My sister and I made the decision to send Mother to school. She’d had a childhood full of experience, none of it quite right for her future. She had helped her father make cellar wine until he left during the flood of ’27, a night when the river turned black and charged against them, almost drowned them at the supper table, and cleared out all the wine below, so that her father left no trace. For years thereafter, when she slept, a hand came and held Mother’s fingers gently.
By age eight, she cleaned their two-family house from top to bottom in a single day while keeping an eye on five younger ones and cooking for Mémé in bed. She thought nothing of going out behind the house to catch frogs by the dozen, to fry their severed athletic legs for supper. Mémé did not believe in school for her children. In spring Mother spent most days with her sister skillfully leaping the log jams which crowded at the bend in the Androscoggin just below the bedroom window.
Already have an account? Log in
Join KR for even more to read.