Julia's Chocolates by Cathy Lamb Read Free Book Online Page B

said. “Just ggaaaagggg me.”
    Katie’s laughter filled the room, but none of the other women seemed to think this was the slightest bit amusing.

    The lights were still low, the candles burning, but the Breast Power Psychic Night group had broken up a bit. Lara had passed out on the couch after declaring that she could hear the state of New York calling her name through aliens. Lydia had pulled a sweater over her head and sat embroidering a pillow that read, “Sex is good for the skin. Men aren’t.”
    Katie had wrapped an afghan around herself and was in a rocking chair by the window, staring straight out, not moving, not reading, just staring.
    And Caroline and I were huddled on the floor, sitting across from each other. Caroline and I had both put our shirts and bras back on.
    I had heard nothing from my boobs except that I was fat, with no job, almost no money, and had a Dread Disease and a sicko ex-fiancé I had had to escape from.
    Caroline the Psychic didn’t ask to see my hand to trace my lines. She didn’t ask for my favorite number. There were no fancy-schmancy teacups or tarot cards, only a flickering candle between us and Lydia’s quiet humming. I think it was a southern song, one the slaves would have sung in the fields. A song with an upbeat tune but words so tragic, so hopeless you wanted to cry.
    Caroline stared at me. “Let me look at your knees.”
    “My knees?” She nodded. “Okeydokey. You’re the psychic. If you can read knees, all the better.” I pulled up my skirt. My knees were scarred in several places from childhood.
    “What’s this scar from?” Caroline asked, pointing to the smallest scar, shaped like a half moon.
    “I was hit by a car.”
    “Hmmm,” Caroline said, her shiny brown hair surrounding her head like a veil.
    I thought I heard wisdom in her “Hmmm.”
    “And this one?”
    “That one I got when I was a baby.”
    She arched an eyebrow at me. It looked like the wing of a blackbird.
    “My mother said I was too fussy that day. She put me on the patio of our apartment when it was raining. I stood up in my high chair and fell over the top.”
    I didn’t tell her the rest of it. Aunt Lydia had told me later what happened. She got the scoop from the neighbor next door, who heard my pathetic cries. The neighbor had rushed over and untangled me from the tray of my high chair.
    There was a gash on my head where the tray of my high chair had hit me when it slipped off in the crash. My hands, elbows, and knees were also bleeding messes. The gashes required nineteen stitches. The new scrapes and bruises simply added to the old scrapes and bruises and two old breaks in my bones.
    The neighbor had banged on the sliding glass door, but my mother didn’t answer, being passed out in bed, upset and drunk because another boyfriend had walked out. So the neighbor had called the police, who called Children’s Services and an ambulance. I went to the hospital and had eleven stitches put in my head and eight on my knees. I still have the scars.
    Children’s Services picked me up for the third time that year and deposited me in a foster home until Aunt Lydia found out about it and came and got me. She petitioned the court for custody, for the second time, but lost when my mother, Candy, who is very petite, except for her breasts, and can look like the most harmless, lovely woman anyone has ever seen, convinced the judge that she had mended the error of her ways, wasn’t drinking anymore, and had found Christ. She was born again, praise the Lord. She was walking with Jesus and felt blessed to have this second chance at living a holy life.
    The judge, a devout Christian, believed her, and back I went with my mother. Aunt Lydia was furious, she told me later, but my mother was careful from then on out. Not because she wanted me, but because she didn’t want Lydia to have me. Then Lydia would have won. Candy couldn’t have that. Ever. Even if her child’s life was a miserable,