Crush Read Online Free PDF Page B

me softens. I put my arms around him and hug him back for the first time. His arms tighten, crushing me against him and the ice inside of me begins to drip awayswiftly.
After that night, I crave his hugs. I think I grow on them. I gain weight and get taller, despite the doctors’ fears that I’ll be stunted because of the starvation and the kidney damage. By the time I’m fullygrown, I’m nearlyfive-six.
    In those first tranquil months with Lloyd Tafford, my permanent personalityemerges. Lloyd is as much an influence on that as my biological parents. It’s still there, that fear, but now I have Lloyd to balance me, and keep it from dominating every second of mylife.
    Lloyd’s never been married, and mycoming into his life must have awakened an instinct to love and nurture. He’s a great, tall man with dark curlyhair and a shypersonality. He’s a gentle man, not just a gentleman. He grew up in Van Buren, a small town in Arkansas. I’ve never been out of California, not since that long ago, blurry trip to Oregon. I love the way Lloyd talks. It’s not an out and out twang or a deep-Southern drawl. It’s verysubtle. Onlya person with a great ear for non-Californian accents would be able to detect all the unusual inflections, which I adopt as I grow up in his home. I’m glad to have an accent. I’m glad to be able to talk at all. When mybirth parents stopped coming to myroom, I had nobody to talk to, so I stopped speaking.
    With Lloyd, I am introduced to a peaceful, nostalgic world. He loves old radio shows that I’ve never heard of, like Fibber McGee & Molly , The Great Gildersleeve , and Jack Benny . In winter, he likes to cover up with quilts while listening to these shows, or old music from the fifties. He loves really old movies starring Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Cary Grant. In summer, he enjoys sitting outside on the back porch made of bricks, drinking lemonade and watching bees and hummingbirds sparring over the red liquid he puts into their feeders.
    He cries easily, and after so many years of burying my most intense emotions deep inside, I cry a lot too, and the stupidest things set me off, like sad endings of old movies or the first sight I have of the Pacific Ocean. I fall immediatelyand absolutelyin love with the broad, churning teal expanse, even the smells of sand and salt and seaweed. “Let’s move to the ocean!” I beg him.
    In fact, after smelling nothing but the rank odors of my own unwashed body---ancient sweat, pasty dead skin, stale urine and my own excrement---along with Daddy’s semen---for so many years, I’ve come to love my sense of smell again. I never go into the bakery department of a grocery store and take for granted the warm aroma of fresh bread.
    All of my senses reawaken. When I see and smell my first rainfall outside Lloyd’s front door, I run out and dance in it, loving the sound of the rain rattling the dryleaves, the sting of cold drops splattering on myskin. I trail myfingers over the bright green moss growing on the old, cracked bricks on the porch. I have a cold the next day.
    My story slowly inches its way though town, from mouth to mouth. It’s moved people to write letters of outrage and encouragement to me and Lloyd. On the street, people stare at me. I don’t know if I see visages of fascination, curiosity or admiration. I know some of them want to talk to me, ask me how I emerged from hell alive, what all went on in that room…
    And I’m glad theydon’t.
Even though Lloyd and I are celebrities in Sommerville, we prefer to keep to ourselves. In fact, Lloyd is every bit the recluse and eccentric I am. Away from work, he likes to be at home. Our companions of preference are the stray alley cats we’ve adopted. We spoil them rotten.
I adore these kitties, which we call our “kids.” Whenever one of them comes in with a runny nose or a goathead sticker imbedded in the tender pink pad of a paw, I fuss over them with warm, wet washcloths and salt water soaks, and