{"title":"This City of Men","authors":"Darieck Scott","doi":"10.2307/2932168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/2932168","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":104755,"journal":{"name":"Ancestral House","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126511361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"City Flesh and Country Manners","authors":"C. Major","doi":"10.2307/2931419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/2931419","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":104755,"journal":{"name":"Ancestral House","volume":"109 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1991-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120825606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Willie Bea and Jaybird","authors":"Tina McElroy Ansa","doi":"10.2307/2931708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/2931708","url":null,"abstract":"When Willie Bea first saw Jaybird in The Place, she couldn't help herself. She wanted him so bad she sucked in her bottom lip, cracked with the cold, then she ran her tongue so slowly over her top lip that she could taste the red Maybelline lipstick she had put on hours before. He looked like something that would be good to eat, like peach cobbler or a hot piece of buttered cornbread. She had just entered the bar clutching her black purse under her arm and smiling to try to make herself look attractive among the 6 o'clock crowd of drinkers and dancers and socializers, every one of them glad to be done with work for the day. He was there at the end of the bar in his golden Schlitz uniform sharing a quart of Miller High Life beer with a buddy. Willie Bea noticed right away how he leaned his long frame clear across the bar, bent at the waist, his elbows resting easily on the Formica counter. There didn't seem to be a tense bone in his lean efficient body. \"He look like he could go anywhere in the world,\" Willie Bea thought as she followed her big-butt friend Patricia as she weaved her way to a nearby table already jammed with four of her friends, two men, two women. \"If somebody put him in a white jacket and a flower in his buttonhole, he could pass for an actor in a Technicolor movie.\" As the juke box started up again, playing a driving Sam and Dave number, he looked around the bar, picked up his glass of beer and headed toward her table with his chin held high over the other patrons. When he smoothly pulled up a chair to her table and straddled it backwards, Willie Bea crossed her stick legs and pinched her friend Pat's thigh under the table to give her some Sen-Sen for her breath. \"Hey, Little Mama, you got time for a tired working man?\" She had to remember to wipe the uncomfortable moisture from the corners of her mouth with her fingertips before she could respond to him. She still felt that way, four years after they had started going together, when she looked at him. Nothing gave her more pleasure than to be asked her marital status with Jaybird around. \"Willie Bea, girl, where you been keeping yourself?\" some big-mouthed woman would shout at her over the din of the jukebox at The Place. \"I ain't seen you in a month of Sundays. You still living with your aunt, ain't you?\" This last expectantly with pity. Willie Bea would roll her shoulders and dip her ears from side to side a couple of times in feigned modesty. \"Naw, girl, I been moved out of my aunt's,\" Willie Bea would answer. \"I'm married now. I live with my ... husband.\"","PeriodicalId":104755,"journal":{"name":"Ancestral House","volume":"354 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1990-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122336702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Happy Story","authors":"Opal J. Moore","doi":"10.2307/2931560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/2931560","url":null,"abstract":"\"What's this story about?\" Everett leans over my shoulder. He really wants to ask \"when will dinner be ready?\" But he will not have it spread about that he is a traditionalist. \"It's about a woman,\" I say as he inspects the contents of pots with an air of disapproval. I continue. \"Intelligent. Attractive. Educated. A career is possible if she plays her cards right.\" Everett has thrown open the refrigerator door, is standing, feet apart, fists on hips, as if silently demanding that certain foods present themselves for his until-dinner-gets-ready snacking. I continue. \"But one morning she wakes up to realize that despite her efforts, she is living the same life her mother led. She feels desperate at this idea-\" Everett is desperately opening up foil wrappers. Finds one cold pork chop. \"-and in that moment, she begins to plan her own suicide.\" \"Why?\" mumbles Everett around a mouthful of pork chop. \"I thought she was so intelligent.\" \"Maybe she's intelligent enough-\" I say to his back as he returns to his armchair enclave, \"-intelligent enough to wonder if surviving is worth the trouble.\" Everett rattles his newspaper. The TV drones. I sweep up crumbs from the table and deposit the abandoned pork chop foil wrapper in the trash can. Slowly I recover my thoughts, make a few scribbles on my yellow pad. \"Why don't you ever write a happy story?\" Everett says, moments later, newspaper crumpling in his lap. I pretend I don't hear him, wish that I hadn't. \"Angel? Didja hear me? Why can't you write a happy story for a change?\" I don't even look up. \"You know one?\" I say. \"Tell me a happy story and I'll use it,\" I say. When I do look up, his eyes are waiting. We look at each other. I smile, feeling some triumph. \"Tell me,\" I say, \"and I'll write it.\" Everett is a determined optimist; I call it self-delusion. I am a realist; he calls it \"bad disposition.\" I say that he pretties up life with pretense. He says that I don't consider the cloud's silver lining. I say you're liable to be struck by lightning standing in a thunderstorm looking for a silver lining. He says I live for bad news. \"Tell me a happy story,\" I persist. \"I can't wait to write it.\" His tongue is working inside of one cheek; maybe he's thinking ... or maybe he's just after a sliver of pork chop caught between his teeth. He seems to regard me with infinite patience and pity. But now, his unflagging optimism comes to rescue his face from furrows of doubt. I see firm determination light his eyes. He will, now as ever, rescue me from myself. I am caught off guard by my own laughter; it comes snorting unladylike from my nose.","PeriodicalId":104755,"journal":{"name":"Ancestral House","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1989-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123356766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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