We the Animals Read Online Free PDF Page B

said, and without even a second's hesitation our mother grabbed his bowl and smashed it onto the linoleum.
    And still the phone rang.
    Ma dismissed us, and Manny went and shut himself up in our room, so Joel and I headed down to the crawlspace, where we sharpened popsicle sticks into points, preparing for war. Footsteps were amplified in the crawlspace, voices muffled, and the phone didn't exist at all.
    Paps finally arrived home, and they made thunder, stomping above us, chasing each other, tumbling furniture. Their screams and curses reached us not as words but as soft, blunt rhythms. One of them finally got in the car and left, then nothing, silence, except for the light scraping of a broom.
    We climbed farther back in the crawlspace, as far as we could go, to the cinderblock wall. We found a heap of relics, a patchwork purse with fake, crackling leather, a broken typewriter, and our old yellow phone. Joel spun the dial.
    "Ring ring," he said.
    I used my thumb to hear and my pinky to speak.
    "Hello?"
    "Mami, how come you don't answer the phone when I call you?"
    "'Cause you sound so ugly!" I said, and we bust up laughing.
    I grabbed the phone and called him.
    "Yo, yo, whassup."
    "Woman, this is your husband talking to you right now, you better act right."
    "What do you want from me?"
    I stared at the receiver in my hand; I couldn't think of anything to say, so Joel took the phone and called me instead.
    "Hello?"
    " Dígame, Mami," he said. "Talk to me."
    "I been missing you, at work, them long-ass hours, I been missing you real bad."
    "I know, Mami, I know."
    We both hung up; we weren't really laughing anymore, weren't really looking at each other, but we were smiling. After a pause, Joel called me.
    "Hello?"
    "I got a job!"
    "You got a job? "
    "Yeah, baby, everything's going to be real fine from now on, just real fine."
    We both hung up, but I called him back right away.
    "I'm sorry."
    "Nah, baby," Joel said. "I'm sorry."
    The next time Joel called me, I made my voice sexy.
    "Hey, you," I said.
    "Hey yourself," he said, and we both hung up, blushing.
    I called Joel.
    "Hello?"
    "What are we gonna do?"
    "What do you mean, 'What are we gonna do?'"
    "It's just going to be like this forever?"
    "No, baby, it's not going to be like this forever."
    "So what are we going to do?"
    "Well, we'll do whatever it takes, I guess," Joel said.
    I was confused about who he was pretending to be.
    "What does it take?"
    "I'm not sure yet." He stretched the cord like a bow and arrow, then let it fly.

You Better Come
    N OW THAT PAPS had returned, he wanted to be with us, all five together, all the time. He herded us into the kitchen and gave us big knives to chop up the onions and cilantro while he picked through the dried beans and boiled the rice and Ma chatted at him and smelled the air and sent us winks.
    After dinner he led us all to the bathtub, no bubbles, just six inches of gray water and our bare butts, our knees and elbows, and our three little dicks. Paps scrubbed us rough with a soapy washcloth. He dug his fingernails into our scalp as he washed our hair and warned us that if the shampoo got into our eyes, it was our own fault for squirming. We made motorboat noises, navigating bits of Styrofoam around toothpicks and plastic milk-cap islands, and we tried to be brave when he grabbed us; we tried not to flinch.
    Ma was leaning over the sink, peering into the mirror, pulling out her eyebrows and curling her eyelashes with shiny metal instruments. "Be gentle," she said without even looking at him, without even blinking her eyes.
    They were both topless; Ma was in a flesh-colored bra and heavy cotton work pants, and Paps had taken off his shirt to wash us. We saw everything—how our skin was darker than Ma's but lighter than Paps's, how Ma was slight and nimble, with ribs softly stepping down from her breasts, how Paps was muscled, the muscles and tendons of his forearms, the veins in his hands, the kinky hairs spreading across his