Flora Read Online Free PDF Page A

he kept saying, and if he did mind, well, too bad. It was he who had chosen to make Flora an intimate of our family for the summer. I would tell just enough to make her feel she was beinginducted into a private family story, and if she proved a worthy listener I would dole out more details. I might also allude to other noteworthy Recoverers on Flora’s first day. The point was to draw her into the ways of Old One Thousand and make her my ally in keeping things going the way they had always been. And what better start than Flora’s having just reread Nonie’s letters on the train!
    But Flora completely derailed my plans by making us stop first in the kitchen, where she proceeded to unpack her luggage. Out of an old carpetbag, whose threadbare state had embarrassed me when Lorena Huff was lifting it into the back of her station wagon, came a sack of flour, filled mason jars, and an entire ham. And then from her suitcase Flora parted a meager layer of personal garments and lifted out a sack of cornmeal, which she held in one arm like a baby while she plucked out tea bags, a tin cake box, and some wax paper parcels of what looked like dead grass. With a sigh of fulfillment she deposited these items on the counter.
    “You didn’t need to bring tea bags,” I said. “And we already have flour and cornmeal.”
    “Well, I wasn’t sure. And I never go anywhere anymore without my self-rising flour. In a pinch, you can make biscuits with it and mayonnaise. I baked them for my teacher-training group last winter and they came out perfect every time. And this cornmeal is stone-ground at a mill near where we live. Now, Helen, you’ll have to show me where everything goes.”
    “What are those dried-up old things in the wax paper?”
    “These are Juliet’s famous herbs. For spaghetti sauce and to enhance our everyday dishes.”
    “Juliet who?”
    “Juliet Parker. Don’t you know her name? She raised your mother and me.”
    “You mean that old Negro who lived with you?”
    “There’s a lot more to Juliet than that. And she’s not old. Now this apple-cured ham is from your uncle Sam. He picked it out especially for you.”
    “Uncle Sam owns the meat market and has been separated from his wife for ages and ages,” I said.
    Flora needed to know that I was familiar with the names that mattered in my mother’s past.
    “Well, he’s the part owner with his friend Ben Timms. Ben and your uncle Sam and my daddy worked in the iron mines together when they were young. Uncle Sam is getting remarried. I mean he and Aunt Garnet are going to get remarried. They were never divorced, but they want to renew their vows and make a fresh beginning. Isn’t that sweet?”
    I stared at Flora, still wearing her little hat with the demure veil, so proudly unloading all this foreign food and all these people with their complications into our house.
    “Is everything all right?” she asked. Something in my face must have sapped the confidence she had brought with her on the train. Already I was learning how effectively she could be managed by a simple look of disdain.
    “I was just thinking where all this stuff should go,” I said.
    “Juliet and I wanted to be sure I brought enough to give you wholesome meals over the weekend. We’ll order whatever else we need from the grocery store on Monday.”
    “Why do we have to order? We can go and get whatever we need in Nonie’s car.”
    “Oh dear, I thought your father would have explained. I don’t drive.”
    “Do you mean you can’t, or what?”
    “I never learned. None of us did. We didn’t have a car, so there was no need.”
    “But how are we going to get anywhere?”
    “Your father has set up an account for us at the store. They make lots of deliveries because of the gas rationing. All we have to do is make a list and call up. We don’t even have to pay when they bring it. It’s all been arranged by your father, isn’t that nice?”
    “But how will we get to church?”
    “I