Читать книгу Swerve - Michelle McGriff - Страница 10

Memories

“Mommy, why my hair is brown and yours is yellow?” the small child, Romia, asked her mother. She had lightly tugged at the ends of it that hung long down her back.

Her mother responded, smiling down at her while picking the healthier box of cereal off the top rack of the shelf. “My hair is yellow because the sun made it that way.”

“Will the sun do that to my hair one day?”

Bending down, she kissed her on the cheek. “The sun will never need to. You are safe as you are. You are blessed and safe as you,” she added. “But if you ever feel as though you are not safe, you will simply ask the sun to make your hair yellow, and your eyes blue”—she bent down close to Romia’s ear—“when they are actually green.”

Romia thought about those words all day. She was a deep-thinking child who was affected by every word from her mother’s lips. Each word touched her deeply and lessons taught would never be forgotten—stored deeply, true—but never forgotten. Her mother laughed after speaking to her in the riddle-like fashion. She often spoke that way to her. Thinking back on her, Romia sometimes wondered if perhaps English wasn’t her first language, although she would be hard-pressed to figure out what other language her mother could have spoken, considering English was the only language she heard from her.

“Let’s see if Mrs. Thurston is ready to leave the store,” she said, moving her basket toward another aisle. They often shopped with the older woman who lived next door. Romia had come to view that woman as a grandmother. When her mother died, she wasn’t surprised to find her being one of the women helping to pack up her mother’s things. She was surprised to find that she wasn’t going to be living with her, but thinking back now, surely the woman was too old to care for a child her age. Even then she had to be around fifty.

Suddenly, her mother stopped as if frozen in time. She stared off into space and then spun on her heels, causing Romia to look in the same direction. At the end of the aisle stood a tall, dark, mysterious-looking man who was not even looking their way, yet her mother became instantly fearful. Romia could sense her feelings through her hand that tightly grasped her own.

“Sweetheart,” she said calmly in Romia’s ear after lifting her onto her hip, “we’ll wait in the car for Mrs. Thurston, okay?”

Romia looked at the groceries. “But what about—”

“Never mind that,” she answered, moving her quickly through the next aisle and out of the store. She continually looked back toward the door of the store until they reached the car.

“You were taking awhile. I got finished and came out to the car,” Mrs. Thurston said, smiling all the while.

“Wonderful,” her mother snapped quickly, unlocking the door for Mrs. Thurston to get in.

“Where is your fo—” Mrs. Thurston began to ask before Romia’s mother all but shoved her into the car.

She opened the back door and hoisted Romia inside. “Put on your seatbelt, sweetheart,” she said, sounding nearly out of breath, still glancing back at the store.

Romia obeyed.

They rushed home. Romia remembered her mother pacing most of the evening, yet breaking into a bright smile every time their eyes met. “I love you with more than all my heart,” she said.

This was but one strange memory Romia had of her mother. Some would come and go quickly, oddly. But this one would play over and over, the same way each time.