Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth

Author:Amy Espeseth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2012-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

Naomi is sorting her closet, piling up hand-me-downs on her pretty four-poster bed; after she is done with them, I inherit her dresses and sweaters. Fancy brands and fabrics, most of the clothes come from Aunt Gloria’s fancy family out in California. The sweaters are always pink or purple, being colours Naomi, her momma and other swanky folk like. I like red, but I know ladies don’t wear it. Naomi points out what sweaters can be thrown in the washing machine and what can’t; it makes me think rich people must be dirty. She couldn’t fit another sweater in that closet edgewise, crammed as it is with hooks and plastic hangers, but still, it is kindness that makes Naomi give me what she don’t need — kindness and the thick-growing middle she thinks she’s hiding.

Curled up on the bed like cats, we are warm and resting amongst the wool: Naomi leans against the foot and I stretch out along the head. Her room smells of lilacs and all other purple things, and there are even flowers in the curtain pattern. I wonder aloud whether Samuel is having fun at hockey camp. When I ask, she moves her pink foot away from where it was resting by my thigh. She crosses her legs and starts unbraiding her hair. Tracing a rabbit of soft white fur sewn into my new sweater, I thank her again for the clothes.

‘Do you think Samuel has any for Reuben?’

Naomi’s loud breath out tells me no.

‘Why do you always want to talk about boys? I think you have a crush on Samuel. Just shut up about him.’

That ain’t fair and she knows it. I sit looking at my hands for a while. When I look up, she’s got her hair all unbraided and it almost touches her waist.

‘I wish I could sit on my hair,’ she says. In front of the dressing mirror, Naomi shimmies her shoulders and hips. She’s been watching television, pageants again, I can tell. She’s peering at the mirror as she walks slow and ladylike, eyeing her reflection above the perfume bottles and hair ribbons lined along the shelf.

Staying quiet ain’t getting me nowhere. ‘I don’t even like boys.’ I got my sock off and I’m picking at my toenails. ‘I sure wouldn’t even want to be a boy.’ My chest feels tight with me wearing this silly bra my mom brought home the other day. Mom said she could see me jiggle, and I was ashamed. I must be the only thirteen-year-old with saggy enough breasts to need to wear a bra. My nipples rub against the lace, and now I’m hunching my shoulders so that Naomi can’t see. Everything needs to slow down, but it is getting all mixed up in my head.

‘Do you remember when I fell through the ice, Naomi?’

Naomi’s re-braiding her hair. With her hands tangled through and looping back and forth, she shakes her head no.

I ask her again if she remembers, and she looks up with mean eyes all squinting.

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