Free The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring

need nobody taking care of me.”
    â€œSince you were sixteen?”
    Freeda picked up her cup and took another sip, but she didn’t sit down. “Yep, that’s how old I was when I took off. Sixteen.”
    â€œTook off, as in ran away?”
    â€œThat’s right. I didn’t step one foot back in that dump for five years. I just pulled into town the night before Ma died. Came home one day, went out that night, came back in around noon the next day, and found her deader than a doornail on the kitchen floor.”
    Aunt Verdella’s freckly hand clamped over her chest, and she looked ready to cry. “Oh dear, how awful!”
    Freeda’s shoulders made a quick shrug. “Yeah, well…I called Ma’s sister—she lived just down the road—and told her to call that piece of slime they call a brother from the bar, because Ma was dead and I’d called the funeral home to come get her and I was taking off. I grabbed my bags, a few things for Winnalee, told them where to send the ashes, and I got the hell outta there.”
    While Aunt Verdella was staring at her, her mouth hanging wide open, Freeda turned and shouted toward the bathroom, where Winnalee was still singing and splashing. “Crissakes, Winnalee! You’ve gotta be shriveled up like a prune by now. Get the hell out of there. I’ve gotta job-hunt today, and I sure as hell can’t go like this. Now move it!” Winnalee kept on singing and splashing. Freeda cussed under her breath, then said, “Damn kid. You can’t hardly ever get her into the goddamn tub. Then once you do, you can’t get her out.”
    Aunt Verdella was watching Freeda, her face still looking upset. “But there were arrangements to be made, of course. And, oh my, you needed some support at a time like that, honey. I don’t mean to pry, it’s just that I’m trying to understand why you’d just take Winnalee and leave at a time like that.”
    â€œI don’t mind you prying. Ask me anything, I don’t care. I ain’t got nothing to hide.” She pulled a bobby pin out of her penny hair and opened it with her teeth, then retucked a loose strand back to the top of her head. “I wasn’t about to hang around there and listen to my aunt and Ma’s old biddy friends give me bullcrap about how I killed my ma by running off, then coming back out of the blue. And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna leave Winnalee behind to be raised by her sister, that religious freak, or worse yet, their loser brother, the son of a bitch.”
    Freeda sat down, lifted her bare legs, and curled her long toes over the edge of the table again, like they were fingers. “As if
I
had anything to do with her dropping dead. My ma didn’t give a shit about me leaving, and she didn’t give a shit about me coming home either. The only thing that woman ever cared about was eating. She goddamn ate herself to death, that’s what she did. Just like Daddy drank himself to death. She had these big-ass stools parked all over that damn kitchen and pulled herself from one to the next, baking and eating till she looked like a bloated wood tick that fell off some mangy dog. I wasn’t about to be blamed for any of that.”
    â€œOh my. Poor little Winnalee,” Aunt Verdella said, making her voice as small as she could. “She’d never even met you, right? How on earth did you get her to go with you, being a perfect stranger?”
    Freeda got up and went to the refrigerator, opening it and peering in. “No, she hadn’t met me, but my pictures were hanging around the walls—probably because Ma was too goddamn lazy to take them down—so Winnalee knew about me, of course. God knows what stories Ma told her, but I guess Winnalee decided I was her best bet. Not like I gave her a choice, anyway.”
    Freeda slammed the fridge door shut without taking anything from it. “Okay, enough,