

He steps on her shoes, but it’s a distraction from the pain upstairs. The radio is on, and Buster and Cora get up to dance. Sara agrees and helps Mama Sugar in the kitchen, where she sets a place for Jonas to eat.īuster says he’s happy the Freedom Riders are fighting because he’s too old to do it for the right to sit on a bus or to eat a meal in a diner.


Coulter tells how he found Amos and how he hates a bully. We are immortal, thinks Sara, as Mama Sugar laughs. Vasselly Sara can fight a man and will if necessary. Amos begs not to go to the hospital, saying please, no hospital. Author West describes the bloody scene when Jonas turns on the light, and Dr. William is crying, and Jonas promises it’ll be okay. Jonas thinks Amos’ ribs are broken, and Collins Hospital won’t take him unless he’s near death. Elvin and Buster come downstairs, and Sara yells for their help and tells them to get Doctor Morgan. A knock at the door brings Jonas Coulter in holding up a bloody Amos, who is dirty and not moving. She wants to tell Mama Sugar the message for Amos but not in front of the boarders, six of them now at breakfast.įor dinner, Mama Sugar makes fried chicken seasoned with garlic and herbs. Everyone wants to hold the baby except Sara, who doesn’t want him because of her past. He’s a garbage worker but cleans now before work. A man approaches her at the store and says to tell Amos he wants the two hundred dollars owed him, or else he’ll be nasty.Įlvin Sanders, one of the boarders, lifts the baby from his crib and bounces him on his knee. In town at Sinclairs Grocery store, Sara chooses peaches instead of apples so Mama Sugar can make a bigger dessert. These characters have already hooked this reader. The teacher, Jonas Coulter, introduces himself to Sara and says William is hungry for knowledge, and he wants to feed that hunger. He forgets there are two water fountains and two entrances to the movie theater for blacks and whites. Coulter, thinks William is special and the book is his salvation. William, Mama Sugar’s grandson, is reading “Georges” by Alexander Dumas for his English class extra assignment. This is the morning scene at The Scarlet Poplar.

He has a metal brace on his foot, and Amos needs to help him get the cars running at his garage shop. Vanellys at the kitchen table asks to hold the baby while Sara picks ripe green tomatoes from the garden. Mama Sugar who owns the rooming house, sees the baby growing like a weed, and she yells at Amos, her son, to sleep off his drunken behavior of last night. “The Two Lives of Sara” by Catherine Adel West is the story of a young woman who comes to a rooming house in Memphis and the baby she births there.
