Read Online Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons - Free Book Online Page B

got.
    I only wanted one white and with a little more money. At least we can have running water is what I thought.
    The whole time I stayed at my mama’s mama’s I thought about giving that judge a piece of my mind.
    Look. You made a mess. Now clean it up and put me on the right road is what I would say to him.
    One solution I figured was to sell off some household items. It is hard for somebody like myself to be surrounded by all that and not think about how much cash it could turn into. I could make a catalog of her merchandise and let folks pick them out a ashtray, some brandy snifters, or one of the many vases. Piece by piece her house would disappear and she would be unable to do a thing. But I would be on easy street.
    I would keep her tied up in this particular plan.
    You would think that when you get older you get weak but that was not true in her case. Meanness made her quick like a jungle animal.
    I started to think she wanted me around as a substitute for my daddy. And each day I was not exactly him but just enough of his eyes or nose to tease her oh she boiled violent inside.
    It must have been hard for her to keep in mind that I was agirl Ellen and not a man she wanted to be alive by her so she could kill but wanted him alive too so she could work her power on him.
    And she had some power. Without saying one word she could make my bones shake and I would think of ghost houses and skeletons rattling all in the closets.
    Her power was the sucking kind that takes your good sense and leaves you limp like a old zombie.
    That is how I felt some days. Like a old monster zombie who was a girl a while back.
    But I got my fire back in me now.
    She would take all the feeling she needed from somebody and then stir it up with some money and turn the recipe back on you. The money made it sweet and without it she might have been just another mean old lady. But set up in her big house she could make the devil scared of her.
    She wanted me so hard to be like him. She reminded me all the time how me and him favored and acted alike. I never told her how Mavis said I looked just like my mama. Sometimes she talked so strong to me that I had to check in the mirror to see if I had changed into him without my knowing or feeling it. Maybe her wishing so hard had made it so I thought.
    I decided I would jump off the bridge if I was different from my old self.
    Maybe he did rub off on me. I still wonder sometimes if I am fine myself or if I have tricked myself into believing I am who I think I am.
    So many folks thinking and wanting you to be somebody else will confuse you if you are not very careful.
    It gives me nerves to worry about me.
    My mama’s mama would shake a little like this too. I hide my hands under my desk if it happens at school. It is not enough to notice good.
    Her hands shook right much though when she told me about my daddy dying. But she managed to slap me with one.
    She said your bastard of a daddy is dead and then she hit me in the face. That does not make sense but that is what she did.
    I had not planned to cry over him when he died. I had practiced it all so many times that all I wondered was if he had died one of the ways I had planned. All varieties of accidents and unfortunate mishaps.
    But he was somebody I knew who was dead. I felt the way you feel when they say a star or a old president is dead and you feel sorry for a flash when you remember his face and think about how you could go quick as a wink.
    She was looking in my eyes for a reason to slap me again but I was determined not to give her one.
    Go ahead and cry for your damn daddy she got in my face and said to me. Go ahead and cry. Just make sure you cry more than you did for your mama.
    Why did she say that to me? I wondered and reached up to catch a tear I felt had just rolled over my eye ledge.
    But she grabbed my shaking hand with her hand shaking and said to let that be the last tear I ever shed.
    I still wonder how long she meant that rule to