Rosie Read Online Free Page A

little Tad, and cried with terror late at night when she thought she heard the mice gnawing through the electrical wires-sure to set the house on fire. And she cried with an unquenchable homesickness for her father.
    A year had passed since his death. One Saturday, Elizabeth sat reading on the porch while her skinny child sat in the lowest branches of the plum tree, chucking the hard green plums at various targets—cars, for instance, which drove down the narrow, rustic street on which they lived.
    â€œBe careful, sweetheart. Those branches are thin.” Get down out of that tree before you fall and break your neck, says her mother’s voice, inside.
    â€œI’m being careful, Mama.”
    Elizabeth returned to the book, Rabbit, Run, which she was reading for the second time: “Sun and moon, sun and moon, time goes.” In the tree, Rosie stopped throwing plums when Mrs. Haas emerged from her house and crossed the street to the picket gate outside the Ferguson house.
    â€œYour roses look lovely,” she called to Elizabeth.
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œRosie, darling, you’re not eating those nasty green plums, are you?” Even from the porch, Elizabeth could see her blinking her nose like a rabbit, had to bear down on a laugh as sheremembered Rosie’s impersonation: Rosie could do a better Mrs. Haas than Mrs. Haas.
    Rosie shook her head—the heavy black curls.
    â€œBecause if you do, you’ll get the trotties.”
    Rosie looked back at her mother, checking in.
    â€œAnd another thing,” said Mrs. Haas, puckering her mouth and brow like young Shirley Temple at her most nobly indignant. “If you eat the little plummies now, they won’t have a chance to grow up and ripen.”
    Rosie, with a roll of her eyes, a horrified mouth, and a sarcasm impressive in one so small, said, “Ohhhh, pooooor plummies!”
    Elizabeth smiled.

CHAPTER 2
    On the night before first grade began, Rosie climbed into bed dressed in brand-new jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes. Hearing footsteps in the hallway, she pulled the covers up to her neck, closed her eyes, and breathed in a sleeping, almost snoring way. Her mother sat down beside her, stroked her bottom, and then leaned forward to kiss the side of her face several times, with a thick vinegary breath. Rosie’s lids flickered, and she turned her head to bury it face down in the pillow, now smelling clean, soapy cotton: Go away, Mama.
    Her mother whispered, “God, I love you, Rosie.” Rosie didn’t move a muscle, and finally her mother got up and left, turning off the light at the door, which she left open.
    Rosie tossed and turned for the next few hours, while her mind spun with picture shows of first grade. She imagined herself reading to an impressed Mrs. Gravinski, cheered on by the kids in her class. She saw herself telling jokes, everybody laughing, especially the beautiful Mrs. Gravinski. She had a moment of terror in the dark when she watched herself, sitting in the firstrow, fart a stream of little green bubbles which would hang tell-tale above her head, and another bad moment when she remembered throwing up on her kindergarten teacher.
    The pillow grew hot and scratchy and she kept turning it over; the sheets felt sandy, and she couldn’t keep her eyes closed. She put one leg on top of the covers to cool off, dozed fitfully, dreamed that when she got up to write on the blackboard she was naked, and the kids were laughing, and even beautiful Mrs. Gravinski was doubled over with laughter, and Rosie was trying to cover herself up with paper towels ... She awoke with a start and looked around the room, breathing rapidly. It seemed like hours until she fell asleep, and it seemed, when she woke up to sunlight and her mother shaking her shoulder, that she had been asleep for ten minutes.
    â€œRosie,” her mother said, laughing. Rosie propped herself up, surveyed her leg in the new blue jeans and shoe on