Because of Winn-Dixie

by Kate DiCamillo

Before I was born, he was a missionary in India and that is how I got my first name.

“Nine,” said the preacher. “She drank. She drank beer. And whiskey. And wine. Sometimes, she couldn’t stop drinking. And that made me and your mama fight quite a bit.

She was old with crinkly brown skin.

Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so as I can see you with my heart.”

“I have been in jail,”

wouldn’t like it very much that I was working for a criminal.

he did not in any way ever act like a criminal.

And that pet shop man is retarded and he was in jail and I wonder if your daddy knows that.”

“Because they’re ignorant,”

I said, “I don’t know. Why are all those bottles on it?” “To keep the ghosts away,” Gloria said. “What ghosts?” “The ghosts of all the things I done wrong.” I looked at all the bottles on the tree. “You did that many things wrong?” I asked her. “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. “More than that.” “But you’re the nicest person I know,” I told her. “Don’t mean I haven’t done bad things,” she said.

But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now. You judge Otis by the pretty music he plays and how kind he is to them animals, because that’s all you know about him right now. All right?”

I was just getting ready to stick my tongue out at them; but then I thought about what Miss Franny said, about war being hell, and I thought about what Gloria Dump said, about not judging them too hard.

“It’s just that I needed to know,” I said. “Because it helps explain Amanda. No wonder she’s so pinch-faced.”