Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

heads at him, hoping for crumbs, but he ate too tidily for that.
    The morning ritual soothed him: the milky smell of the coffee; the jammy, sticky doughnut. Two sips of warm, syrupy coffee
     to every bite of doughnut. He ate meticulously, being sure never to let the jelly touch his fingers. He’d been taught the
     virtues of cleanliness, and he practised them scrupulously. He would take small bites of his doughnut, then, with a little
     gulp, swallow each morsel whole, so that he wouldn’t have to endure the sodden mass of chewed food in his mouth. When he was
     finished, he would carefully fold the brown paper bag in half, then again, and once more, firmly creasing each fold between
     the fingernails of his thumb and forefinger. He always made sure to deposit the wad of paper and the empty coffee cup in the
     garbage cans with the heavy swinging lids: litter disgusted him. The sight of gulls rooting in open bins for stale french
     fries sickened him. He hated the quarrelsome, messy birds.
    In his mind, he had names for some of the schoolchildren, the ones who caught his eye. The small but boisterous little girl
     who loved to climb to the very top of the jungle gym, she looked like a Jenny, his jenny-wren. Some might call her plain,
     but he noticed the way her pigtails bounced saucily on either side of her head as she played. She often beat the boys at marbles,
     crowing triumphantly as she claimed all the best taws and aggies. He could watch her for hours. She must have bruised her
     knee last week; a fall, perhaps. All week, she’d worn a Band-Aid on the knee. It mesmerised him, the contrast between her
     strong, muscular brown legs and the pale pink of the Band-Aid. She was left-handed, and had a loud, joyful laugh.
    Then there was the thoughtful one. He’d christened her Samantha. She played happily enough with the others, but she liked
     to be alone, too. He could understand that. Samantha often sat nestled in the tire swing, one leg tucked up beneath her, the
     other trailing in the dust as she rocked gently back and forth, reading a book. She loved to read. He would squint at the
     covers from his park bench, but it was hard to make out the titles of the books. Samantha had straight, chin-length blond
     hair. As she read, she would trail some of her hair into her mouth. He often thought of her lips, sucking like that on her
     hair. There were other girls; Laura, Michelle, and Deb, or so he imagined their names to be. He never thought of names for
     the boys.
    He would watch the children romp and argue, play and fight and scream and laugh. They were lively, messy little things. It
     fascinated him that no one punished them for spitting, for farting, for letting their hair come undone. He would study them
     until the bell rang, then go to his job in the mail room of the local public library. It was routine, solitary work. It suited
     him well, he felt, the orderly routine of sorting the mail into its tidy cubbyholes.
    There was a spry old couple who usually took an early-morning walk in the park, a brisk stride along the paths that wound
     through the trees. They brought stale cake in greasy brown paper bags from a pastry shop, and scattered crumbs for the birds
     as they walked. Sometimes they sat on a bench near to his, enticing the birds to peck from their open hands. “Look, Thomas,”
     he heard the old woman say once, “that pigeon there; that’s old Helga, I’m sure, the one whose broken wing you set? She’s
     come along well, hasn’t she?”
    He took care never to make eye contact with the couple.

    City Central Library was a huge, squat structure, nine floors high. Two stone creatures guarded the steps to the entrance,
     a griffin and a sphinx, weathered wings outstretched in what had once been majesty. Now, their stern faces were obscured by
     the bird fæces that had been drizzled down their heads by the gulls that roosted there. He didn’t understand why the city
     went to such great lengths to