Legend of Buddy Bush (9781439131824) Read Online Free

long path and she looks so pretty as she give me the look.
    â€œLeave her alone, Mer. She just saying good mornin’.”
    Thank God, Grandpa is coming to my defense. Not that Ma is listening. She says Grandpa can’t raise her children. Now she says that to me, not to Grandpa. She don’t do no talking back to Grandma or Grandpa even if she is forty-eight.
    â€œFine, but we have to go.” Now she’s giving me the “I’m going to tear your tail up later” look.
    I ease out of the car and stand on the wet grass hoping Ma will let me go.
    Instead she starts giving me orders for the rest of the day.
    â€œNow you know you can’t stay home by yourself. Go on up to Ma Babe’s and I will come there when we leave Dr. Franklin’s.”
    That’s what Ma call my grandma, “Ma Babe.”
    â€œBut I haven’t taken my bath yet.”
    â€œYou don’t need a bath. You are going straight to the strawberry patch.”
    â€œBye,” I say as I wave.
    They wave back as Ma points her finger, saying something. Who knows what. I will have to talk to Ma later when Grandpa and Mr. Charlie ain’t around. I know she knows I’m becoming a woman and I’m getting too old not to wash up before leaving home. I don’t know when, but soon I know I’m going to get my period just like Denise and Sylvia at school did. Denise told me she was sick as a dog when Mother Nature came to visit her the first time. Sylvia said she didn’t hurt at all. Accordingly to the conversation I overheard between BarJeanand her best friend Boogie, Miss Doleebuck’s granddaughter, the only reason Sylvia didn’t hurt when she got her first period is because she had been messing with boys already. What a horrible thought. I think Sylvia might be a slut, too, like Mattie. Denise, Sylvia and me suppose to be best friends at school. But I like Caroline much better than both of them. We call her Chick-A-Boo. She lives right down the road. She is my real best friend. Those other girls are not like us. They are town people. They got more than two pairs of shoes and they have daddies. Beside, they spend all their time talking about boys. Uncle Buddy has already warned me to stay away from boys. He said they will give me worms. God forbid what that means.
    I just pray we move into a house with a bathroom before my period comes. I don’t want to use the outhouse for such personal matters. But I’ll worry about my period when it comes.
    Right now I just want Grandpa to get well. I feel like crying just thinking about Grandpa going to the doctor. Specially Dr. Franklin. Now Grandpa don’t know that I know this, but one day when Iwas fishing with Uncle Buddy over in Jackson Creek, he told me that Dr. Franklin and his brother Eddie, who is the sheriff, had mistreated Grandpa about thirty-five years ago. See, before the Holy Ghost came and saved Grandpa one Sunday morning at Chapel Hill Baptist Church where he has been attending for fifty years, he would go into town and drink in what colored folks called “the bottom” on Saturday nights. It was really an alley where the colored men would get together every Friday and Saturday night to play cards and enjoy their moonshine. Grandpa said he had a mason jar of moonshine too many when he decided to go home before Grandma came looking for him.
    Just as he tried to climb into his old pickup truck, the sheriff stopped him.
    â€œWhere you going, boy?”
    â€œHome, Sheriff Franklin. Just heading home.”
    â€œNot tonight, you ain’t!”
    Grandpa was more than willing to sleep the moonshine off in jail. But that old mean sheriff took it upon himself to hit Grandpa over the headwith his billy club before arresting him. Knocked Grandpa cold and threw him in jail. Uncle Buddy said Grandpa was convinced that Dr. Franklin, whose office was upstairs from the jail, knew he was hurt and didn’t come to see about him