Crave Read Online Free PDF Page B

her period and she knew, but really didn’t know what that meant? Had the graphite against paper wanted to confess what had happened with Pop, as she, clenching her fingers, burrowed down on blankness, wrestled words into short, simple sentences? Had she fought the urge to write, “I need to get out of here before we all know,” aware he might not read beyond the letter “I?” Those things cannot be known. The past only reveals what it chooses, but I see her as she inspects her paper, as she says a prayer for each word, and takes her future into her daddy’s room.
    Momma quietly handed her daddy the paper. She quivered as she leaned toward him. He pretended to read even though the curves, the straight lines had always been foreign to him. He cleared his throat and she flinched in response. She looked straight ahead. He stared down. No parts of the house creaked. Even the windows seemed to hold their breath. The ear of the world turned toward him—waited—just as Momma did.
    â€œAll right, you can go.” He spoke with heat, as if she were in need of a whipping.
    She heard it that way too, but through the heat she heard song. He ordered her out of the room, told her to clean something before he changed his mind. She didn’t smile as she left and she didn’t look back. I see him and her in my mind and I know what Momma did not; if she had looked back, if her eyes had touched his, she would have seen the smile, the celebration in him.

The Coast The Coast
    Her first week in Norfolk was the reprieve for which she’d prayed. Norfolk State University was only twenty minutes from her daddy’s Deep Creek, and yet it felt years away, so far, from the two-bedroom house with floors that had moaned as she tiptoed over them. She had moaned too, quietly, so her daddy couldn’t hear, once she’d passed her second month without a period. At Norfolk State, she could moan loudly. There she wasn’t Big Boone’s daughter, she wasn’t “Pretty,” and she wasn’t the girl Pop had deposited his shame into.
    No fear of her daddy hearing in spaces he did not own. This new space, with buildings so large they could have birthed her daddy’s house five times over, belonged to her. She belonged to it, and neither she nor that majestic campus would suffocate under this new belonging.
    There’s something about being surrounded by people who believe the world will work as expected. That kind of confidence rubs off on the less fortunate. That’s what happened to Momma. She became so immersed in that environment she forgot what awaited her at home. She forgot what had prompted her to leave.
    She attended classes, walked the Norfolk State campus like she’d always belonged there, and spent nights with other Upward Bound students talking about lives they would enjoy after graduating and entering college. That was her plan too. Upward Bound, college, maybe even the Army. The Army would get her far from Deep Creek.
    While there was more than enough food at Norfolk State, there were still those pangs, those cramps in time that doubled her over, and left her paralyzed in a bathroom stall. She rationalized her weak stomach as nerves. Then she found she was sick at her calmest moments. Finally, she visited the infirmary. After a quick rundown of her symptoms—nausea, tender breasts, headaches, vomiting—the nurse recommended she take a pregnancy test.
    She didn’t need a test. She knew there was something growing inside her and its life meant her life would forever be changed. She knew this soon after Pop did what he did, soon after that first ride on those handlebars. No, she didn’t need a test. She needed a time machine, a way to go back and do things the right way so the life she’d glimpsed those few days at Norfolk State could be hers.
    After she learned she would be a mother, she learned there would be no Upward Bound graduation. As if she and