Read Online Grace by Natashia Deon - Free Book Online Page B

talk to her. A man, a customer, is standing next to both of ’em with no shirt on.
    â€œDidn’t you hear me call you!” Cynthia say to me. “Get me some towels.”
    I go to the cupboard inside the room, can see Bernadette shaking now. She got throw-up on the front of her dress and in her brown hair. She ain’t much older than me. Cynthia found her at the train station with no money, no food. Been here two months working but she cain’t stand no man touching her if she ain’t had her medicine. Cynthia make it for her by mixing coca leaves in a shot of whiskey. Said Bernadette cain’t live without it. It’s the only thing that stops her from rubbing her arms and from being afraid of the dark, and men, and makes her yes come easier.
    â€œWhat’d you do to her, Jessup!” Cynthia asks that man.
    â€œI swear I ain’t touched her, Cynthia. I took my shirt off and she started screaming hysterical. I swear it!”
    â€œI told you she wasn’t ready to come off it,” she tell Sam.
    I hand her the towels.
    â€œDamn if I don’t have to go back to that apothecary every month for you.”
    Cynthia wipes Bernadette’s face. Her hair. Bernadette whispers something.
    â€œI’m sorry,” is what I think she said.
    â€œOh, you will get off it!” Cynthia say. “This ain’t a drug den and you ain’t staying here free. Sam, watch her ’til I get back.”
    Cynthia gets up and starts past me through the door. She stops. “And you don’t go nowhere but upside this house working ’til I’m back. You hear me?”
    â€œYes’m,” I say.
    T HIS MY GARDEN .
    My piece of life.
    When I’m in, I feel like it belongs to me.
    That’s how I pretend. How I know I belong someplace. ’Cause one day, we’ll all be dirt again.
    I fill my apron with all my vegetables. Two sweet potatoes. An onion. I don’t move when a shadow slides across the ground in front of me. I’ve learned to ignore the fools who taunt me here—name calling, cursing, and those that hide in dark corners.
    I hold tight to the sides of my pregnant apron, close my eyes.
    He touches my shoulder.
    I still don’t move. I hear his footsteps come around in front of me. Just Johnny. The eight-year-old boy that Cynthia dance with. Her son. He squats down beside me with his hands on his knees. Got painted clay marbles peeking between his knuckles like dry fish eyes.
    Sunlight floods his red hair and bursts an orange halo around his head while joined-together freckles start a stripe of brown across the center of his face, exploding in specks of auburn and sticking to all the white skin I can see. Even his bare feet are singed.
    He picks up my sweet potato, flashing three of his knuckles, all of ’em got picked-off scabs. He puts the vegetable in my hand.
    I don’t know what to say.
    I hold my throat, show him I cain’t talk to thank him, nod my head instead.
    He rubs his tired eyes. The bags underneath ’em are purple and black. Like he ain’t slept in days. Cat naps is all he get and when he’s behind the bar asleep on the floor, he’ll shoot straight up awake sometimes,probably reliving his daytimes in his nightmares—because daytimes is when most the men come for his momma. Men, he cain’t stop.
    I saw him attack a grown man once.
    I came in from fetching eggs; started my day in darkness and found him waiting like a cowboy at high noon. He had readied hisself for the man to come out his momma’s bedroom, had his painted clay marbles between his knuckles then, too. He caught me watching him so I smiled. He turned away from me, focused.
    I hid myself behind Bernadette’s door. From there, I watched the boy watch the man through the crack of his momma’s door. Her noise-making wasn’t motherly. Only the parlor music that spilled in the hall offered relief.
    But when Man finished his