All I Need to Get By by Sophfronia Scott

Author:Sophfronia Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Fourteen

My sisters and I share our old bedroom, amazed to find ourselves once again huddled in this space. We sit in there as we did then, trying to make sense of the world. But the plaster walls seem closer now, so that our problems seem humongous—too big for the room. Too big for us.

“I feel like a puppet,” Hazel says late one night as she lies on her back in the trundle bed still painted with blue stars and cows jumping over yellow moons. “I have never felt so helpless in my whole goddamn life.”

“Sugar, don’t we all?” Ella responds. “I had a hunch about all this, didn’t I, Crita? I knew it was gonna be this bad.”

I am sitting on the floor and I reach up to the desk and push an ashtray toward her. She is perched on the other side of the desk, at the open window, smoking and blowing blue clouds out into the warm night. With a yellow silk scarf tied like a headband around her hair, the long end pieces of the bow trailing over her left shoulder, Ella reminds me of a photo I once saw of Dorothy Dandridge. “Yes, you did,” I say. “And I’m sorry. Why don’t we come out and say that while we’re on the subject?”

“Humph, the less said about that the better,” Hazel says and I wince. “The issue here is what do we fucking do now?”

“About what?”

“What are we going to do about big brother?”

“Oh, hon, what’s he doing that’s so wrong other than eating us out of house and home?” With delicate fingers, Ella taps her cigarette in the ashtray. She’s right about that, too. Linc does seem to be eating his way through something, like he’s trying to stave off his demons, or whatever the hell is crawling around his psyche, with food. He devours hamburgers in twos or threes, donuts by the half dozen. At this moment I’m craving the comfort of the apple muffins baked that morning but I know they are all gone. Linc has eaten every last one. “Of course I don’t mind. Cooking to keep up with him gives me and Mama something to do other than worry ourselves into craziness, but to tell you the truth, I’m downright grateful that he’s here. One less thing to worry about.”

“All right, enlighten us, Ella. What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s not in the streets facedown in a ditch somewhere, that’s what I mean. With things the way they are, we’ve got to count our blessings.”

“Those bastard doctors only talk to him.”

“Oh, who wants to talk to some dumb old doctors anyway? They don’t even speak English half the time.”

“I asked Mama for her fucking checkbook.” Hazel pauses, but Ella and I are startled. “Not that way, of course, I mean I didn’t swear at her, but I have it just the same. I told her to make sure there’s no money in the house, and I have this.” She pulls down on the collar of her berry red T-shirt and shows us a key on a thin silver chain.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.