POURRIEZ-VOUS M'AIDE S'IL VOUS PLAIT C'EST TRES URGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!


As they opened the door marked COLORED ONLY, they saw
a white conductor coming toward them. It was a chilly day
but a light skim of sweat glistened on the woman's face as
she and the little girl struggled to hold the door open, hang
5 on to their luggage and enter all at once. The conductor let
his eyes travel over the pale yellow woman and then stuck
his little finger into his ear, jiggling it free of wax. "What
you think you doin', gal?"
Helene looked up at him.
10 So soon. So soon. She hadn't even begun the trip back.
Back to her grandmother's house in the city where the red
shutters glowed, and already she had been called "gal." All
the old vulnerabilities, all the old fears of being somehow
flawed gathered in her stomach and made her hands trem
15 ble.(…).
Thinking he wanted her tickets, she quickly dropped
both the cowhide suitcase and the straw one in order to
search for them in her purse. An eagerness to please and
an apology for living met in her voice. "I have them. Right
20 here somewhere, sir... "
The conductor looked at the bit of wax his fingernail
had retrieved. "What was you doin' back in there? What
was you doin' in that coach yonder?"
Helene licked her lips. "Oh... I... " Her glance moved beyond
25 the white man's face to the passengers seated behind him.
Four or five black faces were watching, two belonging to
soldiers still in their shit-colored uniforms and peaked caps.
She saw their closed faces, their locked eyes, and turned
for compassion to the gray eyes of the conductor.
30 "We made a mistake, sir. You see, there wasn't no sign.
We just got in the wrong car, that's all. Sir."
"We don't 'low no mistakes on this train. Now git your
butt on in there."
He stood there staring at her until she realized that
35 he wanted her to move aside. Pulling Nel by the arm, she
pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in
front of a wooden seat. Then, for no earthly reason, at least
no reason that anybody could understand, certainly no reason
that Nel understood then or later, she smiled. Like a street
40 pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the butcher
shop he has been kicked away from only moments before,
Helene smiled. Smiled dazzlingly and coquettishly at the
salmon-colored face of the conductor.

Nel looked away from the flash of pretty teeth to the
45 other passengers. The two black soldiers, who had been
watching the scene with what appeared to be indiffe-
rence, now looked stricken. Behind Nel was the bright and
blazing light of her mother's smile; before her the
midnight eyes of the soldiers. She saw the muscles of their
50 faces tighten, a movement under the skin from blood to
marble. No change in the expression of the eyes, but a hard
wetness that veiled them as they looked at the stretch of
her mother's foolish smile.
It was on that train, shuffling toward Cincinnati, that
55 she resolved to be on guard--always. She wanted to make
certain that no man ever looked at her that way. That no
midnight eyes or marbled flesh would ever accost her and
turn her into jelly.




1- read the whole text and identify the different characters.
2- say where exactly the scene take place. Justify your answers with several quotes from the text. Find the destination of main characters are heading to.
3- scan the text for words used to describe the characters' eyes and skin. Say what you notice.
4- describe and comment on the attitude of the conductor. Justify with quotes.
5- read the line 7 to line 43 and describe the woman's reaction to the conductor's attitude.
6- explain the reaction of the other passengers,
7- read the last two paragraph and say how the experience affected the girl