Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara Read Free Book Online

root-beer barrels and stuff, only it cost two cents ’stead of five. Uncle Dave was a good talker when it came to movies. They’d go to the Ashby movie house and have Milk Dud fights and Goober wars since stuff was cheaper then. Sonny would be listening and laughing up in his nose somewhere because it was funny, Mama being a girl with Jujubes stuck in her teeth.
    But then Uncle Dave would get to the part when Grandmama Lovey married Widow Man and everybody moved to the Dixie Hill Apartments, only before the move, Widow Man’s twins ran off to join the movement and Mama got sent to live with Great-Aunt Myrtle in New York. And that’s the part Mama didn’t want to hear about so much, ’cause she’d stop sorting groceries and say over her shoulder “All right now, Dave.” But he’d keep on going, talking about people in New York thinking they so hot but not as hot as they think specially if they didn’t even come from New York but came from some nowhere place south of Atlanta and meaning Daddy. And Mama would be shaking too many bread crumbs into the canned salmon, saying, “I’m warning you, Dave, you better cool it.”
    But Dave never did when he was doing that story. Then he’d get to the part where Mama was making up things to tell Great-Aunt Myrtle and Mama would slam down the bread-crumb can or whatever she had in her hand. Then he’d laugh and puff out his cheeks and round out a big belly with his hands even though his own stomach was pretty biganyway. And Mama wouldn’t be saying nothing, her hands lost in the bowl with the salmon and stuff, and not moving, because this was always the part where Sonny would jump bad, and never mind that who he was jumping at was a grown man and was bigger than Daddy.
    And Friday was the worst fight, and by the time she got to the kitchen, Dave was up out of his chair looking like Daddy do with his card friends and he fixing to slam down a good card and run a Boston. And Sonny was out of his chair with his neck swole up and they calling each other jive turkeys and Uncle Dave telling Sonny he’s going to wind up in the juvenile and Sonny saying where he get off hanging around our mama and they so close leaning across the table they got to be spitting on each other. And Uncle Dave said, “Little nigger, I’ve loved your mother longer than you’ve been alive.” That did it. And the table couldn’t take it.
    Mama don’t allow the N word in her house and she don’t allow nobody to pick on her children neither, so she’s trying to put Uncle Dave out, only he’s so big she couldn’t get a grip nowhere on his body so she started shoving with her hip, but he didn’t budge at all. And Kofi calling himself the karate champ start doing the iron fist of death and there was just time for her to climb the step stool and dive on Uncle Dave’s back while Kofi chopped and Sonny was trying to get past Mama and haul off.
    That was just how she’d tell it when Daddy came by. She’d show how she got on Uncle Dave’s back and rode him all the way to the door, Mama yelling, Dave laughing, but how hard it was to pull her fingers off from round his throat. She wondered if her daddy would laugh, or if he’d go all quiet with rocks in his jaw.
    Kenti moved up close to get a good look at her mama. From the kitchen archway, she’d looked like a little child sleeping all crooked on the couch, one arm in the bathrobe.
    “I smell gas, you?”
    Not even the eyelids moved. Sometimes she slept with her mouth loose and Kenti could wake her by touching her bottom lip. But her mouth was like the mail slot in the door.
    “You get sick, you know, sleeping in gas.”
    Kenti opened the door a crack. “I can’t move your feet, Mama.” She opened it some more, until it touched her mother’s shoes. Then shehooked the screen in case of burglars. Mailman didn’t come on Sundays, no way.
    Kenti looked across the street to the only house on Thurmond that was three floors high. Aunty Paulette’s