Read For One More Day for Free Online Page B

Ok!
    You hold onto this letter. Put it under your pillow before the doctors come in. They're going to give you something to make you sleepy and just before you fall asleep you can remember my letter is there and if you wake up before I get to your room, then you can reach under the pillow
    and read this again. Reading is like talking, so picture me talking to you there.
    And soon I will be.
    And then you can have all the ice cream you want! How about that?!
    I love you every day.
    Mom

    Chick's Family After the Divorce
    FOR A WHILE AFTER my parents split up, we tried to stay the same.
    But the neighborhood wouldn't allow it. Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes. People were nicer to my sister and me. There'd be an extra lollipop at the doctor's office or a larger scoop on the ice cream cone. Older women, encountering us on the street, would squeeze our shoulders earnestly and ask, "How are you kids doing? " which struck us as an adult question. The kids' version began with "What. "
    But if we were showed more kindness, my mother was not. People didn't get divorced back then. I didn't know a single kid who had endured it. Splitting up, at least where we lived, meant something scandalous, and one of the parties would be assigned the blame.
    It fell on my mother, mostly because she was still around. Nobody knew what happened between Len and Posey, but Len was gone and Posey was there to be judged. It didn't help that she refused to seek pity or to cry on their shoulders. And, to make matters worse, she was still young and pretty. So to women she was a threat, to men an opportunity, and to kids an oddity. Not really great choices, when you think about it.
    Over time, I noticed people looking at my mother differently when we pushed a cart through the local grocery store or when, in that first year after the divorce, she'd drop my sister and me at school in her white nurse's outfit and her white shoes and white hose. She always got out to kiss us good-bye, and I was acutely aware of the other mothers staring. Roberta and I became self-conscious, approaching the school door as if we squeaked.
    "Give your mother a kiss," she said one day, leaning over. "Don't," I said this time, sliding away.
    "Don't what?"
    "Just... " I scrunched my shoulders and winced. "Just don't. "
    I couldn't look at her, so I looked at my feet. She held there for a moment before straightening. I heard her sniff. I felt her rub my hair.
    By the time I looked up, the car was pulling away.
    ONE AFTERNOON I was playing catch with a friend in the church parking lot when two nuns opened the back door. My friend and I froze, figuring we had done something wrong. But the nuns motioned me over. They each held an aluminum tray. As I approached, I could smell meat loaf and green beans.
    "Here," one of them said. "For your family.” I couldn't understand why they were giving me food. But it wasn't like you said "no thanks" to a nun. So I took the trays and I walked them home, figuring my mother must have ordered them special.
    "What's that?" she asked, when I entered the house. "The nuns gave it to me."
    She pulled back the wax paper. She sniffed. "Did you ask for this?"
    "Nuh-uh. I was playing catch." "You didn't ask for this?" “No.”
    "Because we don't need food, Charley. We don't need handouts, if that's what you think. "
    I got defensive. I didn't really understand "handout," but I could tell it meant something that didn't get handed out to everyone.
    "I didn't ask for it! " I protested. "I don't even like green beans! " We looked at each other.
    "It's not my fault" I said.
    She relieved me of the trays and dumped them in the sink. She mashed the meat loaf into the garbage disposal with a large spoon.
    She did the same with the green beans. She moved so feverishly I couldn't take my eyes off of her, pounding all that food down that small round hole She turned on the water. The disposal roared. When the sound pitched higher,