alike, she understood a little better. In the second grade, she figured out that other kids did not call their mothers by their nicknames. She was in the third grade when she invited a little girl over to her house to play and found out that all little girls didn’t have mothers who brought men home.
The second time she invited her friend over, the little girl said, “My mama says that your mama is a whore and I can’t go home with you.”
Teresa had gone home that evening and asked her mother if she was a whore. Angel had slapped her across the face, told her to never say that word again, and made her sit on the porch until dark. Whatever that word meant, it had to be worse than the swear words that Angel spewed when she was drunk or angry. Teresa was careful not to say it again, or to invite kids to come to her house.
Not long after that, she realized that leaving kids alone in trailers until the wee hours of the morning wasn’t what other mothers did. Some little girls had mothers who combed their hair and made them breakfast every morning before they went to school. The whole concept had seemed strange to Teresa back then, but when she had come to live with Miss Janie, things had changed. Miss Janie took her to the beauty shop and had her hair thinned and layered to make it more manageable, and Teresa learned what it was like to have a hot breakfast every single morning.
Noah startled her when he touched her on the shoulder. “Earth to Teresa.”
She looked up from the floor where she was sitting. “Sorry about that. I was living in the past for a moment.”
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
She watched him load a roller and expertly cover a section of the yellow wall. “Good job. You’re a fast learner.”
“Sam’s a good teacher, but I don’t think you were woolgathering about paint. The expression on your face was pure sadness. Were you grieving for Miss Janie?” Noah asked.
Teresa finished taping off that section of baseboard and scooted down a few feet. “No, not this time. I was thinking about my mother. I should probably just say Angel. I was not allowed to call her Mama, or Mother, or Angelina, for that matter. She was Angel, and she got really mad if I called her Mama.”
Sam added, “When Angelina was a toddler, her mother went to prison for a drunk-driving accident that killed an elderly man and left her in the care of her grandmother. Her grandmother died not long after Angelina moved out. The poor girl didn’t have much of an upbringing, but that doesn’t excuse the way she treated you.”
“How did you know that?” Teresa asked.
“Miss Janie told me y’all’s stories when she first took you girls into her home,” Sam answered.
“Is her mother still in prison?” Teresa had never heard anything about a grandmother or great-grandmother, other than when Angel told her now and then that she hated churches because Mama Lita made her go every time the doors were open.
“Miss Janie kept tabs on all that and said she was leaving you girls as much information as she could. Did y’all find those boxes she put together for you? I bet you’ll find most of that in there,” he answered.
“We found those boxes, and I’ll look into mine later,” Teresa said. “Life sure does have some twists and turns, don’t it? But me and Kayla will still be here for a long time, and Will is moving here, so maybe we’ll start a trend and the town will come back.”
“Miss Janie used to say, ‘It is what it is.’” Kayla had moved to the other side of the room with her can of paint and small brush. “I never understood what she was talking about until lately. Life is what it is. We either repeat what we know, or we learn from it and go forward in a better direction. Wouldn’t it be something if folks started moving back here, and we even became a little bedroom community for folks working in Sulphur Springs and Paris?”
“It sure would,” Sam replied. “What time did you say Will is going to show up?”
“He is supposed to head here as soon as he gets off work, no later than five, and he is bringing pizza with him,” Kayla answered. “Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty for him to do. We’ve still