Free We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg

you!” I shot back.
    “Yes. That’s right. Things for me, too. But the point is, we’re cheating the system.”
    “You have to!” Peacie said.
    “We have to,” my mother echoed.
    Peacie tied a filmy yellow scarf around my mother’s pin curls. The long ends fell down on either side of her head. “You look like one of those floppy-eared rabbits,” I said, and my mother smiled. But it wasn’t true. Even in pin curls, my mother looked lovely.
    “You want to sit by the window for a while, Paige?” Peacie asked, and my mother nodded.
    “You come with me,” Peacie told me. “I need your help out the kitchen.”
    “I haven’t even washed my face!” I said. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth!”
    “You think I don’t know that? Next state over know that!” She walked toward the kitchen and then looked over her shoulder to see if I was coming. “Move your behind!” she said, and I followed her.
    In the kitchen, I sat at the table and she put a bowl of Cheerios before me. “Breakfast in bed—almost,” she said. I did not smile. She sat opposite me. “Now, tell me true, you nervous about that social worker?”
    “No.” I picked sleep from one eye irritably.
    “Are too. Now, listen, I seen these things plenty of times. You just answer every question real calm. You say Mrs. Gruder and Janice just fine. And you say I’m the best one. Which I am.” She eyed my untouched cereal. “And you eat that ’fore it gets soggy. Don’t you make me waste food.”
    I picked up the spoon and had a bite of the cereal. It tasted good with the wild raspberries Peacie had put in it; they grew in her yard. “Why do you think she’ll ask me questions? She hardly ever speaks to me.”
    “You getting older,” Peacie said. “That’s why. She been asking your mother about you, talking ’bout puberty.” She pronounced it “pooberty,” like a science teacher of mine had. “She say she want to start talking to you more often. Today might be the day. Now let’s us practice.”
    She stood up and pushed her chair in, affected a high white voice. “So. Diana, dear. How
you
doing?”
    “Just great,” I said. “Living here in the lap of luxury. Every day is ecstasy.”
    “Well, I tell you what,” Peacie said. “We can finish in a minute, or you can sit in here all day. Makes no never mind to me.” She started humming.
    “I’m very
well, thank
you!”
    “And how your caretakers treat you?” Peacie asked.
    “Oh, they’re really good,” I said. “Especially Peacie, that angel of mercy, that model of perfection.” I was impressed with myself. Hanging around with Suralee was doing me good. I spoke above myself in a way I found thrilling.
    Peacie went to the icebox and got out eggs, then took a bowl from the cupboard. “Yup, I got all day,” she said. “I’m gon’ be here anyway.”
    “Fine!” I said. “But don’t make me practice! Just tell me what you want to tell me and let me go!”
    Peacie put the bowl down on the counter and came to stand before me. I stared at the little flowers on the waistband of her apron. “Just don’t mess up,” she said. “That’s all. Don’t talk ’less you have to. Be polite and make her think everything just fine. You got no idea what could happen if you mess up.”
    “I won’t mess up!” I said. “I’m not stupid!”
    “You ain’t stupid,” she said, “but you act like it sometime anyway.”
    “Why don’t I just not be here?” I said, but just then the doorbell rang.
    Peacie raised her eyebrows and pointed at me, her fingers held like a pistol. I had a nearly irresistible impulse to bury my face in her apron and weep. Instead, I said, “O
kay
!” and gobbled the rest of my cereal.
    “I’m coming!” Peacie yelled toward the door. Then she whispered to me, “Tell her you like her dress, or whatever she got on. She always like that. Tell her it’s her color, whatever color it is.” Her mouth smelled of licorice. She chewed anise seeds, carried a