A Painted House Read Online Free PDF Page B

before. Gran fried chicken twice a week, but never on Wednesdays. My mother’s garden was producing enough tomatoes and onions to feed all of Black Oak, so she sliced a platter of them for every meal.
    The kitchen was small and hot. A round oscillating fan rattled away on top of the refrigerator and tried to keep the air circulating as my mother and grandmother prepared dinner. Their movements were slow but steady. They were tired, and it was too hot to hurry up.
    They were not particularly fond of each other, but both were determined to exist in peace. I never heard them argue, never heard my mother say anything bad about her mother-in-law. They lived in the same house, cooked the same meals, did the same laundry, picked the same cotton. With so much work to do, who had time to bicker?
    But Gran had been born and bred deep in the cotton patch. She knew she would be buried in the soil she worked. My mother longed for an escape.
    Through daily ritual, they had silently negotiated a method to their kitchen work. Gran hovered near the stove, checking the corn bread, stirring the potatoes, okra, and corn. My mother kept to the sink, where she peeled tomatoes and stacked the dirty dishes. I studied this from the kitchen table, where I sat every night and peeled cucumbers with a paring knife. They both loved music, and occasionally one would hum while the other sang softly. The music kept the tension buried.
    But not tonight. They were too preoccupied to sing and hum. My mother was stewing over the fact that the Mexicans had been hauled in like cattle. Mygrandmother was pouting because the Spruills had invaded our front yard.
    At exactly six o’clock, Gran removed her apron and sat across from me. The end of the table was flush against the wall and served as a large shelf that accumulated things. In the center was an RCA radio in a walnut casing. She turned on the switch and smiled at me.
    The CBS news was delivered to us by Edward R. Murrow, live from New York. For a week there’d been heavy fighting in Pyonggang, near the Sea of Japan, and from an old map that Gran kept on her night table, we knew that Ricky’s infantry division was in the area. His last letter had arrived two weeks earlier. It was a quickly written note, but between the lines it gave the impression that he was in the thick of things.
    When Mr. Murrow got past his lead story about a spat with the Russians, he started on Korea, and Gran closed her eyes. She folded her hands together, put both index fingers to her lips, and waited.
    I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. Mr. Murrow was not going to announce to the nation that Ricky Chandler was dead or alive.
    My mother listened, too. She stood with her back to the sink, wiping her hands with a towel, staring blankly at the table. This happened almost every night in the summer and fall of 1952.
    Peace efforts had been started, then abandoned. The Chinese withdrew, then attacked again. Through Mr. Murrow’s reports and Ricky’s letters, we lived the war.
    Pappy and my father would not listen to the news. They busied themselves outside, at the toolshed or the water pump, doing small chores that could’ve waited,talking about the crops, searching for something to worry about besides Ricky. Both had fought in wars. They didn’t need Mr. Murrow in New York to read some correspondent’s cable from Korea and tell the nation what was occurring in one battle or the next. They knew.
    In any case, it was a short report that night about Korea, and this was taken in our little farmhouse as something good. Mr. Murrow moved along to other matters, and Gran finally smiled at me. “Ricky’s okay,” she said, rubbing my hand. “He’ll be home before you know it.”
    She’d earned the right to believe this. She had waited for Pappy during the First War, and she had prayed long distance for my father and his wounds during the Second. Her boys always came home, and Ricky would not let us down.
    She turned the radio