The Sleeping Night Read Free

girls?”
    “What’s to be scared of? I think it’s pretty.”
    “Me, too, but Florence Younger screeched like she seen a ghost when I showed it to her.”
    Angel shrugged and handed it back to him. “You wanna do somethin’?”
    “Yeah.” He grinned, his wide mouth a mix of half-grown teeth and baby teeth and two that had almost reached full size. “Go on and get your daddy’s book. The big one.”
    Angel looked at him for a moment.
    “Go on,” he said, nudging her, a secret in his dancing dark eyes.
    Suspecting a trick, she nevertheless did as he said, finding the book on the table in the living room where it always sat. As she hurried back through the thinning collection of customers in the aisles, her daddy caught her arm. “Where you think you going with that book, gal?”
    “Just to the porch, Daddy. Isaiah said to get it.”
    Parker pursed his lips, then let her go. “Be careful with it, hear?”
    Angel drew herself up to her full height, the heavy book clasped against her chest. “Have you ever known me or Isaiah either one to be uncareful with a book?”
    Behind her, a man chuckled; Parker, meeting the man’s eye, grinned, too. As she hurried on her way, she heard somebody say, “You got your hands full with that ’un. Smart as a whip, she is.”
    But Angel paid it little attention. Grown folks always talked like that about her, and about Isaiah, too. Which was why she imagined they had become friends. Somebody was always shaking their heads about one or the other of them, or making a little sound in their mouths like the food was good, “Mmn-mm-mm.” Only in this case it was a “what are you ever gonna do with that child?” noise.
    Once, some grown-up had looked at Parker and Jordan, talking quietly by themselves and said (like Angel and Isaiah were deaf) “What are you gonna do about those children?” Straight out.
    Parker had looked at the woman through the smoke of his cigarette and said, “I don’t aim to do nothing. They’re children.”
    The woman had made that sound in her throat, then gone on with her shopping. Isaiah and Angel had talked about it and decided the difference they felt in themselves was the fact that both their daddies had gone to France for the war. They came back different, so naturally their children were different, too.
    Parker often read to them on these soft Saturday nights after all the customers went home. He read a lot of books. But this one, both agreed, was the best. Fairy Tales from Around the World.
    Angel carried the book outside to Isaiah.
    “Sit down,” he said, the secret spreading now to his face, where a dimple winked in his cheek. He opened the book with ceremony. “Which one you want?” he said.
    Still puzzled, she shrugged. “I don’t care.”
    “Come on, Angel. You always pick one.”
    “Okay. Hansel and Gretel. ” She giggled, because he hated it. It scared him.
    But without a single protest, he opened the book to the story and began to read, “Once upon a time .  . .”
    Angel listened, her mouth hanging open for a long, long moment, staring at him as he bent his head over the open pages. He didn’t read it as good as her daddy did, but it was a whole lot better than what Angel could have done.
    “You can read ?”
    “You hear me, don’t you?” But a grin betrayed his belligerent tone, and he softened. “Pretty good, huh? I been practicin’ all summer. Your daddy gave me a book of my very own.”
    “Oh, you’re doin’ real good.” She tucked her dress over her knees. “Read me some more.”
    And he did.
    Much later, Parker and Jordan came out on the porch, where the children had moved to drawing with pencils on flat sheets of butcher paper. The men’s voices drifted over Angel, making her sleepy, and she laid her head down on her hands to rest for just a minute. Their words were indistinct, only their voices plain, and she waited for the laughing that would come.
    But tonight their voices were serious. Isaiah’s