The Dance Boots by Linda L Grover Read Free Book Online Page A

very generous with people; she had that reputation. She’d give you the shirt off her back, people said. They always talked that way, like they admired her, but I saw people take advantage of her, too, and she died poor, like a lot of other generous people. Not everybody is like Ma, but she didn’t care about that. I remember not long after we got home me and Sonny were sleeping on the front room floor after everybody was asleep, and we could hear these people, some friends of some of our cousins, in the kitchen. They were real quiet in there, with the door to the front room shut, making these rustling noises as they unwrapped food that they’d brought for just themselves. Here they were staying at Ma’s, and she made them welcome, and with her good manners offering them whatever she had—and that wasn’t much. Before everybody went to bed, they’d finished up the coffee she had on hand and ate more than their share of potatoes, so that there weren’t going to be enough for everybody for the next day, but Ma didn’t say anything because that wouldn’t have been polite. And there they were, eating, in the middle of the night there, all by themselves in the kitchen, and there were me and Sonny in the front room, still hungry, listening to them eat. Paper bags rattling. Chewing. Whispering.
    They got up early and left with their garbage so we wouldn’t know what they’d been up to. When I told Ma about it she said that was their own business and not ours.
    â€œWhy should they get away with that, those bums?” I asked.
    â€œMaybe they think they need it.”
    â€œMaybe we think we do, too.”
    â€œNot like that, we don’t.”
    And Girlie and Aunt Helen just nodded their heads in that way,saying in those voices that sounded like they were singing together, “Mmmm, hmmm,” to let me know that Ma was acting the way a person should.
    â€œIt was cookies, and doughnuts, and it smelled like they were eating dried meat, too. Next time they come here we should throw them out, those bums.”
    â€œPeople do what they do for reasons we don’t know about. They must need it more than we do.”
    â€œE-e-en za,” Aunt Helen added, “so I’ve heard,” which made Ma laugh.
    Ma lived long enough for me to buy a Buick and take her out driving and visiting when I came home, and she made sure that I took everybody else out who needed a ride, too. And let them borrow money. I bought her things I knew she would like, pretty things, a bowl with red and blue stripes painted on the outside, a statue of a little girl holding a flower, a blue powder box with a music box inside—when she opened the lid she could listen to it play while she powdered her face.
    I always worked hard, almost as hard as Ma, but I was somehow able to hang on to more of my money. It wasn’t easy; it took some compromises that sometimes I think she didn’t understand. But she always stood up for me when anybody called me a stingy-gut.
    Like I said, she died poor. Gave it all away. Give you the shirt off her back and died poor, like a lot of other generous people.
NIIBIN: MAGGIE IN SUMMER
    With the weather getting warm and people able to travel around easier, the house got pretty full, with somebody there to watch the little boys and keep them company while Maggie and Sonny worked: Girlie and George and sometimes Henen if it was a good day, or some of the cousins from Mozhay, who visited for an afternoon,or a week, or a month. Some nights there were people sleeping all over the place. They brought blankets and sometimes food with them and shared what they had.
    Maggie’s children slept on quilts that she had sewn during the spring on Sundays, her days off, while she watched Giizis and Biik play and roughhouse with Sonny, of pieces cut from clothing donated to St. Matthew’s and discarded by Father Hagen because it was too worn for wear. Sonny and George