Read The Moon Sisters for Free Online Page B

we did that together, said I was like the sky to her sun—even though the sky was always there and my feet itched to wander more often than not. Still, I could make a decent life for myself in Tramp. One day I’d convince Babka that a marriage between my sauce and her dough could make a perfect pizza. I’d get to travel then, as I sold my pies all over the country. I listened more intently to my bubbling creation.
    I blame myself , Mama said after I’d counted twenty-two circles. I should’ve spent more time with her when she was growing up. I should’ve gotten to know her as a person and not just as a child. I should’ve been a friend to her as well as a mother. Children need their parents to be both, I think, but not all parents know how to be both .
    When I told her that she was the best friend any girl could want, Mama gave me her sunlight-in-the-rain look, with her lips upturned but her eyes sad.
    You made me your friend, Olivia Moon, because you wouldn’t take no for an answer when you asked me to play. You pulled me down to the ground and shoved a doll in my hand, and that was that. Not that I didn’t enjoy myself , she added, when I felt my own smile begin to slip. I just didn’t know I would enjoy myself until you showed me the way. With Jazz, I was a mother only. And sometimes not a happy one .
    Why weren’t you happy? I wanted to know, and she lifted her hands, palms down, into the path of the oven’s rising heat.
    Sometimes people get sad after having a baby. Women’s bodies are like that , she said. Maybe that was it, but I don’t know .
    It was difficult to picture—Jazz alone with her toys on the floor. I asked Mama if she was sad after I was born, but she said that she didn’t think so, that I’d kept her too busy for that. And then she looked again at the clock above the stove.
    Are you worried because you think she’s with a boy? I asked, but Mama didn’t answer. I stirred the sauce.
    I went rambling a lot, too, but I always told Mama where I’d gone if I forgot to tell her where I was going, which was most of the time. Back then I was too young for boy trouble, but I still thought about it. Nuzzling up to someone and kissing in a car somewhere, making more heat than a hundred stoves. That’s where I’d want to be, I decided then, if I were as pretty as Jazz and fifteen and had such a great chest. But I wasn’t about to say that to my mother.
    Maybe I should’ve homeschooled your sister, too, right from the start , Mama said, her voice like an expanding balloon. Then she would understand the value of education and communication. She wouldn’t be so closed off and rebellious and—
    Disappointing?
    The blanket around Mama’s shoulders dropped an inch from the oven when she spun around to face my sister.
    Jazz stood with a set jaw right outside the kitchen, her bare hand clutching the doorknob, her hair coated with tiny balls of ice. She sniffed, but I thought it was because her red nose ran from cold and not because she was going to cry. Jazz never cried.
    Where have you been? my mother asked, and Jazz snapped right back.
    Does it matter?
    Yes. It matters .
    I wasn’t sure if I should leave the room or stay, so I listened again to the sauce and stared at a spider I found near my foot on the slate floor. Circles closed in around that spider, like one lasso after another. The spider stayed still.
    Finally, Mama said, I’m sorry, Jazz. I shouldn’t have said those things .
    Did you mean them? Jazz asked.
    Yes , Mama said. I suppose I did .
    Jazz ran up to her room after that, and Mama ran after her, though it wasn’t any use, because Jazz slammed her door and locked it straightaway. Later, she told Papa that she’d been staying after school to help tutor a student in math, making some money so she could buy presents for my parents and my grandmother, who all had birthdays coming up. Mama cried a lot after that, and she slept a lot, too. Jazz didn’t speak to her for at least a