Playing With Matches Read Online Free Page A

surrounding flesh, and her hair was a Brillo pad.
    If she hadn’t been such a mix of irritations and disgusting things, I might have felt sorry for her. Instead, every Sunday, I endured her whining and tried not to watch her pull her dress from her crack. When it looked like Bitsy was about to make a comment, Miss Shookie backhanded her, smack in the face, no matter that she had a mouthful of mushrooms and cream sauce. Thus, it was normal for Bitsy to make one unholy mess, and she ate with a dish towel tied around her neck.
    “Sister,” Auntie said, “are you aware that your daughter stinks to high heaven?”
    Miss Shookie lifted her chin and replied, “What you are smelling is those damn prison pig farms ’round here.”
    “Shit,” said Auntie.
    “Exactly,” said Miss Shookie. “Have you know my baby girl uses my homemade deodorant.”
    “Lord, that’s right,” Auntie said. “Damn stuff simmers on your back burner till it rots.”
    Aunt Shookie’s deodorant was made from sheep’s fat, melted to a wax that was applied directly to the skin.
    “Everybody knows,” Miss Shookie said, “that deodorant is only meant to block the sweat glands.”
    “Bullshit, sister,” Auntie said.
    Miss Shookie wound up. She waved a large serving spoon and demanded to know— now that they were comin’ to speaking of it— why Auntie had never wedded and bedded some upstanding church man.
    Auntie said they weren’t coming to speaking of it, but now that Shookie mentioned it, why hadn’t she up and married Bitsy’s father?
    Then Auntie looked embarrassed, and to ease the tension, Uncle Cunny told a joke—a good one about three horses, a piece of string, and a beer. Bitsy laughed so hard she peed her pants, and Miz Shookie had to suds them at the sink. She carried on about what a small bladder her daughter had, but she laid into that washboard and was mad as hell.
    While Uncle Cunny sat with his bottom lip between his teeth and his head in his hands, Miss Shookie stretched Bitsy’s unders on the line, with six clothespins to hold them. I’d never seen such enormous drawers. I was embarrassed for Bitsy for more reasons than one.
    I’d heard Uncle Cunny say Bitsy was aiming to be as stout as her mama. If she would slim down and adjust her attitude, he said, the girl might make something of her life. But I’d seen Bitsy kissing boys behind the church, one time letting a Farm guard lift her skirt. I held less hope for her than Uncle did.

6
    O n Potato Shed Road, my best friend was Claudie Maytubby, one of a family of thirteen, living mostly on food stamps, government cheese, and brown beans. Claudie was round of face and sturdy of body. She was black as a raven’s wing, her hair short and four-pigtailed, and her two dresses were plaid and coming apart at the seams. I loved her dearly, but more—I coveted her.
    Unfortunately she was double twin to her sister, Eulogenie, who had one arm. Those girls had come into this world with only three arms between them. They were joined together from one wrist to belly button like a French chorus line. Claudie was the bigger, tougher one while Eulogenie was smaller, with finer bones, shaved-back hair, and tiny teeth. Miss Shookie said that at some time in the womb, Eulogenie had drawn the short stick.
    “After we was born,” Claudie told me one day, “we got too big to be carried around, joined up as we was. Mama dreamed she heard Eulogenie saying, ‘Go on, Mama, and give this here arm to my sister.’  ”
    I watched Claudie’s big pink tongue move around in her mouth. “People came and wrote us up in their magazine. Then adoctor took us to Montgomery and cut us apart. We didn’t share no internals, so that weren’t no problem.” She draped the coveted arm around her sister. It had a wrist and hand and five normal fingers, and underneath was the scar.
    “After,” Eulogenie said in her little voice, “they put us in two cribs.”
    Claudie said, “Eulogenie cried so bad,