Everyday Use
by Alice Walker
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy
yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know.
It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is
swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny,
irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and
wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in
corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her
sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life
always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to
say to her.
