Prelude To Brighter Days

[beckstra]

Jessica's dress was simple cotton--pale yellow in the sun. In her right hand she held a blue, plastic cup of cranberry juice close to her chin. In her left hand, Jessica loosely carried a ragdoll, putrid from the times she'd spat up on it, played in the mud with it, and flung it across the acre of horse apples surrounding her.

The town was small and noisy at her feet. Cardboard boxes and wirey branches formed an imaginary life few of us could ever dream to live. Jessica licked the cranberry flavor from the corners of her mouth and scootched in toward the church. Her lively red hair danced in the wind like a banner.

The little girl's savior sat on the splintered wrap-around porch, sipping sun tea and pawing at dirty gnats. It was a new place and a new time for the two of them. The foster family was optional, but if it was gonna come with a wrap-around porch, she would succum to living with the pope to get her sister away from that man.

There was a certian flow to life in this new place, not nearly as barbaric or "dog eat dog" as Atlanta. In the distance, as the clouds started gathering, and pouring in nearby Savannah, she spotted a rainbow leading into the next door neighbor's yard. "Jessica, come here!"

The little girl shot up like a flash of lightning and ran to her sister's arms. Turning her towards the rainbow, she whispered into the little girl's pink ear, "Look." Without a word, the redheads peered into the slush sky and the rain started falling.