Bleeding Violet Read Free Page B

has been done.I’m old enough to see to my own needs. You don’t have to
do
anything. What’s the big deal?”
    Rosalee had hidden her arms behind her back so I wouldn’t get the idea that I could cuddle with her, too. “You wouldn’t fit in here.” She sounded desperate. “I keep telling you. A girl like you could never learn to adapt. And why would you want to? You think you’re crazy now? There’s things in this town that’d drive anybody—What the hell’s so funny?”
    I could barely hear her, I was laughing so hard. “Let me get this straight: You want me to leave because you don’t think I can
adapt
?”
    “I
know
you can’t.”
    Was she serious?
    I was biracial and bicultural—a walking billboard for adaptation. And what did she expect me to adapt to? Fishing in the crick? Baking pies from scratch? Small-town life was sure to be slow and boring, but maybe that was what I needed—Dallas sure hadn’t done me any good.
    “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Let me stay for one month. If I can fit in, make friends, all that, then I get to stay. But if I fail, then I’ll leave, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
    Rosalee was quiet a long time. “One week.”
    “
Two
weeks.”
    More quiet. “And you’ll go back to your aunt?”
    I stroked Swan’s long, straight neck. “I didn’t say that.”
    “Then say it now or no deal.”
    She seemed to be blanking on the fact that Aunt Ulla didn’t want me anymore—never had, actually—but if Rosalee wanted to listen to me lie, I didn’t mind indulging her. “If I can’t fit in, I’ll go back to Aunt Ulla.”
    Rosalee sighed, a step-off-the-cliff, no-hope-for-it-now kind of sigh. “Please yourself, then. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    I couldn’t believe it. Even knowing what she knew about me, she’d agreed to let me stay. “Yippee!” I waltzed Swan around the room.
    Rosalee watched me dance—again as though she’d never seen anything like me—and went to the door, shaking her head.
    “Good night, Momma.” The name immediately felt weird in my mouth, in my ears.
    It must have sounded weird to Rosalee as well. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “I don’t even know you.”
    I hadn’t thought black eyes could look icy, but Rosalee’s did. I stopped dancing and squeezed Swan against my chest. “If that’s the way you want it.”
    “It is.” She left, and everything felt empty: the room, me.
    She hates you
. Poppa said.
I told you she would. I told you she was unfeeling
.
    I set Swan on the shelf and curtsied to her, thanking her for the dance. “She can feel plenty. She just doesn’t want to. I’ll make her feel. I’ll make her want to keep me.”
    In a week?
    “
Two
weeks.” I switched off the overhead light. “That’s plenty of time. I’m a likable person, aren’t I? And she
is
my mother. Her instincts will kick in.”
    After sixteen years? I think her instincts died a long time ago
.
    “Don’t be so gloomy, Poppa.” I scooched the pallet closer to the shelves so that Swan could better watch over me. I ditched the towel and lay naked on the pallet, pulling the chilly top blanket to my chin. “I can win her over. I know it.”
    What if you can’t?
    I yawned. “If I can’t, then I’ll paint the walls of her house with my blood.” A roll of thunder crashed outside and echoed beneath me along the floorboards.
    “No matter what happens, one way or another, I’m here to stay.”

Chapter Three
    Thunder awakened me.
    The heavy rain drilling against the window made dark wriggling shadows against the oblique ceiling. The rain echoed in the shadowy attic space and made me feel small and fragile, like a lace glove left behind on moving day—mateless and abandoned.
    I shivered on the pile of blankets, waiting for Poppa to whisper to me so I’d know I wasn’t alone, but I’d silenced him when I’d taken my pills. Insanity or sanity. Poppa or loneliness. Wretched decisions I had to make every