Free My Mother Got Married by Barbara Park Page A

was flopping around like crazy.
    I cringed when I saw the hook. “Gross,” I said. “Right through the lip.”
    Ben took the fish and tried to twist the hook out of its mouth. Suddenly I felt queasy.
    He looked up and saw my expression. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt him.”
    “How do you know?” I asked.
    Ben just kept twisting.
    I covered my eyes with my hands. “It’s kind of hard not to feel a hook through your mouth, don’t you think?”
    Ben didn’t answer.
    “I even feel it when I’ve got a crumb on my lip.”
    After a minute I peeked through my fingers. “Sure looks like it hurts, doesn’t it? The way it keeps flopping around like that.”
    I leaned closer. “Oh geez, it’s bleeding.”
    Seeing the blood made things even worse.
    “What’s the difference between fishing and murder, do you think?” I wondered out loud. “Do you think just because you eat it, it’s not murder?”
    Ben stopped what he was doing and stared at me. He didn’t say anything. He just stared.
    Finally the hook came out. “My guess would be that you won’t be wanting to take this home and eat it, is that correct?” he asked, sounding a little exasperated.
    I made a face at the thought of it. “You mean with that lip of his and everything?”
    Ben threw it back. Then for the next few minutes he just sat there looking out over the water.
    I guess I shouldn’t have made him throw it back. I guess we should have taken it home and eaten it. I probably wouldn’t have had to eat the lips.
    Hoping to make things better, I cast my brownie back into the lake. Five minutes later I caught a Huggies diaper.
    Ben started the outboard motor. We left.
    On the way home the silence was louder than ever.

(nine)

T
    HE LAST straw. That’s what they call it when you run out of patience. I never used to understand why they called it that, but I do now. It’s like if you’re a camel and you have to carry a bunch of straw to market. And everyone thinks you’re real strong, so they just keep piling more and more straws on your back. And even though your load keeps getting heavier and heavier and your legs start buckling underneath you, you just put up with it, because that’s what they expect you to do.
    Only finally you reach your limit. You don’t know it’s going to happen. But one day someone reaches up and puts one more straw on your back, and you collapse right on top of him. And he deserves it too. ’Cause he wasn’t paying attention to how you felt. And everyone has a limit. Me and camels and everyone.
    T HOMAS started calling my mother Mom. He started doing it after their day “alone” together. I don’t know if they talked about it or if he just did it on his own. All I know is that he was heading up to bed that night when he suddenly stopped on the stairs and said, “See you in the morning, Mom.”
    I’m not kidding. He said it real casual like that. As if calling a person Mom was hardly a big deal at all.
    It really got to me. Don’t call her that! I wanted to shout. She’s my mother, not yours!
    I THOUGHT about it that night. Not just about Thomas calling my mother Mom. I thought about all of it. About Lydia and Ben, and how much I’d given up, and how much I’d had to accept: sharing my room with a little kid, learning to live with a sister, giving both of them my mother, watching her love a man who wasn’t my dad—a man who didn’t even seem to like me that much.…
    It felt heavy, you know? Like a ton of straw, only worse. And even though I was in bed, I thought I felt my legs start to buckle under me. I’m serious. I could really feel them caving in.
    I didn’t sleep very well. I tossed and turned and woke up a million times.
    Glum. That was my mood when I went down to breakfast the next morning. Not a good time to discover that Lydia and Thomas had eaten the last bowl of Fruity Flakes. When I looked in the cupboard all that was left was Ben’s cereal. Fiber something.
    I hurried into the living