Keeper of Keys Read Online Free
Author: Bernice L. McFadden
Tags: Drama, United States, Literary, Family & Relationships, Romance, Literature & Fiction, Health; Fitness & Dieting, Love & Romance, Literary Fiction, Drama & Plays, One Hour (33-43 Pages), Parenting & Relationships, Relationships
her….. forever.
"She's dead?" I asked even though her chest rose and fell beneath the white sheet that covered her body and I could hear her heartbeat from the machine above her head.
"Dying." My grandmother said.
I would find out that my mother had bone cancer, it had eaten away the marrow, making her bones as brittle as burnt wood and just as weak. Her limbs began to snap in two as easily as the colored pencils she used to sketch out her ideas with.
It took her over quickly and there wasn't anything anyone could do to save her.
My grandparents stepped out of the room right before Doctor Tate, our family physician, turned off the machines.
Only Eve and I remained.
Our fingers linked, we locked our breaths away in our chests as the last switch was flicked off and the white accordion in the bottle went flat and silent.
I kissed my mother's warm cheek and wished that I could have left pink lips there for her to carry through her dreams.
Eve leaned in and for the second time, I watched as she kissed my mother the way Joni kissed Chachi.
My tires squealed against the steel of the railroad tracks as I pressed down hard on the gas pedal. My jeep jerked forward and out of harms way just as the 12:56 to Manhattan rounded the bend. I could see the startled face of the motorman as he pulled the red string that sounded the long foreboding wail of the whistle.
I had forty dollars stuffed in the pocket of my jeans; some change in the ashtray a full tank of gas and tears in my eyes when I started on the seventeen-hour trip to Sandersville, Georgia.
I had to get my daughter; I would not allow history to repeat itself. Would not have my daughter mourning the loss of a mother she never got to say good-bye to.
I wouldn't have her aunts and uncles mumbling things beneath their breaths about the extra money it was costing them to feed and cloth her, just as my family members did after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was put into a resting home.
No, for now my child had a mother and a home and I was going to bring her back to me and never let her go again!
The hours in the car passed as hours do, sometimes unhurried other times as quick as light and just as splendid.
I would share that with this man that would forever remind me of the Masaii tribesman I had encountered on the pages of a National Geographic Magazine. The man that came into my life four years three months and two days after I'd convinced myself that I would never be held by another man.
I would tell this man, this fixer of homes and repairer of spirit, that I felt my mother riding along with me that day. Felt her so strongly that I pulled to the side of the road and ran my hands along the leather of the passenger seat.
"I could smell her." I told him. And I did, my car was filled with the light scent of the coconut oil she used in her hair.
"She was there," Journey replied. And I knew he meant it and did not think I was insane for thinking it or even saying it aloud to him.
It was almost midnight when I turned down the dark road that would bring me to Poor Boy's house. I still called him that, even though at age thirty he had decided to drop the nickname that had followed him since he was a year old.
His mother had dubbed him Poor Boy because of the way his diapers hung off his narrow hips and how he tottered around, bent over as if he had the world on his shoulders and not a dime in his pocket.
"It's James," he would say in a voice too dignified and out of place for a man who'd spent his whole life farming and slopping hogs.
He was a wealthy man now. The half million dollars I'd given him from my lotto winnings had propelled him into socialite status, even though the elite he was apart of was small, new and consisted of his mother, wife, two daughters, his mother Beck, Precious, her four kids and himself.
Precious on the other hand enjoyed the adoration her nickname afforded her. Helen wasn't a name to which people
"She's dead?" I asked even though her chest rose and fell beneath the white sheet that covered her body and I could hear her heartbeat from the machine above her head.
"Dying." My grandmother said.
I would find out that my mother had bone cancer, it had eaten away the marrow, making her bones as brittle as burnt wood and just as weak. Her limbs began to snap in two as easily as the colored pencils she used to sketch out her ideas with.
It took her over quickly and there wasn't anything anyone could do to save her.
My grandparents stepped out of the room right before Doctor Tate, our family physician, turned off the machines.
Only Eve and I remained.
Our fingers linked, we locked our breaths away in our chests as the last switch was flicked off and the white accordion in the bottle went flat and silent.
I kissed my mother's warm cheek and wished that I could have left pink lips there for her to carry through her dreams.
Eve leaned in and for the second time, I watched as she kissed my mother the way Joni kissed Chachi.
My tires squealed against the steel of the railroad tracks as I pressed down hard on the gas pedal. My jeep jerked forward and out of harms way just as the 12:56 to Manhattan rounded the bend. I could see the startled face of the motorman as he pulled the red string that sounded the long foreboding wail of the whistle.
I had forty dollars stuffed in the pocket of my jeans; some change in the ashtray a full tank of gas and tears in my eyes when I started on the seventeen-hour trip to Sandersville, Georgia.
I had to get my daughter; I would not allow history to repeat itself. Would not have my daughter mourning the loss of a mother she never got to say good-bye to.
I wouldn't have her aunts and uncles mumbling things beneath their breaths about the extra money it was costing them to feed and cloth her, just as my family members did after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was put into a resting home.
No, for now my child had a mother and a home and I was going to bring her back to me and never let her go again!
The hours in the car passed as hours do, sometimes unhurried other times as quick as light and just as splendid.
I would share that with this man that would forever remind me of the Masaii tribesman I had encountered on the pages of a National Geographic Magazine. The man that came into my life four years three months and two days after I'd convinced myself that I would never be held by another man.
I would tell this man, this fixer of homes and repairer of spirit, that I felt my mother riding along with me that day. Felt her so strongly that I pulled to the side of the road and ran my hands along the leather of the passenger seat.
"I could smell her." I told him. And I did, my car was filled with the light scent of the coconut oil she used in her hair.
"She was there," Journey replied. And I knew he meant it and did not think I was insane for thinking it or even saying it aloud to him.
It was almost midnight when I turned down the dark road that would bring me to Poor Boy's house. I still called him that, even though at age thirty he had decided to drop the nickname that had followed him since he was a year old.
His mother had dubbed him Poor Boy because of the way his diapers hung off his narrow hips and how he tottered around, bent over as if he had the world on his shoulders and not a dime in his pocket.
"It's James," he would say in a voice too dignified and out of place for a man who'd spent his whole life farming and slopping hogs.
He was a wealthy man now. The half million dollars I'd given him from my lotto winnings had propelled him into socialite status, even though the elite he was apart of was small, new and consisted of his mother, wife, two daughters, his mother Beck, Precious, her four kids and himself.
Precious on the other hand enjoyed the adoration her nickname afforded her. Helen wasn't a name to which people
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