Free The First Lie by Diane Chamberlain

Grace County, North Carolina
    1958
    I leaned my bike against our lopsided porch and tiptoed up the steps, still real shaky from the last few hours. It had to be four in the morning by now and I’d be in deep trouble if I got caught sneaking in, so I pushed the front door open as soft as I could. I knew right away I was doomed. From our bedroom, I heard Mary Ella yelling, “Mama! Mama!” Something terrible was happening for her to yell like that. Our mama’s been gone for a long time, locked up with the other crazy people at Dix Hospital. I called out for her myself sometimes when I was scared or hurt, even if it did no good. Even if I couldn’t really remember Mama at all.
    Mary Ella must have been having a bad dream. I stood still as a statue in the darkness, wondering if I could quiet her before Nonnie woke up and caught me sneaking in, but I was too late. My eyes was getting used to the dark and I could see the couch was empty, the sheets half off the cushions; Nonnie was already up. Usually I could sneak past her while she snored. But there wasn’t nothing usual about tonight.
    I heard Nonnie talking to Mary Ella in the bedroom. “It’s all right, child,” she said. “Everything’ll be all right.” But I could tell by the way Mary Ella was hollerin’ that nothing was all right. I wanted to turn around and run back outside again, even though it was cold and windy and pitch black. Instead, I tore off my scarf and the old coat that used to belong to Daddy and ran across the living room to the bedroom. The best I could hope for was that Nonnie’d be thinking so much about Mary Ella that she didn’t care I’d been out all night.
    Mary Ella was propped up against the headboard, her wild yellow hair lit up by the lamp on the dresser. The ratty blanket covered her big belly like she was trying to hide a pumpkin, and her face, usually so pale this wintry time of year, was red from her screaming. Nonnie pressed a damp rag to her forehead, but when she spotted me, she let the rag drop to the bed and the next thing I knew, she was swatting my arms with her swole-up hands.
    “Where’ve you been, you little tramp?” she shouted.
    “I ain’t a tramp!” I yelled back. I didn’t think you could be a tramp at thirteen. Mary Ella, now, she was a different story. Having a baby at fifteen pretty much made her one for sure, even though I defended her to anyone at school who said a word against her after she got kicked out for being in the family way.
    There was no time for bickering, and I was glad when Nonnie stopped hitting me and sat down on the bed, wiping Mary Ella’s face with the rag again.
    “It hurts !” Mary Ella shouted. She hardly seemed to see either of us while she hollered and cried out for Mama and gripped the blanket in her fists. I didn’t know what to do. I pried loose one of her hands to try to hold it, but she pulled it away. We wasn’t the kind of sisters that held hands, anyway. We might of slept in the same bed every night, but we didn’t talk much or share no secrets. And Mary Ella had plenty of them, for sure.
    “What’s wrong with her?” I asked Nonnie. “It’s too soon for the baby, ain’t it?”
    “The baby don’t seem to know it,” Nonnie said.
    That scared me. Things could go wrong when you had a baby, and Mary Ella sounded for all the world like she could die. I remembered she said that when our daddy died in the tractor accident, she saw his spirit go up in the sky. The way she looked right now, I was afraid I could see hers heading in the same direction, but I think it was just all that yellow hair looking like a halo around her head.
    “There, there, child,” Nonnie said, her voice nearly swallowed up by Mary Ella’s screams. Nonnie looked up at me. “You need to run to the Gardiners’ and call Mrs. Werkman,” she said.
    “Now?” I said. “It’s four in the morning!”
    “And don’t I know it!” Nonnie smacked my arm again. “Four in the morning and my