The Unwelcomed Child Read Online Free PDF

knew my grandparents were frugal people. Having money never meant spending it. People who were not cautious and conservative when it came to that were usually “ripe fruit for the devil’s picking,” Grandmother Myra told me. One of the items topping her list of wasteful spending was going out to eat and paying five times the cost for the same food made at home. “And that doesn’t include the tip!”
    “Well, the Marxes are always talking about the good value at Chipper’s,” my grandfather said.
    Sam Marx and his wife, Trudy, were my grandparents’ closest friends, in that they were practically the only couple ever invited to dinner at our house and the only couple I knew who invited them. Sam had been my grandfather’s factory manager. They had no children. Trudy dressed a little nicer than my grandmother, but as far as makeup went, she used nothing more than some lipstick. Whenever they came to our house, she looked as if she had barely brushed her lips with it. I had the sense that the Marxes were still treating my grandparents with the same deference and respect shown by employees. I never heard them disagree about anything.
    When they were here for dinner and I was helping out, serving and cleaning up like some hired maid, I could feel Trudy’s gaze on me. It was creepy; I sensed she was looking for some evidence to indicate that I would do something or be someone evil. I had no idea what my grandmother had told her about me over the years, but sometimes, when I glanced at her while she stared at me, I felt she was looking at me with delight. I felt confident that if I were her granddaughter, I’d be treated far better.
    “Well, then, choose something clean to wear. Pin up your hair better, and make sure your nails are clean, missy,” Grandmother Myra told me.
    I nodded, trying not to look too excited about it. I sensed a long time ago that if I showed too much enthusiasm for something, she would become suspicious and then forbid it following another one of her credos, “Better safe than sorry.”
    I said nothing. I also knew that if I spent too much time thinking about what I would wear and too much time on my hair, she would reconsider. I went through the day as if it were no different from any other, completing my homework, reading what I had to read, washing clothes, polishing furniture, and, since it was Wednesday and the schedule she had set up required it, washing the kitchen floor.
    Because I had something to look forward to, I wasn’t as tired in the late afternoon as I usually was. I had picked out my newest dress. It did nothing for my figure, but I chose it because it was at least a brighter color than anything else I had, a sharp light blue. I had nothing like matching shoes and no jewelry, not even a wristwatch. She had permitted me to have some colorful ribbons to use to tie up my hair.
    Whenever she relented and bought me something new to wear, she always seemed deliberately to choose a size too big. Any curves that had developed in my body were well hidden. I hated my shoes. They were so dull now, a worn black. She insisted on my having flats: “You’re springing up too fast. People are quick to mistake height for age, and I don’t need anyone who sees you thinking you’re older than you are, especially men.”
    The very thought of a grown man being interested in me was so foreign to my thinking that it became intriguing after she had told me that. Whenever my mind drifted to thoughts about boys, and now men, it was always to draw them up as rescuers, handsome, strong men who could swoop in and take me away. Of course, Grandmother Myra equated physical beauty with some form of danger. Either the woman who possessed it would become too conceited and therefore vulnerable to sin, or she was in danger of attracting the wrong set of eyes.
    I suppose it would be impossible for someone like me living in this house not to grow up with these fears embedded so deeply in her that she believed