We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg Page A

send that fly to glory. And when you go with LaRue, I want you mail them bills on the kitchen table. Count them, and that’s exactly how many I want you have in your hand ’fore you put them the box.”
    Peacie did this every time I mailed something—told me that I should count the envelopes when I first picked them up and then again before I dropped them into the mailbox. If I did not have the right number, I was to bring them all home so she could see what I’d lost. I had never lost anything, but she always told me to count.
    Today there were five envelopes: the electric bill, the phone bill, the rent, the Sears bill, and one more, a plain envelope with money being sent to the Red Cross. My mother never had money to spare but gave to a charity every month anyway. She put no return address on the envelope, and she sent cash—it was important to her to make her donations anonymously. I thought for her to give away money was insane, and I told her so on a regular basis. “It’s very little that I send,” she always answered. And then she always added, “You’ll grow into an understanding of why I do it.” I was sure I would not. For one thing, I didn’t want to understand. I wanted the money.
     
    There was a hole in the floor of LaRue’s car. I liked riding with him for that reason, the sight of the black road rushing by below us, the safety of me sitting above, incapable of ever falling through that four-inch hole—but what a thrill to imagine it!
    “How you doing this fine afternoon?” LaRue asked as we pulled away from the curb.
    “Okay,” I said. He was wearing a new hat today, and I complimented him on it.
    He thanked me, then said, “Now I’m gon’ show you something make your eyeballs spin in they socket.”
    “What?”
    Without taking his eyes from the road, LaRue took off his hat and showed me the inside. There was silk lining, all in rainbow colors. He snuck a look at me. “Ain’t that something?”
    “Yes, but my eyeballs aren’t spinning.”
    “I bet your heart be lifted up, though. Ain’t it?”
    I smiled. “I guess so.”
    “Well,” he said, putting his hat back on carefully, just right. “That’s even better.” His voice was so warm and slow, I liked him so much. I couldn’t imagine what he saw in Peacie. Today I decided to ask him.
    “LaRue? How come you love Peacie?”
    He laughed, then bent his head sideways to have a good look at me. Handsome, too, LaRue was. “What you mean? Don’t you love her, too?”
    I said nothing, stared tactfully straight ahead.
    “Well, I think she a beautiful woman. She got those big eyes, those cute little ears. Mostly she got a big heart. She a
good
woman.”
    “Peacie?”
I couldn’t help myself; it burst out of me like spurting liquid when you’ve just taken a drink and someone makes you laugh.
    He laughed again. “I know you think she mean. But she ain’t in her heart, that’s where the difference lie. Some people act all nice on the outside and they got a heart like a dried-up prune. Peacie the other way around. And you know, she love you like her own child.”
    Now it was my turn to laugh.
    “You growin’ up fast, Diana. When you growed up some more, you understand.”
    Somewhere inside me, I thought he was probably right. Nonetheless, I straightened in my seat, looking to reclaim some sense of outrage, to continue my move from fear of Peacie into a kind of equality with her. I had felt the budding of such independence just this morning, when I told her she could no longer spank me.
    What came to me now, though, was a time I was eight years old and found a kitten in the backyard, on Christmas Day. It was a dirty little calico, shivering and mewing, sneezing a little, and so thin you could feel every bone. I brought it inside and asked my mother if I could keep it. No, she said immediately. I began to cry, saying the cat would die if we didn’t take it in. My mother said it wouldn’t; it would find another home or fend for