The Only Use of

motley
in
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Sitting so close to the desk, I could see that the covers of the books, a motley red, were badly worn and that the gray edges of the pages had been marred by pencils, crayons, and ink.†
p. 21.9

Definitions:

(1) (motley)
consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds of a thing -- sometimes implying that the collection does not go well together and is of low quality
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

More rarely, motley can refer specifically to different colors.

Much more rarely (though commonly in classic literature) motley references a multicolored woolen fabric woven of mixed threads in 14th to 17th century England; or to a court jester's costume made of such fabric. This sense of the word is still reasonably common in the expression motley fool which refers to a jester in such garb.