Black Ice by Lorene Cary Read Free Book Online

relieved to escape from my grandmother’s glittering fantasies and the heartbreaking remnant of her coloratura soprano; her excess, from the pounds of cheese and butter that bubbled over in her macaroni to her fury; and the madcap humor drinking released in her. I was relieved to imagine myself free of the silent judgment of my dead great-grandmother.
    “Grammom would have been so proud of you going to that school,” my grandmother said, bestowing on me even greater praise than she could give. “And the wonderful thing is,” she added, “that we don’t even have to tell you to go up there and make her proud. I know you’ll do that already.”
    When summer came, I worked full time at Woolworth’s fountain in Darby. Weeks whizzed by: hot, repetitive, soothing. Each day I wore the same uniform, washed by hand in the sink and hung to dry in the dining room, and the same run-over shoes polished fresh. Each hamburger was cooked the same way; each BLT arranged just so; each soup-to-go poured to the same level in the take-out cup; each basketful of fries allowed to bubble just the same amount of time in their frothy grease. I had it down now. The work felt good.
    From her post behind the cash register in John’s Bargain Store across Main Street, Karen waved at me through the plate-glass window. “Tacky” Darby passed between us: trolley cars forced to wait while Darbyites double-parked outside the ugly state liquor store; the big white woman in the flowered house-dress who never wore panties (and always bent over); shoplifting teens who met on the sidewalks to compare their heists. Veins raised themselves up along the backs of my hands that summer. My handwriting changed several times. I began reading
Time
magazine.
    Soon after that it was time to go.
    “I want to talk to you.”
    I jumped as my mother came upon me in the dark on our front lawn. On the pretext of walking the dog, I had come outside by myself.
    “Florence Evans told me that you’d go away, and in my heart I’ve always known it. I’m not afraid to let you go. Some people say: How could you let her go at fifteen? But I know that if I haven’t given you what you need by now, another couple years won’t do it. I’ve done my job. I know that.”
    I felt a sadness for us at that moment, and for my mother, for whom being a mother was everything. I was desperate to leave her, a desperation that filled me up with shame. I bloated with it. My fingers itched. She looked at my tears with what I imagined to be satisfaction, grim and tender.
    Then she came to the point. “I think you know how to behave. I haven’t talked to you about how to protect yourself, because you’re smart enough to figure that out. You’ll do better off staying just as you are. Intact, do you hear me? You’re going up there for an education, not for any of that other stuff. Like your cigarettes. I know about girls’ feelings, but I’m not about to condone anything. But girls do make mistakes. I know that. And if you ever make a mistake, don’t you go running to any of those people up there. You don’t know them, and, believe me, they could just be waiting for you to make a mistake. Do you hear me? Don’t you go running to those people. If you make a mistake, you come to
me
—not Nana Hamilton, not Nana Jackson, not Aunt Evie, not your girlfriends.
    “I have some money. That’s just for you to know. It is only for emergencies, but there’s enough there if you need it. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
    I nodded.
    “Good,” she said. “Now, don’t stay out here too long.”
    Getting pregnant, I practically snorted to myself, was out of the question. Not that I couldn’t make mistakes. Not that I was judging girls who did. But not me. Not when I had so much to lose.
    I thought about being pregnant. I thought about how yougot that way, and my body tingled. It did that not only when I expected it, when a boy held me during a slow dance or kissed me good-night,