Dialogue from mother with love .
Her mother was tired that night. She lay on the davenport and made out her Christmas card list while Minta and her er father watched the wrestling matches. It was like a thousand other such unaccountable way it was different. but in some "The last time we'll "Because it's the last time," Minta told ever rake the leaves and make a bonfire in alley. The last time I'll snap a picture of her with her arms around Kelly kids. The last time ... the last time..." She got up quickly and vent out into the kitchen and made popcorn in the electric popper, bringing a bowl to her mother first, remembering just the way she liked it, salt and not too much butter. But that night she wakened in the chilly darkness of her room and began to cry, softly, her head buried in the curve of her arm. At first it helped, loosening the tight bands about her heart, washing away the fear and the loneliness, but when she tried to stop she found that she couldn't. Great wracking sobs shook her until she could no longer smother them against her pillow. And then the light was on and her mother was there bending over her, her face concerned, her voice soothing. "Darling, what is it? Wake up, baby, you're having a bad dream." "No... no, it isn't a dream," Minta choked. "It's true... it's true." The thin hand kept smoothing back her tumbled hair and her mother went on talking in the tone she had always used to comfort a much smaller Minta.She was aware that her father had come to the doorway. He said nothing, just stood there watching them while Minta's sobs diminished into hiccupy sighs.
Her mother pulled the blanket up over Minta's shoulder and gave her a little spank. "The idea! Gollywogs, at your age," she said reprovingly. "Want me to leave the light on in case your spook comes back?"
Minta shook her head, blinking against the tears that crowded against her eyelids, even managing a wobbly smile.
She never cried again.
Not even when the ambulance came a week later to take her mother to the hospital. 205680
Not even when she was standing beside r mother's high white hospital bed, holding her hand tightly, inconsequential things. takeing herself to chatter of
"Be sure that your father vitamin pills, won't you, Minta? He's so careless unless I'm there to keep an eye on him."
"I'll watch him like a beagle," Minta promised lightly. "Now you behave yourself and get out of here in a hurry, you hear?"
Not even at the funeral...
The friends and relatives came and went and it was as if she stood on the sidelines watching the Minta who talked with them and answered their questions. As if her heart were encased in a shell that kept it from
breaking. She went to school and came home afterwards to the empty house. She tried to do the things her mother had done but even with the help of well-meaning friends and neighbors it was hard. She tried not to hate the people who urged her to cry.
"You'll feel better, dear," her Aunt Grace had insisted and then had lifted her handkerchief to her eyes and walked away when Minta had only stared at her with chilling indifference.
She overheard people talking about her mother. "She never knew, did she?" They asked.
And always Minta's father answered, "No, she never knew.