Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz Read Free Book Online Page B

tiptoes and reached her arms high. “Pretty,” she said, “pretty.”
    “No, no, honey. These aren't for you. See, they've got thorns.” She pricked her finger and a red bead of blood appeared. She held it up for Ruth to see as if it were a prize.
Ruth
    “Ho,” he said, and Frenchie stopped. I saw over the wall where all the stones were.
    “Hup,” Rudy said, and I was in the air, and then I was on the snow.
    The snow was hard, like crackers. There were no footprints on it. I was careful. I slid my feet. I tried not to let the snow break. The man that was my daddy let me. He didn't make me hurry. He punched the snow with his canes. Punch, step. Punch, step. I wished I had a cane.
    We went past the mean gray stones and the stone that was sleeping and the one with the boat. I knew the way. Aunt Mandy and I had been here lots of times. We went up the hill, then down the other side. We went to the stone that said my mama's name. It had shiny ice all over it.
    He said, “Mathilda,” and I knew he meant my mama.
    I looked behind the stone like I always did. Aunt Mandy said she was there, too, but I never saw her.
    “Where is she?” Aunt Mandy would never tell me, but maybe he would.
    “In heaven,” he said, that same old answer that wasn't any good to me. And he was crying.
    I cried then, too, because he was crying. “Then why don't we go there and get her?”
    Heaven was the place where we lived with Aunt Mandy, before my mama never came back.
    “Someday you will,” he said, “but not for a very long time.”
    I put my hand on the slippery ice stone. I slid my mitten over it, back and forth. I waited for him to say better get home. But he just stayed kneeling in the snow.
    “Why did she go to heaven?”
    “She drowned, Ruth. She went under the water and she couldn't get back up.”
    So then I knew that I was right. Heaven was the place where we had lived, because that was where the water was.
    “She drowned me too,” I said. “The baby was crying and crying.”
    “What baby?”
    “The ice baby. When Aunt Mandy didn't wait for us.”
    “What are you talking about? When didn't Amanda wait for you?”
    “When I drowned.”
    He was crying and he was smiling. “Don't worry, Ruth.” He wiped the crying off his face and put his hand on my head. “You didn't drown. You're right here with me.”
    I was here, but he wasn't there. So how did he know?

    When Carl returned with Ruth from the churchyard, he got back into bed and stayed there. Amanda opened the curtains each morning, registering her disapproval with every yank on the fabric.
    “Ready?” she asked, but she didn't mean it as a question.
    Surprisingly, after the first few times, he was ready. Twice a day, morning and evening, she unceremoniously threw back the blankets, exposing him to the chilly air, and scrubbed his wounded leg with brisk efficiency. Then she bent the leg, twisted it, pushed and prodded it with her long, thin fingers, until he yelped in pain.
    “Oh, for pity's sake,” she said, “bite on a pillow if you must make that noise. We can't have you scaring Ruth.” And as she wrapped honey-covered cloths around the hole, she warned him, “I'll have to keep this up until you start doing for yourself.”
    He nodded and promised to try, but he had no interest in making himself better. It was all he could do to sit in a chair and eat the coddled eggs and soup she brought him, while she pounded his pillows into fluffiness and changed his sheets, snapping the clean linen once or twice in the air, before she allowed it to settle around the mattress.
    She scared him. He knew she disapproved of him, that she hadn't thought him good enough for her sister. He'd tried to woo her with the birdhouse, but it hadn't worked, and Mattie had cried the day she'd had to carry it back home from the train. He knew she didn't want to talk about how Mathilda had died, but the pain in his leg made him angry and bold.
    “Amanda,” he said one night when she