As Simple as It Seems Read Free Page A

father stepped in.
    â€œYour uncle Mike was in jail,” he said, “and he still is.”
    This news came as a shock.
    â€œWhat did he do?” I asked.
    â€œThat’s neither here nor there, Bena,” he told me. Then he picked up the thread of the story where my mother had left off.
    â€œI rode in the ambulance with Grace,” he explained, “and when we got to the hospital, I told them I was the baby’s father so that they would let me go in with Grace while she had the baby.”
    â€œDid she have a little boy or a little girl?” I asked.
    â€œA sweet little girl,” my father said. “No heavier than a sack of flour.”
    â€œWillow,” my mother said softly. “That’s what Grace said she would have called her.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, would have ?” I said. “I thought you said the baby didn’t die.”
    â€œShe didn’t,” my mother said. “Though it was touch and go there for a while. Remember, Tom?”
    â€œOf course I remember,” he said reaching across me to pat my mother’s hand.
    â€œWhere is she now?” I asked. “Where is Willow?”
    My mother smiled at me, but her eyes were full oftears again and some of them spilled out and ran down her smooth, wide cheeks.
    â€œShe’s here, Sugarpea. With us where she belongs.”
    I felt as if the world had stopped spinning and time was standing still as I struggled to understand what I’d just heard.
    â€œMe?” I asked.
    My mother nodded.
    â€œYou.”
    â€œI was there when you came into the world,” my father said. “I was the first one to hold you in my arms. But it was your mother who saw you through those first few difficult weeks. She never left your side.”
    I was confused.
    â€œWhat happened to the other baby?” I asked my mother. “The one that you had?”
    â€œThere was no other baby,” she said. “People couldn’t tell, because of my weight. Everybody knew we’d been trying; they just assumed we’d decided to keep it a secret.”
    â€œWhen we brought you home, they kidded us about how we’d pulled the wool over their eyes.” My father laughed.
    I was so shocked I could barely breathe. My mother took my hand and squeezed it.
    â€œI wanted a baby more than life itself, Verbie, but I couldn’t do it myself. So Grace did it for me. That’s why I send her a picture every year. It seems like the least I can do to let her see who you’ve become.”
    I could hear my mother’s voice, but I wasn’t listening to the words anymore. No wonder I’d been feeling so mixed up and mean inside. Mike Colter was bad news, trouble from the get-go, warped, and it was his good-for-nothing blood that was running through my veins. After all these years of thinking I was somebody I wasn’t, the real me had finally decided to show up.

CHAPTER THREE
My Annie
    Annie was the first person I told. It was the week before Christmas break, a few days before my birthday, and I remember we were standing together out on the playground at school in our winter coats.
    â€œLots of people are adopted, Verbie,” she said. “Are you going to try to meet your real parents? I’d be dying to know what they were like if I were you.”
    â€œThey’re not my real parents, and I don’t ever want to meet them,” I said angrily.
    â€œYou don’t have to take my head off,” said Annie defensively. “I was just asking.”
    â€œWhy would I want to meet them? Grace practically pickled me before I was born. And Mike Colter is in jail— for killing someone .”
    My father hadn’t wanted to tell me what Mike Colter had done to get himself put in jail, but I had insisted Ihad a right to know everything after having been kept in the dark for so long. Finally he gave in and told me that there’d been some sort of a fight, and that