Acts of God Read Online Free Page B

it.
    â€œWhat did it feel like?” people kept asking Hardin. “When you picked it up and it was a baby?”
    â€œLike a miracle or like if you hit a ball out of the field in the last inning of a championship game. But more than that. It felt like I’d never known what to think before and all of a sudden I knew exactly what to think. But mostly that he was breathing. You could hear this little, little noise of air coming out of his nose. Like we all do it every day but never listen to it. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it too much. I don’t want to lose it all in words.”
    â€œYOU WERE STANDING there in that old pink bra?” Marie’s mother said several times. “I don’t believe you were just standing on the street in that grimy-looking pink bra.”
    â€œI got dressed in a hurry when we decided to go,” Marie answered, getting irritated with her mother after she had sworn to stop getting irritated with her since it didn’t make any difference to get mad. “The bra was on the floor where Ella throws her clothes when she takes them off. I put it on in a hurry. Listen, Mother, if I don’t get a room of my own soon I am going crazy. I’d take that little room off the kitchen that used to be a pantry if I have to but I’m not living in a room with Ella anymore.”
    â€œI’ll talk to your father tonight. We can build an addition if we want to. We can afford it. We’ve just been putting it off. I’ll talk to him tonight. I’ll see what I can do.”
    Her mother turned back to the stove where she was making Courtland stew, her husband’s favorite food that his mother from Edinburgh, Scotland, had cooked every week. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to have a room with Ella. So I’ll try to get it changed. We are very proud of you, Marie. There are not many sixteen-year-old girls in the world that get to save the life of a baby.”
    â€œYou save them every day, Momma,” Marie said. “At the hospital. You do.” She looked up at her momma and thought how much she forgot to tell her mother she was proud of her and swore to herself she would not be irritated by a thing her mother did ever again, even if she kept on making that stupid stew just to make her father happy.
    Marie walked out of the kitchen and out into the living room where Hardin was getting ready to go to football practice. It was Saturday morning and it wasn’t even football season and he still had to go out and practice kicking field goals with his football coach.
    â€œGood luck with your field-goal kicking,” Marie said as she passed through the room. She stopped to say some more, since it felt so good to have decided to be nice to everyone in her family. “I really like to watch you kick them. You get to make points all by yourself that win or lose a game while the rest of them have to run all over the place knocking each other down. I think it’s great you can do it. So good luck with your practice.” She smiled her kindest, nicest, not-acting-but-really-smiling smile.
    Then she went out the door into the beautiful spring morning to walk down to the square and see if there was anyone else around she could be nice to. But not Ella, she decided, thinking of her older sister, asleep in their shared bedroom with her clothes all over the floor like the mess that was her mind.
    The sky was a perfect brilliant blue like the brand-new Izod she was wearing above her cutoff jeans.
    I’m lucky today, Marie decided, and stopped to inspect the brilliant yellow forsythia blooming all along Mrs. Collier’s fence. I hope Rafael’s doing all right. His father said he had two aunts who would help take care of him. I hope he has a good day today and doesn’t know his mother isn’t here.
    God, I have to start being nice to Ella no matter how much I have to try to do it. She might be the only one left