Those Bones Are Not My Child (6 page)

Uncle Dave was okay sometimes. When he remembered to get peaches and whipped cream in a can. And he told good stories about the time he and Mama and a lot of cousins were little children growing up in Buttermilk Bottom. They played dodgeball and running bases. The movie was a quarter in the old days. And for a nickel they’d get two Tootsie Pops and change besides at Wellington Market. There was a pickle barrel there and a case with store cheese and baloney and another case with candy dots on paper and root-beer barrels and stuff, only it cost two cents ’stead of five. Uncle Dave was a good talker when it came to movies. They’d go to the Ashby movie house and have Milk Dud fights and Goober wars since stuff was cheaper then. Sonny would be listening and laughing up in his nose somewhere because it was funny, Mama being a girl with Jujubes stuck in her teeth.

But then Uncle Dave would get to the part when Grandmama Lovey married Widow Man and everybody moved to the Dixie Hill Apartments, only before the move, Widow Man’s twins ran off to join the movement and Mama got sent to live with Great-Aunt Myrtle in New York. And that’s the part Mama didn’t want to hear about so much, ’cause she’d stop sorting groceries and say over her shoulder “All right now, Dave.” But he’d keep on going, talking about people in New York thinking they so hot but not as hot as they think specially if they didn’t even come from New York but came from some nowhere place south of Atlanta and meaning Daddy. And Mama would be shaking too many bread crumbs into the canned salmon, saying, “I’m warning you, Dave, you better cool it.”

But Dave never did when he was doing that story. Then he’d get to the part where Mama was making up things to tell Great-Aunt Myrtle and Mama would slam down the bread-crumb can or whatever she had in her hand. Then he’d laugh and puff out his cheeks and round out a big belly with his hands even though his own stomach was pretty big
anyway. And Mama wouldn’t be saying nothing, her hands lost in the bowl with the salmon and stuff, and not moving, because this was always the part where Sonny would jump bad, and never mind that who he was jumping at was a grown man and was bigger than Daddy.

And Friday was the worst fight, and by the time she got to the kitchen, Dave was up out of his chair looking like Daddy do with his card friends and he fixing to slam down a good card and run a Boston. And Sonny was out of his chair with his neck swole up and they calling each other jive turkeys and Uncle Dave telling Sonny he’s going to wind up in the juvenile and Sonny saying where he get off hanging around our mama and they so close leaning across the table they got to be spitting on each other. And Uncle Dave said, “Little nigger, I’ve loved your mother longer than you’ve been alive.” That did it. And the table couldn’t take it.

Mama don’t allow the N word in her house and she don’t allow nobody to pick on her children neither, so she’s trying to put Uncle Dave out, only he’s so big she couldn’t get a grip nowhere on his body so she started shoving with her hip, but he didn’t budge at all. And Kofi calling himself the karate champ start doing the iron fist of death and there was just time for her to climb the step stool and dive on Uncle Dave’s back while Kofi chopped and Sonny was trying to get past Mama and haul off.

That was just how she’d tell it when Daddy came by. She’d show how she got on Uncle Dave’s back and rode him all the way to the door, Mama yelling, Dave laughing, but how hard it was to pull her fingers off from round his throat. She wondered if her daddy would laugh, or if he’d go all quiet with rocks in his jaw.

Kenti moved up close to get a good look at her mama. From the kitchen archway, she’d looked like a little child sleeping all crooked on the couch, one arm in the bathrobe.

“I smell gas, you?”

Not even the eyelids moved. Sometimes she slept with her mouth loose and Kenti could wake her by touching her bottom lip. But her mouth was like the mail slot in the door.

“You get sick, you know, sleeping in gas.”

Kenti opened the door a crack. “I can’t move your feet, Mama.” She opened it some more, until it touched her mother’s shoes. Then she
hooked the screen in case of burglars. Mailman didn’t come on Sundays, no way.

Kenti looked across the street to the only house on Thurmond that was three floors high. Aunty Paulette’s house. She made waffles Sunday mornings. But her car wasn’t parked out front. Not home from the hospital yet. Sometimes she took them to church in her uniform and looked just like the ushers carrying the collection plates down the aisle, one white-gloved hand tucked behind their back like they were letting everybody know they were honest.

“Mama?” Kenti brushed against the shoes, but the eyelashes didn’t flutter. “You going to church this morning?” She bumped her hip against the sofa arm, then trailed her finger along her mama’s leg. “I can call Aunty Paulette later. She’ll take us. Should I?”

Kenti leaned in close to make sure the gas hadn’t killed her mother. She blew on her face, and the lips loosened. Kenti drew back from the smell. Straightening up, she could see the Robinson yard through the curtains they had knotted together at the art center. Mean Dog was digging up the lawn over there with his nose. Chunks of grassy dirt went over his head and fell right on his back, then broke up.

“Dopey dog.” But on her way back to her cot she was thinking that maybe Mean Dog needed company. It was too bad Buster was a cat and Roger was a fish. She wondered if Daddy would maybe get them a dog. She could walk the dog over to play with Mean Dog. Daddy would have to buy a leash in case Mean Dog played too rough she could yank her dog away. She tried to wake Kofi to see what he thought about it. But even when she pinched him, he wouldn’t wake up and talk. She climbed into the cot with one of her old dolls for company.

Birds in the woods were a whole lot noisier than pigeons on the roof. In the woods they really let loose, a buncha them. So they’d get them all up all right. Cousin Bobby would unzip himself out of his sleeping bag. Sonny probably slept wrapped in the counselor’s extra blanket. And probably slept in his drawers ’cause he didn’t do the laundry. The sight of them stumbling around groggy made Kofi smile in the hollow of his pillow.

There’d be a creek nearby for washing. A good camper always found
a spot to bed down next to a creek or something. That way you just get up and jump in. But sometimes the big guys wouldn’t wash up. They wouldn’t say they were scared of the beetles and snakes and things. They’d say the water had germs. A good camper was supposed to have iodine crystals in his pack. They killed germs. Then you were supposed to let water boil a long time in the kettle before you added the powdered milk or the cocoa or eggs out of the box or whatever you were planning for breakfast. You made the counselor’s coffee in a spotted pot. Whoever was supposed to get up first and do breakfast was supposed to have crystals.

He had some foil sacks of iodine crystals, but Sonny wouldn’t talk up for him to go. Bestor Brooks always spoke up and looked out for his younger brothers, but Sonny only sometimes. And Kofi was a better camper than any a them. “Only the big guys, Kofi, just the big guys this time.” Sonny wasn’t all that big and still had to lie and say thirteen ’cause his birthday was coming up which the counselor was too lazy to look up in the book and catch him out.

Kofi propped his eyelid open on the corner of his pillow. Spider-Man was crouching between the mattress and the bedpost ready to spring. The Hulk had been hanging on the ladder, but he’d fallen down a long time ago, one of them times when she woke him up and made him go over everything again like it was his fault Sonny didn’t mind. And like it was his fault he didn’t know how to look Sonny’s friends up in the phone book. How should he know what Flyboy’s name was, he didn’t hang out with them. “When you’re older, kid, and develop a voice and some style, you can hang.” Sonny was a better singer, but he was a better camper.

Kenti was awake. She had her petticoat smoothed out at the foot of the cot. She’d found some clean socks, but she was going to wear her bathing-suit bottom for panties. He had to laugh. She looked over and thought he was laughing at her doll. She was squeezing its rubber head to make it do ugly faces.

“Mama drinking again, Kofi.”

Kofi roamed his eyes over the bookcase in back of her cot. The paint sets looked crusty. Sometimes they’d go off to the woods to paint, like when Sonny went on a cookout or a bus trip and Kenti would nag that everything was boring and quiet. She would mean McDonald’s or
Stuckey’s with her greedy self. But Ma would make like the best place to go was to the woods with paint things. Sometimes it was just the three of them. But if Big Dave went, they’d drive in his station wagon as far as the approach trail to Appalachia.

“Hear what I said, Kofi?”

He closed his eyes. There were lots of good things to see in the woods, but he didn’t like her pointing things out all the time like she was teaching class over at the Neighborhood Art Center. He had eyes, he could see for himself. Sometimes she’d make a big fuss about how smart he was because he didn’t need paints, he’d squash berries or smear bug juice on the watercolor paper. He didn’t need a brush, he’d break off a bunch of ferns and dip them into puddles looking greenish gold down by the creek. He could almost feel her hand warm on his shoulder. She’d be bragging on him and he’d do a good painting. But sometimes Big Dave would start in, saying she bragged too much on her children and wasn’t firm enough. Then he’d wish Sonny was there ’cause Sonny got Dave straight.

“You wake. I see you smiling.”

“Quit it.”

Kofi sank down deep in the mattress and returned to the woods. One time when they were bottling rinse water for the brushes, there was a scuffling over past the reeds where the frogs had flattened them down. Then he heard this weird witchy laughing, but before he could go see, she threw out her arm like she did driving and coming to a stop. It was a loon. They got to see it but they had to follow her walking squat like they do in the army.

It was a big bird with a tiny head and bright colors. It had a goose neck and a white stomach and it was rearing up and flapping its wide, big feather wings. It was cackling like a crazy person. And all that cackling made it clumsy. It wasn’t the wings but the feet that got the bird going. Once it got itself together it skied off across the water then lifted, its neck stuck straight out. It was calling and calling, only now it was a pitiful sound. “Lonesome” was his sister’s two cents.

On the drive back it was one of those lectures like they were her students and she was teaching about nature. The only interesting part was that flying loons sometimes took a shiny wet highway for a lake and tried to land. And one time, when Dad came by to get them because he
was driving to Chattanooga to see one of his Omega brothers, there was a dead bird spread out on 95 so he said it was probably a loon looking for water. Dad was cracking his gum and nodding while Kofi told all he knew about loons. Dad didn’t interrupt and when he had finished, Dad talked about how he liked water. Said the ocean was one of his favorite things to be on. Then Sonny leaned over from the backseat and said how come Dad was living in Atlanta if he liked the ocean so much. Then Dad said he didn’t think he’d be living in Atlanta much longer. And the whole car got quiet and Kenti didn’t even yell out when they passed a Stuckey’s.

“Girl, would you be careful!”

“We told.”

Kenti stepped in front of Paulette, who had turned to yell over to Mean Dog to shut the hell up. Kofi was shoving the door back with his chin. His key was in the lock. The lanyard he’d made in day camp was around his neck, choking him.

“You sew in your sleep now?” Lanky Paulette approached, stooped over, snapping her fingers under Zala’s nose. “If you’re dying for stitches, come down to Emergency on Saturday night like everybody else.”

“We told.”

“Everybody heard you.” Kofi took the long way around to the kitchen.

Zala felt herself lifted up, a cool hand on her forehead.

“Raise up, girl, ’fore you sew your face to the table.” Paulette clicked off the bulb and twisted the skin around on Zala’s arm. “Hmph,” she said, then pulled Zala’s left arm away from the needle.

“We told Aunty Lette,” Kenti said, trying to scratch her head through her Easter hat.

Paulette hiked her thumb toward her house. “Should I get my first-aid kit?” She cupped her mouth and called out toward the backroom. “ ’Cause somebody around here sure is asking to get his behind tore up.”

“Save your breath,” Zala sighed, the room swimming together. “He’s not back yet. He and Bobby are expected at five o’clock.”

“Is that five o’clock Sonny time or five o’clock standard time? Take my advice, girl, call the cops.”

Zala looked at the welt on her arm. “I don’t call the police on my children, Paulette.” The welt was beginning to blister.

“Not ‘on,’
for
. He’s out there and some maniac’s running around—” Paulette interrupted herself. “Hey, how about getting your poor old aunty something to drink?”

Zala reached out to help Kenti off with her hat. The elastic was biting into her neck. But Paulette pulled the girl into the folds of her dress and eased off the bonnet, tickling Kenti under the chin.

“Don’t you bring me none of that diet soda they got you drinking over here. And no, I don’ want skim milk either.” Paulette made a face and Kenti giggled and squirmed but kept clinging. “I’ll have whatever your mama’s drinking.” Paulette mugged a peek into Zala’s glass.

“Tea.” The glass had sweated against the pincushion.

“Tea. Right.” Paulette shooed Kenti away but she kept coming back, butting the tall woman and burying her head in the yards of beige silk.

“Plain old tea, Paulette. It’s just tea.”

“Take it easy. I was just kidding with you.”

Paulette walked Kenti backward toward the kitchen, her tickling hands locked under Kenti’s elbows. “Whatcha got in there for poor ole Aunty Lette?”

“You not old,” Kenti said, flirty. “Want some iced tea?”

“None of that cloudy stuff you guys brew up around here. Give me something I can see through.”