…The next day Momma went to the hospital. “Why did Momma go to the hospital?” I asked my grandparents. “She’s depressed,” Granddaddy said. Billy and I had pork chops with baked apples and sweet potatoes and baked onions and rice and gravy on our TV trays that night. I asked Billy again what “depressed” was, “Remember, Piglet, it means you are sad a lot and you cry a lot,” Billy said. “You know how Momma didn’t come out of her room lately? When I saw her eyes the other day it looked like she had been crying.”
I needed to think that over. “Depressed,” was a big word for a kid in kindergarten.
One day Grandmomma and Granddaddy took Billy and me to see Momma in the hospital. The hospital smelled so clean. We had to sit in a waiting room and someone brought Momma out to meet with us. I heard a heavy door open and close and just before it closed, I heard someone scream. Then, Momma was hugging Billy and me. She was crying. She stopped and said, “I’ll be home soon, little darlings. Granddaddy bought us a house. You will each have a nice bedroom. We will get a dog and have birthday parties and everything will be nice.”
“Can I have a piñata for my birthday party?” Billy asked. “Yes, you can. And Peggy you can, too.” “What’s a piñata?” I asked. And I looked outside and the sun was shining. “It’s an animal made of papier-mâché that you hang on a tree. You take turns hitting it with a stick and when it breaks open candy falls all over the ground,” Billy said importantly.
In The Freedom of Space 
How painful for a kindergartener to suffer the insensitivities of teacher and classmates!! And her Mother isn’t waiting at home with arms wide open. Instead her mother retreats to her bedroom or seeks treatment at the hospital.
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