Gingerbread Read Online Free PDF Page A

solemnly.
    "What did you do?"
    "1 was eighteen years old, unmarried, no job, just lost my Honey and my honey. I did what you did. Only it wasn't legal then and it was in a back alley basement of the colored doctor. Most painful experience of my life." Sugar's beautiful cafe-au-lait-colored skin paled at the memory. I remembered the horrible cramping in my stomach after the procedure, which was performed in a safe and legal environment, so I could only imagine what Sugar must have experienced fifty years ago.
    'Are you ever sorry you did?" I asked. Because that's what haunts me, that later on, I will want to, and not be able to.
    "Never," Sugar said. I believed her, kinda. "If I hadn't done it, I never would have made my way to California. Got to New York, Paris, Chicago, all them places before coming here. Had me some adventures." Her coral lips had come back to color and she smiled. "You know, there was a time I thought the world was over for me. And I was but eighteen years old. Thought I had no life left to live. And I look at
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    these cards in front of me, and I see that's how you've been feeling. But the times in your life--good and bad, and they'll be lots of both--are still ahead of you. Now's the time for you to think about your future, making new friends, seeing new places. You might have been to hell and back, girl, but losing yourself in Shrimp and spending the rest of your time with this old lady is not all that's in the cards for you."
    Sugar laid down a new card. "The future," she said. "See the Fool there? He's innocent, fearless, about to go off the edge of a cliff. That card can tell you that you just don't know what's around the corner. Looks to me like some new people are coming into your life, and some old ones coming back in. Like you're going back to new-old places."
    "Huh?" I said. "Not boarding school!"
    "Maybe not boarding school. But definitely back to an old place. Here's the Chariot card. Things change quickly, sometimes even backward."
    Bor-ing. I asked Sugar, "Is Shrimp my soulmate? How come there's no Lovers card here?"
    "Maybe you're going to have many soulmates in your life," Sugar said. "Which would be the opposite of me. I had many loves but only one soulmate. Maybe you'll have many soulmates but only one true love. You did get the Ten of Pentacles card. That card can indicate someone you got a real soul connection with."
    "Shrimp!" I said.
    Sugar laughed. "Who said I was talking about Shrimp?"
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    Eight
    "Do you think Sugar was trying to mess with my mind?" I asked Shrimp later that night after we'd dropped Sugar back at the home.
    We were making out in the back seat of the bug, parked under dripping trees on a hill at Lands End which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. Shrimp sighed. This was about the sixth time I had asked him.
    He wriggled his hand out from under my shirt, sat up, and cinched the strings on his drawstring shorts, then leaned down to caress my cheek. "No, Cyd," he said, "I don't think Sugar was trying to mess with your mind. 1 think she was trying to tell you to make more friends besides me and her, and to be open to the possibility that we might not be together for all time."
    He said it so casually. I hoped Gingerbread had covered her ears. "You don't think we'll be together for all time?" I said. My voice was hurried and anxious, shocked. The thought of!
    The night was pitch black except for the stars twinkling through the VW bug's sunroof, but I could see his pupils dilating in fear of having to decide this huge thing right now. "I don't know," he said. "I never really thought about it. I dig you mucho. But I barely know what I'm going to paint tomorrow, or where I'll want to surf next weekend, much less who I'm going to be with for eternity. What do you think, that we'll be together for all time?"
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    "Now I don't," I said, and shoved his body off of mine. I was getting really aggravated. I adore Shrimp and maybe one day when I'm thirty or