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

bail.”
    Angela answer nothing.
    Inside the store, they nudge each other when they see a roach slip by. Buy what they want. Buddy crumple up his dollar bills before he turn them over to the man.
    “Don’t be right to give them something green and pretty.”
    They run back to Buddy block.
    “Come on, come on, let’s get inside! We got one night.”
     
    Angela start laughing when she see the steps. Black and yellow just like Buddy wrote. They take them two at a time, two at a time.
    First thing Angela notice when she step in the door, she smell sawdust, airplane glue and paint. Angela just standing by the door, make her eyes roam around the house.

    Her eyes be roaming around the house.
    The house very surprising. From the street it look like a three-floor brownstone. The outside stone steps take you to the front door, and that front door take you inside. And then, the big surprising part of the house begin because you see no hallway. No hallway. There be indoor stairs lead to a third floor. The indoor stairs be part of the living room on the second floor where you be standing inside the house.
    The third floor be like a balcony, tore back from the downstairs living room and overlook that living room.
    Most of the living room reach from the second floor, where you standing, to the roof. And, in a funny place, not really in the center of the ceiling of the roof, there be a stain-glass skylight, blue and red and purple and plain light, high up in the ceiling/roof of the living room.
    So the house seem huge inside it. Huge and high. With the stairways zigzag on the side. Some of the steps unstained, unpainted. Maybe two piece of furniture in the living room. A easy chair. A portable TV.
    Plants of lumber lean against the walls, and one window almost floor to ceiling, with a brandnew sticker on the corner of it. The other window be broken brick by brick. And temporary cardboard block the air until the wall will hold a longer pane of glass.

    The wall be plaster rough. Some paper stripping curl toward the floor, and other parts be painted blue already.
    Angela feel like she walking in a magazine before the final photograph be taken of the house. Before everything be finish.
    No hallway. Angela stare hard to see a house where people live without a hallway. That mean every part of the house is real. It belong to somebody, and be part of how you live, not how you get to where you live, and be.
    Buddy calling “Come on, Sister Angela.” Buddy pound down the stairs, drop the package, and pound back up. “See how much weight you gain.”
    Buddy lift her to his shoulder, tell her, “Hold on.”
    Buddy walking tiptoe tremble, make believe the weight will kill him. Start to groaning. Groan all the way down the stairs, out to the garden, where he stand her up.
     
    “Let me watch you walking on the concrete. How you like it?”
    Angela see flowers not yet blooming any color. See the narrow pretty strip of path. A strong rose concrete way among the growing flowers. See the mud, the warm right earth, a natural brown.
    “Walk with me, Buddy.”
    “Not enough room, Angela.”

    “How can you make something so narrow, there be no room for two of us?”
    “I guess I didn’t think you come here, really.”
    “Dance with me, Buddy, then we can fit it.”
    Buddy move to Angela move to Buddy, like one person, moving on the concrete running red through the brown earth.
    “They be some hard buttons on your coat.”
    “Well, I’m allergic to the wool you wearing. How you like it?”
    “Here is really nice. I really like it.”
    “You want a soda?”
    “I like a soda, but I like to wash my hands and wash my face, and then I like to come back out here.”
    “It be dark soon, Angela, we can come back out here, maybe later.”
    Buddy think about tomorrow. But don’t even want to say tomorrow.
    “Buddy, where the bathroom? I never see a house like this.”
     
    Buddy bend down to the floor, hold a knob there. When he come up, part of