All We Had Read Online Free

the earth. A flock of birds landed in the field next to us and started pecking for worms.
    My mother finally woke. She stretched and yawned in her seat. When she was done, she tapped me on the thigh, as if to say she was glad to see me. With her foot, she pushed open her car door and got out.
    She stood on the side of the road, looked out at the field, and stretched a bit more. She was wearing her usual outfit—tight jeans, high heels, and a tube top.
    The first rays of sun pierced the clouds, she lifted her face and parted her lips as if trying to drink the light. She reached inside her pocket for a hair tie, twisted her hair into a bun, then hoisted up her tube top. When she stepped off the road, the birds rose up. Dipping their wings in unison, they banked in the air and in one synchronized motion, they landed on the edge of the billboard. Lifting their little rumps, they settled down, then looked around like they were bored.
    My mother walked a few feet into the field. She unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them down, and squatted on the ground.
    She and I almost never had privacy—from each other or anyone around us. The nicest place we ever lived had a shared bathroom without a door. She’d stopped caring about stuff like that. “Even the queen shits,” she’d said to me once when she was squatting in a bush.
    My mother didn’t know it, but she deserved a nice bathroom. If I could give one to her, it would be grand and made of marble, suitable for Cleopatra. Pillars would rise at the corners of a sunken tub. I would travel to the Dead Sea, by camel if I had to, just to bring her back an urn of healing salts—if only for twenty minutes, she could float weightless in a bath of warm water, relieved of all her pains.
    A sliver of light cut across my mother’s back. She reachedbetween her legs and pulled her tampon out. She flung it by the tail as if it were a rat and replaced it with a new one.
    â€œHey,” my mother said when she made it back to the car. “You ready?”
    She settled in her seat, stuck the key into the ignition, looked at me, then stopped.
    â€œAre you okay?” she asked.
    A lump rose in my throat. My eyes welled. “I’m just hot.” If there was one thing my mother never wanted, it was pity.
    â€œHere.” She reached over the seat, felt around, then pulled up a half-filled bottle of water and handed it to me. “Have some.”
    She went to go turn the key again.
    â€œMom?”
    â€œYeah.” She looked at me.
    I searched her face. The lines between her eyebrows were deeper than I remembered. Her lips were creased and chapped. Her red fingernail polish was almost all chipped off.
    â€œNothing.” I swallowed hard.
    She glanced at me and sighed. She smiled just a bit. Then she reached across the seat and stroked my forehead.
    â€œYou’ll cool off,” she said.
    The wheels spun. The car rocked back and forth, and with a grinding grunt, we drove out from the ditch and into the sun.

    The heat pummeled down in blistering rays. The earth looked left for dead. The “deluxe” air-conditioning in our car never worked. Even at sixty miles per hour, the wind through our open windows couldn’t cool us off. The highway threaded through a quilt of bone-dry barren fields. Wavelengths of telephone wireswere punctuated with sickly looking birds.
    We drove clear across Utah and through the mountains of Colorado. We slept on the side of the road or in rest areas. Twice the cops woke us up and told us to move on. We took sponge baths in gas-station bathrooms, we ate at McDonald’s, and when we got sick of that we ate snack food: chips and Cheez-Its, Doritos and nuts. And always we drank Diet Cokes.
    Halfway through Nebraska on I-80, my mother’s toothache flared up. She’d had one on and off for months. When it hurt, it hurt so bad she had to wear sunglasses even in the dark. The toothache had always gone away, but