The Unwelcomed Child Read Free

requirements for that forced her to give me reading she would have otherwise forbidden, such as most of the novels and plays being read in public school, especially when I reached junior and then senior high school age. However, if she didn’t want the state education department on her back to have me brought to a public school, she had to obey and follow the prescribed curriculum. Of course, she did it begrudgingly, complaining about how loose the standards had become in public schools.
    She had been a grade-school teacher in a parochial school for five years, but she was never very fond of formal classroom teaching, always criticizing the way parents were bringing up their children. I read between the lines whenever she talked about her short teaching career and imagined that she was unpopular not only with her students but also with their parents, because she wasn’t shy about giving them a piece of her mind. Perhaps she didn’t quit teaching. Maybe she was not so gently nudged to leave. After that, she went to work for an accounting firm, where she met my grandfather, who was one of their clients.
    Because my grandmother homeschooled me, I never had a close friend or any real friends, or even acquaintances. I was never invited to someone else’s birthday party or to any party, for that matter. All I knew about the wonderful things other girls my age had and enjoyed is what I learned from reading books and plays and, when permitted, watching what my grandparents called decent television, usually never for more than two hours at a time.
    I had no television or radio in my room. I’d never been to a movie. Even if I had some music CD, I had nothing on which to play it, and I was never given a computer or any of the modern-day devices I saw advertised, such as an iPod. They had none of this technology, either. My grandmother said that the Internet was Satan’s new playground. The little music I knew came in bits and pieces from the short television viewing I was permitted or when I was outside and heard a car go by with the windows open and music spilling out. I would cling to the sounds the way someone dying of thirst might follow the final drops of a glass of water.
    Of course, Grandmother Myra and Grandfather Prescott had their hymns and made me sing along with them on Sundays, but they didn’t listen to or play anything else themselves. My grandmother claimed her favorite song was “Amazing Grace.” I often wondered if there had ever been anything remotely romantic about them. They never spoke of a honeymoon, and when their anniversary arrived, they usually had a very simple dinner and talked about how different things were now from the day they were married, how much more things cost, and how the village had changed but not for the better.
    If I believed what they said, or at least what my grandmother said, most of the time, nothing had gotten better with time. Progress seemed to undermine the important and especially the moral things in our lives. One of her favorite expressions was “I wish I could turn back time.” Sometimes I thought she prayed for it. Her refrain at the end of grace was always “and spare us from the new horrors outside our door.”
    The way she said that made me think that monsters were camped on our front lawn, especially when I was younger. I was so frightened that I repeated her refrain almost as loudly as she did. I accepted the power and the hope that prayer provided. What else did I have?
    There we were on Sundays, the three of us, holding our Bibles in the living room in front of a large crucifix, singing. Grandfather Prescott would read a passage, and we would then do a silent prayer. We would have something special to eat for lunch that day and maybe a homemade pie with an infinitesimal amount of sugar. It was the only highlight of the week.
    How dreary their lives were, I thought when I was old enough to understand it all and could look back with clearer eyes. I even found