Black Tickets Read Online Free PDF

they’ve never seen, I could let them touch but no. I arrange their hands and feet, keep them here forever. Sometimes they tell me stories, they keep talking of baseball games and vicious battles with their friends. Lips pouty and soft, eyes a hard glass glitter. They lose the words and mumble like babies; I hold them just so, just tight, I sing the oldest songs. At times their smooth faces seem to grow smaller and smaller in my vision. I concentrate on their necks, their shoulders. Loosen their clothes and knead their scalps, pinching hard at the base of the head. Maybe that boy with dark hair and Spanish skin, his eyes flutter, I pull him across my legs and open his shirt. Push his pants down to just above his knees so his thin legs and smooth cock are exposed; our breathing is wavy and thick, we make a sound like music. He can’t move his legs but stiffens in my lap, palms of his hands turned up. In a moment he will roll his eyes and come, I’ll gently force my coated fingers into his mouth. I’ll take off my shirt and rub my slick palms around my breasts until the nipples stand up hard and frothy. I force his mouth to them. I move my hand to the tight secret place between his buttocks. Sometimes they get tears in their eyes.
    In the foster homes they used to give me dolls and I played the church game. At first I waited till everyone left the house. Then it didn’t matter who was around. I lined up all the dolls on the couch, I sat them one after the other. They were ugly, most of them had no clothes or backward arms. They were dolls from the trash, the Salvation Army at Christmas, junk-sale dolls. One of them was in a fire. Theplastic hand was missing, melted into a bubbled fountain dribbling in nubs down the arm. We faced the front of the room. I made us sit for hours unmoving, listening to nothing at all and watching someone preach.
    Uncle Wumpy gave me a doll. They call him that. Like his pocked face had rabbit ears and soft gray flesh. His face is pitted with tiny scars, his skin is flushed. We won at the carnival: cowboy hats, a rubber six-gun, a stuffed leopard with green diamond eyes for Kitty. We were on our way out between booths and machines, sawdust sticky with old candy and beer, to pick Kitty up at work. We passed the duckshoot. Wumpy was so drunk I had to help him with the gun and we drowned them all. Little yellow ducks with flipped up tail feathers and no eyeballs; they glided by hooked to a string. We hit them, knocked them back with a snap like something breaking. We hit twelve; the whole group popped up, started gliding by again as eyeless as before. So we kept shooting and shooting … The barker came out from behind the counter with his fat long-ashed cigar. He held it pinched in two fingers like something dirty he respected. Then he sucked on it and took the gun away. The crowd behind us mumbled. He thrust the doll into my arms. She was nearly three feet tall, pearl earrings, patent leather heels. Long white dress and a veil fastened with a clear plastic bird. I took the bird, I lit it with Wumpy’s lighter. Its neck melted down to a curve that held its flat head molded to its wings. I liked to keep the bird where no one saw it. Finally I buried it in a hole, I took it to a place I knew I’d forget.

    How I found Wumpy. I was twelve, I lived with Minnie. She made me work in the luncheonette, swab Formica tables with a rag. Bend over to wipe the aluminum legs, clotted ketchup. By the grill her frozen french fries thawed out limp and fishy. She threw them in sooty fat; they fizzled and jumped and came out shining. Her old face squinched like a rat’s, she was forty. Wore thick glasses and a red handkerchief on her head, liked the gospel shows turned up loud. One hand was twisted. She had the arthritis, the rheumatism, the corns, the bunions on her knotted toes as she walked to the shower at home. Hunched in her long robe, she fixed her eyes on the bathroom door. Scuttled clinching herself at