A Matter of Souls Read Online Free PDF

not to wince. She smiled and said “No ma’am” so sweetly that Mama Vee’s breath seemed suddenly sucked away, and the wide-hippedqueen of the house stood angrily rooted to her spot as Hazel sashayed away.
    Hazel knew that save for her dark skin, she was the spitting image of Mama Vee. Did her father’s mother resent her as some kind of bitter reflection?
    Hazel was turning that surprising idea over in her mind when she entered the kitchen and slipped into her chair. Her mother gave her a quick, harried nod from the stove, and sisters buzzed everywhere, distracting her from her grandmother’s whys and wherefores.
    Velma Jean was their mother’s shadow, stirring with the same long nut-brown hands; easing out and around their mother as they placed serving dishes on the table in a perfect rhythm. It was their supper dance.
    Violet, whose attitudes were in every way the same as her namesake’s, shook her mane of thick brown curls, sucked her teeth impatiently, and began instantly to rearrange the plates her twin had only just set down. They used to be identical, but no one understood how Violet had become so skinny and sour over barely seventeen years.
    Miriam had already scrunched her small self into her chair at the far end of the crowded table. She smiled her round, suntanned face up at Hazel from some library book that she was deep into reading. And from the back porch, everyone could hear Baby George slamming and stomping off her basketball and boy scents before she came in and boldly denied both.
    My happy family, Hazel thought. Someday I will havemy own and love it as much as this one. Me and Johnson Caesar Johnson. Mrs. Hazel Mozella Reed-Johnson …
    â€œHey, Brown Sugar!” Daddy shared his gap-toothed grin with her, and she felt her shoulders relax.
    â€œHey, Daddy.” Hazel raised herself to give him a peck on the cheek. He looked tired, the way any man who worked three jobs to support all his women would. As Hazel sat back down, she wondered for a fleeting moment if JC would look tired too, one day. He already had as many jobs as her daddy did, and she wanted a magazine-perfect house and two or three children with it!
    â€œGuess what?” Baby George came breathless beside Hazel, swinging her chair around backward to perch on it. Her face was glowing golden with a pink hint of excitement, and the fat black braids she had wound up tight around her head looked like the crown of some wild, happy queen—or king.
    â€œWe beat the pants off them Garret Farm boys, fifty-five to thirty-two!”
    â€œI hope you don’t really mean that!” Hazel laughed and poured her father a full glass of sweet tea. She still wasn’t sure if her sister—who wasn’t actually the baby—carried on this sports craziness because she wanted to be around the boys, or because she wanted to
be
a boy. As Velma Jean often whispered, the jury was still out on that.
    â€œLord, girl! Set that chair straight!” Mama Vee had made her way into the room. She shook her head and turned to set the big platter of chicken in front of Daddy.
    â€œGood thing Jurdine has to work tonight!” Miriam said, eyeing the chicken cheerfully and sliding her closed book onto her lap.
    â€œIf it wasn’t for Jurdine, we wouldn’t be having no chicken,” Violet murmured. Hazel couldn’t tell if her sister thought that was a good or bad thing, but she didn’t ask her to clarify. Nobody wanted Violet to get started. “Pontificating” was what Miss Clotille called it.
    Daddy motioned to Baby George without speaking, and she sheepishly rearranged her chair and herself, giving him a one-sided grin that was gapped like his. Whether their mother had known it or not, she had certainly marked what she’d thought was her last baby and hoped-for son. When another girl had popped out into Daddy’s hands on the kitchen floor, Mama called her George anyway. And