Freaky Fast Frankie Joe by Lutricia Clifton Read Free Book Online Page A

on a makeup formula that will blend into whatever you skin tone is—including birthmarks. You see, Nova’s interested in buying it if I can get it right.” She gives me a raised-eyebrow look. “And you know what that means?”
    â€œUm . . . what?”
    â€œIt means I can retire, live the good life!” She shakes her head. “Nothing else to do, I suppose, but make another batch.” She studies me some more. “So you’ve come home to roost, have you, Frankie Joe Huckaby?”
    â€œHome to roost?”
    â€œCome up here on this stoop,” she says, talking in a raspy whisper. “Can’t you see that I’m crippled up and it’s hard for me to come down there?”
    â€œI got to go home—”
    â€œAre you sassing your elders?”
    â€œNo ma’am.”
    â€œWell then, get on up here! Can’t be standing in the yard yelling our business at one another. Be all over this one-horse town before you can blink. People get in your business here. You don’t know that now, you’ll learn it quick enough.” She pounds her chest with her free hand. “Got to hold your business close to your chest.”
    â€œYes ma’am, I learned that already.”
    â€œAll right then. We’ll have a cookie, and you can tell me how you come to be back here.”
5:05 P.M.
    â€œWhy did you say . . . ‘back here’?”
    I shuffle into the kitchen behind Miss Peachcott—if you can call the room where I’m standing a kitchen. It’s more like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Beakers and funnels and test tubes take the place of mixing bowls and measuring spoons and baking pans. Jars and bottles of different-color powders and liquids clutter the countertops. Stacks of boxes in all the corners have pink labels marked NOVA stuck on their sides.
    â€œHelp yourself to a cookie,” she says, putting tubesand jars into a pink sack. “I have to make deliveries after I finish up these orders. This one’s for the widow, Mrs. Brown.”
    She stops working to look at me. “There’s one for the books. Woman was skinny as a beanpole before her husband died. Now he’s passed over, she’s fattened up like a pig.” She rolls the top down on the bag and picks up another one.
    I open cupboard doors, looking for cookies. More Nova stuff.
    She begins to put things into the second bag. “This order’s for
Miz
Bloom, that divorcee that’s tryin’ to look half her age. Can always tell a divorcee because she refers to herself as
Miz
. Not even I can help that one—and I have helped many a woman look half her age.”
    I open the refrigerator. No cookies.
    â€œAnd this order’s for that newlywed, Mrs. Barnes—pregnant already.”
    Oven. I take a chance.
    Woo-hoo
. I pull out a package of Oreos and help myself to two. Because the table and chairs are stacked with boxes, I stand in the middle of the floor.
    â€œYou said something before,” Miss Peachcott says, turning to look at me. “Did you ask a question?”
    I swallow the last of the cookie in a gulp. “ ‘Back here,’ ” I say, spewing crumbs across the room. “Outside there, you said something about me being ‘back here.’ ”
    â€œOh, yes. You’re supposed to tell me what you’re doing back here again.”
    â€œWell,” I say slowly, “I didn’t know I was here before.”
    Miss Peachcott’s eyes go round. “You don’t know that you were born here?”
    â€œI was born in Clearview?” I feel
my
eyes go round.
    In a blink, Miss Peachcott leaves off sacking up cosmetics and clears a space at the table.
    â€œMy goodness, child, I can’t believe she never told you where you were born. Why, your daddy worried about you something awful after you left. Of course, I’ve known him since he was knee high to a