Read Like Family for Free Online Page B

does.”
    I stared at the worm of the line as if it had menace, intention, had been digging its tunnel while I slept and played and
     thought I was A-OK. If it had made it all the way to my heart, I’d be dead — boom, just like that — and all because of a button,
     a baby tooth of rust.

U NLIKE OUR MOTHER ON her ghost road, our dad resurfaced every once in a while, especially in the beginning. We’d get a phone call, his voice husky
     with feeling, or a visit. When I was six and we were living with the Clapps, he brought presents, and two years before that,
     before we’d known any family that wasn’t our own, he seemed to be bringing himself.
    I don’t know how many months passed between our mother’s leaving and our dad’s early release from the work camp. I only know
     that Dad called Granny when he was out to tell her he was headed back to Fresno to get us. On the day he was to arrive, Granny
     scrubbed us sore and lined us up on the couch in our best dresses. “Now you girls be nice to your daddy,” she said. “He’s
     been gone a long time. He’s been away in the army.”
    This was the first we’d heard of any army, but we bought it, thinking he might swing through the door in uniform, holding
     one of those hats that look like pea-colored paper boats. It was so much nicer to think of him this way than as someone who’d
     been in prison, wearing an entirely different uniform and no hat whatsoever.
    When he came, he looked bigger than before, and his face was red, though I couldn’t tell if it was from sun or because he
     didn’t know what to say to us or to Granny, who stood at the mantel, hip out and arms crossed tight. When he squatted in front
     of us, grinning wide enough to split something, Penny began to cry and didn’t stop, even when Granny tried to bribe her with
     pudding and cold chicken.
    Was he surprised to find Mom gone, or did he know already? Were we different than he remembered? Louder? More skittish? Quieter?
     More difficult? Maybe he thought he could care for us on his own, then reconsidered, or maybe he knew all along that this
     would be a business visit; in any case, the very next day, he drove us downtown to the Department of Welfare and talked to
     a series of social workers about getting us placed in a foster home. The three of us sat on a wooden bench out in the hall
     while this happened, swinging our legs, talking about what kind of treat we were fixing to get. At that time, the welfare
     building in Fresno was situated directly across from the fairgrounds and right next to a McDonald’s; surely, we were in for
     a ride on the Ferris wheel or, at the very least, some French fries. What we got was a ride back to Granny’s, where he dropped
     us off and said, “You girls be good, now. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

    W HILE MY SISTERS AND I waited for our first foster-care placement, we stayed with our dad’s sister Bonnie, a no-nonsense chain-smoker with a hive
     of red hair. In the evenings, she heated up cans of SpaghettiOs while we labored over card houses at her slick coffee table.
     We slept all together on Bonnie’s foldout couch, which should have been more comfortable than our pallet at Granny’s, but
     wasn’t. It was new and squeaky, and the mattress smelled like rubber rain boots. At Granny’s, everything felt right, smelled
     right, sounded right, even the winos calling out to one another at the gas station on the corner, the sirens hurtling by on
     their way to trouble. We would go back to Granny’s for visits, sure, but would never live there again. She was too old. We
     couldn’t stay with Bonnie for long either, because she wasn’t a mom, she was a telephone operator.
    “Now don’t you worry,” Bonnie told us over creamed corn and wieners. “Any day now a family is going to swoop you up and claim
     you for their own.”
    I wanted that day to come but wasn’t sure how it could ever really happen. If our own family couldn’t find a way to