Crave by Laurie Jean Cannady Read Free Book Online Page A

wore expensive rings that sent cascades of light across the room’s ceiling. Some, like Momma, wore no rings at all because they’d been pawned months before in order to buy food. Some looked as young as Momma, too young to have a husband and a sick baby in the PICU. Some were so old they looked as if they could have been Momma’s grandmother. Most were paired and some were lucky enough to have husbands, mothers, brothers, and sisters watching them like they watched the clock on the wall.
    Momma, alone, watched the clock too, knowing she soon would have to leave in order to get my brother. She spied dawn cresting through the crack in the curtain. With no more cab money, she’d have to walk the six miles to her sister’s. There was hope someone driving along would see her and offer a ride. For her children, she’d violate her own rule, which was to never take a ride from a man while she was walking. On that morning, she was counting on those men who often pulled off the asphalt, windows rolled down, all smiles, beckoning.
    She became nauseous. Since food was scarce, she’d never had the luxury of morning sickness, so she chalked it up to nerves. What would the nurses think when they learned she had to leave? What would I think when I woke and she wasn’t there? Those questions made her stomach feel as if it needed to be emptied. But staying was not an option. Champ had to be collected, and the money she’d paid on the cab had to be recouped. She needed rest because the next day and any day that began with me in the hospital would mean a four-mile trek. As she rose from the chair, she felt her bones protest in cracks and creaks. She was only eighteen, but years of worry and pain had buried themselves in her joints. Pregnant and petite, not by choice, but circumstance, she wore curves that made everyone, men and women, follow when she walked.
    Momma ambled toward the nurses’ station, smoothed her wrinkled jacket, adjusted the waist of her pants so the buckle would not press against her belly. She wished for a mirror so she could see what they would see. Unsure of what to say, she practiced words that would show she was not a neglectful mother and she wanted to stay. None she conjured were sufficient. She readied for looks of disappointment, disbelief, chastising eyes indicting her for making one bad decision after another, the decision to have the first baby, the decision to marry, the decision to have the third and fourth after losing the second, and now the decision to leave the hospital. Those chagrined eyes would not know her story, yet they would sing the same song of disappointment her father sang, her brothers and sisters sang, the strangled melody which pulsed from behind her drunken husband’s jaundiced eyes.
    Midstep, she stopped. No need to interrupt the nurses in the middle of their work, and no need to wake me to say goodbye when all we both needed was rest. She could steal out, take care of tasks the day required and steal back in without anyone knowing. Then, those disapproving eyes wouldn’t follow her home and silence would replace clanging reminders of inadequacies. Who’s to say when they went to find her she wasn’t in the bathroom, getting coffee, or out smoking? She didn’t drink coffee and she’d never smoked, but who was to say? Instead of walking into the judge’s chambers, she could escape before being summoned. No harm since I was safe. She could still suffer damages.
    So, she pulled her jacket closed, obscuring herself, as if she were a thing being smuggled. She dipped into the elevator and exhaled once the doors closed. She continued looking down in an effort to remain hidden. Once she made it out of the hospital, away from the sliding doors, the sun shone so brightly, she believed it to be patting her on the back. But celebration was short-lived, as it often was in her complicated life. There was still much to be done. So, her walk