Free Little Children by Tom Perrotta Page B

been in the habit of drinking in the daytime hours—in fact, she rarely drank at all—but she’d learned to make an exception for her wine cooler at lunch. Partly she did it to be sociable—Bertha didn’t like to drink alone—but she’d come to rely on the pleasantly fuzzy mental state induced by the beverage, even if it sometimes left her headachy and tired later in the afternoon. It was a small indulgence, and May felt like she’d earned the right.
     
    May had first seen Bertha four years earlier in the visiting area of the county jail, where they each had a son awaiting trial. It was hard for them not to notice each other, two old white women in a sea of mostly younger, mostly darker faces. May would offer a shy smile of commiseration whenever they made eye contact, but she was reluctant to introduce herself or otherwise invite conversation. Ronnie’s case had attracted a fair amount of lurid publicity—the Girl Scout cookie angle made it irresistible to the newspapers—and May had felt a distinct chill fall over most of her encounters with other people. Friends stopped calling. Neighbors no longer smiled and waved hello. Her own daughter said terrible things about Ronnie that were probably true, but that May didn’t think should be spoken out loud by members of his own family. Father Ortega even suggested that she take a short break from volunteering on bingo night until “things settled down.” May was in no hurry to meet anyone new, or put herself in any kind of situation where she’d have to explain who she was and what she was doing at the county jail.
    It was Bertha who finally broke the ice. She followed May out to the parking lot one breezy spring afternoon and began chatting as naturally as if they were old friends, making a series of statements to which May could only say Amen , about how mortifying it was to see your own child under lock and key, and how he was still your little boy, no matter what he’d done, and how you had no choice but to keep loving him, no matter what he’d done, and how impossible it was for other people who hadn’t had this experience to understand the strength of the bond between a mother and her child, no matter what he’d done. Then she started moaning about the long and difficult trip from the courthouse back home to Bellington on Sunday, when the buses ran so infrequently, and before May had a chance to think it through, she blurted out that she lived in Bellington, too, and would be happy to give her a ride home.
    For the next few weeks May shuttled her new friend back and forth on visiting days, until Bertha’s son, Allen, was sentenced to six months—it was not his first offense—for stealing a welding machine from a construction site and trying to sell it to a man who turned out to be a cousin of the original owner. By that point, though, Bertha had already begun stopping by May’s house at lunchtime, first by invitation, then on impulse, and finally, on a more or less daily basis. During the school year, Bertha worked as a crossing guard outside the Rayburn School, and she had a couple of hours to kill between lunchtime and dismissal, so why not spend them with May?
    And the truth was, May appreciated the company. Not because she liked Bertha, exactly—Bertha was hard to like in any simple way—but because a person needed company. Something went sour inside if you didn’t have someone to talk to every day. So what if Bertha dyed her hair a brassy red and drank too much (though May couldn’t say she approved of her drinking on school days), or made mean jokes, and rarely had a good word to say about anyone? No one else was visiting May these days, except her daughter, Carol, who came by maybe once a month to complain about Ronnie and insist that May acknowledge what a repulsive person he was. Diane Thuringer from down the street, whom May had once considered a good friend, pretended not to notice her even after their carts almost collided in the