Vada Faith Read Free Page B

running, my red canvas tennis shoes hitting the hot pavement, driving the heat right up into my feet and through the rest of my body until it came to rest on the top of my head like hot coals.
    I ran as if all the demons in Hell were after me.
    I looked over my shoulder only once to see John Wasper and Joy Ruth in earnest conversation, their heads bent together, munching on the candy bars they’d bought. Bruiser and Bobby Joe lagged behind licking chocolate from their fingers.
    Even though Joy Ruth and John Wasper stared at the candy bars longer than any of us, the two of them always picked a Hershey with Almonds. They said you always knew what you were getting when you got a Hershey with Almonds.
    To this day, those two will not try anything new or different and certainly not anything controversial.
    On the other hand, I, Vada Faith, was always up for something new. Back then and now. Something different. Even if I ended up hating it, I was always willing to give it a try.
    I slammed into the trailer that summer day, past daddy stretched out on the sofa reading the newspaper, and buried myself in the sweet smell of the patchwork quilt covering the small bed I shared with my sister.
    We didn’t have much, but daddy kept everything we had clean, especially the bedding. He was home most days and he was always running the old washer out on the built-in porch, hanging clothes on the clothesline strung between two posts out behind the trailer.
    I can see him to this day with several clothespins stuck in his mouth hanging a row of our worn pink panties on the line to dry in the sun.
    “Hey,” Daddy said, coming to stand in the doorway as I lay sobbing on the bed. “You all right, Vada Faith?”
    It was his standard question.
    “I’m all right,” I said, sniffling, giving my standard answer.
    “Okay.” He stood there a minute more, looking uncomfortable, then he trudged back to his newspaper.
    Problem solved.
    Well, not entirely.
    A seed of longing was forming deep inside me. A longing to be something more than I was. To be someone special. Someone everybody looked up to.
    That day I just wiped away my tears and joined the others in the backyard.
    At the edge of the woods there was a big competition going on. The prize was the extra Hershey bar John Wasper had bought. The person who could climb to the top of the old Maple tree won the candy bar.
    I knew I could win hands down. I was the best climber in the bunch and the most daring.
    Besides I was motivated. My Baby Ruth rested at the bottom of the trash can at the A & P. And I was hungry for chocolate.

Chapter Three
    When I rounded the corner of our street on my way from work that day, I could see the old Victorian home Grandma Belle had left us. The paint was worn on the big wraparound porch where Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly had sat. I could picture the President’s wife daintily perched on the edge of one of the old wicker chairs sipping tea from one of grandma’s bone china cups with the pink roses.
    John Wasper had filled the spacious lawn with beautiful flowers and shrubs. The neat bungalows that had sprung up all around the old house made it a decent neighborhood in which to live. However, the old house was an antique that had lost its luster.
    I opened the mailbox at the curb and pulled out a handful of envelopes, a bunch of junk mail, and a Land’s End Catalog. I wondered where John Wasper was. His pickup was absent from the driveway at the side of the house. I knew he’d taken the girls to a movie. He was always stopping somewhere else. My husband loved people and people loved him. His habit of being gone was grating on my nerves lately.
    Whatever had happened to the days when it was just the two of us? When we’d rushed home to be together? We’d make love and tell each other how wonderful we were together.
    I wandered through the quiet house and wished my husband was home. I loved him but he was almost never home. He’d run out in the middle of the