The Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing above me. “Yeah, thanks, but I don’t want it.” I looked up at him for less than a second, which was hard for me to do. “I like it here the way it is now.”
    â€œHave it your way,” he said. Now he sounded ticked at me.
    â€œThanks though.” I don’t know why I didn’t want to say it to him directly, but I said it looking away.
    â€œYou need anything. …” he said.
    â€œA French book,” I said.
    It was almost like he was hearing me talk in French. “Wha’d you say?”

    â€œA French book. I probably need a French book. To study it, you know?”
    â€œO-kay,” he said, making two words.
    He almost closed the door behind him, but my mom was next, already pushing it back open. She’d had her nails done. It was how she was holding her hands.
    â€œIs everything fine, m’ijo?”
    I nodded.
    â€œThen what’s wrong?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œNada nada?” She used a mami voice to me.
    â€œYeah. Nothing.”
    â€œIt’ll be good living here,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
    I nodded like I was trying to really mean it.
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    My mom was dressed too pretty to take serious, shampoo in her hair and body lotion smell, and she was trying too hard to sound happy. Nobody’d believe her except her.
    â€œI won’t have to work, so I’ll even get to cook for you.”
    That made me smile because it was almost funny to imagine.
    â€œI can too cook! Don’t you laugh at me!”
    Sometimes she’d cooked at home. She made enchiladas and tacos fast. What I loved was this deal made with noodles and beef and green chile and cheese and canned creamed corn. She would make one or the other of them for birthdays, although she usually bought our food someplace. I couldn’t imagine her in the kitchen more than like once a month. First off, she didn’t have the clothes for it. She’d have to buy special clothes. Second, moms who cooked were fat and slobby. And third, they wore their hair like for being home, for vacuuming and watching daytime TV. She never even watched TV. She wasn’t any fat, and it seemed like she was always going to abeauty parlor to try a new hairstyle, which everyone complimented her on because it would like “fit her face so well”—what she’d say the girls said, no matter what style—and she had to wear lots of shining jewelry. Nobody cooks meals wearing hoop earrings and silver bracelets.
    She came over and sat next to me on the bed, putting her arm around me like she might make out with me. “Todavía you’re my baby boy, you know, and now I’m going to get to be a mother for you. I know I haven’t been. I haven’t had any time for you, have I?”
    I shrugged. This whole scene was beginning to make me pretty much think about, I don’t know, studying French, just to mess with everybody.
    â€œI’m so sorry, m’ijito. I really am.” She kissed me right on the lips.
    I couldn’t remember the last time she kissed me anywhere, unless it was for show when she’d also be drinking. You know, one of those
Qué guapo es my little man!,
and then a hard smooch like she couldn’t resist me, leaving her audience, her fans, usually her girlfriends, giggling and aahing. But this was softening me, enough to almost straight out ask her,
So why this Cloyd dude? It ain’t funny. What are you thinking?
I already knew her answers, once I took a second. I was older than her in a way that isn’t about years, and she even expected me to tell her practical shit. But I still wanted her to tell me herself. I didn’t want to only listen in, overhear her talking on the phone. I loved my mom even when I wondered why everyone was supposed to love their mom. Maybe because, if she wasn’t drunk, it was so easy to understand her. Simple. Except the part about these