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

house. She made waffles Sunday mornings. But her car wasn’t parked out front. Not home from the hospital yet. Sometimes she took them to church in her uniform and looked just like the ushers carrying the collection plates down the aisle, one white-gloved hand tucked behind their back like they were letting everybody know they were honest.
    “Mama?” Kenti brushed against the shoes, but the eyelashes didn’t flutter. “You going to church this morning?” She bumped her hip against the sofa arm, then trailed her finger along her mama’s leg. “I can call Aunty Paulette later. She’ll take us. Should I?”
    Kenti leaned in close to make sure the gas hadn’t killed her mother. She blew on her face, and the lips loosened. Kenti drew back from the smell. Straightening up, she could see the Robinson yard through the curtains they had knotted together at the art center. Mean Dog was digging up the lawn over there with his nose. Chunks of grassy dirt went over his head and fell right on his back, then broke up.
    “Dopey dog.” But on her way back to her cot she was thinking that maybe Mean Dog needed company. It was too bad Buster was a cat and Roger was a fish. She wondered if Daddy would maybe get them a dog. She could walk the dog over to play with Mean Dog. Daddy would have to buy a leash in case Mean Dog played too rough she could yank her dog away. She tried to wake Kofi to see what he thought about it. But even when she pinched him, he wouldn’t wake up and talk. She climbed into the cot with one of her old dolls for company.
    Birds in the woods were a whole lot noisier than pigeons on the roof. In the woods they really let loose, a buncha them. So they’d get them all up all right. Cousin Bobby would unzip himself out of his sleeping bag. Sonny probably slept wrapped in the counselor’s extra blanket. And probably slept in his drawers ’cause he didn’t do the laundry. The sight of them stumbling around groggy made Kofi smile in the hollow of his pillow.
    There’d be a creek nearby for washing. A good camper always founda spot to bed down next to a creek or something. That way you just get up and jump in. But sometimes the big guys wouldn’t wash up. They wouldn’t say they were scared of the beetles and snakes and things. They’d say the water had germs. A good camper was supposed to have iodine crystals in his pack. They killed germs. Then you were supposed to let water boil a long time in the kettle before you added the powdered milk or the cocoa or eggs out of the box or whatever you were planning for breakfast. You made the counselor’s coffee in a spotted pot. Whoever was supposed to get up first and do breakfast was supposed to have crystals.
    He had some foil sacks of iodine crystals, but Sonny wouldn’t talk up for him to go. Bestor Brooks always spoke up and looked out for his younger brothers, but Sonny only sometimes. And Kofi was a better camper than any a them. “Only the big guys, Kofi, just the big guys this time.” Sonny wasn’t all that big and still had to lie and say thirteen ’cause his birthday was coming up which the counselor was too lazy to look up in the book and catch him out.
    Kofi propped his eyelid open on the corner of his pillow. Spider-Man was crouching between the mattress and the bedpost ready to spring. The Hulk had been hanging on the ladder, but he’d fallen down a long time ago, one of them times when she woke him up and made him go over everything again like it was his fault Sonny didn’t mind. And like it was his fault he didn’t know how to look Sonny’s friends up in the phone book. How should he know what Flyboy’s name was, he didn’t hang out with them. “When you’re older, kid, and develop a voice and some style, you can hang.” Sonny was a better singer, but he was a better camper.
    Kenti was awake. She had her petticoat smoothed out at the foot of the cot. She’d found some clean socks, but she was going to wear her bathing-suit bottom for