Yankee Doodle by Loretta Welch

Author:Loretta Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GemmaMedia
Published: 2011-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

SIX

Lost

There was a spot in the middle of her back, more up than down, between her shoulders, that felt like it was going to break. She knew it wasn’t possible, because there were no bones there, but when she put her bags down and picked them back up again as the train arrived, tears came to her eyes. She had to stand against a wall sometimes to straighten up. Her posture wasn’t great, and the weight of all those supplies, all that dust swept up, and a million swipes back and forth across window panes made her ache. When the sky was blue and the birds sang at her in the evening, when it was summertime and the wind was warm, it went away when she looked up. Stella wondered how much of the ache was an old unhappiness.

Not unhappiness, really, just that steady gnawing feeling that she didn’t belong. The trouble was, where she came from didn’t seem too cozy, either. Where was this girl supposed to be? Certain days, she figured somebody would pluck her up out of the line of people waiting at open doors and cast her back into a pool of people. Or whisk her up in the air on a dust cloud, far far away where she didn’t stand out, but where was that?

From the Midwest, where she was “drug up,” she brought phrases like “old as dirt,” and “dark as four-forty-five,” but she never said “warsh” for “wash” or “growed up” for “grown up.” And while she knew exactly what someone meant when they said “she ain’t never came,” her diction was almost without a place. Like her. She mixed up some words, for sure. “Missouri” was “Missouruh,” and “soda” was “pop.” But it sure as heck wasn’t “tonic.” Still, she got used to the locals who took r’s out of words like “pahk” and “gahden” and dropped them at random into other words like “idear.” She worked out that Mrs F’s “hassock” was a footstool, but these “rotaries” for cars were just plain chaos, as far as she was concerned. Try to cross one in the middle of the day.

How people talk, their language, has something to do with belonging, too. Everything from a foreign language to the inside chatter of teenagers made you a part of a group. Or a place. Or a family. And Stella felt those were all gone for her. And then she thought: These are things that made you who you are, so you take them with you anyway. Maybe you belong where you are. She just wasn’t tethered any more, like a boat without a sail. So much was lost.

Stella knew loss was something like hurt, only deeper. Once in a while a storm comes up behind your eyes and tears can form. Most of the time, it’s like a bellyache, a little higher, and when it comes, it seeps into the rest of your muscles. Simple sadness is a little bit sweet, but when a

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