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Show Motherlunge a novel 215 She was looking in the direction of the school, where J would be walking from. Pavia and I were given lunch money every morning, but I couldn't face eating lunch at school. I had no one to sit with. So for most of that year, fourth grade, I'd been walking home instead. Dorothy stood in the gap of the curtains, feeling half sick. She squinted in the hard winter sunlight coming through the window. She was watching for me. She was waiting to see me in my blue parka coming down the street; I'd have my hood pulled up and my face pointing down. Dorothy thought about how she would tell me. The problem was that there really was no good reason, there was just a reason-something like shame, like love. Dorothy couldn't explain. She decided that that she would just say, You can't come home for lunch anymore, and leave it at that And during my hurried lunch-the noon break was just 45 minutes long, and it took more than half of this time to walk home and back-that's what she did say to me. She was sitting next to me at the kitchen table with my parka covering her lap like a blanket. "You can't come home for lunch anymore, Thea." "Why not?" I asked. I was eating more cereal, therefore I held a spoon. Among flatware, spoons are the most comforting, don't you think? "Because." I took in my mother's face, her pretty mouth pushed down by heavy cheeks. Her pale skin, green-veined below the eyes. Her eyes facing out from her head like a couple of captives. |