Cutler 1 - Dawn Read Free

Momma?" he asked.
    "No," she said. She took a deep breath. "I'm too old and tired to have another baby," she whispered and shook her head.
    "You're mad at me, ain'tcha, Jimmy?" Momma asked him. He was so sullen, I wanted to kick him. Finally he shook his head.
    "Naw, Momma, I ain't mad at you. It's not your fault." He swung his eyes at me, and I knew he was blaming Daddy.
    "Then give me a hug. I need one right now."
    Jimmy looked away and then leaned toward Momma. He gave her a quick hug, mumbled something about having to get something outside, and then hurried out.
    "You just lay back and rest, Momma," I said. "I almost have the dinner all made anyway."
    "Dinner. What do we have to eat? I was going to try to pick up something tonight, see if we could charge any more on our grocery bill, but with this pregnancy and all, I clean forgot about eating."
    "We'll make do, Momma," I said. "Daddy gets paid today, so tomorrow we'll eat better."
    "I'm sorry, Dawn," she said, her face wrinkling up in preparation for her sobs again. She shook her head. "Jimmy's so mad. I can see it in his eyes. He's got Ormand's temper."
    "He's just surprised, Momma. I'll see about dinner," I repeated and went out and closed the door softly behind me, my fingers trembling on the knob.
    A baby, a little brother or sister! Where would a baby sleep? How could Momma take care of a baby? If she couldn't work, we would have even less money. Didn't grown-ups plan these things? How could they let it happen?
    I went outside to look for Jimmy and found him throwing a rubber ball against the wall in the alley. It was mid-April, so the chill was out of the air, even in the early evening. I could just make out some stars starting their entrance onto the sky. The neon lights above the doorway of Frankie's Bar and Grill at the corner had been turned on. Sometimes, on his way home on a hot day, Daddy would stop in there for a cold beer. When the door was opened and closed, the laughter and the music from the jukebox spilled out and then died quickly on the sidewalk, a sidewalk always dirtied with papers and candy wrappers and other refuse that the wind lifted out of overflowing garbage cans. I could hear two cats in heat threaten each other in an alleyway. A man was shouting curses up at another man, who leaned out a two-story window about a block south of us. The man in the window just laughed down at him.
    I turned to Jimmy. He was as tight as a fist again, and he was heaving all his anger with each and every throw of the ball.
    "Jimmy?"
    He didn't answer me.
    "Jimmy, you don't want to make Momma feel any worse than she already does, do you?" I asked him softly. He seized the ball in the air and turned on me.
    "What's the use of pretending, Dawn? One thing we definitely don't need right now is another child in the house. Look at what we're eating for dinner tonight!"
    I swallowed hard. His words were like cold rain falling on a warm campfire.
    "We don't even have hand-me-downs to give to a new baby," he continued. "We're gonna have to buy baby clothes and diapers and a crib. And babies need all sorts of lotions and creams, don't they?"
    "They do, but—"
    "Well, why didn't Daddy think of that, huh? He's off whistlin' and jawin' with those friends of his who hang around the garage, just as if he's on top of the world, and now here's this," he said, gesturing toward our building.
    Why hadn't Daddy thought of that? I wondered. I had heard of girls going all the way and becoming pregnant, but that was because they were just girls and didn't know better.
    "It just happened, I guess," I said, fishing for Jimmy to give his opinion.
    "It doesn't just happen, Dawn. A woman doesn't wake up one morning and find out she's pregnant."
    "Don't the parents plan to have it?"
    He looked at me and shook his head.
    "Daddy probably came home drunk one night and . . ."
    "And what?"
    "Oh, Dawn . . . they made the baby, that's all."
    "And didn't know they had?"
    "Well, they don't always make