Free All-Bright Court by Connie Rose Porter Page A

Mrs. Taylor had taken the boys up to Ridge Road, to the Jubilee, to see
Toby Tyler
. In a few years they would run away and join a circus. They would ride on the backs of horses, and have a clever monkey for a pet. They would wear tights and do tricks and eat candy apples and cotton candy. Toby Tyler would be at the circus tonight, and Dennis would miss it.
    Dennis did not move. He stood in the living room staring at the floor. His voice was just a whisper. “My mama say don’t be letting ya’ll clean me up. I’m clean enough. Ya’ll got to take me the way I is.”
    Mr. Taylor opened the front door to put the boy out, but Mikey ran to him and clung to the boy. He grabbed Dennis around the waist. He held on while his father tried to pull them apart.
    â€œStop, Mikey. I’m going to whip your ass. Stop.”
    Mikey and Dennis fell to the floor, and Mrs. Taylor ran downstairs with Dorene in her arms.
    â€œSamuel, what you doing?”
    â€œYa’ll stop,” he yelled at the boys. He finally pulled them apart and hurled Dennis out the door. “Don’t you come back ’round here, hear me? I don’t want you ’round my boy, you goddamn piss pot.”
    â€œSam, he just a boy. He ain’t much more than a baby.”
    â€œHe ain’t no baby. Him and Mikey the same age. And you, Michael, I don’t want the boy ’round this house. I don’t want you talking to a boy like that. He trash. That nasty boy coming here and telling me his whore of a mammy say don’t clean him up, we got to take him like he is. So white people be saying, ‘See, you smell that? They all stink. They all nasty.’”
    â€œHis mama say that? As good as we been to that boy, as many nights he done sat at our table and ate like he lived here?”
    â€œWhat you expect? The woman a alcoholic. She ain’t got sense enough to pay her bills. We done all we can do for that boy. You feed him one day, he hungry the next. You clean him up today, he dirty tomorrow. This thing done gone too far. And you expecting! It’s too much, Kate. Too much.”
    â€œI’m not going to the stupid circus,” Mikey said. “I don’t want to go without Dennis.”
    â€œOh yeah, you going, and you going to like it, too. I could’ve been putting in some overtime today, but I didn’t so ya’ll could go to the circus. You get on upstairs till your mama call you, ’cause I’m this close to setting a fire to your ass.”
    Â 
    Toby Tyler was not at the circus. Mikey did not care. He had a good time without him, and without Dennis. He ate cotton candy and a candy apple. There was a clown who fascinated Mikey.
    The clown coughed and a bright red silk scarf came from his mouth. He pulled on it and a yellow one appeared next, then a green, a blue, an orange. The clown kept pulling, the colors repeating, until a pile of scarves lay curled at his feet. Mikey thought the clown must have been filled with scarves, that they were coiled up inside him.
    He did bring back a program and some cotton candy for Dennis. The candy hardened, though, and Dennis was not at school next Monday anyway. When he finally did show up later that week, he wouldn’t walk home with Mikey, and he refused the program. He took off running.
    Mrs. Taylor worried about him, but she rarely saw him. Now here he was knocking down Dorene in his rush to get out of the Red Store.
    She bought her bread quickly. She wanted to catch up with the boy before he headed for home. This was why her son was calling to him through the weeds in the field while he was eating stolen bologna.
    Dennis would not answer. He thought Mrs. Taylor might try to take him back to the Red Store. He wouldn’t go back. He would never go there again. He would go up to Ridge Road, to the A & P. He would go up Steelawanna Avenue. He would get up the courage to cross all those streets.
    â€œMa, he gone,” Mikey