Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page A

it.”
    “It must have been nice,” said Ayinde, sounding wistful as she stroked her baby’s hair with her free hand. “You must have always had someone to talk to.”
    Kelly nodded, even though it wasn’t precisely true. Maureen was the only one she could really talk to. The rest of her brothers and sisters thought she was bossy, a tattletale, and too big for her britches when she tried to tell them what to eat or what to wear or how to behave. God, if she’d had a nickel for every time she’d heard You’re not my mother! from one of them. Like their actual mother was such great shakes. Kelly remembered how Paula O’Hara had discovered the scrapbook she’d kept when she was eight years old. The scrapbook was an old photo album that was meant to be the twins’ baby book, but her mother had gotten bored with it, so there were only a few snapshots of Maureen and Doreen when they’d come home from the hospital. The rest of it Kelly filled with her own pictures, ones cut out of copies of Ladies’ Home Journal and Newsweek and Time that she’d take from the dentist’s office at the end of the block after the receptionist left the magazines bundled up on the curb. Kelly wasn’t interested in pictures of people, just pictures of things. She’d cut out shots of big Colonial houses where the paint on the shutters wasn’t flaking off in long, curling strips; pictures of shining new minivans where you couldn’t still make out the words MARY MOTHER OF PEACE painted over on the side; pictures of blue vases full of daffodils and patent-leather tap shoes and a pink Huffy bike with a glitter banana seat. Pictures of dresses, pictures of shoes, a picture of the coat with real rabbit fur on the collar and cuffs that Missy Henry had worn to school last winter. Her mother had escorted Kelly into the living room, where none of the children were normally allowed, told her daughter to have a seat on the plastic slipcovered gold-and-green couch, and brandished the book in her face, shaking it so hard that a picture of some duchess’s hunting lodge came loose and fluttered to the floor. “What’s this?”
    There was no sense in trying to lie. “It’s just pictures of things I like.”
    Her mother’s eyes narrowed. Kelly surreptitiously sniffed her breath, but no, it was just coffee. So far. “Covetousness is a sin.”
    Kelly dropped her eyes, and even though she knew she should just be quiet, she couldn’t keep herself from asking, “Why is it bad to want nice things?”
    “You should be concerned with the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account,” said Paula. Her brown curls were cut short in a wash-and-go style that she hardly ever even bothered to comb, and she was wearing one of her husband’s old plaid shirts over her jeans. “Easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter Heaven.”
    “But why? Why is it bad to be rich? Why is it bad to have nice things?”
    “Because God doesn’t care about nice things,” her mother had said. Paula had been trying to sound pleasant—instructive, too, like a Sunday-school teacher—but Kelly could hear that she was losing patience. “God cares about good deeds.”
    “But why doesn’t God want good people to have nice things?” Kelly asked. “What if you have nice things and you do good deeds, too? What if…”
    “Enough,” her mother had said, tucking the book under her arm. “I’ll be keeping this, Kelly Marie. I want you to go to your room, and I want you to tell Father Frank about this on Sunday.”
    Kelly never told anyone about her book. That Sunday, she just confessed to her usual complement of little transgressions— Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been one week since my last confession. I took the Lord’s name in vain and I fought with my little sister. What was she supposed to say? Why was what she’d done so wrong? Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I cut a picture of a movie star’s