Free All We Had by Annie Weatherwax Page B

they’d put it up for rent.
    Normally a long-winded story like this would bore me, but I could never resist the lilt of an Irish accent. And his was like music to my ears.
    We had waited a lifetime for this. And here it was: me and mymother together making enough money to rent a decent place and pay our bills.
    â€œAh!” Frank O’Malley stood up with the keys in his hand. “I knew I had these bloody things in here somewhere.”

    The house was at the end of a dead-end in a cluster of prefabs and double-wides scattered like dice. Ours was the smallest on the street. A tiny one-bedroom built on a patch of earth that wasn’t level, the house leaned a little to the left. The road wasn’t paved either. It was gravel, and in some places, just dirt. There were overgrown shrubs under the windows and a pant leg of ivy grew up the trunk of an old oak out front. The house had light-blue aluminum siding so faded that parts of it looked white. But we fell in love with it right away. It was fully furnished. There was a couch to the left as you walked in, and to the right, in the front window, a table and two chairs. And there was a color TV at the foot of the bed, which was awesome because TV in bed was our favorite.
    The sun was high and bright the day we moved in. The sky was clear and its color seemed deeper and richer than ever, like a million different blues mixed into one.
    â€œAfter you, madame,” my mother said at the front gate. She bowed and pantomimed me forward. We could not believe our luck. We’d arrived at a place called home, and we had gotten there together.
    The gate was freestanding and wobbly. You had to pick it up on its hinges to open and close it. There was no fence attached; it would have been easy to walk around it. But on the day we moved in, we made a big deal about walking through it.
    â€œOh, no, please, after you,” I insisted, mimicking her.
    We went back and forth like that for a few minutes. I can’t remember who finally entered first, but I do remember this:
    The gate creaked and clicked when it closed and this seemed to set a whole world in motion. In the tree above, a mourning dove twittered away, leaves scattered, church bells rang in the distance.
    â€œYoo-hoo!” a voice called behind us.
    When we turned, a woman was there, standing inside the gate as if she’d been lowered into place from above.
    â€œHi!” she chirped. “I’m Patti with an i .”
    Patti with an i looked to be around twenty-five. She wore tight jeans and a pair of red flats. Her eyes were heavily outlined with blue liner, and a high ponytail erupted from the top of her head in a celebration of hair, like fireworks. She stood in the middle of the walkway, holding a plateful of brownies on the palm of her hand like a waitress.
    â€œI live over there with my husband and kids.” She rotated with her plate, pointing kitty-corner across the street to a place that had all kinds of Big Wheels and scooters out front.
    As she turned to face us again, the door to Patti’s house flew open and a gaggle of kids—maybe three or four of them—spilled out. One of them ran across the street and plowed into her but she didn’t seem to notice. She swayed like a pine tree and when she settled back down, her ponytail recovered to the top of her head. Somehow, she’d kept the platter of brownies perfectly still.
    Another door across the street opened. Patti’s next-door neighbor stepped out of her house. Behind her, a little dog jumped back and forth in the window, yapping at regular intervals.“That’s Pancake,” Patti explained. “He’s a six-pound Chihuahua who acts like he weighs eighty. If it wasn’t for the funny look on his face, he might actually be frightening.” Even from across the street, I could see the dog’s pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
    â€œI can’t say that about his owner, Miss