If I Die Before I Wake Read Online Free Page B

brush that when turned over could be used as a paddle. I'd tasted the hard side of it many times. Clean, dressed in bibbed overalls, a tee shirt, and the shoes I would be wearing for school that fall, Alma turned me loose with dire warnings about not getting dirty before Mom came to get us.
    I walked along the riverbank, poking at things with a stick I'd found along the way, until I spotted the rowboat Grampa used to check the trout lines bobbing up and down in the swiftly running, swollen, muddy river. It called to me.
    Cautiously, so as not to get dirty, I slipped down the bank, grabbed the rope attached to the boat that was tied to a tree, and pulled it in. I jumped on board. I loved to lie in the bottom of the boat, feel the rocking motion of the river, and daydream. However, daydreams didn't come that day. My mind drifted to what I'd be returning to in town. Mom had divorced my dad and married his brother, a mean man whom I couldn't please no matter how hard I tried, and Dad had remarried a large Jewish woman with a little girl who was everything I would never be. In her white, fluffy dresses with jet-black hair that was never out of place, she looked like one of those porcelain dolls I'd seen in catalogues. The first time I saw her sitting on my dad's lap, I wanted to hit her and rip off her pretty dress. She sure didn't look like something the cat dragged in.
    Lying in the boat, my head propped up on one of Grampa's homemade life preservers, I stared at the tops of the trees swaying in the breeze. They were just starting to turn colorsaround the edges. One let loose and drifted on air currents until it landed on top of the water to drift away. I wanted to be that leaf, to drift away to another place, never to return to my life in town again. Would it drift all the way to the ocean? I'd never seen the ocean, but I had seen pictures of it at school.
    Without a second thought, I slipped over the side of the rowboat. The water was cold, the current swift. One waterlogged shoe was dragged off, followed closely by the other. My wet bibbed overalls weighed me down, tugging me away from the boat. I could barely hang on to the side. I heard Alma calling my name. All I had to do was let go, but it felt as if my hands were frozen to the wood.
    Alma grabbed the rope and pulled the boat into shore. Then she jumped in (which really surprised me because she couldn't swim), grabbed my arm, and in one swift motion, hauled me into the boat. I don't know if it was fear, cold, or the sight of Alma's bowed legs encased in rolled-down support hose and her long underdrawers showing as she fell backward—but I started to laugh, and I couldn't stop.
    Back on solid ground, my laughter turned to tears as Alma shook me, hard, yelling that the devil was in me, that I was evil, and she'd see to it that I never came to the river again. I thought at that moment that I should have let go. I should have closed my eyes, let go of the boat, and drifted away.
    ——

    Angel's barking brings me to the present. Rising to my feet, I realize I have to face one more day when I don't have the courage to let go, to give up my life, even if it's a life of misery. I've thought of so many ways to kill myself, but something has always held me back. While Jon was alive, I had a good reason. I didn't want to leave him feeling about me the way I felt about my mother. Now that Jon's gone, I don't know why I can't do it. It's certainly not because I think things will ever get any better.
    It's a short drive to the cemetery. After brushing the leaves from Jon's grave and pulling a few weeds that have grown up around the stone, I settle on the ground and lay my hand on the cold marble. I miss him—his laugh, that crooked grin he got when he played a joke on me or said something witty. Most of all I miss his love. He's the one person in my life who loved me in spite of myself. Tom, the man I've been secretly in love with for over ten years, comes to mind. I thought he