The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

fatherand a mother, but when you don’t even have a place to sleep, it’s worse.
    When I stopped crying, I asked my grandmother if I could sleep with her at night, but she said no.
    “I have to work too hard,” she said. “I need my rest. I have had enough sleeping with children. Children kick,” she said.
    “I won’t kick,” I said.
    “You say you won’t, but in your sleep you would,” my grandmother said.
    She could see I was going to cry again.
    “But just a minute,” she said. “We’ll fix up something for you.”
    And she looked around and found a bunch of empty rice bags, and put them on the floor by her bed, and gave me a blanket off her bed. She got everything all ready for me before dinner, about five in the afternoon. I guess she knew I wasworried that I didn’t have a place where I belonged anymore, and if I at least had a place to sleep, I wouldn’t be so scared.

    Then she told me, “Well, Grandson, you can stay here, but you know the rule about the gate. You have to obey the rule about the gate, you know.”
    I nodded and said, “Yes, Grandma.”
    My grandmother’s house has a high fence around it, and a wooden gate with a lock on it that my grandmother locks every night. The only ones besides her who have keys are my uncles. Everyone else has to be in by eight thirty. After that, my grandmother won’t get up to let them in. No matter how hard anyone knocks, she just shuts her ears. And she won’t let anyone else go open the gate either.
    I told my grandmother I understoodabout the gate, but since I was still little, maybe I didn’t exactly understand.
    Once my mother was gone, I started going walking alone after dinner. I didn’t really belong to anyone, so I did whatever I wanted.
    One night a few days after my mother left, I went for a really long walk, all the way to the lake. By the time I got back to my grandmother’s house, it had been dark a long time, and the gate was locked.
    I didn’t know what to do. And I was cold, besides. I just had shorts and a T-shirt on, and even though San Pablo is hot during the day, it gets cold at night because we’re so high up in the mountains.
    The only thing I could think of to do was to look for my mother. I knew wheremy stepfather’s house was, so I decided to go there. When I got there, through the window I saw a candle burning. Nobody ever goes to sleep or goes outside leaving a candle burning, because it could burn up everything in the house. So I knew somebody was awake, and inside.
    I wasn’t tall enough to see who, so I put a rock below the window and stood on it to look in. I saw my mother, alone.
    I knocked once, so softly she didn’t hear me, and then once again, louder.
    My mother opened the door a crack, and saw me. All she said was “You!”
    Of course, my mother knew the rule about the gate, and how late it was, and how I must have got locked out.
    She stood for a minute in the doorway, and then she said, “Come on in.”She could see I was shivering. Sometimes when you shiver, it’s not just from the cold.
    Inside the house there was a table with the candle, two stools, two plates, two cups, and some bananas. There were a few clothes hanging on nails in the wall,and a little rug on the floor, and, of course, the bed. That was all. The room could have used a lot of other stuff. Mainly, the one thing I wished it had was a back door for me to go out if my stepfather came in the front door.

    “You can stay here,” my mother said, “but if your stepfather sees you when he comes home, he’ll get very angry and hit you. So you’ll have to hide, and sleep under the bed.”
    So I got down on the floor under the bed, back against the wall out of sight, and my mother shook out the little rug to make it cleaner and put it over me.
    But I couldn’t go to sleep, because I was afraid of what would happen when my stepfather came home.
    After quite a while there was a loud knock on the door, and my mother unboltedit. From where I