Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience Read Online Free Page B

sculpted gardens. This wasn’t the modest house Mom had pointed out to us in the middle-class neighborhood in Pleasant Ridge. Rosa spread these photos like a croupier showcasing a deck of cards, before collecting them in a neat stack. She rubbed an index finger down one side and slipped them back into the envelope.
    Our actions needed to remain clandestine; we knew that. What we didn’t know was why.
    Photos safely tucked away, we parted without a word, both of us already plotting how to get the real story. I squiddled into the family room, but I kept my eyes fixed on the kitchen, waiting for Mom. Rosa marked her territory there by doing a load of dishes.
    Finally Mom came through the back door, two stuffed bags in her arms. Rosa took them from her, unloaded the car, and even stocked the shelves with all ten bags of groceries.
    Mom’s pregnant belly was just beginning to show through her white blouse and red skirt. Her tan came from walking to and from her car, and she took pride in the fact that she rarely set foot in the swim club, where we spent our summers in the care of older siblings. But she was one day shy of her Friday morning ritual at the beautician’s, so her hair had gone from its lacquered state to a matted one. Her eyes had a dull sheen against brows crumpled to fight off a frown.
    Based on our mother’s hair, I could see that Rosa’s job would be a cinch. Mom would brew a pot of coffee and plant herself at the table with a sigh. Rosa would merely nudge the envelope toward her.
    When that happened, I couldn’t see Mom’s reaction to the photos because her back was to me. On my elbows I slinked past her chair and under the kitchen table. This was easy to do without drawing attention to myself because everyone was used to having me underfoot. Besides, Mom often boasted that she survived by “tuning kids out.” Some days I listened to her chat with Aunt Gert for hours, and Mom never called me on it. I couldn’t say if she didn’t see me or if she did, but I didn’t count. Maybe she didn’t mind that I eavesdropped.
    In fact, I was there to spy. If I didn’t get this news firsthand, I’d have to rely on Rosa. She’d sit me on her lap and divulge family history as if she had been present for all of it. As young as I was, I could tell the difference between a bedtime story and the truth, and I was greedy for the truth. I wanted to know what happened when I came into the world without legs. Rosa always told the story as if she had been in the delivery room at my birth. “You just slipped out like a piece of raw meat,” she’d say. “Out of what?” I’d ask, and she would plant a sloppy kiss on my cheek.
    I would press her even when she said things like “Eileen did nothing but scream as a baby,” a story that Mom would back up, adding, “All day and all night,” while lolling her head as if she were on an endless bus ride, although Mom would grant that my grumpiness came from the body cast I wore for the second half of my first year. “That dickens,” Mom would say, her birdlike voice trailing off, “who knew she could already roll off the bed? But I guess without legs ...”
    Rosa was now seated at the head of the table, the captain’s-chair arms snuggling her waist, horse heads flanking her shoulders. She faced my direction as I came in, but was too busy with the pictures to notice when I slipped under the dark-stained oak table into my foxhole, where I rested my chin in the cradle of its crossed legs. Below me were Rosa’s feet with their fingerlike toes, which she often used to pinch, then twist, the tender flesh under my arms, bringing me to tears before she’d say, “See what I mean? Always crying.” Right now her feet were dormant.
    Mom’s legs, to my side, were crossed with one foot rocking. She pointed at the photos and reminded Rosa that her widowed mother, Ida Bruehl Fanger, the saint, would be canonized when the Pope got around to it. I was dying to climb up and see Ida.