The Weight of Blood Read Online Free PDF

to my knowledge, didn’t give a rat’s ass what became of her. I didn’t need the social worker to tell me what my mom and stepdad would’ve wanted. I was their only child, and they’d been overinvolved in everything I did. My mom was my Daisy Scout troop leader. My stepdad had hollered encouragement from the sidelines of my Pee Wee soccer games. They had continued to waste money on piano lessons year after year, refusing to acknowledge defeat. My mom was a teacher, and I’d actually done really well in school before everything fell apart. I knew my parents would want me to do something with my life. If they hadn’t died, maybe I would have found some sense of direction. Maybe, if they were still with me, I’d be a completely different person. I had no way of knowing.
    That night, I flipped through the pamphlets the social worker had given me. Community college, trade school, cosmetology school. They all cost money, and I’d already missed the cutoff for financial aid, so there was no point in applying until the next semester. I had a part-time job at IHOP, but my pay wouldn’t be enough to cover rent and expenses when I moved out on my own. I set aside the army and navy recruitment brochures as my last resort and opened the one remaining pamphlet. It advertised an employment agency specializing in live-in positions where room and board were included. Nannies, housekeepers, laborers, companions for the elderly. I didn’t want to do any of those things for the long term, but in the short term it would be a good way to save up money until I figured out what I did want to do.
    Their office was in Des Moines, in a half-empty strip mall, and I had to take the bus. A guy with a long, snaking ponytail plucked me from the waiting room ahead of two middle-aged women who had been there longer. He asked a lot of personal questions that didn’t seem relevant, but I answered them anyway. Now we just need a photo, he said when we finished the application. All I had in my purse was a picture of me and Crystal at the pool. I’d been carrying it around in my address book since she left. I asked the guy if he could photocopy it so I could have the original back, and he assured me he could crop it down to a head shot. A month later I received a contract in the mail, signed it, and sent it back. I’d agreed to two years on a southern Missouri farm in a tiny town called Henbane.
    The social worker drove me to the Greyhound station and wished me luck. Mrs. Humphries had insisted I take the Bible she’d given me, and I left it on the floor of the social worker’s car. My suitcase was swallowed up in the belly of the bus, and I climbed on board.
    The bus ride from Des Moines to Springfield took fifteen hours, including a layover in Kansas City. An old man named Judd picked me up at the bus station, explaining that my sponsor, Mr. Dane, was sorry he couldn’t be there himself but would take me to breakfast in the morning. Judd wrestled my suitcase into the back of his truck and didn’t say much the rest of the way to Henbane, except for some aggravated muttering when he switched between two country stations to find both playing “Achy Breaky Heart.”
    We drove for over two hours, turning onto increasingly rough and winding roads, and it occurred to me that I’d never be able to find my way back. Finally, we reached a dirt path that cut through fields of churned earth specked with rows and rows of seedlings. Judd parked the truck in front of a concrete-block garage, and we stepped out into the humid evening air. Low green mountains rose beyond the fields, and I could smell the nearby river: wet rocks and moss and mud. When I accepted the job, I’d imagined—hoped—that this farm might be something like my parents’ farm. It wasn’t. Everything was unnervingly distorted, like my reflection in the bus station bathroom, the warped mirror and flickering