Free Mockingbird by Sean Stewart

and laughter too. I don’t think I’ve told you how much my mother laughed, or how much her laughter sounded like crying.
    When I was a little kid, I use to love it when she told me her stories. If she was lying propped in bed in her pink nightgown of Chantilly lace I would come curl up with my head on her lap while she stroked my hair. On summer nights out in the garden I would sit next to her and close my eyes to listen better. Texas folk legend has it that Skin-So-Soft moisturizing cream works as a mosquito repellent, so we spent all summer wiped down with it, and I would breathe in the skin lotion and cigarette and hair spray smells that drifted from Momma into the lilac-scented night. As I grew up I began to suspect that her stories had a point to them. Maybe they always did, and I just hadn’t noticed.
    â€œCome set yourself over here.” Momma pats the arm of the wrought-iron chair next to hers. Her voice is lazy, calm as a slow creek in dry weather. “No, I’ll tell you what. Get us a couple of those little Cokes out of the fridge and bring them here, would you, honey? It’s a night for it.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    She’s right, the Cokes are cold and taste pretty good. She always buys the little ones, the six and a half ounce ones in the old-style glass bottles that stay cold to your touch long after they leave the refrigerator. It’s been dry for a spell and the mosquitoes aren’t so bad with our Skin-So-Soft on. We talk a while about nothing in particular. She never mentions Candy’s name. I give short, sullen answers. Finally the effort to make small talk becomes too burdensome and Momma says, “Did I ever tell you the story of the time the Little Lost Girl took Sugar to be her mother?” Which is a lie because I know she’s just now made it up.
    â€œNo, ma’am,” I say. Not wanting to encourage her; not willing to leave and miss hearing the story.
    â€œWould you like to hear it?”
    â€œI reckon you’re going to tell it to me.”
    She has a little more of her Coke. “I reckon I am,” she says.
    Well, she’s been a-walking and a-walking, that Little Lost Girl, trying to get back to her momma’s house, but the longer she walks, the lost-er she gets, and never has she found that house where she was born, with the white paint on the fence and the yellow trim around the door and the big live oak tree with the swing outside.
    Finally one day she sees Sugar sittin’ out on a step. “’Morning, ma’am,” she says. Real polite, like she was taught.
    â€œWell, hello, sweetie,” Sugar says, with a tired smile. “How is it with you this fine day?”
    â€œâ€™Bout that poorly,” says the Little Lost Girl. “I been all this time a-walking and I ain’t ever found my home. I reckon I could walk the rest of my life and not find it, neither. My momma left me and now I’m lost for good.” And she sets herself down beside Sugar and starts to cry. “Can’t I just stay with you? You’re the only one that’s nice to me, and I am so tired of all this walking on my lonesome.”
    â€œOh, honey-child,” says Sugar, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
    Well, the Little Lost Girl starts in to crying and blubbering and holding on to Sugar’s arm, piteous as a baby bird, until finally Sugar, whose heart is soft as tar in summer, agrees to let her tag along. “Well all right,” she says, “but there’s one rule you’ll have to mind if you want to come with me, and that is No Crying. I can’t ever cry, and if you come with me, then you can’t neither.”
    â€œWhy can’t you cry?” asks the Little Lost Girl.
    â€œSweetie, ain’t nobody wants to see Sugar cry. Okay?” The little girl nods. “I have to warn you, we ain’t done walking yet. I haven’t had me a bite to eat