The Kid by Sapphire Read Free Book Online Page B

burning.
    “I’m thirteen!” He raises me up and slams me into the floor again. “You better do what I say.” I ain’t gotta do what he says. I gotta get home to my mother.
    “I ain’t gotta do what you say! I only gotta do what my mother and the teacher say.”
    “Nigguh, shut up! You ain’t got no motherfucking mother! She’s a crack-addict ho died from AIDS!”
    “BATTY!” Miss Lillie’s voice bust through the door. “Batty! Nigger, is you crazy! Get up off that boy! Get up off J.J. Is you crazy ! You done lost your motherfucking mind. He got to go to school! I said git off him! Well, I’ll be damned. He can’t go to school looking like that. Come on, J.J. sweetie, sit up. Batty Boy was just playing with you. He didn’t mean you no harm! I know how rough you boys are. Rough, honey! Yes indeed. Let me go get something to clean up this mess. And you FOOL! You better not lay a hand on him while I’m gone neither.”
    She come back she got latex gloves on like the hospital. “Come on, let me wash you up so you can come eat. You ain’ had no breakfast. Neither has Batty, that’s probably why he’s so irritable.” She wipes my face with a warm washcloth. “You alright, you got a little bloody nose and a black eye. If Batty ever ever lay a hand on you again, they won’t have to take him out of here, I’ll kill him myself! Don’t you worry, that’s why he’s here’cause I’m one of the few that can handle him.”
    She pulls my hand for me to follow her in the kitchen. Everything seems red or maybe everything is red, at least the tablecloth and chairs and kitchen cabinets. I can feel my eye swelling shut. My head is . . . feels like it’s broken or something.
    “What you staring at? You done seen a roach before. Good thing is they only in the kitchen. Some people got ’em all over. I gotta get the man back in here to spray.
    “Sit down, sit down.”
    She places a plate in front of me, it smells good. I didn’t know I was so hungry. It stings the cut on my lip! I push the plate away and lay my head down on the table and start to cry. “I wanna go home! I wanna go home! I wanna go home—” The tears is burning my eye and the cut in my lip.
    “Hush up, J.J., it’s over.”
    “I wan—” I can’t hardly talk. “I . . . go home.”
    “Hush, J.J., you is home.”
    I put my head back down crying. I don’t know where to go. If it was the olden days, I could run away to be with Crazy Horse, be a great warrior. Walk in moccasin shoes. I feel cold, I got my head down. I don’t see him or hear him, but I feel Batty Boy in the room.
    “Look at him! He can’t go to school like that! Goddamn you, Batty! Put your hands on him again and your simple ass is going to a group home or Spofford, hear! HEAR!”
    Loud as she’s screaming, he oughta be able to hear. Heeeaaar! HEAR! I raise up to look at Batty, like those dogs, can she control him. I’m surprised, he looks like a different person from a few minutes ago, bright and cheerful, smiling, not weird.
    “Soup,” he says.
    “What!” Miss Lillie says.
    “What! Smut! Some soup, that’s what!”
    “Good idea, Batty! You smart as a whip when you wanna be. Put him some soup in a bowl.”
    I’m looking at him, then it seems like he disappears, like everything disappears. The cabinets is turning from red to rainbows.
    “Here, drink your soup, J.J. It ain’t gonna burn you.” Batty Boy’s voice comes through the colors, sounds nice like a mother almost.
    Miss Lillie is putting some ice in a plastic bag against my eye. “You can’t go to school like this. I do know that. Lord have mercy! What you say to Batty to make him so mad? Here, hold this ice on your eye and finish your soup. Then when you finish you can come in and watch TV with me.”
    I look up at the wall, the clock is all twinkly with stars, but I can’t tell what time it is.
    “What you looking at? I swear you is the peculiar-est chile I done seen in a while.”
    “I’m looking