His Own Where by June Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

a paper bag. When she reach the building where her family live she feel a freezing terror. But she go inside. Her brothers and her sister have been sent away and so the house seem hopeless ugly.
    Angela sit down in the parlor on the couch. She waiting for her mother or her father when he will get off from working.
    She check the refrigerator. Find no food. No stuff for snacking. One piece of meat be frozen rocky. Bread seem rocky. Milk smell sour. Only thing available is beer. A couple six-packs and a saucer holding gray beans leftover.
    On the stove, a big pot bubbling steady full of peas and hambone.
    “Angela! What you doing here?”
    Her mother shut the front door and immediately call out.
    “Hello, Ma.” Angela leave the kitchen and walk into the parlor where her mother have snap on one of the big lamps no one hardly use.
    “They kick you out, or what?”
    “I’m just visiting for the weekend.”
    “Visiting! Hah. Freeloading be closer to the truth. They give you money? or do you expect that we will feed you for free?”
    Angela want to sit down and be deaf. Be dumb. Be blind. She have no heart to argue with her mother. She miss her brothers and sister. Now she realize she have no home. Her family be
parents beat you in the head or hate you. She mean the father mother family. Her sister and her brothers make another family where she love and care. Angela trying to think how she can come around the hatred of her mother. How she can have a home that be a happy place be better than the upstate “home” for girls.
    “Well, Miss Angela, you have in mind to sit on your behind and watch me slave a little bit?”
    “Oh, Ma. Look, if you want me to do something tell me straight.”
    “Now you criticize the way I talk?”
    “I only mean why we have to fight? Tell me what you want me to be doing. Period. I’ll do it.”
    “If you so smart about the way I should be talking you don’t need me to tell you nothing at all. For all I care you can go on and sit there, or stand upside down. I’m going out.”
    “Ma, you want me to go back upstate?”
    “You got yourself into that mess.”
    “Ma, Daddy put me in the hospital. He beat me.”
    “I don’t care what you do but do it out my sight. Don’t let me hear you say no words about your father.”
    “Ma, I be going back upstate tonight. Right now.”
    “Well, what you waiting for? You see anybody stop you?”
    Angela look at her mother long. She look
around the room. Small room. Big empty dust feeling to the furniture. Dust.
    Angela pick up the paper bag. Finally she take the housekey from her pocket. Put it on the television. “Okay, Ma, I’m going now,” she say. And Angela go. She leave for good.

fourteen
    angela hope buddy be home. They have plan for Sunday. But the day is now. Friday.
    She walk the avenue toward the subway and his house. Somebody come up from behind and hug around her close and large.
    “Hey, where you going Angela?”
    “See you.” She turn around and into Buddy arms. Repeat. “See you.”
    They quick discuss the scene. They figure that tonight be safe enough. The nuns think Angela be visiting her parents and her parents think that Angela be traveling back to Middlebrook. Things seem temporary cool. Both Buddy and Angela feel excited trembling almost almost ready for the liberation they have scheme together.
    “You have any money?”
    Buddy nod his head.
    “Maybe we should pick some food up.”
    “Okay. Let’s go buy some bananas, some potato chips, some ice cream, and some soda. What you want?”
    “I like a hamburger, some tissues and some soap.”

    “You need any of them—ah, what you may call female things?”
    “If I do, I get them on my own time, Mr. Rivers!”
    “Don’t say I didn’t ask you!”
    “Angela, what you think about this store?”
    Got burglar gates and great big locks. You can’t hardly go inside the place. Place be halfway burn. Ashes on the floor.
    “Look like a jail where food be taken out on