Tending to Grace Read Free Page A

in the distance. I wonder, how far away is it? How long will it take to climb? I’ve always wanted to climb something that high, but could I?
    A bed covered with a faded quilt straddles three wide and uneven floorboards. It tips off one leg when I drop my milk crate near the pillow. Agatha looks at the books. “You read all those?”
    When I nod, she snorts. “No time for much of that around here.” She pulls an army blanket from under the bed and throws it on top, causing the bed to rock.
    â€œDo you like mushrooms?”
    I shake my head no, absolutely not.
    â€œToo bad. I eat ’em for breakfast, more often than not. Right good on toast, they are.”
    We are quiet for a few minutes while she tries to get the light switch to work. “Don’t know why your mother brought you here,” she says finally. “I don’t know nothin’ about livin’ with a young girl.” She looks at me for a minute, waiting for me to answer, but I don’t, so she points to a dresser. “Put your stuff in there if you want,” she says as she leaves the room.
    I look past her to the window. My mother will be back for my birthday; she always remembers my birthday, even when I have to bake the cake myself and wake her up to celebrate. She’ll be back for my birthday; my fifteenth birthday, I tell myself. “It’s in October,” I whisper to the mountain in the distance.
    I pull the quilt back, sending dust flying about my head. I notice a cobweb fluttering at the top of the window like a curtain.
    That’s when the loneliness settles deep. I open
Oliver Twist
and lose myself in its pages. Oliver survived without his mother. I wonder how.

18
    I fill an old metal pail with water and scrub my room, top to bottom. I wash the floor, paying particular attention to the space under the bed, and I wipe down the window frame, flinging the cobwebs outside. I mop out the dresser and put my books in the top drawer. Then I unpack my clothes. Two pairs of overalls from the Salvation Army tag sale, my black dress, pocket T-shirts in assorted colors, and my most prized collection other than my books: my socks. Most were purchased at thrift stores: Christmas socks, purple socks, wool socks, socks with lace. Church thrift shops were especially good for hand-knit socks, and sometimes after paying a dollar or two for a pair, I would wander upstairs and sit in a pew and wonder what all the fuss was about.
    The smell I liked a lot. Incense, heavy and thick, hung like blankets all around me. Me and the statues, surrounded by silence. I liked that the best.
    â€œWhat the hell you want with church?” my mother said once after I’d told her where I’d been. “You really are a ninny sometimes, Corns. There ain’t no one who goes to church but hypocrites and fools. Don’t you know that?”
    Well, I didn’t want to be a hypocrite or a fool, so I shut the door to that part of my life and didn’t go back.

19
    Agatha and I climb the rise behind her house to where the fields begin. The grass under my feet grows brown and dry and uncut. I crunch through one pasture, then another, each one rising higher than the last.
    Agatha searches for mushrooms, but not me—I won’t have anything to do with them. I just want to get closer to the mountain that reaches high in the distance. I tell myself I’m getting closer to my mother with each step.
    We turn a bend and there’s a brook ahead. She takes a metal cup off a nail on a tree and climbs down a bank and scoops up some water. She takes a long, slurping gulp.
    â€œCome taste some of this water. It’s the best you’ll ever drink.”
    I’m not so sure. She eyes me carefully. “This is the real thing. You’ve been planted in the city too long.”
    I sip the water at first, but it fills my mouth with so much life that I gulp more.
    â€œWhere’d you be gettin’ that