Read Online Two Shades of Morning by Janice Daugharty - Free Book Online Page A

with a spoon. I should have known better than to say anything, but there I was again—Mama’s little girl, sometimes naughty, sometimes nice.
    “Looks like it’s gone come up a shower,” said Aunt Birdie, gazing out the south window at a thunderhead mushrooming above Daddy’s shingle-roofed shed. “Let’s get these dishes washed up and lemme run get in my clothes.”
    After we had finished the dishes and put away the leftovers for leftovers, I carried the cardboard-boxed quilting frame for Aunt Birdie and placed it in the metal glider on her front porch.
    The sky was impeccably blue, except for that single white thunderhead, smudged gray at the roots.
    Aunt Birdie ambled out to the clothesline on the east side of her yard, leisurely taking down her white aprons and soft print dresses.
    “I don’t think it’s gone rain, after all, Aunt Birdie,” I said and started at the other end of the line, working toward her.
    “It’ll rain,” she said, dropping her clothespins into a red calico bag fashioned after a child’s dress.
    “Aunt Birdie, you don’t like Sibyl either, do you?”
    “Can’t say as I do. How come?”
    “I saw how you looked at her in church yesterday. And how you acted that day at her house.” I waited by the split-rail clothesline prop for Aunt Birdie to finish taking in her half of the clothes.
    She flapped the last white towel in the lifting breeze then flattened it in her wicker basket on the rake-marked dirt. “You trying to tell me something about that woman or just jawing?”
    I didn’t want to answer that, didn’t know how. “A little of both, I reckon.”
    “Well, let’s get on in out of the rain.” She toddled off with the heaped basket toward the front of her house, and as if she’d ordered the rain to wait, it came singing out of the gum woods and across the field, a choir in white.
    “Let’s set on the porch,” she said, already settling into the wood slat settee. “We need a good shower to cool things off.” She meant me, I could tell.
    While the rain closed like a curtain around us, we sat together, folding her clothes. “Aunt Birdie?” I said.
    “Yes ‘um.”
    I wished she wouldn’t start like that. “I want to tell you everything, just like it is.”
    She nodded.
    “Sibyl’s really mean,” I began, knowing I was off to a bad start but going on anyway. “The other night P.W. and I went over to eat with them and she started a whole bunch of mess. She’s got some secret or other on me—I don’t even care what it is. But she went to whispering right in front of me to Robert Dale; he doesn’t act right either. To me,” I added, waiting. Her face was closed to reading. I had to go on or forget it, and I couldn’t take back what I’d said, couldn’t tell how she was taking it. The rain came harder, and I had to speak up, which made it all sound worse for me. “Anyhow, first she offered us some whiskey—I didn’t drink a thing. She had wine, white wine. Next thing I knew, she was asking me about my Easter dress, if I’d found one yet. I said no...”
    “What?” Aunt Birdie thundered, screwing her face and leaning nearer while great drops of rain hailed on the tin roof. “You gotta talk louder. All that racket.” “Sibyl asked me if I’d got my Easter dress yet, and I said no,” I shouted. “I told her I thought I’d just wear an old dress this year.” I didn’t tell Aunt Birdie I didn’t really want to wear an old one—she knew. I looked out at the slashing rain to avoid her eyes. “Well, I guess you saw who showed up at church in an old dress. Oh, it made me so mad! You know, her stealing my idea and all. I know it’s crazy, but P.W. went on just like Daddy about the whole thing. And Mama! Boy, Mama got all fouled up! I wish I’d never even mentioned it to her.” I folded a bath cloth, hoping Aunt Birdie would go back to folding too. She just sat there. “But anyhow, this morning here comes Sibyl, telling me she wants us to be