Child of My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

entrance to the attic stairs a good enough distance away, she turned and sat, her legs spread, as if she had arrived there after a fall, not a climb.
    “Are you all right?” I said, laughing a bit, just to dampen her panic. She nodded, breathing heavily, the too big dress now spread around her like a gown.
    “I’m fine,” she said softly.
    This attic was my favorite place in the house—and I loved every corner of that house, even then. It was all rafters and ancient treasures and chinks of broken sunlight coming through the walls and the one tiny window. Two old iron beds that had belonged to my mother’s parents were set up under one eave, covered with two ancient quilts and two somewhat wilted feather pillows—our guest suite, as my mother called it (my Uncle Tommy being the only guest it had ever accommodated).
    There was a faded Queen Anne chair, some old-fashioned lamps with tasseled lampshades. A dresser. A full-length standing mirror. A steamer trunk that opened sideways.
    My father’s army footlocker, stenciled with his name and rank and the yellowed cargo tag from the Queen Mary. There were a number of rolled-up rugs, a couple of antique pitchers and basins. Boxes of old photographs, of Christmas decorations, of magazines and books. My disassembled crib. My black baby carriage draped with an old sheet. My pale blue teeter totter, my rocking horse. A stage set of an attic in every way.
    My stage.
    Under the other eave there was a long metal rod that held our winter coats in cloth wardrobes, and, for the rest of its length, my biography in clothing. My mother had all my dresses and tops and slacks and skirts and shorts arranged in chronological order down the expanse of the bar, so that behind my father’s overcoat there was my Catholic school uniform skirt, abandoned just a week ago when vacation began, my uniform blouses and sweaters, my Easter dress and coat, my green St. Patrick’s Day shirtwaist, my velvet Christmas dress, my fall kilts and cardigans, followed by everything I had outgrown from last summer, followed by my freshman-year uniform, another Easter dress, etc. It was all orderly enough to merit documentation, and I only had to count off velvet dress sleeves or the yellow, green, pink, or blue shoulders of my Easter coats to know exactly where I needed to look to find something for Daisy.
    I pulled out the first dress I recalled, a white one with pale yellow flowers and a green velveteen sash, puffy sleeves, a sweet collar, a full skirt. Daisy was still sitting on the floor, but when I held it out to her, she rose slowly, walking carefully toward me over the warm, worn floorboards, as if she were not yet sure she trusted them. Kneeling in front of her, I unbuttoned the tennis dress and slipped it over her shoulders.
    “Arms up,” I said, and pulled my old dress over her head. I turned her around and buttoned up the back and tied the sash.
    “Beautiful,” I said, turning her again, and she was: the yellow and white and green and her flushed cheeks and bright red hair.
    “I could wear it to church on Sunday,” she said, a little breathless.
    And I said, once again, “Why wait till Sunday?”
    I showed her my baby clothes, at the far end of the long rack. The little dresses on their hangers, the boxes on the shelf beneath them with the sweaters and the sleepers and even a handful of worn cloth diapers, all wrapped in tissue paper, weighed down with pieces of cedar. I held the box to her nose and told her to breathe in. I said, Isn’t it something, how all my baby clothes smell like that? As if my parents hadn’t gotten me from the hospital at all but from some old forest. Found on a bed of moss, perhaps, cradled in the roots of an ancient tree. It makes you wonder, I said mysteriously, loving her for the way she was taking me in, her mouth opened and her eyes bright. I put the lid on the box and slipped it back onto its shelf.
    “Do you remember anything, Daisy Mae?” I asked.
    “About