Somebody's Someone Read Online Free PDF

try and stop ’em from coming in no way; I just let the tears fall as they pleased and listened while my heart moaned in quiet.
    After shaking her head, and swearing words of
“puta”
and
“cabrona,”
Mrs. Perez led me into her kitchen, where she handed me a wet paper towel and kept one for herself. Most of the welts was real swollen and too painful to the touch, so Mrs. Perez tried to be as gentle as she could. Goodness gracious, the more I looked at me, the more my mind couldn’t make sense of the whole thing. All I could see was that one minute I was home and now I wasn’t. I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong. The tears kept sliding.
    “Shh,
mija.
It’s okay. Shh,” Mrs. Perez whispered to me. She took my head and leaned it on her chest and petted me like a baby. It made me cry harder and want for a mama I didn’t have. I felt the wind take my breath and draw it in real deep as Ruby’s name echoed in my mind. It sounded like somebody inside me was screaming from a far-off place. I don’t know why, but something inside me always called her name whenever I cried.
    It seemed like Mrs. Perez was home alone, ’cause Theresa was nowhere in sight. Secretly, I was happy. I didn’t need my friend to see me all torn up like this. I figured it would sho’ ’nough scare her half to death.
    “Whatchu gonna do,
mija
?” Mrs. Perez asked me, the skin above her eyes raised high. “Ju cain’t go back dare.”
    Again, the water hose welts started to sting and remind me of where I had just come from. I wanted real bad to stay with the Perezes, but I didn’t know how to ask if I could. Anyway I didn’t wanna stay too long just in case Lula decided to come looking for me so she could finish me off. I just knowed that nothing in the world could make me wanna go back home. I realized for the first time that when I left Big Mama’s I never thought past getting to the Perezes’. And now that I was here, I had to worry ’bout what to do next. As I let Mrs. Perez’s question sink into my mind, I quickly started to go through all the folks I knowed that might be interested in me. There was only one other grown folk who I could think of that didn’t live out in south Austin, but I was scareder than the dickens to call her up.
    As I thought ’bout it, ever so slowly, I began recollectin’ the face of the nice ole lady who’d come out to the Thornhills’ to tell me she was my real peoples and she wanted to get to know me. The first time I met her I was playing “Ole Mary Mack” with one of my play cousins, and she rode up our driveway in a big brown car. I’d never seen a car that big b’fore. I tried not to pay much mind to her ’cause I didn’t wanna mess up my game, but I couldn’t help but take notice that she had the largest, shiniest forehead I’d seen in all my life. The way she wore her hair, all pushed back off her face, brought to my mind the man who sits on the front of a dollar bill—except she was black. Even while she got out her car, I never stopped playing “Ole Mary Mack,” I just kept a lazy eye on her. My game was gettin’ good.
    “Hey, Gina, I was eavesdropping and heard Big Mama talking to the lady who came in that nice car. The lady say she yo’ gran’mama.” Carl, Big Mama’s youngest gran’son, came running towards me with a mouth full of other people’s business.
    “You a damned lie,” I hollered at him—mad for making me mess up my game.
    “No I ain’t, neither. I did hear ’em say that. You just wait,” he insisted, then licked his tongue out at me and ran off. I’d later learned that Carl was tellin’ the truth.
    “Odetta Fontaine.” I surprised myself by speakin’ aloud.
    Not waiting for me to answer her question, Mrs. Perez had picked up a ball of cornmeal from a bowl. She looked over at me as she started smashing pieces of the dough between her hands.
    “My so-called daddy’s mama,” I explained, hoping Mrs. Perez could understand me. I say so-called