Knee-Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page A

had been pulled closed. Groping along a wall for a moment, Queen Ester switched a light on and walked into the living room. She shook her head, then turned to Helene. “Yes, yes.” And while Queen Ester was deciding where to put her sudden guest, just where Helene would fit among familiar things, her daughter tried to shake the feeling that something was awry. Getting into her mother’s house shouldn’t be so easy.
    Turning on every light along the way, Queen Ester took her under the arm and ran her around that crooked house. As if aware she had denied Helene for so long, Queen Ester had a page’s worth of explanation for every lamp and carpet. “We got this in Texarkana, and me and Mama sat up most of the night to sew a fringe on it. Feel that, girl. Don’t make a lampshade like that no more.” Helene’s head swam with all the attention. “You know Mama put up this house damn near by herself. Course she never told me, but when folks come by, they make mention of it.” Everything said was sprinkled with a touch of love. “Girl, you done grown. B sho did take care of you. Tell you that much.”
    Queen Ester’s house was full of dead-end hallways and closets she introduced as rooms with no windows. They went upstairs first. Seven doors, but six rooms, on either side of the hallway, since the last door at the end of the hall opened to nothing, Queen Ester said. “Mama had a mind to put a balcony back here but never did get around to it. For the best, I suppose.” The room Queen Ester said was for guests had no furniture, just a large green carpet and one rectangular window that hung so low on the wall it almost sat on the floor. Grandmother’s office, as her mother called it, had no desk, only an upright wooden chair that stood alone in the middle of the room. On one wall you could look out of six windows the size of picture frames. Queen Ester’s bedroom had a welcome mat in front of the door, but the door itself was boarded up.
    â€œHow do you get inside your bedroom?” Helene asked.
    â€œI go through Mama’s room. Got a door that lets me in the side way.” Queen Ester folded her arms and cupped her elbows as they both stood on the welcoming mat; Helene looked at her mother, waiting for an explanation.
    â€œWhy is the door boarded?”
    â€œFell down one day. Just one day it was fine, and then the next it had a hole in it. And what’s the use of a door with a hole in it?” Queen Ester stopped and licked her lips. “Let’s go through Mama’s way.” In her room there was a twin bed, a chair at the foot of the bed, and an open gray train trunk. The small ironing board attached to the trunk was down and a pair of khaki pants were flung over it. Queen Ester led Helene back into the hallway, and they stood next to another door her mother wouldn’t (couldn’t) open.
    â€œCobwebs and Lord knows what all,” Queen Ester said, as she pulled Helene past this closed-up room, down the corridor, which swayed like rolling hills. Queen Ester’s mutterings—got this wallpaper in ’thirty-two, and me and Mama put it up real nice—dwindled to nothing as Helene gave only half a mind to her mother’s voice. The other half had stalled in front of the closed door. Didn’t I hear creaking? she thought, suspecting her mother’s too-easy manner. You just don’t go from nothing to all this. Fearful that her mother had coaxed her inside only to deny her what she needed to know most, Helene stumbled slightly on an imaginary nail, making her mother pause while she gained a balance she hadn’t lost.
    It seemed to be the only door that didn’t look thrown and askew inside its frame; the knob was polished and gleamed from care. But Queen Ester shuffled down the stair and Helene followed. “I got coffee and tea,” Queen Ester mumbled, pulling her daughter into the kitchen.
    Watching the