Free The Right Thing by Amy Conner Page B

Starr’s house cracked open.
    â€œWho is it?” a thin, scared-sounding voice asked.
    â€œStarr!” I said, hugging my arms to my chest. “It’s me, Annie. Can I come in?”
    The door opened wider. I was enveloped in the thick, stale aroma of boiled cabbage and cigarette smoke, with something unpleasant and unidentifiable lurking underneath. Starr peeked around the edge of the door.
    â€œGet inside,” she said. “Somebody might see. My poppa said don’t let anybody in the house while he’s to the church.”
    I slipped inside the doorway. Despite the smell, it was warm in the Dukes house. Starr, barefoot, was wearing a pilled yellow nylon nightgown with a limp collar. “Come on in,” she said. I followed her down a short, dark hall into a bedroom not much bigger than our pantry, lit only by the listless light filtering through a small, sheet-covered window. On the bare wooden floor, there was just room for the single mattress heaped with a patchwork quilt and a battered cardboard suitcase covered in tweed-patterned cloth in the corner. A drift of spangled white tulle spilled from the suitcase’s overstuffed sides. Starr’s pageant dresses were hanging on nails driven into the pockmarked walls.
    â€œSet,” she said. “How come you’re here? I thought we weren’t allowed anymore.”
    I collapsed onto the mattress, drawing my knees under my chin. “I’m running away,” I said, wiping my nose. “Please, Starr—won’t you come with me? We can be friends again.” I had only conceived the idea in the last instant.
    Starr shook her head. “I can’t.” She sat next to me on the mattress and put her thin arm around my shoulders. “See, my momma went away last week. Poppa says I’ve got to look after him now since she’s not gonna come back, not this time.” Her pale eyes were huge in her narrow, pointed face. “I was fixing to get ready to make him some dinner ’cause he’ll be coming home at five pee-em. He’ll be real hungry, Annie. A man’s got to eat,” she said uncertainly. “Right?”
    Starr’s mother’s desertion fought for precedence with the day’s disaster. My spirits plummeted as she stroked my back. “But I can’t go home, Starr,” I said. Voice shaking, I told her about the Treebys’ house. It was hard to confess what I’d seen through the cracked door, harder still to explain my consummate dread of my mother’s lashing disappointment at my failure—once again—to stay out of trouble. This was the biggest trouble yet of my short life, and I was sure I would not survive it.
    When I had finished, Starr shook her head and said, “Poppa says this world’s nothing but sin, woe, and sorrowful torment, and we only get through it with the healing from Jesus. I surely miss my momma, Annie.”
    â€œAnd I’m scared to death of mine.”
    We sat quiet for a minute.
    â€œHold on.” Starr stuck her hand underneath the mattress and fished around on the floor for something, a picture in a cheap frame. “This’s my momma on her honeymoon with my poppa. They went to Biloxi.”
    I took the faded black-and-white photograph from her, looking intently at the slight woman, her arms folded tightly across a shirtwaist dress, standing on the flat sands of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She looked worn out, as though she’d been up for days on end, her shoulders tensed, unsmiling. I couldn’t help but compare her to my own mother, Collie Banks, the beauty. How would I feel if she were to disappear into thin air like Starr’s momma had done? I shivered, wondering if my latest descent into bad behavior would make her leave me, too.
    â€œShe’s sure pretty, huh?” Starr asked.
    I nodded, although I was thinking that Mrs. Dukes was anything but pretty. Her face with its long upper lip and