The Heart Does Not Bend Read Online Free PDF

looked into them. She fiddled with the matchbox, and the grasshopper tried to escape as she opened and closed the lid; all the time she looked straight at me. I didn’t like it one bit. I wanted her to be like Punsie, who filled our yards and our street with screams and laughter.
    “Open yuh mouth,” Petal commanded.
    “For what?”
    “Jus’ open it,” she insisted, the grasshopper dangling between her fingers.
    “Yuh is a mad gal!” I shouted.
    “Is brain food, it will mek yuh smart, and it taste good.”
    I was not convinced. “Who tell yuh dat foolishness?”
    “Mi see it on television, is brain food in America.”
    “Dat is nasty,” I said, disgusted.
    “Yuh like the treehouse?” she asked, and before I could answer, she told me I could climb the fence and use it whenever I wanted.
    “Yuh going to eat it now?” she pestered, knowing full well that I liked the treehouse.
    “Awright, only after yuh!”
    She pulled the right leg off the grasshopper and crunched it to bits between her teeth.
    “Mm-mmm,” she said, satisfaction all over her dundus face.
    She pulled off its other leg and waited patiently until I gathered enough nerve to open my mouth. Reluctantly, I bit into it. It was surprisingly crunchy and tasted almost like grass. We ate the rest of the grasshopper bit by bit. I never did tell Punsie and the others. I just said that we played games in the treehouse. I begged Petal once to let Punsie into the treehouse, but Punsie and the others had teased her too much in the past. For the next two years, until I turned eleven, Petal and I secretly ate live grasshoppers.

    Uncle Freddie had been gone almost a year, and he had never written to his mother or to Monica. He had sent Dennis shoes and a felt hat, along with a miniskirt for Monica and a pair of red booties for his baby son, a pair of pedal-pushers for Punsie and black patent-leather shoes for me. The gifts came in a Christmas parcel my mother and Uncle Peppie sent to our house. The first time Uncle Freddie wrote, it was to me. I’d just turned ten that August. I was playing marbles outside the front gate with Punsie and some of the boys from the street when the mailman rode up to our gate on his bicycle.
    “Mail from foreign, Molly!” he shouted. I scooped up the marbles I’d won and ran to take the letters from him. One was from Uncle Peppie, one from my mother and the last a birthday postcard for me from Uncle Freddie. Mama opened the two letters and separated out the two money orders, which she put in her bosom.
    “Yuh mother seh to give yuh a big kiss. She seh another parcel on de way.”
    I proudly showed her the birthday card from Uncle Freddie, with its picture of Niagara Falls. Mama’s face was glue tight, and she roughly asked, “Yuh can eat dat?”
    With that she rose from her wicker chair and stormed through the gate. I sat on the verandah, staring at her empty chair, then I crawled under the fence to Petal’s yard. I searched the grass under the treehouse for grasshoppers, found four and ate them like they were my last meal. I climbed to the treehouse and sat alone, confused by Mama’s response to the card. Petal joined me sometime later, and I let her fill my head with stories of America’s wildlife, which she’d watched on TV.
    It was pitch-dark outside when I crawled under the fence and back to our verandah. The house was empty. I waited in the dark, frightened of the bats that stuck to the ceilings. This was the first time Mama had left me on my own. Uncle Mikey soon came home.
    “Come here, Dutty Bus,” he said softly, using his special name for me. “What happen? Where Mama?” I began to cry as I relayed the story about the postcard.
    “Dat bwoy going to be her ending,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Yuh eat anything dis evening?”
    I shook my head.
    “Come let we mek a egg sandwich, and then we go find her. Don’t cry.”
    We ate scrambled eggs with hard-dough bread and a glass of milk, and then