Check out this short excerpt from Summertime!! Enjoy!!
I woke up with a start. The room was pitch black and very still. Eerily quiet. So what had awakened me? I lay still, listening and wondering. That’s when I heard the music. Horns were blaring and a piano’s keys were trilling loudly—upbeat jazz, the likes of which I’d never heard before. I stumbled to my feet and slid them into the shoes that sat next to my bed. I opened the door and my room partially filled with the light from the hallway. Placing my hand on the bandage that still covered the side of my head, I slowly stepped out into the familiar hallway and cautiously made my way to the staircase. With every step, the music grew louder and louder. At the bottom of the stairs, I took in the scene with awe.
There were wall-to-wall black folks. The women were dressed to the nines in flouncy dresses and hats with feathers, long white gloves on their hands and big gaudy rings on their fingers. They wore bright red lipstick and rouge, and nursed glasses of brown liquor. The men wore suits and hats and looked like they’d just stepped out of a gangster movie. Loma was behind the bar smiling brightly and pouring drinks. Linda, or Lila, was dressed in a tight little gold dress and was walking around hawking cigarettes. She spotted me and headed my way. “What you doing out of bed?”
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