipped into pockets closing off the front door. We had a similar plank for the store, which we used every night to let customers know we were closed. I don't remember there being a lock for the house or the store.

Momma dropped the board into the slots, and in a second she was striding up the hill to the school.
I hurried beside, hoping to read her intentions in her face.

She looked as she always looked, serene, quiet. If she planned something unusual it did not register in her face.
She walked into the school building and turned around to me.
"Sister, show me your classroom."
I guided her to Miss Williams's room. She opened the door and Miss Williams walked up to Momma.

She asked, "Yes? May I help you?"
My grandmother asked, "Are you Miss Williams?"
Miss Williams said, "I am."
Momma asked, "Are you somebody's grandbaby?"
Miss Williams answered, "I am someone's granddaughter."
Momma said, "Well, this child here is my grandbaby." Then she slapped her. Not full force but hard enough for the sound to go around the room and to elicit gasps from the students.

"Now, Sister, nobody has the right to hit nobody in the face. So I am wrong this time, but I'm teaching a lesson." She looked at me. "Now find yourself a seat and sit down and get your lesson."

Momma left the room and it was suddenly empty and very quiet.
Miss Williams left the room for a few minutes. Not a word was spoken.
Miss Williams reentered and said, "Students, turn to lesson one on page one."
I looked at Bailey and he gave me the smallest nod. I turned to page one, lesson one.

No one spoke of the incident on the way home, and when I returned to the store Momma and Uncle Willie were sitting on the porch.
Uncle Willie said, "Sister, there's something on the kitchen table. Bring it out here please."
I went into the kitchen and on the chopping table stood the most wondrous Caramel Cake looking like paradise, oozing sweetness.

Carefully I brought it back to the porch and it was nearly worth being slapped just to hear Bailey gasp.

Uncle Willie said, "This cake can't pay you for being slapped in the face. Momma made it just to tell you how much we love you and how precious you are."

The End

MAYA ANGELOU

Fab: great story

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