CAASPP Success - Grade 11 Reading Comprehension - Narrative #2

Going Home
[1] Summers in Alabama had always been hot. My childhood memories are filled with days spent floating in the pond, sitting on the porch swing, lying sprawled in front of any source of moving air, trying in vain to get, and stay, cool. But when I walked out of the airport, already tired from a three-hour flight that had been delayed by over half an hour, laden with suitcases and dressed for an overly air-conditioned office climate, the heat came over me like a blanket. An old, unwashed woolen blanket that had been soaked in water, allowed to dry crumpled on the floor, then resoaked and thrown at me in all of its mildewed glory. The short walk to the car-rental agency felt like a trek through the jungle; by the time I got to my rental, my shirt was soaked through in patches, my hair was limp and sticky, and my mood was foul.
[2] During the hour-long drive home, I had plenty of time to think. About why I had left, about all the things I had chosen to leave behind, about the life I had built for myself far away from this world of heat and poverty and depression. Lost in my thoughts, I found myself driving up the gravel road leading to my childhood home before I realized where I was. The clapboard house looked the same as it had when I had left ten years earlier, save for a slight accumulation of the junk common to front yards in this part of the world. The old tire swing still hung askew from the hickory tree, half the ropes worn away from constant use. On the porch sat a rocker that had once been my grandmother’s and a watering can that looked almost as old. Parking off to the side, I grabbed my bags anxiously, trying to calm my nerves, and braced myself.
[3] No one ever used the front door to the house. I remembered that, of course, and walked instead to a side door that opened onto the kitchen. The door itself was propped open to allow for whatever breeze might meander by, the screen door shut to keep out the mosquitoes, giving me a view of the room. There was the kitchen table, covered in dents and scratches but polished to a high sheen; behind and to the right, the pantry, no doubt stocked full of the jars of preserves that my mother would have been making all summer; and straight ahead, my mother, standing at the sink. She had aged during the years of my absence. I could see it in the way she stood, slightly hunched over the sink, and in the color of her hair, pulled back as always. She had to have heard me coming—gravel roads announce visitors from miles away—but she showed no sign that she knew I was standing there in the doorway, debating whether or not to knock.
[4] “Mother? It’s me. I’m here.”
[5] Her back straightened as she replied, though she never turned or left the sink. “Come on in, and be sure to close the screen door behind you. It’s been a bad year for bugs.”
[6] I opened the door and stepped back in time. When I had announced my plan to go away for school, she had asked me how I thought I was going to pay for it. When the holidays came around, and I told her I wasn’t going to be able to come home, she didn’t ask why, and when I stopped calling on a regular basis, she didn’t then either. How many nights had I spent, hating her for making those decisions so hard for me? Already I could feel the anger rising, that she could act so unconcerned at my arrival, standing at the sink shelling peas. Her only daughter whom she hadn’t seen for a decade.
[7] As I approached the sink, ready to demand an explanation, I saw that her hands were shaking, the peas falling into the sink as much as the bowl. She looked so much older, aged even more than I had thought, in the same faded dress she’d probably worn for five years. It suddenly hit me that all that time, she hadn’t called not because she didn’t care, but because she did. She had never been able to leave, but I had, and she understood that I needed to strike out on my own, far from here. Now here I was, in my fancy city clothes, with my college degree and impressive job, and she didn’t know what to say. I bridged the gap the only way I knew how: I rolled up my sleeves, and started to help with the peas.