Every day as I walked up the hill toward that pretty stone church, I hoped to find Marisol sitting on one of its worn wooden pews. Yet each time she wasn’t there I was almost glad. I didn’t know what I could ever say to her that would let us once again be friends, and every time I looked for her and didn’t find her, I felt spared the hardship of having to try. Often after I’d leave the church I’d go up onto East Mountain and walk the creek beds where me and her used to hunt for gold. Other times I’d walk the blocks me and Daddy used to walk in our “exploring walks,” almost always ending up down by the mill, amazed that there once was a time when I couldn’t wait to visit Ma there to hear stories about her and Daddy’s pasts. Now I was almost afraid to hear of their pasts. It was like them not talking about the years before they’d had me had made those years bigger and darker than they had been to begin with. Even Gram’s past had its own terribleness to it and as I’d sit in Saint Barbara’s I’d stare at Saint Barbara’s statue, at the expression on her face that was so sweet it was almost dumb, and I’d think of all the words that I now knew referred to Gram: loose, fallen, easy, floozy, harlot, whore.
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