Free Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

last.
    You can bet we did not go to his funeral. I know they had one because my daddy’s brother Rudolph brought me the flag they had laid on his coffin. He got the flag because he was in the war.
    I did not go to the funeral but I imagined how bad the preacher must have felt to put my daddy in the same ground with good people and babies born dead who get to be angels. And beside my mama.
    They put her in a box too and him in a box oh shut the lid down hard on this one and nail it nail it with the strongest nails. Do all you can to keep it shut and him in it always. Time would make him meaner to me if he could get out and grab me again.
    Go ahead and look said the magician.
    I do not want to look.
    It is all illusion. Look in the box and see what is there.
    I do not want to see.
    Go ahead said the magician. There is nothing to be afraid of. Everything has vanished! See. There is nothing in the box.
    Where did it go? I need to know.
    Oh I suppose they put him in the hole and everybody walked away without talking just like before and they will wish they were already home.
    Rudolph came straight from the graveyard to my mama’s mama’s. She sent me to my room and told me to stay there until he left. Which I did not do but I stood in the hall and spied.
    She had some secret business with him. He came to the house now and then and she always told me to leave. I knew that what I was not supposed to hear was most likely juicy so I always listened in.
    What are you bringing that trash here for? she met him at the back door and asked.
    He said in a hang dog way he thought Ellen should have it.
    I watched her get stiff and then she spit on the flag he had folded up in a neat triangle and held to her like a present.
    Then she said to him after all the money you have taken from me you have the audacity to bring that bastard’s business into my house. You should be shot.
    Rudolph had the nerve I would not have and said he only took what she offered. All that was due him.
    She called him a worm and a farm boy too big for his britches. And if you don’t think I can ruin you too then just hide and watch me! You just remember whose name that dead bastard’s farm is in and while you’re at it take a drive to the courthouse and check the name on your own damn deed. Then come back here and tell me who is running this show.
    Rudolph stood there like the farm boy too big for his britches that his teacher had just unbuckled and dropped around his ankles so the paddle could sting and snap his behind.
    Then he turned and ran out the door.
    He left the flag though.
    That night I woke up from my sleep because I heard something outside and I looked out my window and saw her standing by a wood fire she had made herself poking what was left of some stripes farther into the flame.
    I did not go back to sleep that night because I kept thinking over and over again about the encyclopedias. Oh the froze sneeze and the poems. I wanted to rub my hands on the pages again. The flag on fire did not matter but just those encyclopedias. They might not have ever been mine but I believed that much touching and looking had made them into mine.
    That is what I thought to myself while she poked her flame.
    I do not know why I thought she would be happy when my daddy died. She was the kind of woman you cannot even die to suit. She would swear you did it to spite her.
    We all did things against her she said. She even fired the colored household help because she swore they were an infernal conspiracy and were stealing out from her nose.
    And when they were gone it was just her and me. Me to look after her not the other way around like you might expect.
    That did not surprise me because I had just about given up on what you expect. I just lived to see what would happen next.
    At least taking care of her took me out of the fields.
    When she got sick with the flu all she wanted to do was talk. That was about all she was able to do. I called the doctor who checked her over