Free Leaving Eden by Anne Leclaire

and drove around in the bright yellow Chevy with a
Student Driver
sign on the roof like a pizza delivery car. Even my Raleigh beat that. As soon as I wheeled into the yard, I could see a yellow slip of paper flapping on the front door. No sign of Martha Lee’s pickup.
    The scrawled note said she’d been called in unexpectedly on a case—old Temple Fallon over in Mission Wales had fallen and broken her hip.
Shitpissfuck.
I ripped the note off the door and scattered the pieces in the yard. In recent years, I’d trained myself not to plan on much, which take it from me was the best way to avoid disappointment, but I’d been
counting
on this driving lesson. At this rate I’d be as old as Temple Fallon before I learned to drive. Didn’t they have nurses in Mission Wales? Was Martha Lee the only LPN in Amherst County or what?
    The thing was, sick people always wanted Martha Lee taking care of them, especially dying people, although you’d think that if a person was about to die, she’d want to be looking at some sweet-faced angel type instead of someone like Martha Lee. I know when Mama fell ill, she wouldn’t let another nurse near her. Martha Lee was angel enough for her.
    It wasn’t true, of course, but Mama seemed to get sick overnight. One week she was swimming with me at the creek and dancing up a storm with Daddy, and the next week she was too tired to fix cake batter. She was always slim—she used to buy her clothes in the girls’ section at Shucks Discount—but by the time school started in September, she was downright bony. She took to wearing my daddy’s long-sleeve mill shirts, thinking, I guess, that we wouldn’t notice, but instead of hiding her thinness, Daddy’s shirts emphasized it. Often, when I came home after school, I’d find her sleeping. Not on the couch or the porch glider, but in her bed, which was scarier. One day I found her puking in the bathroom. When she reached out to flush, her sleeve fell back revealing an arm so thin, it looked like it would snap if you sneezed.
    “Don’t tell your daddy,” she said.
    “Okay,” I said. It shamed me to think a part of me was glad Mama was sick. For sure, she wouldn’t be leaving us if she was feeling poorly.
    “Promise,” she said. “Promise you won’t tell him.”
    The weight of conspiracy settled on my shoulders, but I agreed to it without hesitation. Like most people in her life, I couldn’t deny Mama anything. Still, I wondered how she thought she could keep this from him. Course now I understand you can always keep from people things they are determined not to see. You can even keep things from yourself if you’ve a mind to.
    The next day, when Martha Lee showed up with a pot of chicken necks and dumplings, I heard them arguing in Mama’s room. They never, ever fought, and this scared me more than finding Mama on the bathroom floor.
    “Well, I’m not standing by,” Martha Lee said. When she came out of that room her lips were all tight, like her mouth was full of the vinegar milk Mama used to make corn bread. I didn’t even pretend not to listen while she phoned a doctor over in Lynchburg.
    “He’ll see you tomorrow,” she told Mama.
    The next day, Daddy stayed home from the mill to drive her. When I insisted on skipping school to go along, I got set for an argument, but they caved without a word. I sat between them on the bench seat of the Dodge as we headed toward Lynchburg. Usually I felt protected sitting there, the three of us tight as June bugs, but that day, wedged in between the heft of my daddy and the unbearable weightlessness of Mama, nothing felt safe at all. We drove past the Ford dealership, the video store, past the run-down house with a sign that said inside a lady would read your palms, past the converted service station where they sold silver jewelry and cowboy boots, past the whole sorry strip of fast-food places pushing tacos and barbecue and fries. All the way to Lynchburg no one even turned on the