Borrowed Children Read Free Page A

money?”
    Mama smiles.
    â€œNo, I mean her bust is full enough that she fills this out. Of course, it’s still a bit scandalous, but Laura is Laura.”
    Mama’s still smiling, then shrugs the smile away.
    â€œAt any rate, with a little white yoke I can fill it in for you. And the suit just needs to be hemmed.”
    â€œOh, Mama, I can’t go to school in clothes like that!”
    â€œAnd why not? They’re perfectly decent clothes. Or will be.”
    â€œBut nobody wears clothes like that! And I’m not—I don’t even fill out a slip.”
    Mama pats her stomach, where the dress is stretched like a
    skin.
    â€œWell, I certainly do.”
    I don’t know what to say to that.
    â€œAnd you’ll look better in Lauras clothes than you will in your birthday suit. You’ve grown too much over the summer to wear most of last year’s clothes. Besides, Mandy, by the end of this year you don’t know how you’ll look. You’re getting to an age—” Her voice trails off. She gestures for me to bring her the hot iron from the stove.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I ask, setting the hot weight down, taking back the cool one.
    For a minute Mama just looks at me.
    â€œYou’ll be starting to mature is all,” she says. Then she sprinkles water from a jar onto the iron to test its heat.
    I want to ask more, but her face says the talk is finished. It’s the same with the clothes. No point in arguing. So I go on dipping shirts in starch and rolling them into balls. And I keep an eye on Anna and Helen through the screen door. They’re in the back yard shelling beans.
    School will be all right somehow, though. It always is. Just thinking about it makes my throat tighten. “Pencil fever,” Daddy calls it when I can’t wait to go back to school. “Darnedest thing I ever saw.”
    Daddy finished the eighth grade and Mama went on into high school, so they know what it’s like. Except they didn’t have Mr. Aden for a teacher. If they had, they might have caught pencil fever too.
    Mr. Aden’s from Boston. He came to Goose Rock on a mission, he says, but he and the Almighty got separated on the way down, so he doesn’t work for a church.
    â€œI work for you,” he tells us, “for the tilling of your minds and the fruit of your ever-growing souls.”
    I told Mama and Daddy that.
    â€œBet he gets a check, too,” Daddy said.
    Sure he does, but that’s not the main thing. Mr. Aden has a greater goal in life than “worshiping the brazen dollar.” That’s why he came to the mountains.
    â€œPeople are different here,” he says.
    Daddy says we can’t worship what we haven’t got.
    I expect Mr. Aden just got tired of Boston, the way a full person pushes back his plate. But that wouldn’t happen to me. I’m hungry enough to feast on a city forever: theaters and cobbled streets, museums and libraries and running water! We have to pump our water in Goose Rock, of course, and order books from Sears-Roebuck. That means we don’t get many. A library means free books, all you want, over and over.
    â€œYou’ll have a library here,” Mr. Aden promised us. “The spirit requires books and there will be money for them once people’s bodily needs are met. We must be patient. In the meantime, I’ll make a school library of my collection.”
    And that’s what he did. The first week I brought home Jane Eyre ….
    â€œAmanda!”
    â€œOh—what, Mama?”
    â€œI’ve been talking to you for five minutes and I don’t believe you’ve heard a word.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I guess I was daydreaming.”
    â€œWell, those shirts are going to turn to bricks if you don’t hand them over here. And these I’ve finished need to be hung up in the boys’ room.”
    I’ve exchanged the wet rolls of cloth for the billowing