The Perfect Place by Teresa E. Harris

Author:Teresa E. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)

Eighteen

WE’VE been in Black Lake for six days, and if I should’ve learned anything by now, it’s that all the hope in the world isn’t going to help when it comes to Great-Aunt Grace. I wake up to find her standing over my bed, a glass of orange juice in her hand.

“I’m not going to camp,” I tell her.

“Oh, yes, you are. Y’all ain’t gonna be nippin’ at my ankles all the Lord’s day long. Besides, a little Jesus ain’t never hurt a soul.”

But I bet Jaguar and Pamela could cause someone some real damage.

“I want y’all downstairs in thirty minutes or less. Understood?”

“I guess.”

I wait for Great-Aunt Grace to leave. She doesn’t. Instead she stops just by the door and points at the clean laundry sitting on top of the dresser. She made Tiffany and me finish it last night. “That’s what y’all call foldin’?”

I nod. Great-Aunt Grace disappears into the hallway, muttering about how the Lord never made two more useless kids. I get up to shake Tiffany awake. She swats at me like a cat. I say just one word—“Camp”—and she flies out of bed. She doesn’t complain when I scrape her hair into a ponytail or when I get in her ears with a washcloth, or even when she has to feed grumpy old Mr. Shuffle, who goes after her ankles again when she takes too long opening his can of 9 Lives. When Great-Aunt Grace serves us up oatmeal with the consistency of cement, Tiffany doesn’t so much as make a face.

Not me. I can barely choke down my breakfast, not even when Great-Aunt Grace comes and stands over me the way she does.

“You gonna be hungry in no time, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself,” she says.

For Camp Jesus Saves, I have no one to blame but Great-Aunt Grace.

I take my time washing the breakfast dishes, soaping and rinsing each dish more than once. When she catches me soaping up the sponge to rewash the cups for the fourth time, Great-Aunt Grace says, “You gonna wash the clean right off them dishes, girl. Now, come on and let’s go.”

To camp. We lock up the house and start walking in the Black Lake heat, and even though I try to walk slower than a tortoise with a bum leg, we’re at camp in no time. It’s a scientific fact that the more you don’t want to go somewhere, the faster you’ll get there. We stop in front of Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School. A banner strung across the school’s brick front shouts in all caps: WELCOME TO CAMP JESUS SAVES, WHERE DELIVERANCE IS FREE.

We follow Great-Aunt Grace up the walkway and through the front door. Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School smells like fried food and permanent markers. Our shoes squeak on the linoleum floor. Two girls come running down the hallway, holding hands. When they see Great-Aunt Grace, they slow to a walk and move all the way to the right, hugging the wall.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.