Carrying Mason Read Online Free PDF

watching cartoons and forgetting to eat, forgetting to wash up, maybe forgetting to breathe now that her son was with Jesus. I looked to the sky as a lacy cloud skirted by. For a minute I thought I saw Mason’s smile.
    Mama was preparing one of her cold summer-day meals for supper. She hollowed out cantaloupes and filled them with fresh fruit. Then she made ham-and-cheese sandwiches and that was supper.
    Daddy had gone off to work after the funeral so he wasn’t there. He and the other plumbers were laying a new water service near the new houses they were building behind the high school. Daddy said it would be good summer money, enough to maybe make a real family vacation possible. We all cheered when he said it. Even Polly Dog, who was sitting as close as she could to me, let go one of her happy barks. When Polly sat on her haunches the top of her head reached my kneecaps, so I could easily scratch behind her ears. She liked that best of all.
    Most of the men in Makeshift worked the coal mines, following their daddies into the deep earth. But not my daddy. He said some men needed to stay on top of the world to take care of things that needed taking care of, like toilets and pipes.
    “Luna,” Mama said, “how’s Ruby Day?”
    I shook my head. “She ain’t good. She’s just preten-din’ to be good.”
    Mama took my hands in hers. “Sometimes pretending is a good thing. Before you know it, you ain’t pretending anymore.”
    I pulled my hands back. “I need to get out of this dress. I’ll be down to help in a minute.”
    Mama looked at me with needle-sharp eyes that cut right through. “You got somethin’ on your mind, Luna.”
    It wasn’t a question.
    “Maybe, Mama.”
    But I didn’t tell her just then. I went to my room where Delores was sitting at her vanity table primping herself like always.
    “You can keep trying,” I said, “but no amount of powder is gonna change your pig nose.”
    Delores looked at me in the mirror. “I hate you, Luna.” She tossed a bottle of something, I didn’t know what, at my head. It hit the wall.
    I pulled a pair of shorts out of my drawer and lookedat Delores. I had no right to say what I said. It was jealousy that made me say mean things to her, since Delores was so pretty. “I’m sorry, Dee,” I said. “I’m sorry I said you had a pig nose. I don’t wanna fight anymore.”
    She glared at me in the mirror.
    I changed into shorts and a light, cottony blouse, which I tied across my midriff to be cooler.
    “Daddy’ll make you untie that shirt, you know.”
    “I know. But he ain’t home yet.”
    The twins bounced into the room with basketballs.
    Delores banged her brush on the table. “Can’t I ever get any privacy around here?”
    I tried to shoo the girls out but they refused and started jumping on their beds.
    “Stop it,” Delores screamed. “Just stop it now or I’ll tell Mama.”
    April stuck out her tongue.
    “Maybe Daddy will finish that basement room he’s always talking about,” I said.
    That garnered nothing more than another glare from Delores. She was right. No one believed Daddy would ever finish the room.
    The twins tired of bouncing and left carrying their dolls—one with knotted-up hair and dirty clothes and the other with long, silky strands and a neat dress. The dolls always made me think of Delores and me.
    Mama and I finished preparing fresh fruit—strawberries, cantaloupe, honeydew, blueberries, apples, bananas, and one mango that Daddy got as payment for fixing Grace Pickler’s leaking faucets. Mangoes weren’t readily available at Haskell’s Grocery Store, and Grace claimed she got it from a visiting missionary on furlough from South America. We filled the cantaloupe bowls once everything was cut. I stole a taste on account I never saw a mango in my whole life. It was sweet and juicy, and, as I held it in my mouth, for a second I was an exotic firewalker.
    “Daddy will be home any second,” Mama said. “You better untie that