Native Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

matter?” he asked, feigning ignorance.
    “Do what I asked you, will you, boy?”
    He went to the bed and helped his mother lift Vera. Vera’s eyes were closed. He turned away and finished dressing. He wrapped the rat in a newspaper and went out of the door and down the stairs and put it into a garbage can at the corner of an alley. When he returned to the room his mother was still bent over Vera, placing a wet towel upon her head. She straightened and faced him, her cheeks and eyes wet with tears and her lips tight with anger.
    “Boy, sometimes I wonder what makes you act like you do.”
    “What I do now?” he demanded belligerently.
    “Sometimes you act the biggest fool I ever saw.”
    “What you talking about?”
    “You scared your sister with that rat and she fainted ! Ain’t you got no sense at all ?”
    “Aw, I didn’t know she was that scary.”
    “Buddy!” the mother called.
    “Yessum.”
    “Take a newspaper and spread it over that spot.”
    “Yessum.”
    Buddy opened out a newspaper and covered the smear of blood on the floor where the rat had been crushed. Bigger went to the window and stood looking out abstractedly into the street. His mother glared at his back.
    “Bigger, sometimes I wonder why I birthed you,” she said bitterly.
    Bigger looked at her and turned away.
    “Maybe you oughtn’t’ve. Maybe you ought to left me where I was.”
    “You shut your sassy mouth!”
    “Aw, for Chrissakes!” Bigger said, lighting a cigarette.
    “Buddy, pick up them skillets and put ’em in the sink,” the mother said.
    “Yessum.”
    Bigger walked across the floor and sat on the bed. His mother’s eyes followed him.
    “We wouldn’t have to live in this garbage dump if you had any manhood in you,” she said.
    “Aw, don’t start that again.”
    “How you feel, Vera?” the mother asked.
    Vera raised her head and looked about the room as though expecting to see another rat.
    “Oh, Mama!”
    “You poor thing!”
    “I couldn’t help it. Bigger scared me.”
    “Did you hurt yourself?”
    “I bumped my head.”
    “Here; take it easy. You’ll be all right.”
    “How come Bigger acts that way?” Vera asked, crying again.
    “He’s just crazy,” the mother said. “Just plain dumb black crazy.”
    “I’ll be late for my sewing class at the Y.W.C.A.,” Vera said.
    “Here; stretch out on the bed. You’ll feel better in a little while,” the mother said.
    She left Vera on the bed and turned a pair of cold eyes upon Bigger.
    “Suppose you wake up some morning and find your sister dead? What would you think then?” she asked. “Suppose those rats cut our veins at night when we sleep? Naw! Nothing like that ever bothers you! All you care about is your own pleasure! Even when the relief offers you a job you won’t take it till they threaten to cut off your food and starve you! Bigger, honest, you the most no-countest man I ever seen in all my life!”
    “You done told me that a thousand times,” he said, not looking round.
    “Well, I’m telling you agin! And mark my word, some of these days you going to set down and cry . Some of these days you going to wish you had made something out of yourself, instead of just a tramp. But it’ll be too late then.”
    “Stop prophesying about me,” he said.
    “I prophesy much as I please! And if you don’t like it, you can get out. We can get along without you. We can live in one room just like we living now, even with you gone,” she said.
    “Aw, for Chrissakes!” he said, his voice filled with nervous irritation.
    “You’ll regret how you living some day,” she went on. “If you don’t stop running with that gang of yours and do right you’ll end up where you never thought you would. You think I don’t know what you boys is doing, but I do. And the gallows is at the end of the road you traveling, boy. Just remember that.” She turned and looked at Buddy. “Throw that box outside, Buddy.”
    “Yessum.”
    There was silence. Buddy