Free The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis Page A

was true that the night before he’d felt something with Coral that he’d never experienced and that, unlike the other times, he could recall it. But Six wanted to go home. The reverend would think him ungrateful, so Six replied, “I don’t know, sir. I guess so.”
    “Preacher has to be called, young man!” the reverend said sharply. He gestured toward Six’s clothes. “The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don’t suppose he means us to stay that way.”
    Reverend Grist had been kind to Six during the trip from Philadelphia. “It’s Jim Crow now,” he said, when they crossed the Mason-Dixon. “You ever been down south?” he asked. Six shook his head. “Well, when there’s white folks about you, make yourself scarce, and if you can’t, smile and don’t never look them in the eye.”
    The Reverend rocked on his heels as Six dressed.
    “The Lord gives us breath and life,” he said. “And He gives us flowers and the moon and eyes to see them with and a heart and mind to appreciate their beauty. That’s something only we can do. You know that? A cow in the field doesn’t have appreciation of beauty. That’s a gift He gave us, just to make life a little sweeter. Ain’t that something?”
    Reverend Grist paused, then asked, “What happened to you, boy?”
    “Sir?”
    “I … I wondered what happened.”
    “Burned, sir.”
    “Must have happened a good while ago, healed over now, like it is.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Must have been real painful—and you was just a little fella at the time, I imagine.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Must have given your mama a real scare.”
    “I guess so.”
    SIX REMEMBERED the ambulance ride to the hospital and Hattie weeping beside him. He had not seen her cry before or since. He was only nine at the time, but he remembered the heaving sobs that pulled her body to and fro and how she kept touching the parts of him that weren’t burnt. “Please, don’t take this one too,” she said. She shook and rocked, but her hands were calm and steady on him, as though they weren’t attached to the rest of her body.
    He stayed in the hospital for two months. Each time he woke from the painkillers, Hattie was there, face white as chalk—sitting straight backed in the chair or standing at the window or pacing at the foot of his bed. August came too. He whistled Six a tune or brought him odd presents: a wooden recorder that he played very softly until a nurse came along and told him to stop, cherries that he peeled with a small knife and cut into pieces so Six could taste the sweetness on his tongue without having to chew with his burned jaws.
    His sisters visited. He woke one afternoon to find Cassie standing behind Hattie. “I’m so sorry, Mother. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” she said. Hattie turned to face her and nodded. Cassie left the room in tears.
    The sun filtered through the heavy curtains in the hospital room. Six felt as though he had been asleep for a long time and that perhaps he was still sleeping and everything he saw or heard was a dream. In the dream he got up from his bed, put his arm around Cassie, and said, “See, I’m fine. It was just a little accident, and I’m just fine.”
    The burns covered 50 percent of his body. The doctors told Hattie they didn’t know if Six would live, and so in his sleeping and sleeping he was dying, or almost.
    Bell and Cassie thought they had killed him. After he was better and had gone back to school, and even now, six years later, they blamed themselves. Either would do anything for Six if he asked. When he was short with them or cold or looked at them in anger, it hurt them deeply. Six sniped at them purposely when he wanted to inflict pain or when he wanted someone to remember that night with him and to suffer.
    On the evening of his accident Cassie was getting dressed for a prom to which an older boy had invited her. Hattie had given her permission because he was, as she said, the right sort, college bound, it