The Cotton Queen Read Online Free

close friends and mere acquaintances, showed up at our house to get everything into boxes and loaded up on a truck. It was a quiet, subdued atmosphere with lots of effort and almost no laughter.
    Then we were on an unexplained flight back to Texas. It was a military hop from our air base in California to one near my grandparents.
    A sad-looking old man met us as we got off the plane. He seemed a little disappointed that I shied away from him.
    “Of course you remember Grandpa Hoffman,” Babs insisted.
    So I nodded as if I did.
    I didn’t know him at all. And Babs didn’t seem to know him that well, either. Neither he nor my mother had much to say to each other.
    We waited as they unloaded a big box covered in a flag. Two lines of airmen saluted it before they put it in a long black station wagon.
    We got in my grandfather’s pickup truck and drove the long way to their farm in near silence.
    There was nothing quiet about that evening. We had dinner in the Hoffmans’ kitchen. We were interrupted a hundred times by the telephone and people at the door. The house was full of flowers. So many it was kind of sickening. Who could eat fried chicken when all you could smell was mums and gladiolas.
    Babs put me to bed early in the front bedroom. The house was old and creaky and unfamiliar.
    “I’m scared,” I admitted to her.
    She rubbed a hand across my forehead.
    “I’m going to sleep with you in here,” she told me.
    “Really?”
    “Uh-huh.” She was nodding.
    “I have to talk to your grandma and grandpa for a while and then I’m going to come in here and snuggle up beside you. Would you like that?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So don’t you go hogging all the bed, ’cause there’s got to be some room for me.”
    “You can sleep right here,” I told her, indicating the mattress right next to me.
    “Okay, that’s where I’ll be,” she said. “But right now, you have to go on to sleep and I have to talk for a while. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    She leaned down and kissed me on the end of my nose.
    “It’s just Mama and Laney against the world,” she said.
    She left me then and went into the kitchen. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t really. It felt so early and I heard every noise in the place. I soon became distracted by the raised voices in the back of the house. I was curious. I listened intently, trying to keep up with what they were saying, but I couldn’t. Some people’s voices carried better than others. I could hear my grandmother pretty well and Mom only when she sounded angry. But there were other people talking and I couldn’t make it all out.
    I slipped out of bed and sat down on the floor next to the door. That wasn’t much better. I opened the door. I could hear more. Down at the end of the hallway the light from the kitchen shone in on the floor. As I crawled closer, it became clear that it wasn’t just Babs and my grandparents. Several of my aunts and uncles were in the kitchen, as well. But it’s my mother’s voice that I heard distinctly.
    “I know what I’m talking about,” she said. “None of you have ever been a child who’s lost a parent. I have. I know exactly what it means and how it feels.”
    “She’ll need to say goodbye,” Grandma said. “No matter how painful it is, she’ll need that for the rest of her life.”
    “No.” My mother’s voice was calm, but adamant. “The memory of that body in the coffin will supersede every other memory she has of him. Laney is not going to that funeral, even if I have to stay here with her myself.”
    That sounded good to me. My mother and I would stay together, while these other people went to the funeral. It sounded okay, so I made my way back to bed. I snuggled up under the covers and fell asleep waiting for her to join me.
    The next day began before I was ready. Babs was sitting at the dresser in her underwear, hooking her hose to her garter belt.
    “Is it time to get dressed?” I asked.
    She turned to smile at me. Even smiling she