The Twelve Tribes of Hattie: Oprah's Book Club 2.0 by Ayana Mathis

Author:Ayana Mathis [Mathis, Ayana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780385350297
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

I OUGHT to pack up Ella’s things, Hattie thought. She rubbed her cheek against the smooth spot on top of the baby’s head where the hair hadn’t grown in yet. She stood in the doorway and scanned the street for Pearl and Benny’s Buick. Ella had gotten old enough to hold on to things with her fist—Hattie’s nose or chin or a lock of her hair. And she had learned to give kisses, though she kept her mouth open in a round O, suction kisses, August called them.

He was delighted with her, as he was with all of the children. He treated them like bear cubs at the circus, and they loved him for it. He let the little ones come into the bathroom while he shaved, and they watched him as raptly as they would a picture show. He taught them to whistle songs he’d heard on the radio. August was a buffoon, and they adored him; Hattie kept them alive, and they barely smiled when she entered the room. Hattie didn’t know how to be a different kind of mother. She squeezed Ella. Maybe with you I could do better, she whispered in her daughter’s ear. Maybe this time … But it was too late, everything was decided.

Ella closed her fist around Hattie’s earlobe and giggled. I ought to put her in her blue dress and pack her things, Hattie thought again. But the blue dress was for company or for outings, and they still had another hour together. Hattie decided to put the milk bottles out on the stoop. Maybe she’d sweep too, before Pearl arrived. Fallen leaves were thick on the steps, and Hattie’s was the only porch not swept clean.

Ella cooed at the butterflies flitting around the bushes near the porch steps. It was her first autumn. Hattie wondered what she must think of it or if she’d even noticed that the summer had faded into the burnt yellow and orange of fall. At least, Ella wouldn’t have to endure the northern winter. Hattie had never gotten used to it. She didn’t suffer from nostalgia—the South was gone from her—but the northern winter left her raw and heartsick. It had taken two of her children. Ella squirmed against her.

“Oh, it’s the butterflies you want,” Hattie said. She got a mason jar and captured two of them inside. She refused to look at the clock again but she was as aware of the time passing as she was of her own heartbeat. The butterflies, white as two slips of paper, flitted in the jar. Ella was transfixed. In the summer Hattie’s girls trapped fireflies. They ripped the glowing bits from the insects’ abdomens and put them on their fingers like rings. “Princess emeralds!” they shouted and ran down the block with the green glow paling on their fingers. Ella banged the butterfly jar with her hands.

“Ain’t that a purty sight? You poke some holes in that lid and put some grass in the bottom and they’ll live till sundown,” Willie said.

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