Free Orleans by Sherri L. Smith Page B

shirt, though, and it look more proper somehow. She put a bowl on the ground and then they leave together, the boy looking over his shoulder at me. I don’t leave the bushes. I don’t touch that bowl.
    Next morning, when the mist be steaming off the ground like will-o’-the-wisps, the girl come back, only now she got a man’s coat on. It hang off her like she a scarecrow. She sit down in front of the bowl and mix it, and I see there been a spoon in the bowl the whole time. After a minute, she shrug and eat it herself. By the look on her face, it just as good cold, and I’m wishing my daddy had said it be okay to eat from a stranger’s hand, so I don’t be left with nothing but growling to fill my belly.
    The next night, she leave me another bowl. This time, the girl take a spoonful while I be watching, then she wipe the spoon off carefully and leave it behind, so I know it ain’t poisoned or nothing.
    “Wait,” I say when she start to walk away. The girl turn around and scan the bushes for me.
    I come out and ask, “Where’s the little boy?”
    The girl shrug. “He got work to do.”
    “What about you?” I ask, sidling up to her.
    She smile. “You be my work tonight and every night ’til I get you to come out.”
    “Well, I’m here,” I say, and try not to look so cold and small, but I know I be just that, and she know it, too.
    “Yep,” she say. I sit down. She follow, crossing her legs Indian style.
    “Eat,” I say, and she take another spoonful of food. Fish stew tonight. I see the shrimp in it, pink and white, and the tiny black veins in a piece of catfish. She wipe the spoon off and set the bowl down. I pick it up and, after sniffing it, I take a bite.
    My stomach clench like it gonna turn on me. My mouth water, and for a second I don’t know if I gonna be sick or it just saliva. I glare at the girl, but she smile back.
    “It ain’t poisoned,” she tell me. “You just hungry.”
    “I know,” I lie. I been hungry before, but never so hungry that food make me sick. Mama and Daddy never let it get that bad. I swallow hard so I don’t start crying about them.
    The girl take another bite and I follow suit. Together we finish the bowl, and I know I be keeping it all down.
    “You alone out here?” the girl ask.
    “No,” I lie again.
    “Me neither,” she say. “I mean, before, yeah. But now, I never am.”
    I give her a suspicious look.
    “All because of Mama Gentille. She take care of all the little kids, and when we grown, we take care of her. It ain’t hard. And soon I’ma be grown enough to start paying back all the good she done me. That why Alfie be gone today. Alfie can only do little things, like pick berries. Tonight he snapping beans back at the house. But I get to come out here and talk to you. You want to come with me? You should be with us kids, and Mama Gentille.”
    It sound nice—a house, other kids, snap beans and berries. “Are you a tribe?” I ask her.
    The girl shake her head. “No, silly. Mama don’t believe in tribes. She say God made us all for something, and she take care of us all just alike.”
    “And you ain’t get sick being together like that?”
    The girl shrug. “Sometimes. But we tend to each other.”
    I grunt, thinking about it. “You freesteaders?” I ask. I crouch on the ground and watch a beetle making his way across the dirt, a leaf on his back. What he doing with that leaf? I wonder. Daddy’d know. Mama, too. But I guess I never will.
    “No, silly, we ain’t freesteaders, neither. We Mama’s kids. That’s all. We a family.”
    Family. Something move sideways in my chest, and all of a sudden I start to cry. I can’t make it stop and don’t want to. Like, if I try to hold it in this time, I like to drown. I cry and cry so hard, I can’t see the little beetle no more or the stew bowl or the spoon or the forest. The girl don’t say a thing ’til I be done. And then she say, “My name be Alice. You want to come with me?”
    And I