Homesick Read Online Free Page B

anything, not as if conversation were divided into Adult subjects and You’re-Not-Old-Enough-to-Understand subjects. They discussed whether Adam and Eve had been real people or whether there would ever be another world war. Things like that. And Andrea not only knew how babies were born, she knew exactly how she, herself, had been born.
    Since Mr. and Mrs. Hull were in such agreement, you would have thought they would have been happy, but they weren’t. According to Andrea, her parents did not get along. She was even afraid they might get a divorce. I had never known anyone who’d had a divorce and I had no way of knowing how married people got along, so of course I was interested in hearing the ups and downs of Mr. and Mrs. Hull’s married life. Indeed, I never came back from Andrea’s without something new to think about.
    My mother was going to take me to the Hulls’ on Friday and since my father had a committee meeting that night, she would stay for supper and Mr. Hull would drive her home in his Dodge sedan. I would go home when the Hulls came into town for church on Sunday.
    So on Friday I put on my middy blouse which, more than any of my clothes, made me feel like a Marjorie, and my mother called for rickshas. The coolies came running, jostling and swearing at each other, each one shouting for us to take his ricksha, take his, take his. I always felt sorry for the coolies who weren’t chosen. I knew how few coppers they made and how often they had to go without rice but, on the other hand, I felt sorry for those who were chosen. The harder a coolie ran and the heavier his load, the sooner he would die. Most ricksha coolies didn’t live to be thirty, my father said. Of course I was not a heavy load, but even so, by the time we reached the Hulls’ house, my coolie was wiping the sweat from his face, using the dirty rag that hung at his waist. It was no use telling a coolie to walk, not run. He’d feel he was a weakling if he didn’t run; he’d lose face.
    The Hulls’ house was red brick and American-looking, not American like the pictures of my grandmother’s house which had a front porch and honeysuckle vines and a swing, but American like a picture in a magazine. Mr. Hull had designed it himself, with special features for his family. Andrea’s room, for instance, had a bar down one wall for her to use when she practiced dancing. We went straight to her room and I sat down in her white wicker rocking chair and waited for the news.
    â€œWell, I’m afraid they are doomed,” she sighed. Her parents had had a terrible fight the week before, she reported, and hadn’t spoken for days. “And they won’t listen to me. I figured out how we could bring our whole family together but they won’t listen.”
    Andrea was lying flat on the floor because that was good for her posture, but with news like this, I was surprised that she still cared about her posture.
    â€œWhat did you figure out?” I asked.
    â€œA baby.” Andrea gave me time to get used to the idea. “I didn’t expect my mother to have the baby,” she explained. “That would take too long. I wanted my parents to adopt one from the same place that they adopted David. Then we’d all have someone we could love together.” She began pedaling her legs in the air to strengthen her thighs. “Besides,” she added, “an adopted baby would be good for David. He wouldn’t feel so left out. You know how he is.”
    I did know. At twelve, David was the oldest of the children. The Hulls had adopted him when they thought they couldn’t have children of their own. Then a year later Andrea had come along and afterwards Edward, but Mr. and Mrs. Hull treated David the same as the others and seemed to love him as much. Still, David felt different. He was always wondering who his real mother and father were, even though the Hulls said they