The Return of Buddy Bush Read Free

they leave, me and Ma staying in the little bedroom off of the kitchen, because Collie sleeping in my room. Ma say they city folks and they need their own room so they can do as they please. Ma say they lazy and we got work to do. We do not have time to tiptoe around in the bedroom while they sleep late. She said we’ll be fine in the other room until they leave. I do not care where they sleep; right now, I’m looking in the chest again. The dead folks’ chest.
    I stick my hand down in the chest to the very bottom. I’m almost scared to look at what I pull out. But I’m looking. This obituary is sixty years old. It is for a lady named Nicey Lewis. That would be Grandma’s stepmomma. My grandma told me that her blood momma, Mae Fannie, died when she was born. Her daddy, GeorgeLewis, had to raise her by himself for a little while. Grandma said that she did not even have her ma’s breast milk to drink, just milk from the cow.
    Grandma said she was about two when her papa (my great-granddaddy), George Lewis, married this kind lady named Nicey Tann. That was her maiden name. Grandma said she was about ten before she realized that Grandma Nicey was not her real momma. It ain’t nothing her kinfolks told her. They from Rich Square and everything is a secret around here until you grown. Even when you grown, I think you get a piece of news here and a piece of news there. That is why the mason jar is so important in my life. I ain’t asking nothing. I will ease drop with my mason jar up against the walls until I get the truth.
    Now, this is the truth. I ease dropped and learned about my grandma one day when she was talking to Miss Doleebuck. Grandma did not have much schooling because she had to stay home and work in the fields. But on the dayswhen it was too cold to work, Grandma would walk to the schoolhouse up in town for a few hours. She said one day she was teasing a girl at school named Betty Sue about her half-pressed hair when Betty Sue just upped and got real mad and told Grandma all about herself.
    â€œYou think you is something special, don’t you, Babe Lewis. Let me tell you how special you ain’t. You don’t even have a real momma. My momma said that your momma is dead and that lady you live with ain’t your momma. Now how you like that, with your bow legs?”
    Betty Sue laughed at Grandma and poor Grandma said she ran all the way home crying loud and acting crazy.
    Great-Granddaddy Lewis was not home when she got there, but she told her Grandma Nicey what Betty Sue said. Grandma Nicey started to cry too and held her girl until her daddy got home from the cotton field around suppertime. That’s when they told her about her real momma, Mae Fannie.
    Mae Fannie got sick while she was giving birthto Grandma. So sick that she took her last breath when Grandma took her first. Grandma don’t know much else. She did say that Mae Fannie has a twin sister who is still living up in Baltimore and her name is Fannie Mae. She’s about one hundred years old now and she is blind. She don’t ever come to Rehobeth Road. But Grandma don’t visit her either. Grandma said, “What does being blind have to do with sitting your behind on a train and coming down South? If she don’t ever come to Rehobeth Road again, I will not go to Baltimore. Never.”
    Anyway Grandma told Miss Doleebuck that after Betty Sue told her about her real mama, Grandma never talked to Betty Sue again. But it made her love Grandma Nicey even more for taking her and raising her like she was her own and all. That’s probably the reason Grandma was so happy to raise Uncle Buddy, being that somebody that was not her momma raised her.
    Grandma Nicey must have been some kind of woman. And I’m looking at her dead folks’ paper right now. It is old and yellow, but I can read it.Folded in her paper is George Lewis’s dead folks’ paper. It don’t say much. Just stuff