Tiny Dancer Read Online Free PDF Page B

friends’ houses. Sure, that was it. I dismissed the thought right off as ridiculous that the sunflower people had some secret relationship with my little sister. I stood in front of my window, still drying my soggy strands of hair. Siobhan had not ever mentioned knowing the neighbors behind us. Yet the way the black woman’s hand fell onto her shoulder so intimately, like they knew one another, got my thoughts spinning. I slipped back to The Box and rifled to the bottom pulling out the photo again.
    The woman was not wearing a white uniform apron, although everyday chores did not necessarily require a dress affair for domestics. She wore a dress made out of some lovely purple fabric. She was visible only from the shoulders down, my sister the photo’s subject. An expensive gold bracelet hung from the woman’s wrist. A charm hung from the bracelet, although I could not make out the details of the ornament. Maybe it was a flower. The woman’s nails were manicured and painted. I decided she was not a domestic.
    Vesta talked loudly to Daddy coming upstairs. I put away The Box and waited for her to disappear into her room for her Sunday nap.
    Then it was if an overpowering influence lured me out of my bed and down the hall, drawing me downstairs and through the house. First a curiosity about my younger sister having a second life we did not know about tantalized me. As intent as Siobhan was in wanting her way, the very idea of making such shocking associations renewed my respect for her. Then there was my secret daydream I had long harbored of crossing the forbidden territory into the thicket of towering yellow heads just to catch a closer glimpse of their wicked shenanigans. It was not the first time my interest about the wrong kind of people had rubbed a raw place between Vesta and me. Yet there I wandered Sunday into the neighbor’s garden, smack dead center.
    I entered the garden right as the big church bells of nearby Vineland set to ringing.
    The garden air hung potent and heavy, the flowers dripping raindrops down my neck while the storm subsided. The gardener had left a five-by-six square open space in the garden’s center. A small child’s table and two chairs sat on the black soil, a toy tea setting left carelessly out in the elements, so like a child to do that and something like Siobhan might have done. The little China cups overflowed with rainwater so I emptied them. A pretty pink house built child-size stood next to the table. I wobbled across the sticky soil in my bare feet, knelt, and crawled inside the house. I felt like Alice after she outgrew the magic tearoom. I rolled onto my bottom and stretched out as far as my feet would stretch, my hands cupping the back of my head. The wooden house was balmy, but the floor nice and dry, warmed by the humid morning. I rolled up the soft frayed edges of my shorts again stopping just below the panties line. I admired my legs, still shapely from my years as a dancer. While I disliked my smile, one corner slightly higher than the other, and my curly red hair—frizzy on wet days like today —I was grateful for nice legs, although I doubted Billy ever noticed them.
    Cirrus clouds floated overhead, non-threatening, and enough cloud cover to cool the sunflower sanctuary. I deliberated over why Vesta hated this patch of golden faces so much. I had to admit seeing it from the inside offered a different perspective entirely. Vesta would never cross into this man’s yard short of leading a band of picketers.
    Velvet leaves and spiny stems surrounded me. The massive sunflower heads attracted finches and wrens into the brown orbs like babies sucking at their mamas’ breasts. 
    A sweet smell crawled down the paths of stems and leaves. Peach pie, I decided. I could not see beyond the dense garden forest, but imagined the neighbor’s wife must have been baking for Sunday dinner.
    It was here though that I could in privacy plan a strategy. I reaffirmed not to risk igniting my