Picking Up the Pieces Read Online Free PDF Page A

ago, I had spent nearly every minute cleaning the tiny nine-hundred square foot home, trying to scrub away the bad memories to no avail. Rose had redecorated most of the surfaces after Momma died, putting up fresh paint and airy curtains, but it was like slapping a designer dress on a two-bit hooker. The surface might look pretty, but the character underneath was still seedy and coarse.
    God, I hated this house.
    Ashley hadn’t taken my separation from Mike well, and she often woke up in the middle of the night in tears. But my daughter’s nightmares had increased since moving out of the only home she’d ever known…and so had my anxiety. I’d sit up in bed in a cold sweat, roused by her screams, reliving the ugly hateful past, Rose’s cries mingling with Ashley’s in my head.
    “Violet! Help me!”
    Holding my little girl in the darkness reminded me of holding another little girl, smoothing her hair and telling her it was okay.
    “Don’t leave me, Violet,” she’d plead through her tears.
    I promised that I never would. Ever.
    And I hadn’t.
    I’d always stayed close to protect her from the woman who had called herself our mother. Three years after our wedding, Mike was offered a job in Little Rock. His father’s construction business was struggling at the time, so he’d begged me to move. I refused. Daddy had died only months before and Momma had insisted Rose come home from college, leaving in the middle of the second semester of her first year. I’d tried to talk Rose out of coming home to Henryetta, but Momma had my baby sister wrapped good and tight in her cycle of abuse, and Rose came running back desperate for Momma’s love and approval, despite the fact I’d spent the majority of my life trying to give her the love our mother refused her.
    I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t protected her. One of my earliest memories was of four-year-old Rose standing in the living room crying while Momma leaned over her, shouting, “You’re an evil child! I’ll beat that demon right out of ya!” But instead of beating her, Momma stuffed her in the hall closet and shut the door. That punishment was far more effective than any beating ever could be.
    Rose was terrified of being trapped in enclosed spaces.
    My little sister screamed and cried in terror while I pleaded with Momma to let her out. Instead, Momma sent me to my room and told me to stay out of it. I sat on the floor of the stuffy bedroom Rose and I shared, staring at the closet door across the hall. My own tears slid down my face as I listened to my little sister cry. I had learned that any attempts to help her would only make her punishment worse, so I just sat there in our stuffy room, sweat dripping down my back, making my cotton shirt stick to my skin. Within fifteen minutes, Rose’s cries turned to soft whimpers and I heard a knock at the front door.
    “What’s all the ruckus, Agnes?” Miss Mildred asked through the screen door.
    “Rose,” was all Momma said, but the “hmm” Miss Mildred released said she knew all about my little sister and her devious behavior.
    The screen door banged open then shut, and I could hear their muffled voices as they gossiped about Miss Opal, who lived across the street. Poking my head out of the bedroom door, I realized they were on the front porch, sitting in Momma’s wicker chairs.
    My stomach knotted into a tight ball as I ran across the hall into the bathroom and filled a small cup with water. Making sure Momma was still outside, I opened the closet door and found Rose on the floor, huddled against the wall. Strands of her dark brown hair were plastered to her damp, reddened cheeks and her eyes blinked at the sunlight.
    “Violet?” she whimpered.
    I turned to look toward the front door, panicked that Momma would discover what I was doing and hurt us even worse. “Here.” I thrust the cup at her and she grabbed it, gulping the water in a matter of seconds.
    “Come back later,” Momma said,