Mare's War Read Online Free Page B

blubbed worse than Feen, up there crying about how Miss Ida don’t never let herdo anything. She told me I should go, though, and she could go with me. Said all you gotta be is one hundred pounds or over, free of responsibilities, and twenty years old. Even Miss Bébé knows I am not hardly no twenty, but she says Mama wouldn’t have to do nothing but sign and I could still go. Miss Bébé says she just knows
my
mama wouldn’t hold me back from doing my “duty.”
    I ask her if colored girls going, and Miss Bébé said yeah, yeah, colored girls are going.
    Huh. I’ll just
bet
they got colored girls there. Got to have someone wash up and cook and fetch and carry for the women’s army, same as for the men’s.

    Feen got put in charge of the Sunday school Christmas play. She’s been working every day after school, making robes for the Virgin Mary and sitting up working the treadle on the sewing machine all evening till I get home. Mama’s been getting on her about how she’s strainin’ her eyes inside sewing all the time and she better get up and feed the chickens and not get too prideful about sewing for her play. Feen feed the chickens, all right, but she do it so early they haven’t gone to roost, now. She do it real quick and get back inside, like she scared of the dark. Feen stay in the house right next to Mama, but she don’t go to bed now till she see me home. She don’t say nothing, but since Toby been back, she’s been crying every night.
    She sits in the front room with all the lamps lit. Feen thinks Toby won’t do nothin’ in the front room with the lamps on. She’s smart, Feen is. Thing is, Toby ain’t dumb.
    That’s all right. Marey Lee Boylen ain’t dumb, neither. This so-called uncle Toby keep messing with us, he’s gonna find out a thing or two about just how dumb it is to think he can walk in here and take what he wants.
    He’s back, but now I’m ready for him.

4.
now
    “You didn’t tell your mother?” I blurt the question before I stop to think about it. Mare’s story has made the hairs on my arms prickle.
    “Sometimes folks don’t want to hear things,” she says shortly. “You can talk till you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not talking to the right person, it won’t do you any good.”
    I think about this for a while, chewing the inside of my lip. If Dad died, no way would Mom not want to hear if some guy was bothering us. No way would any adult I told not believe me and help me. I look out the window and change the subject.
    “You started working for Miss Ida when you were fifteen? Full-time? How come?”
    Mare makes a face and pushes up her sunglasses. “Lot of girls my age had to work,” she says. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Great Depression? Mama needed an extra pair of hands to make ends meet. We needed every cent we had to pay the mortgage, and with the farm and all, we were betteroff than most. Folks did what they could those days to keep food on the table—”
    “You couldn’t have been
that
poor,” Tali interrupts. “Dad always says we don’t have any money, but we always do. It’s just he doesn’t want to buy me a car.”
    Mare glowers. “A girl your age ought to have had two jobs by now. What makes you think your daddy’s got to buy you a car anyway? Why don’t you get a job and buy it yourself?”
    “I would,” Tali says coolly, “but I can’t work since I’m spending my summer with you. And anyway, I’m getting good grades, so I can qualify for scholarships. Mom and Dad promised they’d help with either college or a car, and I
need
a car.”
    Mare clicks her tongue in disgust. “You ‘need’ a car. You don’t know what need is, Miss Tali.”
    My sister mutters something under her breath and looks out the window. I know what Mare thinks of us. I guess I never considered it, but I do have my own computer and my own room. Not only did Mare have to share a room with her sister, but when they were really little, they shared a