Mississippi Sissy Read Online Free

grabbed some napkins and, still kneeling, cleaned the man’s shoes. “Sorry. He’s got a sensitive stomach. He’s a sensitive kid. He’s sensitive.”
    The two coaches ceased their laughter. They frowned at my father mopping up the vomit. “That’s okay, Ses,” said the man, lighting another Winston. “Shit happens.”
    My father turned to me. That recurring look of sad disdain he could deliver my way stopped my tears. He was even sadder than I was. Then, for the very first time, the sadness morphed into that more perplexed look of fear. I did not take my eyes from his. It comforted me to know that my father, who was afraid of nothing, was afraid of me. I unfolded my arms. I put my hands back on my hips. It was the last time I cried in his presence.
    ________________
    My father was thirty-two when he died. My mother, thirty-three, when cancer claimed her. I was eight. My brother, Kim, was six. Karole, our baby sister, had just turned four. “They called it cancer, but it weren’t nothing but a broken heart,” was the whisper that waftedwith enough velocity above our heads during the aftermath of my mother’s burial that it could have lifted my sister’s bangs with the draft it left in its wake. We had also to endure a plethora of fat-woman hugs. They enveloped us, one by one, these women, with their sagging folds of soft flesh, and scratched our already ruddy faces with the black woolen dresses they had had in their closets since those days they had patterned their wardrobes after Mamie Eisenhower. They exuded an assortment of fragrances: gardenia, vanilla extract, hairspray, Clorox, coffee, a bit of liquor, Lemon Pledge. The mere presence of Kevin and Kim and Karole in a crowded room back then—”KKK . . . ain’t that just precious,” was another whisper that always seemed to float about us—could elicit tears from total strangers as well as anything they had at the time in their pockets or snappy patent leather purses: Juicy Fruit gum, a piece of old peppermint, loose change, a handkerchief to wipe our noses. I was given a rabbit’s foot at my mother’s wake by a very tall man who explained to me that he had played basketball with my daddy. “You need this rabbit’s foot more ‘n me. Which one are you, Kim or Kevin? God knows you younguns need a string’a good luck. You’ve had a heap of bad. Too big’a heap. Look at me. Here I go again.
Fuck
.” At that, he began to cry. I ignored him and wondered what this new word was he had just uttered because Aunt Vena Mae, my grandmother’s older sister, shuddered at the sound of it and abruptly pulled me toward her. She was standing nearby, pouring a bit of Carnation evaporated milk into her coffee straight from its little can. I marveled at the word’s power, as Aunt Vena Mae’s fingers were actually trembling now with anger as she pressed me protectively against her raw silk dress, its tiny nubs rubbing against my face. Aunt Vena Mae always wore a chunky necklace which would bang against her latest astonishing brooch when she moved about. She pulled me closer to her. I heard the agitated clunk of her jewelry above my head. The silk nubs burrowed into my cheek. Something had just happened. Something other than funeralsand tears and the arrival of another plate of food to stick in the refrigerator.
Fuck.
I wanted to know a word like that, a word that could make something happen, one that could push death, if only momentarily, from such a room.
    The very tall man, saying, “Sorry, ma’am,” unfolded his body from its careful crouch next to me and walked away. I forced myself from Vena Mae’s grasp. She sipped her Carnationed coffee and assessed me with her stare, filtering me through all her meanness. Childless, Vena Mae flared whenever children were too long underfoot. “That’s just her nervous condition,” my grandmother