Tending to Grace Read online

  He hasn’t taken his eyes off me. “Who’s this?”

  I take a deep breath. “C-c-c-c ...” Then I stop, unable to go on. I might be standing knee-deep in water, but my face sparks. He reaches for Bo’s arm, misses, and wades closer. He looks at me without blinking.

  “Who are you?”

  “Cor-cor-cor . . .” I stop and start again. “C-c-c-cornelia.”

  He recognizes me; I can see it in his eyes. Then he looks away.

  “Dimwit,” he says, half under his breath. He drags Bo out of the water, up the hill, and into the car. I sink to a rock and reach up to wipe the mud from my face.

  56

  I carry a frog into Agatha’s kitchen a couple of hours later. It squirms so much I keep tightening my fingers around its slender body. It is half the size of the one Bo caught a few days ago. But it is alive and green. I can attest to the fact that it hops as high as my face.

  Agatha looks up from the cucumbers she is slicing.

  “What happened to you?”

  I tell her the story and drip on the floor.

  “Maybe you should race it for her,” Agatha says.

  57

  “Name, please.”

  A boy wearing a sign on his chest that says FROG JUMPING COMMISSIONER looks up at me. Behind him, someone has taped a set of rules, written on poster board in thick black paint:

  OFFICIAL RULES

  No toads.

  Any frog jockey who is rough will be asked to leave the race.

  A jump is measured by running a string from the start line to the frog’s front feet after it has hopped three times.

  DO NOT ARGUE WITH THE FROG COMMISSIONER.

  ALL JUDGMENTS ARE FINAL •

  58

  The frog commissioner looks up at me when I don’t answer.

  “I said, Name, please.”

  “Ummmmm.” I try to ride the vibrating wave of the m sound, hoping I can break into Cornelia without blocking on empty air. I look for Bo in the crowd, even though I don’t expect to see her. A boy with a frog twice the size of mine edges forward. “What’s going on?”

  “If you want to race, I need your name,” the commissioner says again. “Are you going to race or not?”

  I take a deep breath and push my foot into the ground. “C-c-c-c ...” I stop.

  “What?”

  More of the kids behind me move closer now. “C-c-c-c-c ...” I want to sink into the ground.

  The commissioner looks at me unbelieving, then laughs. “What’s the matter, forget your own name?”

  I take another breath and laugh right along with him. Then I spell my name. The easy way out is as simple as J-e-l-l-O.

  59

  “Jockey, on your mark.” A couple dozen kids kneel down around the circumference of the starting circle while I hold my frog in front of me. They’re all supposed to keep their frogs under control while I jump mine. This is a one-frog-at-a-time race.

  The boy on my left holds a frog with massive legs the size of my entire frog. My frog’s legs look like knitting needles.

  One kid loses control of his frog and watches it jump crazily out of the circle and across the pavement and the boy screams out, “Stop, stop!” but of course it doesn’t listen. I tighten my grip.

  “Get ready!” screams the frog commissioner. “Go!”

  60

  Two chained German shepherds growl and bark as I round the corner and walk up Bo’s driveway. A woman walks out of the house and wipes her hands on a dish towel and watches me from the porch. Two toddlers grab at her legs, peeking from behind her floured apron. Her stomach sticks out so far with a baby on the way it looks as if she’s tucked a laundry basket under her dress.

  I glance around quickly for the father. There’s no car in the driveway. Several chickens peck at the ground, which is worn thin and bare and hard as an old carpet. A cracked bathtub tilts on the grass, filled with muck.

  “Is B-b-b-bo here?”

  The mother looks me over. “You Lenore’s girl?” Her voice softens. She makes my mother’s name sound welcoming, promising, kind.

  I nod.

  “Bo told me you’re at Agatha’s. You look just like your mother. Like Agatha, too. Come on in. I’ve got something for you.

  “Bo’s out in the back with the boys. I baked this morning.” We walk into the kitchen and she pulls a chocolate cake out from beneath a checked towel that sits on the stove and wraps it in tinfoil and hands it to me.

  “There’s no frosting on it so it won’t get all over everything. Would you like a piece? I’ve got another. Have a seat.” She points to a table in the middle of the kitchen that sits on an orange and brown braided rug.

  The toddlers peek at me from behind her skirt and she drags them along behind her as she pulls a jelly glass from a cupboard and fills it with milk.

  Faded curtains cover the window over the sink. An old white sink sits near the stove with a built-in drainboard on the end. The room smells like chocolate.

  “All those potatoes. Agatha really helped us over the winter. My husband found a job, so things are better now. You can tell Agatha. And tell her I appreciate the vegetables Bo brings home, I surely do.” She smiles and cuts me a slice from the other cake and lays it in front of me.

  “How’s your mother?”

  I shrug.

  “She still the same?”

  I nod, although I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing.

  “She’ll come around. Sometimes it takes a while.” She smiles at me again.

  I’m not so sure I should have to wait at all. I’m pretty sick of waiting, actually. But instead of saying anything, I take another piece of cake. Bo is lucky to have a mother like this, I think. They both have the same kindness. I feel the warmth coming up through me as I take another bite of cake.

  61

  Bo covers her eyes and counts and three little boys dash away from her as I walk around back. A rusted swing set with one swing missing stands near the house.

  “I got you a r-r-ribbon,” I say, walking up to her. “A yellow one.”

  “How’d you do that?” She pushes the bangs out of her eyes and turns to the boys. “Don’t go too far!”

  “I caught a frog in the pond. I won a yellow ribbon.”

  “Wow, that’s so great, Corney. Let me see.”

  I pull the ribbon out of my overalls pocket and give it to her.

  “Wow, I wish I could’ve seen it. How’d you catch the frog?”

  “Took me the rest of the morning.” I laugh. “You don’t get m-m-m-money for third place, though.”

  She strokes the ribbon. “That’s okay. Was it fun?”

  I smile. “Yeah. I n-n-n-never raced a frog before.”

  We both laugh.

  “Want to play with us?”

  I shake my head. “I have to go. But if you w-w-want to come over, I can show you some stuff. About r-r-r-r-reading, I mean.”

  “You mean it? You really do?” When I nod, she jumps up and hugs me and it feels pretty good as I hug her back.

  62

  The next day I receive a postcard that sends a storm rushing across the desert.

  Good, I think. She’ll be back for my birthday. A mother doesn’t forget her daughter’s birthday.

  63

  I bring Bo to the library. I scan the shelves, looking for the right book. Finally, I put Teach Your Child to Read on the counter. Warm Milk looks up at me and smiles. I look at Bo. “I’d like a library card,” she says.

  Warm Milk types the card for Bo and hands it to her. “Would you like one, too?”

  I shake my head and plant myself facedown again.

  64

  “I’ll shut the door if you think your p-p-p-pa will come.”

  Bo slumps at the kitchen table. The heat hangs heavy inside the house and out. The black-eyed Susans droop after an afternoon at the back step. We watch them through the screen door, newly fixed by me, that barricades us against the flies and mosquitoes that followed an
other bout of humidity.

  “Oh, don’t worry about him none.” Bo laughs and slurps the lemonade I put in front of her. “He’s workin’ till midnight. He hates it, but our nights are nice and quiet now.”

  I pull out the phonics book and sit down beside her. “All right, then. If you’re sure.” I open the book. “We’re going to do short v-v-vowel sounds first.” I point to a letter a. “This makes a sound like the a in apple or the a in ant .”

  Then I show her an e. “This m-m-makes a sound like the e in echo or egg.”

  I point to the a again. “Aa, aa, aa,” I say. “Now you try.”

  “Aa, aa, aa.”

  Bo looks at the page intently. Her bangs flop in front of her eyes and she pushes them away. “How come it doesn’t sound like the a in plate?”

  “That’s for l-l-l-later.” I glance out the door. “Now come on. You have to learn this.”

  “I just don’t get it—why doesn’t it sound right?”

  There’s a bang at the door; we both jump before we realize it’s Agatha.

  “I got all these tomatoes here,” Agatha yells in to us. She dumps the tomatoes into the sink and covers them with water.

  “Okay,” I say, turning back to Bo,“it just doesn’t make s-s-s-sense to ask all these questions. Everyone asks these questions and it gets them nowhere. Now just say after me—aa, aa, aa.”

  Bo rolls her eyes. “Aa, aa, aa.”

  She turns her face into a sour ball. “I don’t want to do aa, aa, aa, Corney, I want to read. This is for babies.”

  “Bo,” I say, raising my voice just the tiniest bit, “you have to start at the beginning if you don’t want to be a baby.”

  Bo squinches her face and tries again. “Aa, aa, aa,” she says softly.

  “That’s b-b-better. Now for i, you make the s-s-sound like in itch or igloo. Say it—ih, ih, ih.”

  Bo crosses her eyes at Agatha, who laughs.

  “This is so dumb,” Bo complains. “Ih, ih, ih.”

  I ignore them.

  “Now why don’t we p-p-play a game,” I say. I tear a piece of paper into four squares and on one square I write the letter a, on another an e, and on a third an i. Then on the fourth square I draw a goose.

  “I told you this is for babies,” Bo says.

  “No, it’s going to be fun. Now look. We’ll f-f-f-flip these cards over and if you get one of the vowels, you make the sound, but if you get the goose, I make a honking sound and flap my arms like this.”

  Agatha pulls a tomato out of the sink and begins chopping.

  “Okay, pick a card.”

  Bo picks the goose.

  “Honk, honk, honk, honk,” I scream. I stand up and run around the table, flapping my arms. “Honk, honk.”

  “Why ain’t you teachin’ her the words, silly goose?” Agatha says from the counter, chuckling to herself.

  “It m-m-makes sense to go slow and make it fun so she can learn it this time,” I say, slightly miffed. “I b-b-bet if they made it fun in school, Bo would have learned it the f-f-f-first time around.”

  Agatha pulls out a knife and starts quartering the tomatoes. “At least she’s not too scared to go to school.”

  I ignore Agatha and turn the page. “We say o like ostrich.”

  Bo interrupts me. “Yeah, Corney, I never knew anyone who reads as good as you. You could go to college.”

  College? Me? Do you have to talk in college?

  Agatha interrupts my thoughts. “How long you goin’ to hide, Cornelia?”

  65

  Hide? I’m not hiding. I’m waiting for my mother to come back and take me away. I sink my arms deeply into a basket of wet clothes. I grab towel after towel, shirt after shirt, hanging my madness out with wooden clothespins.

  “When you goin’ to talk about it?” Agatha has walked up behind me. I stiffen but don’t turn. Two clothespins jam into my mouth, and I reach down for a pair of my socks.

  “You don’t talk about your mother, your stutterin’, you keep all that inside you, you’re goin’ to rot like an apple.”

  I pick up a pair of my socks and add those to the line as she walks away.

  She wants me to talk? How? I stuff my feelings and they layer themselves like a parfait dessert in the innermost part of my being.

  Inside, where nobody can see, I am glorious with the colors of the girl I wish I could be.

  66

  One day a postcard comes with a mother walking hand in hand with a child, and I know, even without flipping the card, that there’s been a shift in the barren landscape between my mother and me.

  67

  Something itches at me. It’s itched for weeks now, ever since Bo started coming around for reading lessons.

  I stand at the counter peeling potatoes and Bo practices her u sounds. “ ‘Muck, luck, truck, stuck,’ ” she reads, her index finger a magnet that pulls her through each word.

  But it’s not Bo that’s making me itch; it’s Agatha. She waits at the table every afternoon for Bo. She looks up from whatever bean she’s snapping or tomato she’s chopping and watches Bo read.

  “Corney, I don’t know this word,” Bo says, looking up from her book. I put my knife down, ready to walk over to her, then pick it up again. The itch runs deep. “Ask Agatha,” I say, looking over at my aunt. “I got to get this done.”

  Agatha looks down to the dried beans she’s picking through, hunting for bits of pebble and dirt.

  “I’d need glasses for words that small,” Agatha says quickly.

  68

  I know it’s him as soon as the car turns up the driveway. We don’t move as he crunches along the gravel to the back door. Even Agatha sits without breathing.

  He looks in at us through the screen, his eyes traveling from Agatha to me and then stopping on Bo. “What are you doing here?”

  “Pa!” Bo covers the reading book with her hands. Her father unlatches the door without anyone asking him in. Agatha stands. “Pete,” she says. I grab hold of Bo’s hand.

  He ignores us and glares at Bo. “No one said you could come here.”

  “St-st-stop yelling.”

  He turns slowly and stares at me.

  “This is my niece, Pete,” says Agatha. “Now you be calmin’ down.”

  “Calm down? What are you talking about? No one said she could come here. What’s going on, anyway?”

  His eyes jump from the reading book to Bo’s paper and pen to Agatha’s beans.

  “She’s l-l-learning to read,” I blurt out, grabbing Bo even tighter.

  That fact catches his attention. “Reading? She reads just fine.”

  When I don’t say anything more, he turns to Agatha.

  “What is this, you think we need some kind of charity? We don’t need it, that’s for damn sure.” He turns to Bo. “Get out to the car. Now.”

  I take a deep breath. “She can’t r-r-r-read hardly at all. She c-c-c-c-could never go to college reading like that.”

  He laughs, sneers. “College? You think I got money to send a girl to college?” He grabs Bo’s arm and marches her out of my grasp and out the door.

  I look at my empty hand, unbelieving. I look up at Agatha, but she is sitting back down at the table, slumping into her arms. I take a deep breath. What now? What now? What now? I breathe again and run outside as he crunches toward the driveway. “J-j-just wait,” I scream. “She’ll go to college. J-just wait.”

  69

  “You could hide a book in these potatoes,” Agatha says a few nights later, walking up from the cellar.

  “How are we g-g-g-going to do that?” I use a towel to wipe whole wheat dough from my hands and walk over to the table.

  “Like this.” Agatha pulls a dozen potatoes off the top of a bushel basket and lays them on the table. “Put a couple of books in here like this and we’ll pile these potatoes back on top.” She looks up at me.

  “Do you think it could work?”

  “Best I can think, it will. Now go get some books.”
br />   I pull two books off the counter and hand them to Agatha. “He’ll shoot us if he finds out.”

  “He won’t find out. We’ll go when he’s at work.”

  When the basket is filled, I carry it out to the back of the truck. “I forgot Leo the Late Bloomer,” I yell to Agatha over my shoulder. “It’s her f-f-f-favorite. Can you get it?”

  “You get it.”

  I heave the basket on the truck. “It’s on the shelf in my r-r-room.”

  She opens the door to the truck and climbs in. “Damn, I forgot the keys.”

  “Get the book while you’re in there,” I say, taking the top layer of potatoes off the basket so I can add another book.

  When Agatha gets back, she carries The Cat in the Hat.

  I look at it, confused. “She’s already read this one. I said Leo the Late Bloomer.”

  “I don’t have time to fiddle around, Cornelia. I’ve got to get back before it gets too dark so I can get the rest of the cucumbers in from the garden. We’ve got to hurry.”

  I put The Cat in the Hat in the basket and cover it with potatoes.

  70

  The dogs howl as soon as we start up the driveway. The father meets us on the porch.

  “What do you want?” he yells to us as soon as Agatha turns off the truck.

  “You said he w-w-w-wouldn’t be home.”

  Agatha shrugs and opens her door and climbs out. “Just had too many of these potatoes, Pete, and I was wonderin’ if you could use some. We’ll never use all these.”

  He doesn’t say anything; he’s looking at the back of the truck. I can tell he’s trying to decide.

  “Plus,”Agatha hurries on, “I wanted to tell you I was sorry about your little girl. Had no business invitin’ her over and all.”

  I can’t believe she’s saying that. He grumbles to himself. He finally walks off the porch and around to the back of the truck and looks at the basket of potatoes.