Free Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff Page B

Mr. Neary was on his way to work, or maybe to Gallagher's for all she knew.
    She stood up then, and dressed, thinking about whatHughie was doing to this family, and how much she too had disappointed Mama even though Mama had never said one word about it.
    In school that morning Sister Raymond stopped at her desk and asked her to stay afterward. Bird swallowed. Was she in trouble? She tried to think of what she might have done. But there was nothing. Bird was the first one finished with the arithmetic examples Sister put on the board every day. She'd answered all the science questions from the booklet Sister had given them.
    The only thing Sister Raymond might have seen was the strip of cloth Bird wound around her fingers one after another.
    Mama had taught her bandaging. “Practice,” she'd said, leaning over her. “Do it a hundred times, a thousand times, do it until you have the feel of it with your eyes closed. Not too tight or the fingers will turn purple.”
    Why did she do it? Why did she bother? She wondered why Mama had even showed her how. Mama knew it was all for nothing, she thought. But she had done it more times than she could count, and was surprised at how smoothly the bandage rolled itself out now.
    She thought of Mama going to patients in the middle of the night, tiptoeing out the door so Bird wouldn't wake and be tired at school the next day. And sometimes from the classroom window she saw Mama trudging up the street, head bent against the wind, holding her hat with one hand and her bag with the other.
    Now Sister stood up from her desk, looking toward the door. “It's dismissal time.”
    Everyone else went to the wardrobe for their coats, then shuffled out the door, Thomas glancing back at Bird. She didn't quite look at Sister, who was coming down the aisle. “Bridget?”
    Bird took a breath.
    “Ah,” Sister said, “I'm sorry. I can see that I worried you. There's nothing wrong.” She looked at the chalky blackboards. “I'm going to wash these down. Want to—”
    Bird took the small pail to fill from the closet down the hall. Sister Raymond pinned back her sleeves and together they made wet swaths up and down the boards. It was a soothing job, sponging the board and leaving clean patches as they went.
    “Well, Bird,” Sister said, “what about next year? Going to high school?” She tilted her head. “Or following in your mother's footsteps?”
    Bird shook her head. How could she say it would be neither one?
    “You're a fine student, Bird,” Sister said. “I think you'll be good at anything you do.” She went to her desk with a rustle of starch and reached into her drawer. “There's something I want to lend you.” She handed Bird a small package.
    “Mama says never to borrow—”
    “Ah, yes, but from your teacher it's different.”
    Bird knew what it was by the feel of it. A book. She thought back to the day the class had brought in books, and remembered putting hers away.
    She could see Sister remembered it too.
    Bird wanted to tell her the whole story, that Da had given her the book, that every night she read one of the storiesabout the fox, or the rabbit. Da had run his hand over her hair as he passed on the way to work the other day. “Ah, Bird,” he'd said, “if I had ever known when I was young that I'd have a daughter who could read.”
    Something had happened to her because of the reading. What Sister Raymond had said once was true. You could learn anything from books, especially if you looked in back of what the writer was saying. The stories in Da's book were about animals, but if you looked closely, you could see they were really about people and why they acted as they did.
    Sister Raymond reached out to put a hand on Bird's shoulder. “I didn't have a book to read until I was in the convent.”
    “I'll be careful of it.”
    Sister smiled. “Don't I know that?”
    Bird ducked her head and went out the door, Sister calling after her, “I have other books for you to