The Good Sister Read Online Free PDF Page A

It made her mad that they all believed she was so dumb she’d call 911 for no good reason at all. Last night her father,
     Nanny Franny, and Gramma Ellen had stayed up late talking. Merell sat on the stairs and tried to hear what they were saying
     until Daddy came out of his study and told her to go to bed; they would deal with her tomorrow. Tomorrow was today. Her father
     had gone to work and no one had dealt with her.
    She wondered if Mommy was angry with her because of yesterday. Everyone else sure was. At breakfast Gramma Ellen gave her
     a look like if she were a wizard Merell would be turned into a houseplant. She closed her book and went into the house and
     upstairs. It wasn’t a good time to remind her mother of her promise, but if she waited for a good time, she’d be an old woman.
    Merell Duran was not quite nine but already she knew that she wasn’t beautiful like her mother or even cute as the twins were.
     But she was smart, even smarter than her mother, which didn’t seem right to Merell. Her arms and legs were long and skinny
     and the elbows and knees might as well belong to a boy, they were that bouldery. Her hair was sort of mud-brown and nothing
     special at all, just ordinary hair made horrible by the fact that she had threecowlicks on the back so anyone standing behind her could see her pink skull. The tip of her nose bent a little to one side;
     and when she smiled at herself in the mirror her face looked lopsided so she tried to ignore mirrors as much as she could.
     Daddy said she was gorgeous, but she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
    The subject of honesty and lies was of great and perplexing interest to Merell, almost as baffling as gravity and sex.
    She squeezed her hand on the knob of her mother’s bedroom door, opened it carefully, and stepped into the gloom. She had learned
     to slip into rooms and disappear into the shadowy corner spaces, becoming practically invisible. Grown-ups didn’t like it
     if she ran into a room talking, better to enter silently and stand as she was now, next to the door and a little behind a
     chair, away from the light. Across the large bedroom, her mother lay buried under a blue comforter against a half dozen pillows,
     with celebrity and fashion magazines scattered around her. The blackout drapes were pulled, and the room was dark except for
     a wedge of light from her mother’s dressing room. The air-conditioning was set so low that Merell got goose bumps, and it
     didn’t smell good. When the meany-men came to call, Merell’s mother got unhappy; and when she was unhappy she didn’t shower
     and she hardly ever washed her hair unless Aunt Roxanne or Gramma Ellen helped her.
    Earlier in the month her mother had a lot of good daysone after another, and Merell had almost forgotten what it was like when the meany-men were in her head. Only last week she
     had been happy to help Celia fold the big fitted bedsheets, and when she emptied the dishwasher she sang the alphabet song
     with the twins, mixing up all the letters on purpose, which Merell didn’t think was a good idea. Earlier in the week Mommy
     and Nanny Franny, Merell, and her sisters had gone to the zoo and afterward they ate dinner at the Big Bad Cat, where Mommy
     gave the DJ a twenty-dollar bill so he would play “Chantilly Lace.” She asked one of the waiters to dance with her, in and
     out and between the tables, and the other food handlers stood around chewing gum and clapping hands in time to the music.
     Afterward everyone cheered and Mommy made a bow like a princess. She was the only mother Merell had ever seen dancing at the
     Big Bad Cat. As she thought about it now, she realized the dancing might have been a warning that the meany-men were coming
     back.
    Merell studied her mother’s moods the way a sailor read the wrinkle of the wind on the face of the sea. She didn’t have to
     see her mother to know how she felt. The air in the house vibrated with her moods.
    “Why are you