Read Online Amazing Grace by Lesley Crewe - Free Book Online Page A

gates. Sometimes I see a yellow school bus go by if I’m up in my tree house and I wonder what it would be like to be those kids who get to drive on a bus. It looks fun and free.
    I’m so lonely that I forget to smile. But then I find a cat, a very skinny black and white cat, and I ask Iris if I can keep it.
    â€œCats belong in a barn.”
    So now I sleep in the barn. No one knows I’m here. Well, Iris knows, but she doesn’t stop me. The cat and I are best friends. I call him Buddy and I won’t let anyone near him. One day the man watches me play with the cat and that makes my stomach knot so tightly I run into the woods and go to the bog. Buddy and I try to catch butterflies while we sit on the rock.
    Three years later, I’m twelve, and I almost forget what my mother and sister look like. They didn’t want me so I don’t want them anymore. I’m not running away now; I’m in charge of the chickens and I’m happy about that. Helen and I are still friends and I like when the teacher talks about books and geography. The cook is even teaching me how to make bread. I’m also knitting. I made a sweater for Buddy but he doesn’t like wearing it, so I gave it to Helen’s little sister to put on her doll.
    Helen and I still go to the tree house but mostly we just talk there and laugh. Sometimes the women bring back comic books from the store and we read them and drink Tang. We hang from the branches with our legs and look at the world upside down. Iris comes running over and tells me to get inside. I think I’m in trouble, but no. She just looks in Helen’s closet and takes out one of her bras.
    â€œYou’re becoming a woman now,” Iris says. “Your breasts are growing and we have to cover them up.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo avoid temptation.”
    â€œWhat will I be tempted to do if I leave them hanging out?”
    Iris looks at the ceiling. “Grace, you’d try the patience of a saint. Now tell me, have you started bleeding yet?”
    I know what she means. The older girls told me about it, and Helen got hers months ago—I wasn’t frightened when it first happened to me. But I’m private and everyone doesn’t need to know my business.
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œWhen it happens, come to me and I’ll give you some rags.”
    I know how to collect rags. Iris is becoming entirely too bossy.
    And then the man shows up in the barn one hot summer night. I see his shadow in the doorway. I know right away he’s come for me. I grab Buddy and burrow under the hay, because I can’t get out without him seeing me. He’s going to hear my heart thumping. It will lead him right to me. He comes closer and says very softly, “Grace. Grace, come to me. I can see you.”
    I don’t think he can see me but I don’t know for sure. Buddy is wiggling and I’m so afraid to lose him that I jump up out of the hay and run. But the man doesn’t stop me. All he does is grab the cat right out of my arms.
    â€œNO. Give me my cat.”
    The man holds Buddy by the back of his neck.
    â€œYou’re hurting him! Let him go.”
    â€œI’ll let him go as soon as you stop shouting.”
    I close my mouth and watch Buddy dangling off the floor, helpless and frightened. I feel my body get hot, so hot that I’m burning up.
    So this is hell. This is where hell lives. Within.
    But I’m not losing the only family I have left.
    â€œDo what you want. Just let Buddy go.”
    And that’s the night he married me.
    I think all the women who live here know exactly what’s going on. I may not be the best disciple Jesus ever had, but I know that this isn’t right. There is no love between the man and I, no matter how much he moans that he loves me. If he loved me, he wouldn’t hurt Buddy. And I tell him if he ever picks Buddy up like that again, I’ll stab him with a pitchfork. He