Free Little Mercies by Heather Gudenkauf Page B

Eventually, Jenny stopped asking about her.
    But now, sitting in a restaurant in Cedar City, in the very town where Jenny’s mother grew up, where her grandmother may still live, she slowly, methodically deciphered her grandmother’s handwriting. It was written in tiny, cramped cursive and Jenny, on her best days, struggled to read a menu. In the card, her grandmother said she was sorry that her daughter, Jenny’s mother, wasn’t there for her. That she didn’t used to be this way. She was once a caring, loving little girl who spent her days riding her bike around Cedar City and evenings catching fireflies and playing Kick the Can and Boys Chase the Girls. Jenny couldn’t imagine her mournful-faced mother ever hollering Ollie, Ollie oxen free at the top of her lungs and kicking at an old rusty coffee can with all her might.
    Her grandmother wrote that she hoped that Jenny would write back to her, that maybe one day they would meet and she could tell Jenny more about how her mother used to be. She signed the letter Grandma Margie.
    Jenny’s stomach flipped with excitement. Now all she had to do was find Hickory Street and the house where her grandmother lived. Jenny carefully placed the birthday card back into its purple envelope and returned it to her backpack. She turned her attention to the large manila envelope that held all the important papers in her father’s life. “This is it, Jenny,” he had said just the night before as they made their way to the bus station, all their worldly possessions in the two bags that they carried with them. “Say goodbye. We’re never coming back to Benton.”
    Jenny slid a sticky finger into the envelope and her touch landed upon three photos. They were the thick kind of old-fashioned pictures that slid out of the bottom of the camera. The kind that you would shake until, slowly, like magic, the picture would emerge. Jenny gasped at the images. She wouldn’t have recognized herself if it weren’t for the Worlds of Fun t-shirt, once her favorite shirt, that showed a cartoonish map of the amusement park. She never actually had gone to Worlds of Fun, it was just another used article of clothing picked up from Goodwill, but she remembered loving that shirt, wearing it nearly every day. She could imagine herself raising her arms above her head as she rode the mini roller coaster or eating a mound of cotton candy on the carousel. The picture was a close-up of Jenny, both her eyes swollen shut, her upper lip so puffed up that it concealed her nostrils. A large cut slashed across her left check and appeared to be oozing, her Worlds of Fun shirt stained with what could only be blood. Jenny felt suddenly dizzy and the pancakes in her stomach churned like stones being skipped across a pond.
    “Whoa, you were hungry,” the waitress exclaimed, reaching down for the empty plate and gathering wadded-up napkins and syrup-coated utensils. When Jenny didn’t respond, she looked down, her forehead pleated with concern. “You, okay?”
    “I have to go to the bathroom,” Jenny whispered hoarsely, clapping a hand over her mouth, her eyes searching desperately for the restrooms.
    “It’s thataway.” The waitress pointed as Jenny slid out from behind the booth and stumbled away. Biting her cheeks and swallowing hard, she bumped from table to table, not noticing how the other customers recoiled at her approach. Jenny threw open the bathroom door and staggered to an empty stall, fell to her knees and vomited. Drops of perspiration beaded at her hairline and she gasped for breath. Again her stomach seized and she clutched the sides of the toilet trying to steady herself.
    Jenny sensed rather than heard the presence behind her, and her face burned with shame at being caught in such a private act in such a public place. One gentle hand pressed against her shoulder and another cupped her forehead as her stomach gave one final violent lurch and the last remnants of her breakfast erupted.
    Jenny was