A Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Lauren DeStefano
- Language: English
- Genre: Children’s Parent Books
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Pram died just before she was born. It was a brutally hot August, and the
dogwood tree was parched. Its white blossoms had gone weary and brown
without rain. The nurses pitied it. In fact, that was how Pram’s mother was
discovered. A nurse filled up the janitor’s mop bucket with fresh water, and
she went outside to water the dogwood tree, as unconventional as that might
have been.
Instead, the bucket fell at her feet, and the water spread around the
parking lot, never quite reaching the grassy island that contained the tree.
For there was a woman hanging by the only branch that looked sturdy
enough to support her weight. She was almost too unreal to be a woman at
all, if not for her pregnant stomach.
In the next instant, there was a gurney and shears severing the rope,
hands easing the woman down with great care as though she could be
saved. Pram was inside her, already dead. But doctors aren’t put off by the
finality of death. They believe it can be negotiated. If they can pull the right
strings at the right time, they can make dead things breathe again. So Pram
lived after all.
Pram, orphaned right at the start of her life, was inherited by two very
practical aunts. They ran the Halfway to Heaven Home for the Ageing out
of their two-hundred-year-old colonial house. According to Pram’s books,
“aging” was misspelled, and Pram noticed only when she first learned to
read. She climbed on a chair and scratched the unwanted e from the sign
with a black crayon and was promptly scolded. The crayon mark was
scrubbed down to a dull scar.
Pram wasn’t told the story of her birth. But even as a very small girl, she
felt deep in her chest that she was alive and dead at the same time.
Pram’s aunts had no idea what to do with a little girl, much less how to
love one. They did give her the very best things they could think of: a name,
for starters. Pram was short for Pragmatic, because after much deliberation,
they agreed it was a sensible name for a young lady. It was also a trait her
mother had lacked.
They gave her a bedroom in the attic. It overlooked the pond where her
mother had liked to swim, and had bright daisy wallpaper, and teddy bears
that wore dust hats and dust sweaters. For dessert she was often permitted
slices of cake with whole strawberries inside. They gave her a plaid jumper,
and Aunt Dee ironed the pleats while Aunt Nan starched the white blouse
that went under it.
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