Mockingbird Read Online Free Page B

that Little Lost Girl has been a long time walking. She’s walked down by the bayou and she’s walked up on the Hill where the rich people live. She’s walked through Chinatown where the food smells funny and she’s walked out late, past the corners where the colored girls wait in their gold shorts to climb into Mr. Copper’s car and be carried away. She’s been walking a long time, always looking for her own little house with the yellow trim around the door and the white fence around the yard and the swing hung from the limb of the live oak tree out front, but she never has found that house—until now.
    This day, she’s walking through a nice homey neighborhood and all of a sudden there it is. She’s been lost so long she can’t be sure it’s the place, but the picket fence is white, there’s yellow trim around the door, and wouldn’t you know, there’s a swing that hangs from two long chains bolted to the limb of a big live oak tree.
    There’s a woman out front working in the flower bed, shovelling dirt from a big pile under the rosebushes into a hole the size of a laundry basket. It’s as if she’s filling in a little grave.
    â€œMomma!” says the Little Lost Girl. “Is that you?”
    The woman stops shovelling, but when she turns, with a heap of dirt still resting in her spade, the Little Lost Girl sees that it is not her mother standing there but the Widow. The girl is scared of her cruel old eyes. “Oh. Excuse me. I been lost a long time, and I thought this might be my house,” she says. “Say, what might you be burying there under that rosebush?”
    The Widow looks at her for a good piece. “How did you come to be lost?” she says. She’s got a voice like a steam iron hissing down on a shirt.
    â€œMy momma told me I was sick and took me to the doctor. The doctor said I was well, but when I got back to the waiting room my momma wasn’t there. I waited for her until the office closed, but she didn’t come back, so I’ve been trying to walk home by myself.”
    The Widow looks at her for even a longer time. “That’s a long walk,” she says. Then she turns back and drops her spadeful of dirt into the little hole under the rosebushes.
    â€œAre you for certain this ain’t my house?” the Little Lost Girl says. “It surely does look like it.”
    The Widow turns back to her. “If ever it was, it isn’t now.”
    â€œOh,” says the Little Lost Girl. Then she cries. Cries and cries for all that lonesomeness. For all that walking.
    When she’s done crying she says, “What have you got down in that hole?”
    â€œWhat’s your name?” says the Widow, real quick-like.
    The Little Lost Girl does not answer.
    â€œCat got your tongue?” the Widow says. “I asked you what your name was, girl. We’ll do a trade. You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you what I’ve got at the bottom of this hole.” The pile of fill dirt is nearly flat. When the little girl does not answer, the Widow sets to tamping it down with the back of her spade.
    â€œMy momma said not to tell my name to strangers.”
    The Widow puts her shovel aside and steps onto the fill dirt, tramping it down until it’s level with the rest of the flower bed, and you can hardly tell there ever was a little hole beneath the rosebushes. “No little girl lives here anymore,” she says.
    Then she closes the gate in front of the Little Lost Girl, and latches it, and walks back up to the front porch, and goes into the house, leaving the Little Lost Girl outside. When darkness falls, a yellow light comes on in the living room, but the front door never opens. Finally the Little Lost Girl starts walking on, looking for her very own home, where there would be yellow trim around the door and a white picket fence and a swing hanging from a live oak tree outside. And