Chanel Bonfire by Wendy Lawless Read Free Book Online Page A

was so furious at us.
    “Just put your toys in the bags.” She marched out of the room and slammed the door behind her. Terrified and sobbing, Robbie and I started taking our dolls, puzzles, and stuffed animals off the shelves and dropping them into the bags. We hid our favorites—which included the two angel dolls our father had just given us, my sister’s teddy bear,Guthrie, and my Raggedy Andy—on top of the high bookshelf, which you could climb up like a ladder because it was built into the wall. Everything else, including our Christmas presents, went into the trash bags, and we were sent to bed with no dinner.
    In the morning, Mother’s black mood was gone. She greeted us at breakfast as if nothing had happened. Robbie and I were confused. It was almost as if it had been a dream. Only the absence of our toys, the garbage bags, and the soda fountain told us it wasn’t.
    Spring came and my mother started to talk about moving. Not just moving house again but moving away. She’d heard that Pop was seeing a girlfriend of hers, and suddenly it seemed there were ghosts and old boyfriends around every corner. New York was finished for her.
    Two weeks later, Catherine came into our room in the middle of the night. She turned my bedside table light on and sat down next to me. She was crying.
    “I just want you to know that your momma fired me and I love you both.”
    I was still half-asleep as she gathered me up in her treelike arms and crushed me against her immense bosom. I reached my arms around her neck and held her. I remembered all the times she’d made us that special syrup when we were sick, cooked our breakfast, and helped us find our shoes. She tucked me back into bed and kissed the top of my head. Then she gave my sister the same farewell. She turned out the light and waddled to the door.
    “Bless you, my lambie pies,” she said in the dark.
    Catherine was leaving us, and we would never see her again. Feeling such sorrow that she wouldn’t be in the kitchen in the morning, or anyplace else in our lives, my heart felt pressed down upon, as if the heaviest book in the world had been placed there. Utterly bereft, my sister and I cried quietly into our pillows.
    The next day, when Robbie and I came home from school, I spied a large pile of familiar-looking Louis Vuitton luggage heaped in a corner of the lobby as we walked through to the elevator. I glanced over at Johnny the doorman, wondering if he might want to tell me something, but he just clasped his arms behind his back and looked out through the door at the street. When we got upstairs, we discovered our front door open and the apartment completely empty.
    “Is this our house?” my sister said. She took her coat off and, seeing nowhere to put it, plopped it down on the floor.
    “I think so,” I said, looking around.
    We were standing in the foyer wondering if we’d been robbed when Mother emerged from her bedroom with her mink coat over her arm.
    “Oh, there you are,” she said, checking her watch.
    “Where is . . . everything?” I asked. All that was left were the nails in the walls where the pictures had once hung, and little dust balls on the floor that had previously been trapped by pieces of furniture. Even the piano was gone. It made me think of what the Grinch did to Whoville.
    “The movers came today and I had it all put into storage.”
    The elevator man walked by with another suitcase and our cat, Maudie, in her carrier, yowling like an angry baby. Maudie was a chocolate-point Siamese and always meowed loudly like a person who wouldn’t be ignored. I ran to my room to see if anything had been left behind, but it was empty.
    “Wendy? Where are you?” I heard my mother’s shoes clicking down the hallway toward me. I looked up to the top of the bookshelf where our stash of secret saved toys was hidden. They would have to stay behind now. Mother came into the empty room, her voice echoing off the bare walls: “You see, all gone.