Playing With Matches Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t there, like she didn’t count.
    She was so pretty. Her eyes were big and round and green, and she kept touching Denver Lee, like she needed to feel something familiar under her hand.
    When dinner was done, and I’d thanked Miz Maytubby for letting me join in, Denver Lee said he was going down the road to visit old friends, and he’d be back directly. Lucille’s skin went so pale, she looked almost blue.
    All the boys tore out the door.
    The rest of us moved around the kitchen like I reckon women have for a million years. When Alvadene handed out dish towels, Lucille didn’t get one. Nobody let her pour up the peas or wrap the last square of corn bread. Lucille sat down on the floor and tucked her legs under her, set to play with the babies, but Alvadene scooped them both up and took them off to bed. Claudie took over the washing, passed me a towel, and I dried the dishes and stacked them by the drainboard. Eulogenie put them away. Lucille rose from the floor, and with one hiccuping sob, ran out the back door.
    They all stood, looking at the linoleum. I put down my towel and headed out too. I saw the door slam on the outhouse, and I sat down in the grass to wait. Time went on, but the door did not open.
    “Miss Lucille?” I called. “You got to step out sometime.”
    “No, I don’t,” she said.
    “That’s one nasty outhouse. Denver Lee will come back, and you’ll smell like shit.”
    She opened the door.
    “I greatly admire your yellow dress,” I said.
    She looked me over, causing me to brush a crumb from my shirt and retie one sneaker.
    “I don’t understand,” she said to me. “White girl, what are you doing here?”
    “I’m friends with Claudie.”
    She sighed. “I’m wife to their oldest boy—”
    “I know.”
    “—and I just wanted to play with the little ones.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over on her rouge. “I hoped they’d all like me, especially his mama. I tried to be polite.”
    “You were,” I agreed. “Although you didn’t eat much.”
    “How could I?” she said. “It’s like I was carrying some almighty disease.”
    I smiled with one corner of my mouth while I searched for something to say. “They were excited when they got Denver’s letter, saying he was married.”
    She looked at her sandals, at the hard packed ground. “I told Denver Lee to explain, that it wouldn’t set right. This is Mississippi and—well, they weren’t expectin’ him to bring home a white woman.”
    “Just give them time.” I got up to leave.
    “Wait!” she said, the word sharp on her tongue. “You got any more advice?”
    “Well—I can tell Genie already likes you.”
    “Oh. The skinny little thing with her mouth hanging open?”
    I nodded. “That’s her. And Claudie’ll take to you. Look, Denver’s mama will be back in the bed now. Go on in, ask how she’s doing, can you get her anything.”
    “I don’t know—”
    “Then get you some cool water, sit out on the porch, and wait for Denver Lee. Go on, now.”
    “What’s your name again?”
    “Clea June Shine,” I said. “I stay twelve houses down, at Miss Jerusha Lovemore’s.”
    “She’s white too? She your foster nanna?”
    Auntie was neither. The air had grown cool. “No, ma’am.”
    “Then how come she keeps you?”
    “My mama gave me to her. I reckon it’s bad manners to give back a present.”
    “Girl,” Lucille said with a small pink smile. “I bet you came tied up with a great big bow.”

7
    I t seemed like the right thing to do that day, it being too hot to come out from under the willow.
    Claudie came over, and we formed a plan. We would put on a show and do it up right, charging nickels and all. Three cents for the kids.
    “I can’t sing,” I told Claudie. “And I sure can’t dance.”
    “Hell you cain’t,” she said. “Anybody can dance, girl, just move with the music—like this.” She commenced to hum something surprisingly deep-throated, her shoulders rotating like broken