Body and Bread Read Online Free PDF

accommodate the child who’s assumed my mother’s name, while another child and her mother are being manipulated. “No. Sorry,” I say then blow out the candle. “As a matter of fact, just before you got here, I promised a student I’d meet her at my office in half an hour. Having trouble with her thesis. You understand.”
    “You mean you want us to leave?” Hugh asks, his head cocked. “But we drove all the way here.”
    I gather the scattered pyramid pieces from the floor. “Professors have emergencies, too.” Hugh’s specialty, gynecology, was chosen for its un-Pelton-like qualities, but he, like Kurt, heads his department at Latimore Memorial.
    “Why do you do this?”
    “Excuse me?”
    Holding hands, Debbie and Norine walk toward the front door.
    “You’re my sister.” He and Kurt have maintained the Pelton tradition of gathering for holiday lunches and periodic Sundays after church. My absence must worry them.
    “Yes, and I appreciate you coming.” Mother and daughter move into the front yard. “And bringing your family with you.” Liar! Liar! Miraculously, he doesn’t notice.
    “At least call sometime.”
    “Sure.” I walk him outside, tap his back, the bones pliant yet sturdy.
    “I pray for you every night,” Hugh whispers with such tenderness, I can’t bring myself to point out his implied insult.
    “When did you get so pious?”
    His fingers furrow his hair, exposing strips of scalp. “When Sam died, I got mad,” he says, his eyes suddenly wet. “There didn’t seem to be a point to anything. Church was nothing but morons preaching a hyped-up myth.” He shifts his stance, shoves his fists into his pockets. “Then I found the Lord.” He nods, as though I’ll understand. I don’t. Sam would’ve known what to say. Hugh’s grief would’ve prompted Sam to give comfort. Now this Christian brother is hesitating to help Terezie’s daughter, and I am silent.
    While Norine stands at the curb, Debbie crouches, her denim skirt barely covering her crotch. Hugh joins his family; when he squats, he cups his daughter’s chin with one hand, grips his wife’s thigh with the other.
    Odd, I think, the variations in dress and behavior female animal species use to attract males. Then, cheer-lee churr sings from the pecan tree across the street. “Western bluebird, Sialia mexicana ,” I mumble, “Sooty gray feathers that camouflage during nesting. Unlike grouse in estrus, who shove their swollen parts in the air.”
    While Norine runs to the side of the house, out of view, Hugh helps Debbie stand. He whispers something, rubs her back.
    The white bass squirts orange eggs, roe, as she flutters her silver sides in the shallow water.
    When Norine returns, she holds something I can’t see.
    “Beautiful,” Hugh says, stroking her arm.
    Still, human females outdo them all, I think while I reach for the door knob: from painting their nipples and elongating their necks, to the Dayak girls in Borneo wearing corselets of rattan hoops covered with brass rings, silver and shells. Or American women who squeeze into denim.
    When I turn from the doorway, Norine hands Debbie a fistful of wild rain-lily stalks. As I whisper, “ Cooperia pedunculata , diminutive amaryllids,” I notice the child’s and mother’s same sorrel-colored hair and Norine’s stance, tilted forward, like her father’s.
    My eyes close. Burning sage. Drumming? Shells jangle.
    On my bed two hours later, I stir, groggy.
     

 
    C HAPTER 3
    A WEEK LATER, I drive to Nugent, where I get lost trying to find Kurt’s house. Circling through the subdivision, I spot a familiar screened porch, a three-car garage with a basketball hoop, the street with a seventy-five-degree drop that neighborhood children coasted down on skateboards and bicycles. Bewildered (How does a person lose her brother’s house?), noticing the same orange front door for a third time, I skid to the curb midway through the next block.
    I’d like to go through the