The Good Sister Read Free Page A

money.”
    After dinner Roxanne pushed a stool up to the sink and filled a square plastic tub with hot water. She washed two plates and
     two forks and the spaghetti pot. She rinsed her glass and sudsed away the milk scum, rinsed it again in the hottest water
     she could bear and set it in the drainer. As she worked she thought about her mother’s words. Some of the things grown-ups
     said were ridiculous. But not all. The trick was figuring out when Mommy meant what she said and when she didn’t.
    Hair to kill for.
    Made of money.
    Roxanne wiped down the counter and the stove top. She emptied the brimming ashtray on the table and put the beer cans in the
     garbage and swept the kitchen floor, careful to poke the broom into the space between the stove and the refrigerator where
     the greasy dust bunnieslived. She imagined people with dollar bills for arms and legs and eyes made out of coins. The children would have Indian
     faces like the nickel she once found in the gutter.
    Roxanne set the timer on the stove for one hour, the length of time she was permitted to watch television after dinner. Mommy
     didn’t like Roxanne to sit close; but the yearning to lean against her shoulder, to press her body against her mother’s hip,
     was so intense Roxanne’s skin tingled the way it did when she knew the oven was hot without touching it. On television she
     had seen mothers and daughters with their arms around each other, kissing and hugging. Was she meant to believe this or was
     television like a fairy tale, a made-up story no different from the fantasy about children with heads like Indian nickels?
    There was so much Roxanne didn’t know.
    Mrs. Edison baked pies and cakes to earn extra money, and she had taught Roxanne to read the recipes. Roxanne liked cooking
     because when Mrs. Edison followed the directions Roxanne read to her, the desserts turned out perfectly. But life wasn’t like
     cakes and pies. Even when she did exactly what she was supposed to do, Roxanne was still afraid when she heard Mommy and Daddy
     talk and laugh and fight at night. Though their words went by too quickly to understand and she pulled the blankets over her
     head, making a tent full of her own familiar breath, their mixed up angry-happy voices filled the darkness. She thought about
     the homeless woman in the red wool hat and wondered if she had ever been in the first grade.
    Roxanne and her mother lived on a street where the traffic was noisy until late at night. There were two bars on their block.
     One had a name Roxanne could not read because it was in Spanish. Mommy often left her in bed at night and walked across the
     street to the other one, the Royal Flush; and when he was home from the Marines, Daddy made money playing pool there.
    Roxanne tried to remember when she had last seen her daddy. She remembered asking her mother where he was, but she had forgotten
     the answer. She raked through her memory for something she had forgotten or done wrong that would explain why Daddy wasn’t
     home, and Mommy was making her live with a grandmother she’d never met or even heard about until that day. At home she didn’t
     talk too much or whine for candy in the supermarket or ask even half of all the questions in her mind. She hardly ever forgot
     to do her chores. In fact, she enjoyed making the kitchen orderly after dinner; and in the morning she made her bed and swept
     the porch before she went to Mrs. Edison’s. It gave her a safe feeling when all the chores were done.
    In the car the next day she asked, “Are we almost there yet?”
    “We’re not even to Bakersfield.”
    Roxanne imagined a field full of Mrs. Edisons and all of them rolling out pie crust and making cakes.
    “How long till we get to Bakersfield?”
    “Stop with the questions, Roxanne. I’ll put you out at the side of the road, I swear I will.”
    From the car window she saw a sad part of the world, run-down buildings and vacant lots, broken-down fences and