We Are All Welcome Here Read Online Free PDF

sunbathed, my mother wore a turquoise bikini top over her shell, and turquoise shorts beneath it. Peacie had made an extension for the top out of a tie that someone had unthinkingly donated to us, and had stuffed the cups with socks. When she finished sewing them in, she held the top up before my mother for her approval. “What do you think?” she asked.
    My mother raised an eyebrow and cocked her head. “Just wear a smile and a Jantzen,” she’d said, then added, “A couple more socks wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
    Peacie would plug extension cord into extension cord so that my mother could stay hooked up to her respirator, then push her down the board ramp LaRue had built over one side of the porch steps. She would position the wheelchair just so, and then give my mother sips of sun tea from a tall plastic tumbler. That tumbler had glitter embedded in the plastic, and my mother and I both liked to see it sparkle in the sun. Peacie liked drinking from a Mason jar, and she liked plenty of sugar in her tea. I once watched her spooning it in, and said, “Sugar’s expensive, you know.” She looked up at me and I felt ashamed. “You can have as much as you want, though,” I said, and she answered, “Lordy Lord, Miss Diana, I sho’ am grateful for yo’ kindness, yes I is.” “I’m sorry,” I muttered and she said, “Go outside. Miser.”
    My mother tanned and smoked her cigarettes, leaving behind the red imprint from the lipstick she was never without during her waking hours—many times a day, she would ask, “Is my lipstick on?” Peacie sat beside her on a lawn chair, her shoes off her feet but her stockinged feet resting on top of those shoes—Peacie never went barefoot, claiming it caused epilepsy, among other things. She looked through magazines, holding them so that both she and my mother could see and licking her fingers delicately before she turned each page. When Peacie wanted to know what a story was about, my mother read it to her. Sometimes they would laugh together over something, Peacie’s hand over her mouth to cover her missing side tooth, and when I said, “What? What’s funny?” they would say, “Oh, nothing,” and look at each other and laugh again. My jealousy at such moments made for a dime-sized pocket of heat behind my earlobes.
    Last week I had slipped inside the back door where I stood unseen by my mother and Peacie. They were sitting at the kitchen table and my mother was reading tarot cards for Peacie—their heads were bent over the crosslike spread, and they were staring intently at the images. My mother did readings for lots of women—they would come in and pay a dollar to hear what she said, then leave as quickly as possible after the reading, though my mother always invited them to stay for a visit. Oh, they would love to, they always said, but…I imagined they figured the dollar was price enough to pay.
    I stood where I could see and not be seen. If my mother or Peacie noticed me, they’d make me leave—I knew this from past experience. Both of them regarded what occurred during readings as spiritual, fragile, almost holy. They saw it as being part of this world and of another one, too, one that was parallel and mysterious and reachable only by those with “the gift.” They believed my mother was benignly possessed when she read the cards, that she became a conduit for otherwise unknowable truths. Peacie would put the cards into my mother’s hands before they were cut; my mother would close her eyes and hold them for varying lengths of time. When she opened her eyes and nodded, Peacie would take the cards and cut the deck at a place my mother approved. Then she would lay out the arrangement my mother dictated.
    My mother was talking about LaRue, and the card Peacie had just turned over was
The World.
“Hmmmm,” my mother said, “very interesting, considering what you just told me. This card is a journey that leads ultimately to a complete human being. There’s a