One Heart Read Online Free PDF

rubbed my head it was too forceful. But I had my mother there to love me; I did all right. She would make excuses for the man. “Your father’s had a long day, honey.” “Your father’s gruff on the outside, but inside he’s tender.” “Your father loves you, he just don’t know how to show it.” Some women are born to make excuses this way.
    I’d pretend to believe her. She was a fragile sort.
    For years Gladys would cook the family dinner because my father said she was such a fine cook, that she had the knack, that it was inborn, that my mother never spiced anything up and burned half of everything. Burned the shit out of it .
    â€œReally, Frank, you’re exaggerating. I can cook. I can put more spices in. Just ask! Gladys shouldn’t take over, she’s a child.”
    â€œIt’s practical,” he’d say. “If you got a natural cook in the house, you make her the cook.”
    He was not a man who needed to yell to get people to follow his orders. In fact, he was usually soft-spoken, and used big words he learned at night school. But somehow he made you feel if you stepped out of line, if you said the wrong thing, if you asked too many questions, he’d kill you. You knew he’d never really kill you, but that was what you felt anyways.
    He bought Gladys four aprons, all pretty, some with hand-sewn flowers from the Farmers Market, one from a department store. I remember he tied an apron on her and had her spin around the kitchen like it was a ballerina dress. “Beautiful,” he said that day, and whistled, still in his work clothes, his hands and nails dirty. He was learning to build houses. He ran with the Italian stone mason crowd up north in the city of Wilmington. They were good craftsmen like you don’t see anymore. He was also slowly going to college at night. He was a book-smart man, I’ll give him that. He could pass a test when he was drunk. He was often drunk, but also in control. He wasn’t a sloppy kind of drunk, usually. He wouldn’t have stood himself being out of control.
    So maybe Gladys was ten then. But she was cooking every day after school, and she liked it, because my father made her feel like a special queen, and she made casseroles and stews and simple chicken or beef with green beans. And she made pies—pumpkin, apple, peach, cherry, key lime. And when she was older she made bread. And my father would rave every night; he couldn’t get over it. He would tell the neighbors and all our relatives about Gladys, and she would smile and feel proud. He said she was not just a cook, she was an artist.
    Maybe you’d think my mother felt bad, like she wished she was still cooking, but it weren’t that way. My mother thought my father was right, she always thought that; it was ground into her early on that the man knew better. They got married in 1927. I guess most of your 1927 brides weren’t asking a lot of questions. My mother weren’t exactly a suffragette in comfortable trousers.
    So instead of getting upset that she was ex-head cook she used the free time to make a great big garden, and to grow her rosebushes. She liked being out of the house in her old sleeveless dresses and her scarves on her head. The scarf never did match the dress. It was a sin the way she looked sometimes. Kneesocks rolled down like sausage links around the ankles. Who was looking? Who cared? Well, I cared. She would get red shoulders from the sun and her skin would peel and she liked that too. She would sit there on the back stoop and peel off her skin like she wanted to peel her whole self away. It was hard for me to look at that thin little daydreaming woman sometimes. She had bright green eyes, same color as Gladys’s only softer, and they’d look up at me as if to say, Don’t worry, honey, life is long, you won’t always be watching your sunburned mother like this.
    But if Gladys went out in