Foster Read Online Free Page A

than half done and the sugar is already weighed and the pots warmed, Kinsella comes in from the yard and washes and dries his hands and looks at me in a way he has never done before.
    ‘I think it’s past time we got you togged out, Girl.’
    I am wearing a pair of navy blue trousers and a blue shirt the woman took from the chest of drawers.
    ‘What’s wrong with her?’ the woman says.
    ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, and she needs something more than that for Mass,’ he says. ‘I’ll not have her going as she went last week.’
    ‘Sure isn’t she clean and tidy?’
    ‘You know what I’m talking about, Edna.’ He sighs. ‘Why don’t you go up there and change and I’ll run us all into Gorey.’
    The woman keeps on picking the gooseberries from the colander, stretching her hand out, but a little more slowly each time, for the next one. At one point I think she will stop but she keeps on until she is finished and then she gets up and places the colander on the sink and lets out a sound I’ve never heard anyone make, and slowly goes upstairs.
    Kinsella looks at me and smiles a hard kind of a smile then looks over to the window ledge where a sparrow has come down to perch and readjust her wings. The little bird seems uneasy – as though she can scent the cat, who sometimes sits there. Kinsella’s eyes are not quite still in his head. It’s as though there’s a big piece of trouble stretching itself out in the back of his mind. He toes the leg of a chair and looks over at me.
    ‘You should wash your hands and face beforeyou go to town,’ he says. ‘Didn’t your father even bother to teach you that much?’
    I freeze in the chair, waiting for something much worse to happen, but Kinsella does nothing more; he just stands there, locked in the wash of his own speech. As soon as he turns, I race for the stairs but when I reach the bathroom, the door won’t open.
    ‘It’s alright,’ the woman says, after a while, from inside and then, shortly afterwards, opens it. ‘Sorry for keeping you.’ She has been crying but she isn’t ashamed. ‘It’ll be nice for you to have some clothes of your own,’ she says then, wiping her eyes. ‘And Gorey is a nice town. I don’t know why I didn’t think of taking you there before now.’
     
    Town is a crowded place with a wide main street. Outside the shops, so many different things are hanging in the sun. There are plastic nets full of beach balls, blow-up toys. A see-through dolphin looks as though he isshivering in a cold breeze. There are plastic spades and matching buckets, moulds for sand castles, grown men digging ice cream out of tubs with little plastic spoons, potted plants that feel hairy to the touch, a man in a van selling dead fish.
    Kinsella reaches into his pocket and hands me something. ‘You’ll get a Choc-ice out of that.’
    I open my hand and stare at the pound note.
    ‘Couldn’t she buy half a dozen Choc-ices out of that,’ the woman says.
    ‘Ah, what is she for, only for spoiling?’ Kinsella says.
    ‘What do you say?’ the woman says.
    ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Well, stretch it out and spend it well,’ Kinsella laughs.
    The woman takes me to the draper’s where she buys a packet of darning needles at a counter and four yards of oilcloth printed with yellow pears. Then we go upstairs where the clothingis kept. She picks out cotton dresses and some pants and trousers and a few tops and we go in behind a curtain so I can try them on.
    ‘Isn’t she tall?’ says the assistant.
    ‘We’re all tall,’ says the woman.
    ‘She’s the spit and image of her mammy. I can see it now,’ the assistant says, and then says the lilac dress is the best fit and the most flattering, and the woman agrees. She buys me a printed blouse, too, with short sleeves much like the one she wore the day I came, dark blue trousers, and a pair of black leather shoes with a little strap and a buckle on the front, some panties and white ankle socks. The