Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 60
ОглавлениеWhat you got there, gal?”
Before Easter could answer, Mama Rain snatched the notebook from her hands and held it high above her head. “Some type of diary?”
Easter tried desperately to grab the book, but Rain was tall and easily kept it out of Easter’s reach. “Give it here!”
Rain laughed, bringing the book toward Easter and then snatching it away again. “Give it here,” Rain mocked. “You always scribbling in this book. What you writing?”
“It’s my business!” Easter snapped as she made yet another futile leap for the book. “Goddamnit, Rain, you evil bitch, give it back!”
Rain’s palm came across Easter’s cheek with so much force that Easter stumbled backwards until she lost her footing and fell over, hitting the ground with a hard thud.
“You watch your tongue, you hear?” Rain’s voice was even, her green eyes narrowed to slits. “You don’t ever call me outta my name.”
Easter rubbed her stinging cheek. Rain spent a few more seconds glaring at her before she returned her attention to the book. Easter watched as she flipped through the thin pages, pausing every so often to stare intently at some word or phrase that had caught her eye. Easter watched and waited for Rain to see herself in those words in the pages and pages of passages. It was all about Rain, and about the smoldering love Easter had for her. The thirst was there too, blatant and screaming, aching and throbbing. She’d written about it in bold, dark letters. She would have written it in blood if she could have.
Rain finally closed the notebook and gave it one last thoughtful look before tossing it back to Easter.
“So what’s it say?”
Easter was bewildered. She’d seen Rain flip through pages of the newspaper as she sat sipping her morning coffee.
“Pardon?”
“I asked you,” Rain growled, eyeballing her, “what’s it say?”
“Ma’am?” Easter was still confused.
“Goddamnit, don’t ma’am me!” Rain yelled. “You poking fun at me?”
Easter scurried backwards. “No, I just thought—”
“Yeah, I know what you thought,” Rain spat before turning and stomping off.
Her ankle wasn’t broken, but it was sprained. The result of a cartwheel gone wrong that sent Rain crashing to the floor, where she lay stunned, her legs splayed wide open. The men in the audience leaned in and groaned with pleasure. Rain was not wearing any underwear.
In her tent, on her cot, between sips of white lightning, she moaned, cussed, and confessed that she was getting too old for that particular type of bullshit. Easter sat at her feet, listening quietly as she gently pressed the chunk of ice onto Rain’s bruised skin.
“I’m twenty-eight, you know, an old woman. I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she slurred as the flame of the oil lamp danced in her eyes. “I thought I was gonna be famous, but ’stead look at me, dancing and singing for niggers that got a day’s worth of dirt under their fingernails.” Her words were soaked with disappointment. “My mama probably turning over in her grave.”
Easter stared down at Rain’s pretty toes.
“What about you? What you wanna be? I know you don’t wanna be my maid for the rest of your life, do you?”
Easter shrugged her shoulders. Being with Rain for the rest of her life sounded just fine to her.
“I don’t know, haven’t really given it much thought.”
Rain turned the flask up to her lips and drank deeply. “Stand up, girl, raise your dress and let me see your goods.”
Easter turned a crooked eye on her. “What?”
Rain’s face went slack. “Well someone’s got to do it, might as well be you.”
“Do what?”
“For all the writing and reading, you just as dumb as a doornail, ain’t you?”
Easter blinked. She was completely lost.
Rain leaned over and peered directly into Easter’s wide eyes. “You gonna have to take my place in the show until I’m healed.”
Easter’s jaw dropped.
“Close your mouth, chile, this place full of flies,” Rain chuckled.
Easter knew Rain’s entire routine by heart, every hip-swaying, groin-thrusting boom-chica-boom-chica-boom-boom-boom move, but that didn’t mean that she could pull it off in front of an audience of sex-crazed sharecroppers. And furthermore, Easter didn’t have Rain’s curves—she was as flat as a board.
Nor did she find it easy to melt into the music, so her attempts at a lascivious bump-and-grind were appalling; in fact, she resembled an epileptic in the throes of a seizure. Comedy was not her intent, but it was the end result and the audience roared with laughter and threw pennies at her feet.
“You a clown, girl! A straight-up fool!” Rain howled when Easter chicken-walked off the stage and into her open arms. “It wasn’t me, but it was good!”
“You think so?” Easter was panting.
“Better than good,” Rain said, and then pressed her warm lips against Easter’s. It happened just that once but Easter would relive it a million times in her dreams.
