Read Online The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson - Free Book Online

shameful. When Mama had given her a taste of wine for becoming a woman, she knew that was different somehow—that the woman thing happened to every girl and because of this, they could celebrate it. But what was happening to her and Trout—that was different. They were alone together. There was no one standing behind a closed door smiling and holding out a glass of wine.
    “I know why, Trout,” Staggerlee whispered.
    Trout ran her hand slowly back and forth over the quilt. “How come you know?”
    Staggerlee shrugged. She had never spoken about it and couldn’t now. She didn’t have the words for any of it, but her feelings were like words inside her—painful and sharp.
    “I just do,” she said finally.
    She could see Trout swallow. “Ida Mae thinks I could learn to be a lady here.”
    Staggerlee smiled, and the air grew lighter. “Lady. Sounds like something out of the eighteen-hundreds.”
    “I think that’s when Ida Mae should have been born.” Trout looked down at her hands. “Hallique understood me. I could tell her anything and she didn’t judge it. When she was dying, she called Ida Mae into the room and told her to be patient with me, to give me some growing room. I was standing outside the bedroom door listening.” She blinked and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Then she told Ida Mae why she needed to be patient with me and Ida Mae lost it. She just lost it.”
    Staggerlee had run home from that afternoon in the cornflowers with Hazel bursting to tell someone. But as she got closer to the house, she slowed down. Somehow she knew there was no one—no one who would say, “That’s wonderful that someone made you so happy.”
    “She said when I come home from here,” Trout was saying, “all these feelings I have better be gone. Feels like everyone in my life has betrayed me.” She looked over at Staggerlee. “I guess I’m kind of scared you will too.”

Chapter Twelve
    THEY SPENT THEIR FIRST FEW WEEKS TOGETHER walking along the Breakabone River, Creek barking and dancing around them. And in the blue heat of summer, Staggerlee fell in love with Trout’s voice, soft against the rush of the river. Around them, pecan and sweet gum trees blossomed and swayed. In the late afternoon, they picked azaleas and Indian paintbrush and mountain laurel for the dinner table.
    Some evenings, Trout asked to be alone and went out walking. Those times, Staggerlee watched from her window until Trout became tiny in the distance and faded into the line of evergreens. Those times, Staggerlee felt her heart caving in around itself.
    She had dreamed Trout before she came. Dreamed a girl who would be like her—liking the same things, knowing the same history. Someone her age who she’d walk along the Breakabone River with. She had dreamed them sitting on the porch laughing together. Dreamed the red dust rising up around them as they walked. Each time Trout left to go off on her own, Staggerlee thought about the day Trout would go off for good.
    Some evenings, the phone would ring. And when the answering machine clicked on, there was a girl’s voice on the other end, asking for Trout. When Trout ran for the phone, Staggerlee longed to run after her, to sit beside her and listen. But she didn’t. Instead, she sat on her hands and waited. When Trout hung up, she was often quiet. She seemed younger after those phone calls—less sure of herself. Staggerlee watched her, wondering what the girl had said to make her feel this way.

    ONE NIGHT ABOUT a month after Trout arrived, Staggerlee woke up to find her standing in the doorway. It was almost dawn, and gray light trickled in from the shutters Staggerlee had pulled closed the night before.
    “Your dog always sleep right next to your bed like that?” Trout whispered, sitting down at the foot of the bed. Creek lifted his head and yawned. He was curled up on his dog bed, a round dark blue mat Daddy had made.
    Staggerlee squinted up at her. It felt strange to