What Happened to My Sister: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

bare foot.
    “My flip-flops, my flip-flops! Momma Momma ow!”
    “Get your own damn flip-flops,” Momma says from under the hood she’s jimmied up like a car mechanic. “I got bigger bears to skin.”
    We’re in bad moods. Even me and I’m not ever in a bad mood. Not even when I stepped on a yellow jacket wasp with a bare foot when I was in first grade. My arm’s all the way almost to the bottom of the clothes sack feeling around for flip-flops. Emma used to call them flippy-floppys . Mine have rainbows on the bottoms so the person walking behind can have something cheery to look at.
    “They’re here somewhere.” I say this to myself, honest. I sure didn’t mean for Momma to hear when I made the groan sound she calls the woe-is-me . If I got the woe-is-me in my voice she’ll ask if she should call the whaaa-mbulance , making it sound like the crying a baby makes.
    “Oh hush up,” she says from right behind me. I jump at her being close all the sudden. “Momma this, Momma that. Like I don’t have anything to do but wait on you hand and foot. Move aside and hold your water.”
    This makes my bad mood a little better because hold your water is what Miss Juni Moon used to say ever-time someone tried to hurry her up. Miss Juni Moon used to come watch us back in Toast if Momma and Daddy stayed out for too long. Miss Juni had this angry-looking scar on her forehead the shape of a sliver of the moon and she was born in June 1960, the only baby born during the month of the worst flood the town ever had so, thanks to two strokes of bad luck, she was Juni Moon and that was that. Pretty soon no one could remember her real name.
    After fishing out my flip-flops Momma stands under the tree that’s so spindly she’s got to stand sideways for shade. She lights her cigarette with one thumb flick of the lighter wheel. Momma can light a cigarette on a windy day with one hand tied behind her back. I bet she could light one in a snowstorm. Also, she can smoke with no hands if she needs to—she rarely does because she says it’s not ladylike . But here on the side of the empty road to nowhere she lets the cigarette dangle from the side of her mouth like a gunslinger in a shoot-’em-up even though she ain’t doing anything with her hands.
    Since we got nothing better to do, I pull out my notebook. Today is Tuesday , I write—even though I don’t know what difference that makes, marking days of the week like that. But I figure the small stuff might could come in handy one day, who knows. So I write:
    The car just died. I’m wearing my green shorts the ones with a peace sign on the right. My now-dirty unicorn T-shirt I got from the Goodwill dollar bin a long time ago …
    “What in the Sam Hill you think you’re doing?”
    I jump in my skin for the second time in the day. I hadn’t heard her coming—she’s real good at surprising me that way. Momma’s cigarette bounces up and down between her lips like it’s dancing to the words. The ash at the end clings on and I worry it’ll fall rightinto Momma’s clothes and light her afire. Then I realize she’s got that look that tells me, even though her voice is quiet, she’s madder than a wet hen.
    “Must be nice to set and draw pictures all day while I’m here trying to figure out how to save our hides ,” she says. “Here I am, dealing with shit we got on us once again and you’re over here all comfy scribbling Lord knows what kind of craziness in that—Gimme that goddamn thing. …”
    I scramble to close it, shoving it under my fanny so she cain’t work it from me, and I pray she hadn’t set her mind to taking it ’cause if that’s the case then I might as well kiss my notebook goodbye now and make it easy on both of us.
    “I’ll snatch your arm out of its socket and beat you with the bloody stump if I find your crazy talk in there, y’hear me?” She tries to get a pinch hold on it but I bear down to make myself heavier until she finally gives