Clay's Quilt Read Free Page B

Crow County, Kentucky. Easter could remember how people went on about Anneth, how she would sometimes come in at three or four o’clock in the morning, smelling of liquor, a cigarette always ruining her pretty hand.
    Even when they were teenagers, still living at home with their granny, Easter would sometimes be awakened by the rumblings of cars pulling down into the holler. Anneth would stumble out of the car, singing a Brenda Lee song at the top of her lungs, and then stop halfway across the yard as the car made its way back out of Free Creek.
    She’d yell, “Easter! Get up! Come out here and look at the moon. Ever-damn-body get up and look!”
    Easter ran out to her, clad in her long flannel nightgown. Anneth pulled her up into her arms, holding her so tight that Easter feared she’d break her bones. She grabbed Easter’s chin roughly and directed her face skyward. She whispered with sweet whiskey breath: “Look at it, Easter. I love a little slice of a moon, don’t you? They way better than a full one.”
    â€œLet’s go in, Anneth. You’ve woke the whole holler up.”
    Anneth laughed. “We ought to stay out here all night and study that,” she said, staring at the sliver of moon. “That’s church to me.”
    Anneth just liked to have a big time all of the time. Easter had always been the good girl, but she had never been jealous of Anneth. She had never gotten distraught when all the pretty boys went after her sister, never mad when Anneth refused to go to church.
    Anneth used to beg her to have more fun, but Easter would say things like, “Just watching you is enough for me.”
    Anneth would fall back, her dress cool and thin against her milky thighs. “Easter, I don’t want you to die and go to Heaven without having a little fun. The Lord forgives all things, honey. Live, sister!”
    Easter had lived out her own sin through her sister, because God knows Anneth did enough of it for the both of them. She often asked herself how she could have been a Christian and condoned such actions. She loved it when Anneth threw back her head in laughter, letting all of her teeth show, her eyes clamped shut, hand pounding her red knees.
    It didn’t shock Easter when they came and told her that Anneth was dead. She was the only one Anneth never could surprise, despite how different they were. She had known that Anneth would not die naturally—somebody had to take a life like that. A person so full of life couldn’t just up and die; a life like that had to be taken by force.
    Anneth came to Easter sometimes, but Easter had told no one of this. One would think a spirit would come in quiet and solemn, but Anneth was the same in death as she had been in life. She came to Easter laughing, leaned up against a wall with her arms crossed and her bangs hanging down in her eyes. A lusty, ancient laugh, an open-book smile. She studied Easter, and her eyes grew misty with tears.
    The first time Anneth came to her, not long after her death, she did speak. Easter was praying in the living room, something she did when the notion struck her. In the middle of her prayer, she sensed someone was standing behind her. When she turned, there was Anneth, smiling. Anneth said, “Live, girl.”
    Easter jumped up and ran toward her, knowing that she could not touch her, knowing that Anneth wasn’t even real but was something that she was meant to see. Anneth said it again and Easter felt herself growing angry.
    She yelled out, “This is the way I like my life, Anneth!” She closed her eyes, asking the Lord to take this image from her eyes. “This is too much. I don’t have the strength for it. Take her.”
    Easter had seen spirits and known things since she was a little child. The Bible spoke against fortune-telling, but she could not deny what she saw in her dreams, what she sometimes witnessed right in her own house. She had lived with