I'd never seen no walls like ‘em. Dark blue wallpaper, even darker blue floral patterns in it. I put out my hand to touch, just like velvet they done felt. So smooth, so soft. And all the way up the ceiling, two floors, must be thirty feet high, I done thought. Got to stare in wonder. The floors, they got dark, shiny wood, so beautiful like a frozen lake. Just like the Ohio River in January, except dark brown instead of glassy gray. And the wide staircase going up who knows where. The banisters, they done match the floors, too.
“Young lady, you come on in here,” the light soprano voice done said to me, so I follow into the parlor. More blue wallpaper in here, the white lady sitting on the sofa wearing a cream-colored linen dress. She young, too, just not so young as me. Maybe seventeen, maybe eighteen.
“You’ll be my maid, Miss Gracie. You set yourself right down there on that stool. I’m going to give you the yarn. You hold that. That’s right, Miss Gracie.”
So I do what she tells me and it’s real nice in here. I done got promoted from the yard where I fed the chickens, now I come inside the house and be a maid for Miss Letty. She real pretty-like, got to say I like her. Maybe I should think again about what Larribee said out by the barn about the underground. Seems real nice here by Miss Letty’s side and her white dress. All these pretty colors around me.
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