Rhythms of Grace Read Online Free

of her love, my mother answered my prayer, tossing her cigarette somewhere on the floor and stomping it out. I grabbed for her hands. Just in time. She was coming at me.
    “Ow! Cut it out, will you, Ma?”
    Her answer was another blow. Despite the dark, she could see my every move. Even if she hadn’t seen, she’d know anyway. I’d learned every bit of my bob-and-weave act from watching her. It’d never worked very well for either of us, but it made the time go faster somehow. As punches rained down on my back, I turned and grabbed her fists. Her hands didn’t hurt so much. Not anymore. It was the other things . . .
    “Stop it, okay? Just stop it!”
    She laughed, sounding eerily like my father used to when he was dealing out the punches to her. Didn’t she remember how it felt to be on the other end?
    “You want to make this hard, do you?” she said, grabbing a fistful of my hair.
    I gritted my teeth and yanked my head away. It felt like I left some hair in her hand. My head ached, but I didn’t care. I was sixteen. Long past begging. It didn’t do any good anyway.
    “You think you’re a man, boy? I’ll make a man outta you. Don’t worry.”
    Teetering on a broken heel, she lit into me again—this time scratching, digging at any flesh she could find. I ran back to the bedroom, hoping Brian was still outside the window in case I needed to jump out of it. He’d catch me, I was sure of that. The problem was, my mother caught me first, just as I was trying to get a running start.
    She tripped me from behind and we flopped onto the bed. The broken springs that I avoided at night jabbed into me now. My mother kept screaming at me, but I tuned it out, listening to the rain pounding against the window and the rattle of Brian’s bike chain instead.
    He’d gone home.
    Sure he’d come back when it was over and sneak me into his room, but it wasn’t the same without him outside, waiting. It meant something to know he was out there, that as soon as she left, he’d come right in and take me home, smothering all my secrets under his mother’s quilts.
    Mama got tired of fighting me and started singing a song I’d never heard. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like the songs from Brian’s church that floated down the hill. I wished there’d been a service tonight.
    Cold, hard rain coming in through the cracks and my mother drunk and crazy on my chest was all the hymn I had. For a little while, it was enough. I put my arms around her and smoothed her hair.
    The street light clicked on, bright and blurry against the window. We both turned away from it, not wanting to see. I think that’s why she always came at night, so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. At herself. Tomorrow, she’d leave money on the table for me.
    I’d take the money and wait a couple hours before Brian came and helped me limp back to his house, where I’d stay until Mama came for me in a few days, sober and pretty in a worn-out sort of way, standing on the sidewalk, thanking Brian’s mother through her teeth. We’d pretend it didn’t happen except for her saying sorry over and over. We’d get pizza and watch stupid movies, cut coupons and do homework. And then some man would call, come by . . . And then she wouldn’t come home. And when she did, it’d be like this. Only tonight, it was raining, so no one would hear me scream.
    So far tonight I wasn’t too bad off, though. Scratches and bruises was all. We’d broken the bed frame and my last clean T-shirt was ruined, but I couldn’t think about that now. The picture frame I’d hidden under my mattress rested on the floor: face up, broken and smiling. I hoped she didn’t see it. I hoped she was drunk enough that she’d be passing out soon.
    One hand on her back, my fingers eased toward the metal frame, one of the last things we still had from before. There were two photos inside—the top one of my parents as newlyweds, the one that I looked at to remind me of who