Pebbles *short story*

She wasn't all that good looking. She was average at best. She didn't put her rouge on like Ella kept telling her too. She didn't see the sense in it, "ain't no colored woman in the world turn red in the face like that, and they lips ain't that pink neither!". That was the way she seen it. There wasn't any point trying to make yourself look like some white woman when you have a face the color of rich soil.
She let out a soft chuckle as she tore the husk off each ear of corn. That Ella was one pig sty short of a mess. But she was a good friend, a friend for all times kind of friend. Her smile weakened as her mouth fixed itself back into its familiar pout.
Her legs were agape, and her long house dress hung low like a stage curtain.
It had been almost a year since he had left. She finally realized he wasn't coming home anytime soon. She felt a tear well up in her eyes and her throat became tight. She clenched her jaw tight and focused harder on her task.
In the distance, she could see a figure coming up the way toward her gate. Staggering from one side of the dirt road to the next, the person had a lazy stride that she recognized. She still kept at that corn, all the while never removing her gaze from the approaching stranger.
Several emotions coursed through her in a moments time.
He opened the gate.
eight months, seventeen days.
She could taste the salt over her upper lip. She kept at that corn.
"I take it I came on time since you fittin' to cook."
He hardly glanced her way. He continued up the porch steps and walked into the house as if he had never left.
Eight months and seventeen days.
The arch of her foot began to itch and she rubbed it on the conrete step. A small pebble fell from it.It was almost as if it were clinging to the mixture of rock and sand and by her rubbing her foot on it, it just gave way and came loose from the foundation.
She dropped the corn down in her bag and stared at the pebble.
That night she lay in her bed awake while he snored, deep in a peaceful slumber. Restless, she got out of bed and made her way to her chest of drawers. She opened the top drawer and lifted out the little velvet bag. She then opened it and began emptying all of its contents in the steel trash bin.
The loud clanging woke him up and he sat up with his face screwed in utter annoyance.
"what you doing woman?"
"I'm throwing out my rouge, that's what."
"As much as that cost, you gonna go and toss that out in the trash? Ain't that supposed to get you all dolled up? That's supposed to make you look like them gals at the city and you throwin' it all away." He shook his head and lay back down.
She thought once more about that pebble that freed from the cement earlier. She returned to bed. As she lay down she turned to the heaping mound of a man that was next to her and said softly
" You can rub up on me all you want, but there gonna come a time when I may have to come a-loose, and I dont need no rouge for that."