Read The House You Pass on the Way for Free Online

do about her,” Daddy said, starting the car and moving slowly down the long driveway. “Girl’s becoming hard to live with.”
    “Ma says it’s just her taking being a teenager too seriously. A phase.”
    “Well, it would be nice if you remembered how troubling this phase is for us and not make us go through it again.”
    “I’m not Dotti.”
    “I know.” But he looked worried anyway.
    Staggerlee stared out the window. Would there ever come a time when her parents weren’t comparing her to Dotti or using Dotti’s bad behavior to teach her a lesson? Her mother had said that she and Dotti were both women now. But still, Staggerlee thought, I’ll never be her. That was the thing her parents would never understand.

    AS THEY NEARED TOWN, Staggerlee’s stomach tightened. Town made her nervous. There was always someone somewhere ready to point them out, ready to whisper, “You remember that bombing back in sixty-nine? Well, that’s the family of those people.” Some days she felt like a sideshow act—being gawked at by people she didn’t know.
    People were walking fast underneath brightly colored umbrellas. A couple waved, and her father waved back. A group of men sitting underneath a gas station awning grinned and waved—some of them were Daddy’s hired hands.
    “What y’all know good?” her father said, rolling down his window and slowing the truck as they neared the men.
    “Devil beating his wife today, ain’t he?” one of the men said. He grinned. A wide, nearly toothless grin.
    Staggerlee smiled, looking out to where the sun had peeked out a bit between two clouds. It was an old expression, one she had heard her father use a couple of times—sun showers meant the devil was beating his wife. It didn’t make any sense but it was always funny to hear.
    Her father laughed and pulled over.
    “We’re going to be late,” Staggerlee said, getting nervous. “Tyler’ll be waiting.”
    He looked at his watch. “We’ll make it, sugar. Let me just say a quick hello.”
    Another man came up to the truck—a dark, gray-haired man in work pants and a shirt so washed out, Staggerlee couldn’t guess what its original color had been.
    “Your south field’s gonna need plowing before the sun gets too hot, Canan. I got some time next week I could get to it, if you’d like.”
    “That’d be as good a time as any, Trev. Just come on by and do it and let me know how much you got coming to you.”
    Trev smiled. “That your baby girl there?”
    Daddy nodded.
    “How you doing, brown sugar child?”
    “Fine, sir.”
    “She getting big, ain’t she?” He turned back to the men. “Y’all see Canan’s baby girl—she just about grown, ain’t she?”
    Staggerlee’s face grew hot.
    “Look just like he spit her out,” another man said.
    “Be beating boys off with a stick soon, Canan. My big-headed boy Derrick’s in your class, ain’t he?” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the rain dripping from his forehead.
    “Yes, sir.” His son was loud and gangly. Once, a few years back, he had put an apple on her desk, with a tiny red heart taped to it. Staggerlee had eaten the apple and returned the red heart. She had no idea what he had intended for her to do with it. After that, he had seemed cold toward her.
    “Adeen got another one coming.” Her father grinned.
    Derrick’s father whistled, low and steady, then turned to the group again. “Y’all hear that? Another one coming.”
    They all hooted.
    “Can’t keep the rooster in the barn, can you?” Trev grinned.
    Daddy smiled, and Trev tapped the truck once and stepped away.
    “You give my best to your family,” he said as Daddy started the engine. “I’ll see y’all sometime next week.”
    They drove off slowly, Daddy grinning and giving one last wave before he turned at the corner. When he got around his men friends, he seemed to step into a different person—someone relaxed and easygoing and ready to laugh. He had known some