Invisible Lives Read Online Free PDF

never having to look down.
    But New York proved too frenetic for the knowing. And then Sean and I met, and I tumbled head over heels, then stumbled flat on my face. How far can you go with a man who won’t admit his own prejudice? And how many more men would humiliate me that way?
    I began to miss the Northwest, the cool cleanliness of the air, the mountaintops like whipped cream in the sky. I missed the cobblestone alleys of Pike Place Market, my friends, the easy, casual atmosphere of Seattle.
    Then Ma’s business faltered, and one day her voice came through forlorn over the phone, and I knew I had to come back.
    Now I take the long way home, walking the neighborhood to clear my head. So Ma has found me a man. She’s so happy, and the happiness of others has always been my concern. As a child, I felt I could see people in other lives, in other possibilities. I could hear the longings of finches in the blackberry bushes, of the mice in the underbrush. I adopted stray cats and plastered stickers on our windows to keep the pine siskins from hitting the panes. I sat in the woods for hours, letting the needs and fears of animals climb into me, then helping where I could.
    “How does she know where to find these creatures?” Ma asked once when I brought home a litter of kittens whose mother had been killed by a car. Their hunger and thirst and fear had screamed at me in my sleep. I found the fur-balls hidden in a hollow log in the woods. We nursed the kittens to health and adopted them out.
    My parents didn’t have the knowing, but they surmised that the gods had endowed me with increased sensitivity. I didn’t begin to understand my own ability until the week after Christmas, in the third grade.
    I had Miss America Barbie, the peach-colored doll with a smooth complexion, torpedo breasts out of proportion with her stilt-long legs, a glittering crown on her head. At recess my friends and I ran around the playground, the dolls’ red satin capes trailing in the wind. Then a rock dropped and hit me in the head. I stumbled and fell.
    I lay on my back, blinking at the open sky. I touched my forehead, expecting to find blood, but my fingers touched dry, unbroken skin. The rock had fallen into my head and lay smoking like a chunk of meteor. It wasn’t a real rock. It was a feeling, a longing.
    Someone stared down at me from the monkey bars—Leslie, a thin, quiet girl with light gray eyes. Her arm had brushed mine as she’d climbed, and I’d felt an inkling of the longing.
    She smiled, revealing a big gap where her front tooth had gone missing. You couldn’t tell by looking at her that the meteor of longing had come from her, that it had fallen from her mind into mine.
    Miss America Barbie was still clutched in my right hand, but now her cape was muddy. A few boys gathered nearby, snickering. They were trying to peek up Leslie’s skirt. She didn’t seem to notice.
    The smoking meteor sank into my brain, and I glimpsed, in fleeting images, Leslie’s spindly Christmas tree at home, her parents fighting. She didn’t get any dolls for Christmas, not even a book. She got hand-me-down clothes, and her heart ached for Miss America.
    Why couldn’t I see it in her face?
    “Come down here, Leslie!” I called, and everyone turned to look.
    Leslie climbed down the monkey bars, her eyes devouring Miss America.
    I handed her the doll. “You can have her. She’s yours.”
    Her eyes widened as she looked at the doll, then at me.
    “I don’t need your stupid doll,” she said and threw it. Miss America splashed into a puddle. Her tiny, tailored dress was ruined, soggy and sagging.
    Leslie retrieved her longing and marched away. I sat up, and the kids gathered around, whispering and mumbling. A sour taste came into my mouth. I’d thought it would be easy to give Leslie what she wanted. Why had she thrown the doll and walked away? I could still feel her need.
    I rescued the doll from the puddle.
    Leslie avoided me after that. I was