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

panties. He had to laugh. She looked over and thought he was laughing at her doll. She was squeezing its rubber head to make it do ugly faces.
    “Mama drinking again, Kofi.”
    Kofi roamed his eyes over the bookcase in back of her cot. The paint sets looked crusty. Sometimes they’d go off to the woods to paint, like when Sonny went on a cookout or a bus trip and Kenti would nag that everything was boring and quiet. She would mean McDonald’s orStuckey’s with her greedy self. But Ma would make like the best place to go was to the woods with paint things. Sometimes it was just the three of them. But if Big Dave went, they’d drive in his station wagon as far as the approach trail to Appalachia.
    “Hear what I said, Kofi?”
    He closed his eyes. There were lots of good things to see in the woods, but he didn’t like her pointing things out all the time like she was teaching class over at the Neighborhood Art Center. He had eyes, he could see for himself. Sometimes she’d make a big fuss about how smart he was because he didn’t need paints, he’d squash berries or smear bug juice on the watercolor paper. He didn’t need a brush, he’d break off a bunch of ferns and dip them into puddles looking greenish gold down by the creek. He could almost feel her hand warm on his shoulder. She’d be bragging on him and he’d do a good painting. But sometimes Big Dave would start in, saying she bragged too much on her children and wasn’t firm enough. Then he’d wish Sonny was there ’cause Sonny got Dave straight.
    “You wake. I see you smiling.”
    “Quit it.”
    Kofi sank down deep in the mattress and returned to the woods. One time when they were bottling rinse water for the brushes, there was a scuffling over past the reeds where the frogs had flattened them down. Then he heard this weird witchy laughing, but before he could go see, she threw out her arm like she did driving and coming to a stop. It was a loon. They got to see it but they had to follow her walking squat like they do in the army.
    It was a big bird with a tiny head and bright colors. It had a goose neck and a white stomach and it was rearing up and flapping its wide, big feather wings. It was cackling like a crazy person. And all that cackling made it clumsy. It wasn’t the wings but the feet that got the bird going. Once it got itself together it skied off across the water then lifted, its neck stuck straight out. It was calling and calling, only now it was a pitiful sound. “Lonesome” was his sister’s two cents.
    On the drive back it was one of those lectures like they were her students and she was teaching about nature. The only interesting part was that flying loons sometimes took a shiny wet highway for a lake and tried to land. And one time, when Dad came by to get them because hewas driving to Chattanooga to see one of his Omega brothers, there was a dead bird spread out on 95 so he said it was probably a loon looking for water. Dad was cracking his gum and nodding while Kofi told all he knew about loons. Dad didn’t interrupt and when he had finished, Dad talked about how he liked water. Said the ocean was one of his favorite things to be on. Then Sonny leaned over from the backseat and said how come Dad was living in Atlanta if he liked the ocean so much. Then Dad said he didn’t think he’d be living in Atlanta much longer. And the whole car got quiet and Kenti didn’t even yell out when they passed a Stuckey’s.
    “Girl, would you be careful!”
    “We told.”
    Kenti stepped in front of Paulette, who had turned to yell over to Mean Dog to shut the hell up. Kofi was shoving the door back with his chin. His key was in the lock. The lanyard he’d made in day camp was around his neck, choking him.
    “You sew in your sleep now?” Lanky Paulette approached, stooped over, snapping her fingers under Zala’s nose. “If you’re dying for stitches, come down to Emergency on Saturday night like everybody else.”
    “We