The Day of Small Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

mule. “How old is this huzzy?”
    Brother don’t say nothing and Mama laughs, a hard ugly sound. “You don’t even know, do you, son? Like as not she’s someone else’s leavings and she thought to catch her a man too young to know the difference betwixt spoiled—”
    Brother cuts in right quick. “Don’t, Mama. It ain’t no use you saying any more. I aim to marry her and bring her here. Iffen that don’t suit you, well, I reckon I can find another place to call home. I’ve worked for you since I can remember and tried to do right by you when all the others went off but, aye God, I’ll please myself in my wife.”
    I can hear the
thockety-thock
of Mama’s sharp knife against the board and I know that she is chopping up cabbage to fry with some hog jowl. She don’t answer Brother for the longest time. But then at last I hear the hiss of the cabbage hitting the hot grease and she calls out, “Least, hurry up with them roasting ears; the water’s a-boiling.”
    It is a Sunday afternoon when Brother brings his girl home to meet Mama.
    “And there ain’t no need for you to send Least off out of the way like you always do,” he said as he made ready to go down to Gudger’s Stand and meet the number eleven from Ransom. “I already told about her taking spells and why she don’t go to school and all—it don’t bother my girl one bit. She says she’ll be tickled to have her a little sister.”
    At midday me and Mama don’t fix no real dinner; wejust eat us an applesauce biscuit so that Mama will have time to finish up the three-egg cake she made this morning. She takes a knife and spreads the brown sugar icing acrost the top of the cake, making fancy patterns as she goes. I can tell that she has drunk some of her tonic because the end of her nose is pink and she is humming a song.
    Brother was surprised when Mama told him last week that she wanted to meet his girl and that she would make a cake. But he fixed it up just as quick as he was able afore Mama could change her mind. Brother has even paid Lilah Bel’s uncle to take his new truck to meet the train and bring them back to the foot of our road so’s Brother’s girl’ll not have to make such a long walk. Mama don’t know that part, and if she did, she would likely have something to say about it.
    Because Brother’s girl is coming, I have a new dress. Mama took some plain feed sacks and she boiled the white cloth with onion skins and roots till it come up the prettiest yellow you ever saw. And then she made a collar and little pockets out of some other feed sack cloth that had green and pink and purple flowers all over it. My new dress looks like it could have come from the wish book. I will be very careful not to spoil it.
    The cake is all done and setting on the table with a piece of cheesecloth over it to keep off the flies; Mama has had me lay out four of them little green glass plates that come in the boxes of oatmeal along with forks and glasses for each of us. I set them out first one way and then another.
    “Quit your fooling with them plates lest you break one,” Mama says.
    I am almost beside myself for this will be the first time I ever sat down with company.
    “I thank you for inviting me.” Brother’s girl looks at Mama and smiles real sweet. Her and Brother have walked up the road and clumb the porch steps and she is out of breath a little. The fancy shoes that make her walk on tiptoe are dusty.
    Mama don’t get up from where she’s setting with her Progressive Farmer magazine open on her lap but she nods and says, “Git you a chair and rest a spell.”
    Brother’s girl takes the little rickety chair next to Mama. Her dress is the color of peach blossoms—the fanciest thing I ever seen. I watch how before she sets down she runs her hand behind her to smooth her skirt against her bottom. She perches there like a butterfly, looking so fluttery and so light. I see Brother watching her and I think he worries she will fly