Read Boys and Girls Together for Free Online Page B

thought, If only this girl would never cry as her mother cries, if only she’d never
need
to, if only it could be so.
    The girl threw herself on the man and held the arm he was spanking the boy with.
    â€˜Don’t spank him, Papa,’ she said. She wasn’t finished yet with the laughter of the game but she was never more in earnest. ‘Don’t spank him. He’s my brother,’ she said.
    She hugged the boy, who looked down at her indifferently, his whole face winking, and the girl said: ‘My little brother. My little baby. Don’t cry.’
    The boy turned and looked at his father. His lips moved a little because it was killing him, he liked it,he wasn’t above it, but she was so little and such a crook, provoking him into hitting her all the time, and then when he got in trouble about it, real trouble, not like this game, she came to him when it was all over and said, ‘I’m sorry, Johnny.’ And hugged him and told him not to cry, the way she was telling him now when he
wasn’t
crying.
    The man dressed the boy quickly and turned them loose in the backyard to fool around with the junk out there until he had breakfast ready. The fierce passion of the two of them together began the minute they were alone, the loving and bothering of one another, of dominating one another, each trying new methods or using tried and tested ones. But in the end the boy hit the girl, the girl burst into tears, and the boy stood around feeling sick with guilt because of the awful noise she always made.
    He got the oranges out of the bowl above the kitchen sink and went to work getting their juice. Then he got the cold cereal into the bowls and poured sugar and milk into each bowl, called them, and they came climbing up the steps.
    He began to get his coffee going in the percolator while they drank their orange juice and fooled around with the cold cereal, not eating it but playing games with it. Then he got the fat bacon going because he knew they never could resist that, at least, and he put a couple of eggs into some water to boil because sometimes they would go to work and actually eat awhole egg, or maybe even two of them, as if they were really hungry, but mainly they were poor eaters, and he and his wife had made a mess of their eating, his wife using the one-for-Papa, one-for-Mama, one-for-Jesus technique, and the man telling them how the kids in Europe didn’t have hardly anything to eat, ever. But the boy always said, ‘Give them my food, Papa.’
    Well, he wasn’t going to fight them about their eating any more. He himself, when he thought of it, as he always did when the boy wouldn’t eat, had never been able to get enough, but he had always tried to be polite and had often refused a second helping of something he wanted badly, but this was only when there were strangers around. The rest of the time he ate all he could get, and it wasn’t that way with his son. It wasn’t that way with his daughter, either. Kids just don’t like to eat very much these days, he thought. It was true of everybody’s kids. Everybody was having trouble with their kids about eating.
    Maybe the kids know what they’re doing, he thought.
    Right now, though, his own kids were playing games of leverage, and pouring with their spoons the milk and the cereal that was mushy now, but to hell with it, he thought, maybe the games mean more to them than eating the lousy food. Maybe if somebody fixed them a bowl of hot oatmeal or something, they’d eat, but that was nonsense, too, because he had tried it andthey had both insisted on cold cereal. Why? Because they could have more fun pouring the cold cereal, that’s why. He saw the girl lift her bowl and pour half of it on to the linoleum, but he decided to let that go, too. She liked to do that.
    â€˜O.K.,’ he said. ‘Bacon. This for you, Rosey. This for you, Johnny. And that’s all.’
    â€˜There’s