The Interruption of Everything by Terry McMillan Read Free Book Online Page A

of—an orchard bar. No one has ever seen or heard from him since.
    My foster sister, Joy, whom I dearly love and hate as if we were born to the same parents, does not want to remember the people who abandoned her when she was six and turned her over to the state of California, county of Fresno, for love and caregiving. That person turned out to be my mother, whose real name is Louvelle Dupree and whose only other child would be me, Marilyn, who had two years earlier already left to attend college in the Bay Area causing “Lovey” to suffer a serious case of the empty nest. She said she felt useless and needed somebody other than needy parishioners and neighbors to talk to without having to pray with them or do their hair in her hot kitchen. So she fostered Joy and then adopted her. Lovey was so proud when Joy got stars on her report card for being thoughtful and helpful because she was the same at home. But as Joy became more high-spirited, her mannerisms were not as amusing to Lovey. Joy turned a corner and things went bad.
    On several occasions, Joy did stints in juvenile hall for various youthful infractions. Lovey tried to give her back to the state, but waited too long. Joy had already turned eighteen and had one baby and then another and now she’s done a grand job of convincing Lovey, who is all of sixty-seven, that she is needed around the house. It’s most likely Joy and her undisciplined little brats who are probably Lovey’s major source of stress.
    “Is Joy there now?”
    “I doubt it. She ain’t never here. But those little Flintstones should be running around here somewhere.”
    “I’ll call back later, Lovey. You sure you’re okay?”
    “I ain’t answering no more questions. Good-bye.” Click.
    Something is wrong in Bedrock, since she brought it up. If I smoked, this would be a good time for a cigarette, but I just do what Trudy suggested Maureen do, and take a series of slow breaths as I walk back up the stairs and sit down inside the waiting room where two other women are now sitting. One, dressed in a conventional navy blue suit, is on her cell phone, which rings every fifteen seconds because she keeps saying her name and title and “hold” like this is her office without walls. The other woman is so thin she looks like a hard pretzel. She’s in running clothes and looks to be in her early thirties. Her tiny muscles pop out like golf balls on arms. When she crosses her legs, I can hear them crack. I want her to eat something right now. I bet she doesn’t get her period either.
    Have You Noticed Any Unaccounted for Weight Gain? Yes. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t even stand to look at myself naked in the mirror anymore because it is not my body I see, it’s the body of some middle-aged woman who’s letting herself go.
    I try to move my backpack with my right foot, which seems to have fallen asleep. It weighs a ton. Last night I took all the stuff out of both glove compartments and stuffed it in here so I could sort through it over a decaf latte, but not at Starbucks. I have started boycotting them since they’ve started appearing like dandelions on corners within urban, rural—and from what I’ve seen on MTV—even within international hotels and blocks of third-world countries, thus giving me a sense that they’ve come to Earth pretending to be philanthropic when in fact they are really an alien empire sent here to take over the world by sprinkling a little something extra into the drinks. We, their addicted slaves, don’t even realize that we have learned a new language—their language. Many of us cannot even afford their stock since they went public, but have shown a different kind of loyalty by spending astronomical amounts of money once known mainly to drug addicts for coffee and tea, but somehow we don’t seem to mind. Well, I mind.
    Where was I? Oh, yeah: sorting through my backpack. I’ve damn near forgotten I was even in a doctor’s office when the nurse or