Uchenna's Apples Read Free Page B

the hedgerows that separated them, a long low bumpy green-tinged line could be seen: the silhouette of the little line of hills separating this part of County Dublin from the eastward side of County Meath.
    As they headed back into the circle, Uchenna could see her mam’s big Toyota Landcruiser parked in the driveway already. “Is she off today?” Emer said. “Usually she’s not here yet.”
    “No, she just gets done faster sometimes on Thursdays,” Uchenna said. “Some of the people she takes care of in the hospital have dialysis today, so they come in really early in the morning and she sees them then.”
    They swung up past the SUV and headed for the back door, up at the side of the house before the garage. Most of the houses in the circle looked pretty much alike: a big living room and kitchen and utility room and one bedroom and bathroom downstairs, then three more bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, with the upstairs windows sticking out under separate dormers from the blue slate roof. Uchenna’s house was the only one in the circle that was painted white: it had been the showhouse for the development, the first one built, and it had older plantings around it than the other houses, as well as a trimmed hedge on each side instead of the concrete-block walls that the newer houses had.
    She rattled the latch of the back door and found it unlocked. Uchenna pushed the door in. The utility room was humming with a wash running in the washing machine: a couple of plastic laundry baskets full of dirty clothes stood around on the tile floor, waiting their turn to be washed. “Mam?” Uchenna said.
    “In here, sweet,” said her mother from the kitchen.
    They went in. The kitchen was bigger than those in some of the other houses in the circle, partly because it had been an office as well when the house was still the showhouse. A round dining table stood by the rear window that looked out on the back yard: toward the front of the kitchen, the breakfast bar looked through into the living room. In there, the big widescreen TV was showing one of the local TV station’s afternoon talk shows, where a man was busily cooking while the two female hosts looked on. Relaxing against the breakfast bar, sipping a mug of tea and idly watching the TV while holding the wireless phone against her head, was Uchenna’s Mam. Flora Alele Debe-McConnor was easily six feet tall: a little broad-shouldered, but otherwise slender and high-cheekboned, with a gorgeous smooth dark complexion and beautiful eyes that were tilted up at the corners. This catlike tilt often made Uchenna’s dad call her mam Kitty or Flowerpuss, which in turn occasionally caused Uchenna’s mam to whack her dad in the head with a pillow or pretend to strangle him with her stethoscope. She was still wearing her white medical coat from work, and hadn’t gotten around to taking off the bright patterned scarf that she had put on over her cornrows for the wards.
    “Hi Uchenna’s Mam!” Emer said.
    “Hallo Emer dear,” Uchenna’s Mam said, glancing over at them and smiling. “You two are early today. No sports?”
    “Not till tomorrow, Mam,” Uchenna said, dumping her schoolbag on the back table and then going to hug her mam. “Hockey practice then. You on hold?”
    “Waiting for daddy,” Uchenna’s mam said. “He said maybe we would go out for dinner tonight. But I think he has to work late. His software team just got broken up again, he’s got to put some new people into the open positions…” She sighed and turned away to lean the back of her against the breakfast bar instead of the front. “What’s the homework like tonight, girls?”
    “Got it mostly done already,” Uchenna said. “But we have to go to the library.” She threw Emer a cunning look that said, No we don’t, just play along with me.
    “You could’ve stopped there on the way home,” Uchenna’s mam said. “Not like you to backtrack, sweet.” Then she rolled her eyes in annoyance