Mama by Terry McMillan Read Free Book Online

tear up each and every one of your black behinds. Now who did it?"
    "Not us, Mama," said Angel, holding Doll's hand. One of them always answered for both, as if they were Siamese twins, and they always agreed with each other. At six and seven years old, and only ten months apart, neither of them had opinions that weren't interchangeable.
    Money just stood there, knowing full well he was guilty.
    "Mama, we was just playing," he said. "I didn't mean to touch it, but Bootsey and Doll were chasing me and I bumped into it. I can fix it. Remember last time, Mama, when it broke, and I fixed it?"
    "All right. I want all of you to go into that bathroom over there. Get that soot off of you. Then I want you to march back up those steps, sit doWn on that sun porch, turn on that TV or get a book, and don't say two words to me or else I'ma be two minutes away from your asses. You understand me?"
    The girls ran into the bathroom. Money was used to this kind of thing: his sisters undressing and slamming the door in his face. He tried to fix the furnace while they were bathing, but it was really broken this time. When he heard them run upstairs, he made sure the bathroom door was locked and then he took his own shower. He loved his sisters, but sometimes he could strangle them for being girls. He had always hoped that the next one would be a boy, but no luck. While he took his shower, Money wished he could tell somebody how much he missed his daddy.
    By six o'clock, the beans were thick and simmered but the house had grown colder and colder. Mildred knew then that the furnace was in fact broken. She called to find out when the repairmen could come out to fix it but they told her not until the roads cleared up. When would that be?
    By eight o'clock the house was so cold the kids could see their own breath. They didn't want to leave the sun porch because they were watching "Get Smart," one of their favorite shows, but Mildred made them huddle in front of the warm open oven while they ate their beans and rice and corn bread. She wasn't hungry and just sipped on her last beer.
    Two days later when the furnace people finally came, they told her it would cost $175 to fix, and since it had taken her so long to pay last time, they said they couldn't even start the job without at least a $50 deposit. "Just have a seat, and don't go nowhere," she told them. Mildred closed her bedroom door and called Buster, her daddy. She knew she was his favorite, and if she could just get around Miss Acquilla, she wouldn't have a problem. Mildred's mama, Sadie, had died in 1958 at forty-eight from a heart attack. Out of all Mildred's sisters and brothers, she took her mama's death the hardest. For the longest time, Mildred thought God had betrayed her by snatching Sadie away from her the way he did. Two years later Buster had married Miss Acquilla. He had told Mildred he was lonely in that big old house with no woman. And during those two years before Miss Acquilla had moved in, Mildred had made Crook watch the kids while she took her daddy home-cooked meals, washed his work clothes, and cleaned up his raggedy house.
    Mildred and Miss Acquilla couldn't stand each other. Miss Acquilla didn't like the way Mildred could get anything she wanted from Buster, and Mildred didn't like Miss Acquilla because she was a selfish bitch, and reminded her of Ernestine: big, black, and evil. Ever since Mildred could remember, Miss Acquilla seemed to have had a head full of gray hair. She dipped snuff, too. But the main reason Mildred didn't like her was because she had married her daddy and ran him like a race horse.
    Buster didn't tell Miss Acquilla he was lending Mildred more money. He knew he'd never hear the end of it. He took his white handkerchief from the old trunk at the foot of his bed, counted out three twenties and a ten, hopped in his Buick, and drove directly to Mildred's. She had asked for seventy because the kids had caught colds and couldn't go to school. She had to