Sadie's Mountain by Shelby Rebecca Read Free Book Online

I’m gonna wake her up for you. She’d be devastated if I didn’t.”
    I realize my mouth feels like a dry cotton ball. I nod yes.
    As I walk in the room, it smells like a medicine I don’t know. It must be evaporating out of momma’s skin and being released into the air.
    Missy walks over to the old metal bed and taps momma’s shoulder. She leans down and announces me in a loud voice. Momma opens her eyes and they dart around the room until they settle on mine. She motions for me to come closer, so I do.
    “My baby,” she croons and softly grabs a hold of my right hand. Her hand feels light and fragile like a broken bird wing in mine.
    I sit in the chair next to her. That’s all it takes for the tears to force their way out of my eyes. I have different types of cries: the ugly cry, the loud cry, the surprise cry, the whiny cry, the knot in the throat cry. This one is the stinging cry. My eyes will sting without the knot in my throat and they won’t stop stinging until I’m over it. Usually the stinging cry comes when I’m particularly saddened—usually reserved for things and people I love a lot. Sometimes it takes all day to go away—I just tell people I have allergies.
    Momma looks so old, so weak, as if her body is being sucked up from the inside and her skin couldn’t keep up.
    “Sadie,” she says, breathlessly.
    “Yes, Momma.”
    “I want ya to go up the mountain and get me some yella root for my skin and fer these sores in my mouth. It. Soothes. Me,” she says, painfully.
    “Of course.” I look at Missy who shrugs her shoulders.
    “Go, please,” she begs, dismissing me.
    I’m so confused as I get up from the chair. But then again, I can’t really expect momma to be rational. She wants me to go up to Gauley Mountain and dig goldenseal roots. She might be perfectly lucid. Okay. Fine. I guess I have to go out after all. What harm can come of that?

Chapter Five—Jerky Jake
     
    “Eat this,” Missy says, as I come out of the bedroom we shared as children. I’m wearing the clothes Missy threw at me out of a box in our old closet. It feels like I’m wearing my old skin in this well-worn black t-shirt, some washed out jeans, and my old, faded brown boots. The ones that were hers and she’d given me when my feet grew big enough for them. The ones I was wearing when... No. I can’t go there right now . But, as I wiggle my toes inside them, I wonder if I can find traces of my blood embedded in the old leather like they do on CSI. Stop! I tell myself. This is sick .
    She’s made me a plate: fried chicken, greens, and potato salad.
    “I’m a vegetarian,” I explain as I slide into the heavily waxed chair around the old, knotted wooden table.
    “Of course you are,” she decides.
     I run my hand along the arm of the chair. It’s just as I remember except there may be a few more layers of wax now. I smile at the familiarity.
    This table reminds me of all the ways I used to hide meat so I didn’t have to eat it. Sometimes I pulled the meat off into strips and hid it under the rim of the plate, or I’d drink all my juice and hide it in the plastic cup. Sometimes I fed it to my dog, Nancy, under the table.
    That reminds me, she died on the side of the road after being hit by a car when I was thirteen. She was so funny. She’d get mad at momma when, come summertime, momma buzzed away her thick mane of peach-colored fur. She’d hide under the house for days, and walk around with her nose in the air after that for another week or so. She used to sleep in the bed with me and Missy. She’d press her little body against my side, reminding me she loved me with little pink-tongued kisses on my arm. She was a love.
    I close my eyes and let these things come back to me. It reminds me that not everything about being here is bad. It’s just one bad thing happened, and somehow that painted all of the past with a darker hue. Like a line got drawn in my memories that wouldn’t let me through to all the