Free Francie by Karen English Page B

safe.
    Suddenly it was coming. The local heading to Birmingham … The ground trembled beneath me and a faint curl of white smoke plumed above the trees beyond where the tracks curved out of sight. It was coming! I could hear its whistle and that sh-sh-sh sound of steel wheels on steel track.
    Finally, a thunderous roar brought that big black round face of the engine into view. I hadn’t stood up good before it was racing by and I was counting cars and squinting at the windows to see the people in them. I waved and waved until it was out of sight.
    â€œWhat you doin’?” Alberta said from behind me.
    â€œWaving to my train.”
    She stood there with me looking down the empty tracks. “I do like trains,” she said. “Cause they’re full of possibility.”
    That was just how I felt. They took you to places of possibility.
    Alberta started down the hill. Halfway, she turned
around and waved. I waved back. Although I wanted to see my new cousin, I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I felt sleepy. I lay down, right there, and using my arms for a pillow, closed my eyes for a nap.
    I dreamed someone was watching me—from the woods. Someone was standing there at its edge, just out of reach of the open light, staring at me. I woke with a start, whipped my head around in all directions, then sat there for a while barely breathing, listening as hard as I could. For what, I don’t know.
    I sighed, got up, brushed off the backside of my cotton dress, and started down the small hill toward the road, my bare soles relishing the places where the grass was slick and cool. I was going to see a new baby girl.

Clarissa’s Room
    â€œWant to see my room?” Clarissa said on Tuesday.
    I couldn’t look at no room. I had work to do. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my apron. I was down on my knees, rolling up the heavy area rug in the living room. Me and Mama had come to wax the floors. “I can’t,” I said. “I gotta roll up the rugs.”
    â€œI can help you.”
    â€œNo you can’t, neither.”
    â€œWhy?”
    She looked funny with her sunburned face peeling across the nose, her face round and plain as the moon. Her pink shirred sundress showed off red shoulders.
    â€œCause my mama wouldn’t like it. Your aunt neither.”
    â€œWell, come up then, for just a bit.”

    I looked toward the dining room, where Mama was working. Maybe I could sneak up for just a little while.
    â€œI was going to show you my books.”
    I looked toward the dining room again. I thought about them books.
    â€œOkay,” I said, standing quickly.
    Clarissa led the way and I tiptoed up the stairs behind her, while she chattered on. “Aunt Myra decorated this room for me because she thought I needed cheering.”
    â€œDo you need cheering?” I asked. Such a thought was unknown to me. I couldn’t remember anyone concerned with cheering me up.
    â€œNot much anymore,” Clarissa said, throwing open the door. Stepping aside, she allowed me to go in ahead of her. It was like something I’d never seen. One whole wall was nothing but bookshelves like a library. I’d never really been in a library, but when I moved to Chicago, I was going to find me one.
    I cocked my head sideways and began to read the titles: some I’d read already, some I ain’t never heard of. I’d read Silas Marner in seventh grade. And David Copperfield last winter.
    Clarissa was pulling back her curtains over a window seat covered in the same fabric. “I picked this fabric myself. Aunt Myra and I got it in Mobile.”
    It was pretty. I liked cornflowers. What was it like to wake up in a room like this every morning, I wondered. I pictured myself sitting in the gazebo on a summer
evening, with a glass of lemonade with shaved ice and a good book.
    â€œCan you keep a secret?” she asked suddenly.
    â€œI guess …” I said