Mama was engaged in a continual quest to “find” herself. It was strange-stupid, even-but she often felt like the only adult in her family, as if she were the ballast that kept the creaky Allbright boat on an even keel. Leni was afraid to stay and afraid to leave. You don’t want to be late.” Her voice was calm and soft, as delicate as she was. She looked tired she’d worked the late shift last night and had the lunch shift today. Mama reached into the breast pocket of her pink waitress uniform and pulled out her cigarettes. Leni saw how tired he looked, how defeated. “Hey,” she said.ĭad saw her and took a step back from Mama. Leni cleared her throat to get their attention. Mama took a step toward him, reached out. Moving cautiously through her bare room, she went down the hall, paused at the kitchen doorway. She took a deep breath, unfolded, and slid off the twin bed. Not once had she found a way to truly fit in, but she remained stubbornly hopeful. She had learned this fact the hard way in the last four years, she’d gone to five schools. If she didn’t leave right now, she was going to be late for school, and the only thing worse than being the new girl in junior high was drawing attention to yourself. Weather like this brought out the darkness in her father.
and her father’s angry leave me the hell alone. Through the thin walls of the rambler, she heard her mother say, Ernt, baby, please don’t. Now she sat on her bed, with her skinny legs drawn up to her flat chest, a dog-eared paperback copy of Watership Down open beside her. She was the new girl at school, just a face in the crowd a girl with long hair, parted in the middle, who had no friends and walked to school alone. People who loved each other snapped and fights erupted as the water rose and the rain continued.
Rivers flooded their banks, washed across yards, ruined homes. Trees fell over, crashed into power lines electricity was lost. Chunks of land that had been steady for generations fell like slag heaps on the roads below, taking houses and cars and swim- ming pools down with them. Water found its way into the smallest cracks and undermined the sturdiest foundations. That spring, rain fell in great sweeping gusts that rattled the rooftops.
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