Read The Summer We Got Free for Free Online

back a year and a half ago,” Maddy said, smiling.
    “Was that a good thing?” Regina asked.
    “If that’s my only choice, I’ll say good, but really
it was a wonderful thing,” Maddy
said, and all three of them laughed.
    The children came down off the porch to investigate
their new neighbors and Regina told Maddy and Malcolm their names and ages.
Sarah was six, long-limbed and pretty, and she smiled politely at them. Ava and
George Jr. were four year-old twins. George Jr., who was nicknamed Geo, was chubby-cheeked
and had a quiet curiosity in his eyes as he looked up at Maddy. “How are you?”
he asked her, not in the way children usually asked that, not as if he was
simply saying words he had learned to say when greeting someone, but with a
kind of attention and concern that Maddy had never felt coming from a child.
The question felt so genuine that Maddy could not give a standard answer such
as just fine or good, thank you, baby , without feeling as if she were lying, so she
said the truth, which was, “I think I’m mostly okay.”
    Ava had large, heavy-lashed eyes and her knees were
covered with scabs, some of them freshly picked-at. Up close, she was even more
transfixing. There was a hum about her, almost a glow, almost a whisper, but
neither of those things entirely; something unnameable that seemed to radiate from her. It warmed them up in the chilly autumn air and
caused a little laugh to come up out of Maddy, unexpected.
    “Oh,” Maddy said. “I felt so happy all of a sudden.”
    Ava grinned at them, revealing the same small space
between her two front teeth as her mother, and said, “Y’all got cookies?”
    “Ava, go somewhere, please,” Regina said.
    Ava frowned up at her, then skipped away, back up onto
the porch, and both Maddy and Malcolm watched her as she went. Neither found it
easy to look away from her. When Regina leaned down into the truck bed to retrieve
another box, Maddy and Malcolm each grabbed one, too, and followed her up the
steps.
    The layout of the house was the same as every other
house on the block. They entered into a small foyer that led to a short hallway,
off of which there was a living room, a dining room, and, at the back of the
house, a good-sized kitchen. Stairs led from the foyer up to the second floor. Neither
Malcolm nor Maddy knew who had owned the house before, because no one had lived
in it since either of them had been on the block, but whoever they were, they
sure seemed to like red.
    “I never seen so many red walls,” Malcolm said.
    “It’s one of the reasons we settled on the house,” said
Regina. “Ava loves color. The more of it she can get, the happier she is. If it
aint no color on the walls, she’ll put some on them, with crayons, or my
lipstick, or whatever she can think of. This way saves us a lot of headaches.”
    The kitchen door swung open and the sandy man with the
large hands waved at them as he came into the foyer. “Morning.”
    From her window, Maddy had judged him to be four or
five years older than his wife and up close that estimate seemed right. He was
tall and narrow-shouldered, nice-looking in spite of having big, almost bulgy
eyes, and he had a smile that was friendly and seemed to hold back at the same
time. He said his name was George Delaney, and Maddy and Malcolm introduced
themselves.
    “What brought y’all up here from Georgia?” Malcolm
asked them.
    “Oh, you know,” George said.
“It’s more opportunity up here. White folks down there do everything they can
to keep us from having anything.”
    Maddy shrugged. “White folks up here aint much
better.”
      “They aint much better nowhere,” George said, and they all laughed and nodded agreement on
that.
    “What y’all do for work?” Maddy asked.
    “I’m in the streets department,” George said.
    “Working for the city?” Malcolm said. “That’s a good
deal.”
    “Regina works for some white folks out in Springfield,
but it’s a little far from here.