The Day of Small Things Read Online Free PDF Page A

face and a dead babe wrapped in her apron.”
    “Had they took sick or—”
    “That was what Mommy wanted to know, was it the summer complaint. Lots of babies dies that way when ever drop of milk they take just runs right through ’em, is what she said, but Aunt Alva said no, she herself had seen those dead babies and each and every one was as fat as mud. Hit just looked like they’d stopped breathing.”
    I suck hard on a lemon drop, letting the sour-sweet spit make a big pool in my mouth before I swallow it. Then I ask, “Why’d she want to keep having them babies iffen they was just all going to die on her like that?”
    Lilah Bel looked at me funny. “Why, don’t you know nothing? Married ladies just naturally have babies.”
    Lilah Bel is all the time letting me know that she is ten years old and goes to school, while I am only nine and ain’t never been nowhere. I pick up one of last year’s swiveled-up apples that’s laying on the plank floor and chunk it at her.
    “I don’t see what’s so scary about this dumb story.”
    “You let me finish, you’ll see. Or maybe I hadn’t ought to tell you the rest for it truly is the awfullest thing.”
    She makes like she’s not going to say no more and starts turning the pages of the old wish book we have up here. Sometimes we play a game of picking out what we like best, but I know she’s going to tell me the rest of the story, so I just wait and suck on my lemon drop.
    Pretty soon Lilah Bel points to a picture of a baby dolllaying in a little basket. “There was three more of that lady’s babies died and ever time it was the same: all the folks coming round, bringing food and making over her and folks at church praying for her on Sundays and at Wednesday night meeting too. But my Aunt Alva’s mamaw suspicioned something and the next time that lady had a baby, why, Aunt Alva’s mamaw she went over there and offered to stay with them and help out. She stayed there for a week and the baby was still living and she stayed for another week and the baby was still living and finally after three weeks, Aunt Alva’s mamaw begun to think that the danger time was past and she could go back home.
    “So she put her things back in her grip and was ready to be on her way but first she thought she’d step into the other room where the mama and baby was and take her leave. So in she went, just a-tippy-toeing in, quiet as ever she could, so as not to wake the little un. And there she seen the most dreadful thing …”
    Lilah Bel stops and goes to looking through her candy for a peppermint drop. I poke at her with my bare foot.
    “What? What did she see?”
    Lilah Bel looks at me funny again and pinches her mouth together. “I’ll tell you the rest but then you got to tell me something scary.”
    I can’t think of aught scary to tell her but I nod my head and we hook our fingers together for a promise. Then she stands up and reaches for the hem of her skirt. She folds it back and I see that she has got one of her mama’s great long hatpins jobbed through the cloth. She pulls it out real slow and holds it where I can see it good. Then she bends down and picks up that little apple what I had flung at her.
    “Maybe you don’t know it,” she says, “being as you’re the least un in your family and ain’t been round no babies, but when they’re born, new babies all have a soft spot on the top of their little heads. When Woodrow was born last year, Mommy showed me hisn and let me put my finger on it real gentle-like. I could feel the beat of his heart on that soft spot and it went up and down, up and down.”
    Lilah Bel is talking slow and whispery and making her eyes big. There is goose bumps coming on my arm and my mouth has gone all dry.
    “You got to be very, very careful,” Lilah says, staring hard at me, “that nothing don’t hit that soft spot for it could kill the baby.”
    I sit up and swallow hard. I want to stop her from telling the rest but I