Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast Read Online Free Page A

moon was full and sitting between the horns of two hills. There was a sprinkling of stars overhead. And Mama began to move the ground beneath me, trying to rise.
    The garlic strands must have worried her, for she did not come out of the earth all at once. It was the scrabbling of her long nails at my back that woke me. I leaped off that grave and was wide awake.
    Standing aside the grave, I watched as first her long gray arms reached out of the earth. Then her head emerged with its hair that was once so gold now gray and streaked with black, and its shroud eyes. And then her body in its winding sheet, stained with dirt and torn from walking to and fro upon the land. Then her bare feet with blackened nails, though alive Mama used to paint those nails, her one vanity and Papa allowed it seeing she was so pretty and otherwise not vain.
    She turned toward me as a hummingbird toward a flower, and she raised her face up and it was gray and bony. Her mouth peeled back from her teeth and I saw that they were pointed and her tongue was barbed.
    â€œMama gone,” I whispered in Bubba’s voice, but so low I could hardly hear it myself.
    She stepped toward me off that grave, lurching down the hump of dirt. But when she got dose, the garlic strands and the cross stayed her.
    â€œMama.”
    She turned her head back and forth. It was dear she could not see with those black shroud eyes. She only sensed me there, something warm, something alive, something with blood running like satisfying streams through blue veins.
    "Mama,” I said again. “Try and remember.”
    That searching awful face turned toward me again, and the pointy teeth were bared once more. Her hands reached out to grab me, then pulled back.
    â€œRemember how Bubba always sucks his thumb with that funny little noise you always said was like a little chuck in its hole. And how Sukey hums through her nose when she’s baking bread. And how I listened to your belly to hear the baby. And how Papa always starts each meal with the blessing on things that grow fresh in the field.”
    The gray face turned for a moment toward the hills, and I wasn’t even sure she could hear me. But I had to keep trying.
    â€œAnd remember when we picked the blueberries and Bubba fell down the hill, tumbling head-end over. And we laughed until we heard him, and he was saying the same six things over and over till long past bed.”
    The gray face turned back toward me and I thought I saw a bit of light in the eyes. But it was just reflected moonlight.
    â€œAnd the day Papa came home with the new ewe lamb and we fed her on a sugar teat. You stayed up all the night and I slept in the straw by your side.”
    It was as if stars were twinkling in those dead eyes. I couldn’t stop staring, but I didn’t dare stop talking, either.
    â€œAnd remember the day the bluebird stunned itself on the kitchen window and you held it in your hands. You wanned it to life, you said. To life, Mama.”
    Those stars began to run down the gray cheeks.
    "There’s living, Mama, and there’s dead. You’ve given so much life. Don’t be bringing death to these hills now.” I could see that the stars were gone from the sky over her head; the moon was setting.
    â€œPapa loved you too much to cut your hands and feet. You gotta return that love, Mama. You gotta."
    Veins of red ran along the hills, outlining the rocks. As the sun began to rise, I took off one strand of garlic. Then the second. Then the last. I opened my arms. “Have you come back, Mama, or are you gone?”
    The gray woman leaned over and clasped me tight in her arms. Her head bent down toward mine, her mouth on my forehead, my neck, the outline of my little gold cross burning across her lips.
    She whispered, “Here and gone, child, here and gone,” in a voice like wind in the coppice, like the shaking of willow leaves. I felt her kiss on my cheek, a brand.
    Then the sun came