Make Lemonade

"MAKE LEMONADE"

"This lady's blind and she's poor 

she washes peoples laundry on rocks,

you know, in the river, the way they do in those places.

And she has these kids that are in starvation

and the blind lady she goes out with her old cane

thumping on the hard dirt of the town,

she's goin' out shopping, she wants an orange

for her kids, to get vitamins.

She has enough money to buy one orange.

She'll divide it for her kids.

From washing the laundry, she has the money.

"So she goes to the street where they have the market,

all busy with donkeys and everything in the way.

And she nearly gets knocked over by some bad boys

but she gets to the fruit market

and she smells all the fruits

and she just wants one best orange

for her children

So she holds some oranges in her hand 

and she find the best one.

                                                                      Even being blind, she can smell how juicy it is

                                                                      and she pays her last money for the orange

                                                                      and she starts thumping home

                                                                      with her cane

    "What happens on the way home is

    the same bad boys from before,

they trip her and she falls and drops the orange.

Her nose is bleeding from her falling

and she's reaching across the ground

 for her cane and she's a mess.

So one of the boys

says how he's so sorry to see her in the dirt,

 he tells her he was jus passing by and saw her fall.
She knows this is a lie
but he hands her her cane.
So she thanks him and she gets up and thumps on home;
now she's bleeding from her nose but she's on her way home
to her starving children.
                                                                       
"But with her bleeding nose she couldn't smell
so she doesn't know till later what that boy done.
She gets home and guess what?"
She cuts it open and the bad boy cheated her,
he gave her a lemon, 
not no orange. She smells this sour lemon smell
coming up from the fruit she cut
 and she's mad."
                                                
"So?' I say.

" So. First you know what she does?
 First she tells herself how stupid she is, she should know
the very instant he gave it to her.
You know what she does next?
She finds a little teensy bit of old caked, lumpy sugar
she had packed away, and she mixes it up
with the juice of the lemon
and some clean water from the spring they have there,
and she makes lemonade.
And she feeds it to her starving little ones.
And that's the end of the story."

This is an excerpt from the book Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff. Where the main character is Jolly a 17 year old with two children and no outside help. LaVaughn a high schooler who lives in a run down place with her single mother. Jolly needs a babysitter and LaVaughn needs collage money so LaVaughn takes the job. They become friends. This is Jolly telling the story to LaVaughn. It is the story that makes " when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" literal. I have really have never liked this saying but this story is awesome, how this lady is taken advantage of but she turns here situation around. That is exactly what the character Jolly has to do with her life, she has no money and a bad education. Lemons are sour not good tasting by themselves. But you juice it and add sugar it is a great drink. What the saying is saying is, when life sucks try to make it less suckie.
I enjoyed this book I would give 3 out of 5 stars

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