Read A Place at the Table for Free Online Page A

that cake,” I say.
    She says that’s a fine idea, but the cake layers are still a little warm so why don’t I take a bike ride while they cool down? I say, “Yes, ma’am,” and go outside where I left my bike on the front porch. The license plate, attached to the handlebars with pipe cleaners, looks good. Real good. “JLMTIK” glitters like the golden treasure it stands for. I walk the bike down the porch steps and then I get on it and start riding down the street. I don’t see anyone out in their yards until I get to the house at the end of the road, where Jefferson Place dead-ends into Ansley. There is a Negro family out front. Two women sit on folding chairs on the porch while the kids run all over. Off to the side a man wearing shorts and a Braves T-shirt is moving hot dogs around a hibachi grill.
    I wave when I ride past and the fat woman sitting on the porch lifts her hand to wave back. I turn around on Ansley so I can ride by them again, only it’s uphill, so I have to stand to pedal.
    “Hey!” I yell.
    “Hay’s for horses!” yells one of the girls from the yard. She is tall and thin and dark. She wears a bun on the very tippy top of her head with a bright pink ribbon tied around it.
    I try to slow down so someone will ask about my license tag, but it’s nearly impossible to do that when you are pedaling uphill. You’re pushing hard against gravity as it is; any less speed and you might start wobbling.
    I figure I ought to look for other new kids around the neighborhood to show my tag to, since no one but Pink Ribbon has paid any attention to me and all she did was tease. I ride past several houses, passing Meemaw’s little brick bungalow, but the front yards are deserted,which is strange considering it’s a perfect spring night, warm enough to sit outside but too cool for mosquitoes. But then I smell meat cooking and I realize most folks are probably having a real barbecue out back, not just cooking wieners on a hibachi grill. Meemaw said we might even grill up some hamburgers for our supper and put chili on them like they do at The Varsity.
    I decide to try the colored family once more. I turn around and head their way. Maybe they haven’t seen my license tag. Because if they did, wouldn’t they ask about it or at least say it’s nice looking? Smack in front of their house, I turn my handles toward them so they can see the glittery letters. But I turn too fast and run into the fence. Pink Ribbon says, “That fool cain’t ride within an inch of his life,” and everyone laughs, though the fat woman on the porch tells Pink Ribbon to quit acting ugly.
    “I can ride. I can ride real good. I just wanted y’all to see my license tag.”
    “Well, come on over here and show it to us, then,” says the fat woman. She wears a sleeveless top with little strings that tie at her shoulders. Her arms are the biggest I’ve ever seen. They are bigger even than Daddy’s thighs, and Daddy was a football player in high school.
    I hop off my bike and walk it up the path that cuts through the middle of their yard. Pink Ribbon comes over and studies the letters. She stands with her legs apart and her hands on her hips. “So? Jesus love me too,” she says. “I was baptized in holy waters when I was a baby.”
    “How’d you know that’s what it says?” I ask.
    She taps her finger against the side of her head. “Cause I got a big ol’ brain in here.”
    “Keisha, you stop showing off,” says the woman on the porch.
    “Ain’t showing off when it true,” she says.
    “I got a big ol’ hand that can knock some manners into you,”the woman says, but she’s settled so deep into her folding chair, it doesn’t look like she is going to get up to knock anything into anyone anytime soon.
    I know I should be happy that Keisha is saved, but I can’t help but be disappointed. I wanted to bring a heathen to Jesus. “You know the ABCs of salvation and all that?” I ask.
    “I’m in the third grade. You