Bone and Bread Read Online Free PDF

front. Until he started working at the shop, Lefty had shined shoes at the airport. He loved it but quit because everybody started wearing sneakers. He told us to hunt for sweets in the pockets of his coat hanging on the rack while he rang through the customers. Then he leaned his elbows on the counter and started adding to our list. If he had guessed that our paranoid inventory would yield such sober and scrupulous results, he probably would have hesitated.
    After that, walking around the corner to get milk turned into a twenty-minute trip as Sadhana and I high-stepped over the cracks, our solemn, anxious faces wed to the sidewalk. Ladders we shunned as if they were lepers, though we more or less agreed that doing much of anything outside was too perilous anyway, given the number of black cats in the neighbourhood. Instead, we played mostly indoors, or on our two balconies when the weather was fair.
    We removed the salt shaker from the table and hid it in the cupboard. Mama, exclaiming upon finding it there, held it up and studied our faces. “Girls,” she said, “I’ve been looking for this. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spill it. Is that it?”
    Sadhana shook her head until her braids started to come out, and Mama put the salt back out of sight. My job was to hide the umbrellas, which was easier, as we had only one. Mama was a great lover of rain. Mirrors were less easily disposed of, but we gave a wide berth to the dresser in Mama’s bedroom, which had its own tilting mirror as well as a hand mirror that was part of an heirloom set she’d brought from Ireland. The mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom we handled only with something equivalent to a surgeon’s careful touch.
    If our mother noticed us becoming more worn and manic, she never said anything. She liked to leave us to our games and amusements. With Papa gone, she had her own shadow side in which she laughed a little less and did more yoga, and every once in a while, when the phone rang or the kettle whistled, I’d see a flicker of fear cross her face, and I wondered if she was afraid that something else bad was going to happen.

The fire came in like a stray dog, slinking up the stairs as we slept, dragging its empty belly along the floor and blackening the walls with its great dirty hide. From where I lay in bed, it sounded like nothing so much as a large animal, sniffing and snapping as it prowled. I awoke to the crackle of it chewing on the thick green rug that Papa had stapled to the staircase when he and Mama first moved in. In the faint glow of the nightlight, I could see its hazy floating shadow in the hallway. I sat up and made myself scream to scare it away. Instead I only woke my sister, who kicked off her covers and, without opening her eyes, declared that this time she was sure we were going to melt before morning.
    â€œA dog,” I said, and it came out in a whisper. My throat felt ragged, as though I’d screamed more than once. The only reply from Sadhana was a grunt. She had probably fallen back asleep before her covers even touched the floor.
    While I was still deciding what to do, Mama came running in. Behind her I could hear a beeping, as though she had decided to set her alarm clock for the middle of the night.
    â€œWake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” Her voice was a loud, strange singsong. She was carrying sopping wet towels she told us to press to our faces. I sputtered against the shock of cold water.
    â€œStop it,” I said. “Did you see the dog?” But the sound had changed, and I wondered if I had been confused. “Are we going to look at the stars?” I asked. Once or twice Mama had woken us up well past our bedtimes to go and look at the night sky — the three times that Mars was in conjunction with Jupiter, and another time for a lunar eclipse.
    â€œNo, not stars,” she said. “Wake up.” Though her face was mild, something in her voice