The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas Read Online Free PDF

Madres!” Maxine surrendered to the distraction in a heartbeat. A sure sign she hadn’t wanted to follow my lead and get mixed up with Little Mary Deathray and her wheat-grass concoction of doom.
    “Don’t you love it when she calls us that?” I said, accepting Bernadette’s distraction and Maxine’s reluctance.
    “I’d love it more if somebody was up to acting the part a little better.” Maxine arched an eyebrow. My dear friend gave me a nudge and gazed down on the portable showcase in Bernadette’s booth—the one with the four sample tiaras glimmering up at me from a deep blue velvet backdrop.
    I sighed.
    She sighed. “Face it, Odessa, we are a couple of Queen Mamas without the proper accoutrements.”
    “One day, mark my words, ladies, you are going to break down and think of a reason to buy yourselves your very own queenly headgear.” Bernadette tapped the glass.
    “Me? Don’t be silly.” Spoken like a true minister’s wife. “What would we do with those, Maxine? Perch one on top of our heads while we ride around in a golf cart keeping the reverends company for eighteen holes on a Wednesday afternoon? Use it to catch the light and signal passing airplanes to try to divert them from the flight path over our retirement village? Wear it to the Piggly Wiggly?”
    “Why not?” Bernadette asked, you know because she was making a sales pitch.
    “Why not?” Maxine echoed because she so clearly wanted to be sold.
    “Those tiaras are for weddings, proms and quinceañeras.” I speak more than the basic awkward Spanish that everyone in Texas has mastered. So I knew exactly how to pronounce the word for the celebration that Hispanic families have for a fifteen-year-old daughter becoming a woman. “Those are three things that have no bearing whatsoever on your everyday life, Maxine. Or mine.”
    “Or mine, ” Bernadette whispered, eyes averted.
    That did it. Made me feel a perfect heel. And suddenly I had yet another person who by their very presence in this place had touched my tender heart. I wanted to grab Bernadette by the hand and tell her not to give up hope. She might be long past her own quinceañera and prom, but one day she could have a daughter…especially if things worked out with that new minister. And a wedding…The new minister was single, after all, and looking. Why not allow a bit of speculation and hope? One should always hope.
    “Though, from what I’d heard, she shouldn’t hope for too much in the looks department.” This aside came from Maxine.
    The new minister wouldn’t break the camera in the wedding photos, but he wasn’t movie-star handsome. Or even reality-show-TV attractive. But he had a good sense of humor and kind eyes. That’s what Maxine’s church secretary had heard, via the child-care director, via the wife of the chair of the selection committee. The man had kind eyes.
    “Don’t forget, we need you and your sewing machine at the church every evening this week to help make costumes for the play at the end of vacation Bible school, Bernadette, honey,” shouted a woman in a red hat hauling a plaid bag in a rectangular wire-framed cart from one booth over. “Most of the volunteers can only work one night, maybe two, so we’re counting on you to be there Monday through Thursday.”
    “Of course, Mrs. Davenport. I’ll be there.”
    I looked at Bernadette, who had her head hung just low enough to give a glimpse of how much the demands of her life had worn away at her.
    Bernadette deserved a man with kind eyes.
    But I didn’t take her hand or try to give her comfort. I may be pushy, a bit too proud and past my prime, but I am not a fool. I know that even the most encouraging of words from a plump old lady in the flea market would not hold any value for a woman that age.
    In a lot of ways, the real reason people like me and Maxine fit right in here at the Five Acres of Fabulous Finds is that we’re yesterday’s goods ourselves. Discarded, to some degree, by