Sentinel of Heaven by Mera Trishos Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

tapped his own chest.  Reached out and touched her lips, then
put the same fingertips to his ear.
    “You want me
to talk to you,” she said at last.
    He nodded
firmly.
    “About what?”
    He pointed –
you.
    “What about
me?”
    Leo spread his
hands.  Anything.  Everything.
    “Couldn't we
just read a book instead?  That's what I usually do after dinner.”
    He was having
none of it.  He wanted her story.
    “Fine then. 
It's boring, anyway.”
    He gave her a
look of serious doubt, and indicated she should continue.
    “I was born in
a little hospital in Valdosta, Georgia on October twenty-fifth, late nineteen-seventies. 
My parents named me Moira Jerilyn Newton; I've tried to live down to it ever
since.”
    She took a
deep breath.  “My father was a real estate agent.  He died of heart disease
when I was five.  My mother was a home-maker with some typing skills; she
couldn't afford to take care of us alone so she moved back in with my
grandmother, here in this house.”
    The tiny
sitting room with all its little country finery packed away into the attic, to
become a cramped and noiseless space with two twin beds in it: mine and my
mother's.  All the delicate things through the rest of the house I couldn't
touch because they were Grandmother's and they might break.
    Spending
the day climbing the trees outside and scouting the forest by myself, coming
back in and getting roundly scolded for the state of my clothes.  Mother went
to vo-tech on Dad's life insurance to learn medical transcription; I went to
elementary school in what all the other girls recognized as their cast-off
clothing, given to Goodwill.
    Evenings
spent in silence inside these tiny walls, silence broken only by the click of
Grandmother's knitting needles and the clack of Mother's crotchety typewriter
that was always breaking, always sent in for repairs that cost so dear.  And I,
sitting on the floor where he is now, with a book pushed into my hands to keep
me quiet.
    Letting me
read was the only way to persuade me to sit still.  They used to make me read
the Bible in church during the sermons so I'd be good.  I got used to not
asking questions about the errors and logical inconsistencies I discovered – no
one was ever willing to answer, anyway.
    Leo was gazing
at her encouragingly.  She couldn't seem to find her voice but the stream of
thought went on.
    At the
bottom rung of the school hierarchy, being the poorest kid in a poor town, I
had few friends.  I found what I needed in books.  I used my library card
constantly and never dared rack up a late fee.  I bought the five cent pulp
paperbacks with what I earned sweeping porches and raking leaves on the
weekend.
    I never
was much of a believer but I begged for Heaven to help me when I was the first
in my class to develop tits.  Mother pressed her lips tight at the thought of
having to spend money and buy me bras – not much in that size at the local
consignments but it wasn't like I could do without.  Grandmother barely
noticed; her sight and mind were beginning to go by that point anyway.  The
casual cruelty of the other girls in middle school became a focused crusade of
hatred as the boys started noticing the little 'rag doll'.
    Not that I
really wanted them to notice.  Fourteen year old clod-headed brutes with
young-old faces and boots that reeked of local farmyards, already filling their
bottom lips with chewing tobacco, daring each other to pinch my ass in the
hallway.
    I took up
boxing.  The gym teacher was distantly sympathetic; as a closeted lesbian in
the Bible belt I guess she thought we misfits should stand up for each other. 
The pinching stopped – but they started whistling, hissing, cat-calling
instead.  When I was sixteen I gave the worst of them a fat lip; when Mother
found out I was suspended for a week she pulled down a willow-switch from the
tree at the front of the drive and gave me my first and last thrashing.
    The next
day I started walking down the