The Good Sister Read Free

don’t talk to strangers—so it made sense that there must be rules that applied to how people talked and what they
     did. Maybe if she read enough books and learned all the words in the dictionary and if she never stopped watching and listening,
     she would understand why mothers on television loved their daughters, but hers didn’t.
    At dinner Mommy said, “You’re going to stay with your grandmother for a while.”
    This was the first Roxanne had heard of a grandmother.
    “We’ll leave tomorrow after breakfast. Put what you need in that pink backpack and don’t forget your toothbrush.” Mommy went
     into the bathroom and closed the door.
    The questions lined up like Marines in Roxanne’slogical mind, a platoon of them beginning with
why
and
who
and
when
and what would happen if she missed the first day of school.
    She heard the sound of water running into the tub. In a minute steam would seep out from under the door like smoke. Mommy
     must be nervous. She always took a bath when she was nervous. The medicine cabinet opened and clicked shut; the lid of the
     toilet seat hit the tank behind it. These were normal sounds and nothing to worry about. But if everything was normal, why
     did Roxanne feel like something big and mean and cold as a polar bear had walked in the front door and was right now standing
     in the middle of the room, staring at her?
    “Are you mad at me, Mommy?” They sat at the card table eating spaghetti.
    “Why? What have you done?”
    This trip to her grandmother
felt
like trouble.
    “Eat your dinner. Let me think.” Mommy twirled the spaghetti around the fork in her right hand; she held a cigarette in her
     left.
    Her mother’s name was Ellen and she was prettier than most of the moms on television. Mrs. Edison said she had hair to kill
     for. At the roots it was dark brown like Roxanne’s but every few weeks Mommy washed it with something stinky that came in
     a box and turned it a silvery-yellow color. She wore her hair in long loose curls and looked like one of Charlie’s Angels.
     Her facereminded Roxanne of the kittens in cages at the pet store when they pushed their noses against the wire and mewed at her.
     Roxanne wanted to take them all home, but Mommy said over her dead body.
    Roxanne hated when she said that.
    “Are you?”
    “Am I what?”
    Mad at me.
    “You know.”
    “No, I don’t know.”
    “How long are we going to be there?”
    “You mean how long are
you
going to be there. I’m not staying one minute longer than I have to. I gotta work, you know.” Mommy worked at a Buick agency
     on the National City Mile of Cars. The ads on television said it was the biggest dealership in San Diego County. “Mr. Brickman’s
     letting me use a good car.”
    “Am I going to sleep there?” The polar bear was ready to swallow her up now, and there was something heavy in her stomach
     like a thousand ice cubes bunched together. “I don’t want to sleep there. I want to stay in this house.” One bedroom, a kitchen
     with space for a table, a bathroom with a tiny window over the tub, and a screened porch at the back where Roxanne slept.
     “I like our house.”
    “You need your head examined.”
    Mommy put her bare toe on the pedal of the garbage can, and the top sprang up and clanged into the side ofthe stove. She dumped most of her dinner. Mrs. Edison said Mommy didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.
    “What if she doesn’t like me?”
    Roxanne’s mother sighed as if she had just that minute put down a bag of rocks and been told to pick up another. “Look, I
     know you don’t want to go up there, but believe me, I’ve got my reasons and they’re plenty good. Someday you’ll thank me.
     But we’re not going to talk about it and that’s final. And I don’t want you calling me up and whining on your grandmother’s
     dime. She’d make me pay for those calls and like I’ve said to you about a thousand times only you don’t seem to get it, I
     am not made of