Castles Read Online Free PDF Page A

other and grow. Clouds are born of the love they share, and as that cloud grows, the landscape of the world is changed for good. That was her simple explanation of how babies were made.
    Why was Grandma telling me now that men were evil? Why should I care?
    "If the tongue of a boy is so bad, Grandma, why not cut it out?" Really. Why not get rid of it? It seemed like common sense to my nine-year-old mind.
    "You got to be careful when you cut, Maggie," Grandma said. "There's always so much blood."
    Grandma didn't say another word for a while. She pulled the afghan around her tightly and turned back to her observation of the weather. I tried to do the same, but the thoughts in my mind—of Michael and his tongue, of the body in the Bus and the thing I saw—jumbled together and prevented me from paying any more attention to what was on the horizon. I didn't know that was the last conversation I would ever have with Grandma.
    She died on my tenth birthday, waiting for another storm to come.
    I'm sure the wind took her.

2
     
    The days and nights before Grandma's funeral were surreal. It was mid-summer. The days were hot, the nights hot and humid. I stayed in my room after her death, sweating and crying.
    I never empathized with Mama; it was Grandma who raised me, Grandma who taught me how to be a woman, and Grandma who showed me love when no one else would. Mama was around more after Grandma passed away, but I was determined to never feel anything for her. Perhaps I didn't see Mama's pain the way I should have. She did, after all, lose her mother. Looking back, however, if I'd lost my mother at that point, I probably wouldn't have been as devastated as I was after losing Grandma. I just didn't care enough.
    Mama came in once to ask me how I felt, but thinking back, I really believe her attempt at understanding my pain was more a formality, something she needed to do as a parent. I looked past the pain in her face, the wet cheeks she wiped off with the back of her hand and her unkempt hair. I drew away from her, pushing back against the wall as I'd done so many times before. Maybe that's why she never said another word to me about Grandma.
    The morning of the funeral, I dressed myself and braided my hair the way Grandma taught me. I wanted to look my best, even if my best would be lost on those around me. In the back of my mind, however, I know I wondered if Michael would be at the funeral. Grandma had seen the way he looked at me, and just maybe she would smile down on me from her castle in the sky.
    The drive to the funeral home was quiet. I looked out the window at the passing houses and strip malls, like I had on many occasions when Grandma would drive me here or there. I could almost feel her in the car, smell her clothes and taste the air around her. I didn't expect to feel so many things. Hell, I didn't know what to expect really. I'd seen a dead body, but not one I knew. This was to be my first glimpse at death from a vantage point not far removed from my life. I was to be humbled, and even if I didn't understand that word at the time, I knew something was going to change.
    "Mama." I didn't turn away from the passing world beyond the car's window.
    "Yes?"
    "Do you miss her?"
    Mama didn't say anything. I don't know if she cried at that moment or if she felt the same pain I felt. Perhaps she had the time to prepare herself for the inevitable. Grandma was old when she passed away, and I believe Mama must have known Grandma's life clock had been ticking toward eternal silence for years.
    For a child, a parent's death is something different, something more shocking. In a second, the nurturing stops and a slow—often painful—education of death begins. For me, the woman who raised me, fed me, dressed me for school, made sure I was healthy and along the way dropped life lessons in tiny chocolate-covered morsels . . . was gone. In the car at that very moment, I took a look back at everything I could remember.
    There was