Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [30]
We watched them strap their toddler to a high chair. Right away, it began to bawl.
“What a hassle,” Momma remarked. “But pregnancy’s even worse, you know. Especially my first time around. I think I must have spent the first six months sobbing in the bathroom with my arm wrapped around the toilet.…”
I picked at my fruit salad and tried not to listen.
Momma had told me about her pregnancy so many times I knew the story backward and forward. At eighteen, she’d been just a year older than Mandarin was.
Being pregnant was humiliating, she claimed—the morning sickness, the medical examinations, the ugly protruding belly no amount of padding would obscure. But worst of all, Momma had told me so many times the phrase seemed tattooed inside my skull, was the awareness that this stranger was growing inside her.
I had to remember it was me inside, the baby Momma hadn’t wanted in the first place. Taffeta was a different story. One hundred percent wanted, even if the marriage that had created her had been a joke. With me, Momma still claimed she’d never considered abortion or adoption—though whether God or my grandma was her reason, I never knew.
I was afraid to ask.
And yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, that girl my mother had been. She’d tried to escape Washokey. Because of me, she didn’t make it.
On Friday morning, the wildwinds thundered down from the Bighorn Mountains. Dust and grit swirled over the ground in currents, stinging our ankles as Taffeta and I stumbled toward school. The chain-link fence surrounding the school yard quaked and rattled. My sister hid her face in my side at every gust, which made it even more difficult to walk.
All the students crammed into the building instead of hanging out on the lawn before homeroom. From the hallway, I could still hear the wildwinds bellowing, a mournful whistle that stabbed through the edges of the double doors.
By the time the late bell rang, Ms. Ingle still hadn’t arrived. Kids speculated that her car had been blown over or a cottonwood had fallen on top of her house. Tag Leeland, a senior, claimed school policy dictated that after fifteen minutes we were free to go. Alexis and Paige leaned against the wall, whispering, with their heads tipped together. I stood a few yards away with one hand in the pocket of my jacket, running my fingers over a translucent piece of agate.
After a while, Davey Miller approached me. He did it bit by bit, like a ground squirrel advancing for a morsel of food. Like if I made too sudden a movement, he’d bolt.
“Hello, Grace.”
He stood there with a goofy grin on his face, blinking hard, until I said hi back. I remembered the time a group of boys had stolen his purple baseball cap when he’d first moved to town. A farmer had discovered it masking-taped to the head of a steer.
“What’s up, Davey?”
“Oh, nothing much.”
I tapped my foot through a moment of blink-filled silence.
“Seriously, Davey. What’s up?”
“Um,” he began. “Well. I was wondering …”
Before Davey could reveal what he wondered, a sudden commotion stole our attention. The double doors at the end of the hall swung open with a violent crash. A blast of wind whooshed in, and the unexpected dazzle of light made me squint.
The voice came before I could see again: “Gracey! Grace!”
Then Mandarin appeared in the glow.
Even as my befuddled brain was still trying to make sense of it—that in front of God and everybody, Mandarin Ramey had called my name—she was charging up the hall toward us and skidding to a stop, her elbows knocking aside my astonished classmates. When she seized me by the shoulders, I felt like she’d reached into my chest and taken hold of my heart.
“Grace, you’ve got to come with me. It’s worth it, I swear.”
This time, I didn’t think twice.
Turning my back on Davey, slack-jawed Alexis Bunker, my homeroom, the world, I fell in step beside Mandarin. We sprinted back down the hall, the clap of our shoes on the tile resounding off the walls, startling poor