Seth and Samona Read Online Free PDF Page A

squeal.
    “Well …” Samona took a deep breath. “The reason I know what a wake is is on account of my aunt Delia’s wake that Nigel and Anthony got to go to last year.” Nigel and Anthony were Samona’s older brothers.
    “Your aunt Delia ain’t dead! She did my mother’s hair at the shop last week,” I said, frowning.
    “Course she ain’t, ’cause of the wake. Anthony told me all about it. There’s moaning and screaming and singing and everybody’s wearing black. Anthony said they was all grieving so hard Aunt Delia just woke up and started banging on the coffin and screaming for somebody to let her out. We all got our time to die, and this wasn’t hers. Anthony said it was a real good wake—’cause oftentimes the body just stays dead. That’s why you gotta make arrangements for the funeral, just in case they don’t wake up,” Samona said, sighing and snapping her bubble gum.
    Enrie’s mouth dropped open. “Really, Samona?”
    I let out a little laugh to show her that I wasn’t scared. “Stop fooling around, Samona.”
    But Samona didn’t smile one of her big grins or laugh or anything. She held up two fingers and crossed her heart. “That’s what Anthony told me.”
    Then she turned around and skipped out of the schoolyard, her sweat suit getting dimmer and dimmer with each hop, leaving me and Enrie to stare at each other.
    Morton’s funeral home in Mattapan Square did not seem one bit like a place where a dead person would be waking up. In fact, it looked like the kind of house I wish we could live in. It was two stories high with big windows. It was painted white with black shutters and it even had a little green lawn with a white picket fence around it. That was on the outside.
    Now I don’t believe in superstitions or evil signs and all. Finding out Mrs. Fabiyi was no witch doctor had cured me of believing in anything that I didn’t see with my own eyes. And I sure couldn’t put much faith in anything Samona said. But when puffy clouds the color of wet cement started rolling in just as Papi was driving Jean-Claude and Chantal and me to the funeral home that night, and when lightning all of a sudden lit up the sky like firecrackers, even I had to believe it meant something.
    I had been thinking hard about what Samona told me all day. I wanted to believe she was fooling, butSamona would never cross her heart and lie at the same time. And come to think of it, I do remember her aunt Delia being very sick last year. Manmi and Granmè had gone to visit her in the hospital. And all day I was remembering that movie Enrie and me had seen last month about zombies that came alive and voodoo stuff. Manmi was so mad when I told her about it. She sat me down and tried to get me to see that the movie was just twisting stuff around and that the people who made the movie didn’t know nothing about it in the first place. She said all that movie was about was distorting reality.
    But this was for real. Maybe it’s just me, but the way I figure it, if a body up and dies, they should make it their business to stay that way. Mrs. Whitmore was telling the class the other day that the world has a terrible population problem and that death was one of the few things that kept this problem from getting out of control. Then I started to feel bad ’cause I know how much Granmè loved her sister and I know how I would feel if Chantal died. I knew that I should pray real hard with everybody and hope that Matant Margaret would wake up and go back to the nursing home. But at the same time, I was not looking forward to this wake. Especially when I heard all the wailing before we even got up the steps.
    I could hear a low moaning sound coming from behind the door. Jean-Claude had to push me up those stairs. It sounded like a pack of dogs howling andmoaning in the middle of the night. I moved a little closer to Jean-Claude as the door opened up to a little hallway with a deep red carpet. At the same time, I heard a