Slow Way Home Read Online Free

his easy chair.
    “You’re a regular silver fox.” We all laughed at Poppy, even Mary Madonna. The laughter made me feel light-headed. I thought of the colored pills Mama used to take whenever her nerves would run high and wondered if they made her feel the same way.
    “Oh, me,” Nana said. Her coarse gray hair was twisted in a braid and pinned into place on the back of the head. The first time I had one of the bad dreams, Nana came into my room with it all loose and hanging wild down her back. The stark whiteness of her hair, bathed in the blue moonlight that seeped in through the blinds, reminded me of a ghost. Before I came to my senses, I told her I didn’t like long hair. She laughed and wrapped her arms around me. The roll of skin on the side of her back was cushiony. “Sugar, it’s just part of my religion, nothing to be scared of. It’s my covering. The Bible says so.”
    Her callused hand squeezed mine, and she lay with me until the past rolled away and sleep returned.
    After the television was turned off, Poppy moved towards the porch-light switch, and Nana assigned beds. Mac would sleep with me, and Mary Madonna would take the sofa.
    While Nana searched for sheets in the hall closet, Mary Madonna twirled her damp hair and sighed. “I’d sleep on that old hard floor if I was you.” Cupping a hand to her mouth, she closed her eyes and smiled. “He pees all over hisself. Just like a little bitty baby.”
    “He does not, you farthead,” Mac said, and then quickly looked at me for confirmation.
    I shook my head and glanced at the blank TV screen, trying to lie without coming right out and doing it.
    Curling the edge of her lip, she let loose. “Don’t tell me. Mama Slow Way Home
    15
    said he wakes up like a crazy person. Screaming and spraying pee all over the place. Poor little thing.”
    That baby-sounding voice. Mama’s voice. Before I could help it, I snatched the brush from the coffee table and whacked it against her golden arm. She screamed, and Nana pulled us away from each other.
    “What in the world is going on in here?”
    Mary Madonna tried to fake-cry. “Ain’t you gonna spank him?”
    she moaned.
    “I tell you who I’m going to switch, the whole mess of you if you don’t get yourselves to bed. Now scat.” Nana waved her hand for effect, and Mac and Mary Madonna scattered. But I stood still as could be. Fury was one emotion I had mastered, and a play act was something I could detect by the slightest change in voice pitch.
    Hours later I rolled over to find the pillow missing and a wrinkled sheet beside me. Tiptoeing into the living room, I found Mac stretched on the old quilt, his hair spiked and legs twisted like a slinky.
    And at the edge of the hall I paused to look real hard at the black ro-tary phone. In a moment of weakness I glared and waited, staring until the white panel and black numbers blurred my vision like an early morning mist.
    The first time the school secretary called my name over the fat brown speaker box in Miss Douglas’s class, my heart began racing. Dewayne Pickings had reported that the principal used an electric paddle on him with no fewer than forty-five spikes in place for added torture.
    And seeing the brown cardboard that now replaced the lunchroom window, the same window Dewayne broke with a rock just because he wanted to see it shatter, I figured he was an expert on discipline.
    The hissing sounds from those around me didn’t help slow my heart rate, and I gave them a sneer as I stuffed the denim bookbag Nana had made me.
    But at the front office there was no electric paddle, not even the principal for that matter, only the school secretary, who sold pencils 16
    m i c h a e l m o r r i s
    and pads of paper each morning, and Poppy. After he explained that I had an important appointment, I watched Poppy write unsteady letters that spelled his name across a white pad. My chest swelled when I read the name in Poppy’s scratchy penmanship. After I was