White People Read Online Free PDF Page A

grandfather and his shy-in-public wife. It was built to seat a family of ten, plus guests. I am alone here at my usual end. Mother, Daddy, Bradley, and I each have a whole side to ourselves and must speak up to be heard by everyone. Venetian blinds cross the dining-room window, and sunshine throws a laddered shadow straight across the walnut surface of the table. The round-ended bars of light rest there in a row, like giant versions of my own crayons.
    My brother and his friends are playing baseball in the front yard. They chant their jeers to various Episcopalian cadences. A few minutes back, a foul ball rattled off the roof. The grandfather clock in the foyer musically commemorates each and every fifteen minutes, however uneventful, and my crayon seems responsible for every drowsy sound.
    The surface of the table gives a sudden jerk, and the crayoned frond of the potted palm I’m drawing takes an unexpected twist. I look up and watch my handsome father seat himself at the far end of the table and spread his mail like a game of solitare. Crosshatched with sunlight, his white shirt is dazzling and reflected in the tabletop. From his favorite coffee cup, steam climbs. It twists and plaits itself up through the alternating stripes of sun and slatted shadow. He holds an envelope to the light and rips into it with one finger. With that same hand, he slapped me two days ago. It burned across my face and swiveled my whole head in that direction. I go back to my control of crayons. Maybe he’ll take his bills into the study and leave me here to excel privately at drawing.
    His voice startles me. “Why don’t you go outside and play with the others? It would do you some good.” I continue drawing. Indoor clouds rain blue and purple pellets on the houseplants. “Did you hear me down there?” “Yes sir.” “What don’t you like about baseball? Are you afraid you’ll get hurt or what?” I know I must say something. “I like drawing.” A pause. Still watching me, he drinks from his coffee cup. “But it’s summer, Bryan. It’s a beautiful summer morning and you’re seven years old and when—” “Eight,” I say, not looking up. “What?” “Eight years old.” “All right, then, eight, all the more reason. If you’ve got to draw on a day like this, what’s inhere that you can’t draw just as well outside?” All the floating clumps of leaves have sprouted pots. “I asked you a question. What do you find to draw, sitting in here like this?” A challenge. He thinks I don’t know. Most Imaginative of My Age, and he thinks I don’t even know what I’m drawing. Tell him an airplane, tell him an airplane. “You,” I say, despite myself. “Drawing me?” Why did I tell? Now he’ll want to see it. Casually, he glances again through his mail. “So, you’re drawing your dad, huh? Well, let’s have a look.” I note that he’s forgotten all about the baseball game. After slapping me two times in one week, he’s crazy if he thinks I’ll spend all morning drawing him and then get up and walk to the far end of the table and deliver it. He only notices my drawing when he wants to show that it’s a waste of time. I won’t let him see this. Absolutely not. Unless it’s that or getting slapped again.
    “It’s really not any good,” I assure him.
    “Let me see it.”
    “You won’t think it’s any good. You’ll get mad ’cause it’s not the way you really look.”
    “Bring it here.”
    “Well, I drew in the door and plants behind you, and I think you really have to see it from down here at this end, because this is where I drew it from.”
    “I can turn around and see those,” he says, peeved at conceding this. “Bring it here, Bryan.”
    I concentrate on the black crayon in my damp right fist. I study the picture itself. “Daddy,” I begin, definite. “I just don’t feel like you would … I don’t want you … to see it … yet. I’ll show you later, in a minute, later on.”
    “This is