Read Online Wisdom Seeds by Patrice Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

daughters and granddaughters just like Nana had shared her letters with me. My eyes were closed and I smiled at the thought of being in love. I woke up as the bus pulled into the station in Camden.
    Mom was leaning on the hood of my dad’s Benz reading an Ebony magazine. Her hair was pulled back into a French roll and the orange of the evening sun highlighted her yellow linen dress. She looked up and smiled as I got off the bus. My mom was classy and looked like a model posing for a photographer. We met at the luggage stand and hugged.
    Mom wanted to talk in the car but I needed to put my head back and close my eyes. I had chills and could tell I was coming down with something. Mom sang a medley of hymns as we rode back to the house.
    The aroma of my mother’s honey barbeque sauce greeted me as I came in the back door, but the hoagie I had eaten on the bus was bubbling in my stomach. It took everything in me to make it upstairs to the bathroom. After spending twenty minutes with my face in the toilet, Mom came to the door with a glass of warm ginger ale.
    â€œGet those nasty clothes off before you get in the bed.” Mom’s disdain for street clothes on the bed was glaringly apparent and overshadowed her sympathy.
    â€œMom,” I whined getting up off the bathroom floor, “please let me lay down for ten minutes.”
    â€œI’ll make you some tea. You need to get out of those clothes; you don’t know who sat in that seat on the bus before you. And you’ll feel better in a clean night-shirt.”
    There was no need trying to persuade her. No street clothes on the bed had been a long-standing rule in the Allen home. I put on a tee shirt and collapsed onto my bed. When I woke up it was after midnight – I called Greg anyway. There was no answer. I assumed he was still at work.
    On Wednesday I was still unable to keep food in my stomach and Mom suggested I go see our family physician. Dr. Morant suspected I was pregnant and I reluctantly consented to an internal exam. My cycle had always been irregular and Greg always used condoms, except the first time. Dr. Morant smiled and said congratulations – I was horrified. My twenty-minute exam turned into a ninety-minute visit. I left the office with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and the names of three OB-GYN’s. I was glad I borrowed Mom’s car and she hadn’t come with me.
    Unsure of what to say to my mother, I drove down to Atlantic City and sat on the beach until the sun set. Greg would have to marry me. We would struggle, but we would make it. I could begin graduate school when the baby was about two. This was workable.
    There was a message from Greg when I got home. His schedule had been switched and he wasn’t able to come to Smithtown the following weekend but he wanted to know if I would come to Pittsburgh for a few days. I returned the call and said I would. He asked me to stay with him and not let my cousins know I was in town – I agreed. My heartfluttered thinking that Greg knew I was pregnant via some type of paternal intuition. I found moments of solace assuming we would spend our visit planning an October wedding. As there would be no time to get a dress made, I resigned myself to buying one. Greg would have to make time to come to Smithtown so we could tell my parents of our plans.
    The chirping of the birds in the tree outside my window greeted me on Thursday as I kicked the sheet off of me. Although it was a humid morning, there was a slight breeze that made the window sheers dance. I heard my dad’s car drive away and met Mom in the kitchen.
    She poured water in a teacup as I sat on the stool behind the counter. “Good morning. Do you feel any better?”
    â€œA little.” I avoided eye contact and played with the sugar bowl.
    â€œWhat did Dr. Morant say?”
    â€œIt’s nothing to worry about.” I changed the subject before she would ask any more questions. “I