‘Don’t mess with him,’ I said. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with him. We’re hungry.’
She gave me a look like I’d punched her. ‘Don’t speak to me!’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘we don’t like this any more’n you do. If Lone hadn’t told us to, we wouldn’t never have come. We were doing all right where we were.’
‘Don’t say „wouldn’t never”,’ said Miss Kew. She looked at all of us, one by one. Then she took that silly little hunk of handkerchief and pushed it against her mouth.
‘See?’ I said to Janie. ‘All the time gettin’ sick.’
‘Ho-ho,’ said Bonnie.
Miss Kew gave her a long look. ‘Gerard,’ she said in a choked sort of voice, ‘I understood you to say that these children were your sisters.’
‘Well?’
She looked at me as if I was real stupid. ‘We don’t have little coloured girls for sisters, Gerard.’
Janie said, ‘ We do.’