Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco Page A

top.
    Snowflakes flit through the yard as I look across at my mother, huddled under her coat, on the front step. Half a year—it sure took you long enough is all I can think.
    â€œHi, Corns.” My mother stands up when I walk over. Her arms hang skinnier, if that’s possible.
    â€œWhat are you d-d-d-doing here?” I step forward, unsure, but my heart is leaping.
    â€œSeeing you, you goose.” She laughs in that nervous way that scrapes at bone. She nods as Agatha walks up behind me. I am getting used to the quiet scuff of my aunt’s moccasins. I had forgotten how she towers over my mother. Same thin wrists, but an oak and a sapling.
    â€œWhere’s the ride?” my aunt says finally.
    â€œAt the store to get some things.”
    â€œI knew you’d come back,” I whisper, stepping closer.
    My mother looks at her feet, then steps forward and hugs me the way a little boy hugs his mother when his friends are watching. Her dress floats loose under her coat as she steps back. Her cowboy boots barely leave a print in the snow.
    I want to give her a fat slice of whole wheat bread with a thick spread of molasses, some cheese, and a chunk of apple pie to keep her from fading away.
    â€œI missed you real bad, Corns.” She looks up at me quickly and I see the hesitancy in her eyes in the instant before she blinks it away. “We’re going to Atlantic City, Corns. I’ll come get you soon as I can.”
    My spine straightens and hardens as anger rises from deep inside. I clamp my teeth down over my climbing fury, imagining myself getting real heavy, folding over onto myself, getting thick so her words can’t reach the spot deep inside that hasn’t turned hard yet. And I’m trying harder than I’ve ever tried before as my mother keeps glancing out at the road for the boyfriend’s car.
    But it’s not working. My mother lights a cigarette and I notice the Yodels package sticking out of her pocket. I unclamp my teeth. I’ve spent so much time in the tepee, so much time with Agatha, that when I push the anger down now, all I want is a voice.
    â€œWe won’t be there long before we come get you. Just long enough to get settled and get jobs and stuff.”
    My aunt touches my shoulder. My mother looks off to the road. She smokes her cigarette in short quick drags, and I watch her shoulders slump and I see her pain and then, like a gush from a vein, I feel mine.
    â€œMaybe things will finally start working out for us,” she says while looking out at the road. “You can go to school down there, Corns.”
    She keeps on talking, stumbling along about the way it will be for us someday, but this time, as the tears fall down my face, I look away from her.
    I think about that day I began writing about my life in the tepee and how I promised myself I would never hide again. I watch my mother explain how she’ll come back for me, how I can practically count the days on my fingers, she’ll come back so soon. Never hide my face, I told myself that day, never again. Never look at my feet, never again.
    I look up at Agatha, then back to my mother. “I’ll b-b-b-be okay here.”
    My mother looks away. But I walk across the miles and miles that stretch between us and hug her anyway.

97
    â€œI bet I owe a huge fine,” I say as I wrap a brown paper bag around the library’s copy of
Oliver Twist
that I tucked in my drawer all those months ago. “Here, hold this string.”
    Agatha puts her book,
Foraging for Wild Foods,
on the counter. Just the title makes me shudder. She pushes her finger on the string and I tie a tight bow.
    â€œSend ’em a jar of fiddleheads. Bet they’d appreciate that in the city.”
    â€œThat’s the l-l-looniest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say, picking up a pen and writing our return address in bold black letters.

98
    We climb the mountain a lot come spring. We bring our