The Warmest December by Bernice L. McFadden Read Free Book Online

Wednesday then, I guess?” I said to the television.
    “Uh-huh,” someone replied from behind his green curtain.
    I’d hated Wednesdays for a long time. From age ten to thirteen to be exact. Those were the years I attended Catholic school, and during those years every Wednesday we had half a day of school. Most children chalked that up as a plus, as if it made up for the ugly plaid skirts and clunky black shoes. Malcolm and I hated it.
    Our schoolmates hurried past us, leaving a knotty stream of laughter behind them as they giggled their way through plans for their afternoon. Malcolm and I turned the normal ten-block walk into fifteen or twenty, going out of our way to stretch the time between the 11:45 bell and the moment we stepped over the threshold of apartment A5.
    Glenna was always with us. Her wide bright ribbons bounced against her cheeks as she slapped at the back of Malcolm’s head and teased his ears. “Stop,” he’d yell at her, but she would keep harassing him; she knew he had a crush on her.
    Glenna was a latchkey child and spent every afternoon, Wednesday or not, stationed in front of the television, a bag of candy in her lap, waiting for her mother to walk through the door at six. She was lucky if Pinky walked through the door before midnight.
    “You gotta go to the bank today?” she asked as she nibbled on a Twizzler.
    “Yep,” I said. That was Wednesday protocol. The bank and the A&P. I hated both places. But I think the A&P was worse. Hy-Lo did all of the shopping for the family. He bought what he liked, Delia cooked it, and we ate it.
    He always used two shopping carts, one for food and the other for household supplies. Malcolm and I would trail along behind him, up and down the wide, white aisles with shelves that dwarfed us. We would struggle with our cart of toilet paper, detergent, and cleaning supplies, often rolling into a display or jamming into Hy-Lo’s heels.
    “Meatheads,” he’d sneer at us and maybe pop us upside our heads or pinch us on the underside of our arms.
    After we came home and unpacked the brown paper bags and put the food and supplies away, we had to fold the bags. Not just any old way; there was, according to Hy-Lo, an art to folding a paper bag.
    Bag after bag, crease after crease—we folded until our fingers ached, and if we didn’t do it right Hy-Lo would throw all the bags to the floor and make us fold them again.
    Yes, I hated Wednesdays.
    “You want me to go with you?” Glenna always asked.
    “He might see,” I said as I kicked over a bottle someone left standing in the middle of the sidewalk. It fell on its side and rolled into the street.
    Hy-Lo made it clear every week that I was to go straight to the bank and then come directly home. No stopping, no socializing. I was to do this alone. And if he found out otherwise, my behind would be his.
    “Oh, that’s right,” Glenna would say as if she’d forgotten that it had always been that way.
    No matter how many blocks out of our way we went, we always seemed to make it home by twelve-thirty. My stomach turned as we rounded the corner and started toward the apartment building.
    Maybe he wouldn’t be there. Maybe today would be the day his truck jackknifed on I-80 and he was lying dead on the highway somewhere. Maybe today would be the day I would walk through the door and there would be two nice policemen comforting my mother. She would look up at me with her red eyes and tell me, “Your daddy is dead.” I would hold my smile back, for her, so she could have her grief.
    I would hug her and tell her it was going to be all right, offer the policemen something to drink, and then show them to the door. “Thank you,” I’d say. “We’ll be fine.”
    I’d tuck Delia into bed, make her some tea, and close the drapes. Maybe call Gwenyth and his brothers, Charles and Randy, with the news, and then I would go to my bedroom, close the door, and scream with joy into my pillow.
    The car was there.
    “Well,