Those Bones Are Not My Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

tank top chafed her underarms. She stepped back, the mirror out of danger. Her wraparound skirt hung uneven, limp. She had walked all the starch out of it and felt clammy. But she was not going to shower and change. Let him see she’d been up all night waiting, up all night and still wearing her shoes. Her arches ached and her soles burned, but she was keeping the sandals on for the height of the heels. Any minute now it would be eyeball to eyeball. And he was not going to get over on her, not this time.
    A whir and a whine made her turn toward the archway that opened onto the kitchen. But even as she looked at the fridge, she was thinking the sound might be herself, an overwound spring. She felt like brittleclockworks trembling near the shattering pitch. It was a car coming. The seams of her skirt pockets strained with the thrust of her fists.
    A car had turned into the street from Ashby. She backed up over the rug, grazing her hip on the table. The TV shimmied against the button box, the sour yellow of the sewing-machine bulb blinked. She planted herself in the middle of the room, her legs straddling the bald spot in the carpet. “Pushover,” she’d heard him tell his scatter-tooth friends. Let him try. He was not going to get by her this time.
    It was a car and not the van from the Metropolitan Boys’ Club. Its headlights strobed the panes in the door. The lights hit the hedges, the jade, the window-glass spaces in the macramé drapes before they shut off. When last she’d been out, marching up and down Thurmond Street, the jade had been shaggy inkiness behind blocky hedges of black. Now she could see three different shades of green in the yard, a network of browns, and a halo of mauve outlining the bush.
    It was morning. “Morning”: The sound of it fueled her fire. Twelve years old and out all night long. She pitched forward, her toes sliding out of the sandals and clutching at shag. She mouthed all the things she would say to him, all the things she’d been lashing together to flay him with since the day before when Kofi had shrugged and said “Went.” Sonny had actually gone to the Boys’ Club cookout when she’d told him flat out no, he couldn’t go. He was asking for it, and he would get it this time.
    The car pulled alongside her Bug out front, then swung wide. It cruised up the driveway across the street. She could hear Mean Dog yank on his chain. She shoved the drapes aside and dust sprinkled down on her arm. She added that to the boy’s crime sheet; he hadn’t vacuumed. The car went all the way up to the carport. No doubt Sonny was directing the driver far away to avoid a scene.
    It was not the camp counselor that got out, but Chaz Robinson. She couldn’t figure out how Sonny had hitched a ride home with their neighbor. Robinson closed the door softly and waved the thick Sunday papers at Mean Dog. He got a frisky welcome, the dog nipping his own backside, nearly twisting in half. Robinson held his finger up to his lips and the dog wagged his head, backed into the butterfly bush, then sprang forward, forepaws scratching at air. The yelping was muffled low in the throat. She could hear Robinson’s husky chuckle as he opened theside door and went in. Ears forward, Mean Dog waited, then dropped flat on the lawn. His tail beat the ground and petals spattered the walk.
    No one else was getting out of that car, she could see that. Mean Dog nosed his dish toward the walk as far as his chain would allow. The back of her throat thickened, but she waited. The dog dropped his head on his forepaws and slept. Maybe Sonny had been dropped off at the corner and was coming around the back way. She moved too quickly, barking her shins on the sewing chair. The choir robe fell to the floor in segments.
    “You stompin’ again and waking us up, Mama.”
    Zala swung her head in the direction of the backroom. Her hemplike braids swatted her cheeks.
    “Never mind what I’m doing, you two. Go back to sleep.”
    She