“Don’t you hate it all?” I said. “B.O.
and
. . .”— I opened my sweater to one side and took a quick look at my chest—“…getting boobs?” I figured I could say this to Helena; her boobs were ahead of my boobs. “My puberty book says there’s no way to stop ’em.” I paused. “Darn things could get
huge
!” I opened my eyes wide.
That made Helena laugh. Helena laughing made me laugh. As we walked past Hose Company No. 6, two of the firemen who were out front smiled at us. “What’s so funny?” one called.
“Nothing!” I called back quickly, but Helena and I looked at each other and cracked up even more. She bent over, holding her stomach. The firefighters started laughing too.
“Why are we laughing?” one wanted to know.
“Don’t tell, don’t tell!” Helena whispered. She pushed at me.
I shook my head. We continued down the sidewalk in a fit, bouncing off each other as we went.
By the time we reached Seneca Street, we’d recovered enough to speak almost normally again. “Addie, I hope Robert is wrong. I hope you make the Stage Orchestra,” said Helena. “We need another good flute in the woodwinds.”
I smiled at Helena and decided on the spot that making the Stage Orchestra was one of my new goals.
"
H
ey, Soula?”
“Yes, Cookie?”“
“What do you know about Onion College?”
“Onion College? You mean
Union
College?”
I closed my eyes and pictured the letters on the sign at the entrance. “Oh yeah. It
is
Union.” I laughed and knocked myself in the head with the heel of my hand. “I should have known that!”
Soula laughed. “We all got our gaps. Fine place, so I hear,” she said. “Pretty campus, too. I go special to see the Jackson’s Garden when the roses bloom in June.”
“It looks like there’s a different world inside those gates.”
“Hmm. Gates’ll do that. Just like bridges,” Soula said. She bent to pull up the glued flap on a cardboard box. “Wanna help me stack the ’ronis?”
“Sure.” I picked up a few boxes of macaroni and began placing them on the shelf.
“Just do them nice so Elliot won’t have a chicken when he gets in,” Soula warned. I smiled back. Elliot was like that; things had to be neat.
Soula passed me a few more boxes. Her hands were shaking. She stopped still and wiped her brow.
“I’ll get these. You sit down,” I said.
Soula sighed, reached behind her, and let herself down into the lawn chair. I’d seen her scoot that chair all over the shop, sometimes just walking her big legs into it to move it. It would have been funny if not for the fact that she really
needed
to sit often. I kept thinking about how she’d said, “Four more to go.” Soula was sick with something. Mommers had told me that it wasn’t nice to ask about people’s health problems. “If they want you to know, they’ll tell ya,” she’d said. So I waited to be told.
“That’s better.” Soula pushed a grin at me as she settled into her chair. “Thank you, Cookie.”
I patted her hand real quick. She fanned her face and blew a puff of her breath through her bright pink lips.
“What do you mean about gates and bridges?” I asked.
“Hmm …just that whole passageway feeling. Like there’s gotta be something better on the other side.”
“Oh,” I said. I squared a row of boxes with my hands and went on stacking. “Do you think that’s true?”
Soula shrugged. “Probably just a myth. But the human race likes to have things to believe in. Including me. I’ve always wanted to move over to the other side of Freeman’s Bridge. Get out of the city. I’ve got it in my head that I could get a better life. A safer life,” she added.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Seems to me that any place where there’s more grass and more trees is safer. The city has dangers, you know. Even our little corner here, I’m afraid.” Soula stared at the floor ahead of her and was quiet for a moment.
I waited, then asked, “Like the brown fields?”
“Yes, Cookie. And the exhaust and the refuse, the use and misuse and then no use at all. I mean, look out back here.” She pointed a thumb toward the Empty Acre and shook her head. “What can you do with a cement field full of holes? Waste, waste, waste. And here I am, selling junk food outta the micro-nuker, cigarettes, gasoline by the tankful! Talk about waste! I’m part of it too.”
“Hmm. But you know, Soula, I’ve got a grandpa and he lives across the bridge and up on a farm.
He’s got an orchard and a vegetable garden and I guess he’s healthy.” I thought for a second. “But he’s kind of a grump. Like he isn’t any happier for living there.”
“No?” she said. A little smirk came loose at one corner of her mouth.
I shook my head. “I know the health stuff is important, but I think there’s more to getting happy than that.”
She leaned forward, kind of studying me. I worried that I shouldn’t have said it. Soula actually might have been happy just to have good health.
“I think you need heroes, too,” I said. I made a little fist for punch.
“Heroes?” she asked. “Like friends and family?”
“They
can
be friends or family,” I said. “Webster’s says—”
“Webster’s?”
“The dictionary,” I explained. “A hero is someone who sets themselves apart from others. You know—someone who is strong or shows courage, takes a risk. And I know Webster’s is probably talking about well known heroes. Like from the newspapers and history books. Inventors and athletes and people like Martin Luther King.”
“Uh-huh.” Soula was still listening.
“But don’t you think it’s possible . . .”—I twisted up my face—“…that every person is a hero to someone else?” I said.
Soula sat back. She blinked at me once and said, “Well, Little Cookie, I guess you could be right. Never thought of it myself.”
“Never thought of what?” Elliot asked as he came through the door. He paused at the cash counter, running one hand through his close red hair and straightening the Quick-Pick sign with his other.
“Heroes,” Soula answered. “Addie says we’ve all got ’em.”
“Hope so.” Elliot grinned. “Makes living kinda scary, otherwise.”
The three of us looked at one another for a second or two. I did a double thumbs up in agreement. Then Soula and Elliot each put up two thumbs with me.
“Six thumbs up,” I said. “You can’t beat that!”
“
I
s there dinner?” I asked.
Mommers flapped a hand at me to make me be quiet.
“My homework’s done and I already practiced.”
“I heard, I heard,” Mommers mumbled. She typed furiously and squinted at the computer screen. She read something and typed again.
“So, do you want me to cook?”
No answer.
Truth was I never really liked dinnertime. Breakfast was our best meal because it was the only meal that was normal. What I mean by that is we had either toast or cereal. That’s normal for breakfast—everyone eats those things for breakfast. But
we
often had cereal or toast for dinner, too.
I discovered that if I just added tomato and melted cheese to the toast it looked much more like dinner. And if I just heated up a can of condensed soup—tomato or cream of chicken, for example—and didn’t add the water, it tasted pretty good poured over toast. So, toast dinners became my specialty.
Mommers cooked too. There were nights when something seemed to take hold of her and she’d cook up a storm, making quarts of spaghetti sauce and homemade garlic bread. She’d throw the noodles at the fridge to see if they’d stick and then call me to the table, and we’d eat and eat as if we were bears packing it away for winter. I remembered a time back at the house when she’d roasted a turkey in the middle of July and she’d made the gravy and mashed potatoes. She’d called Dwight at work and had him stop for cranberry sauce. We had Thanksgiving in July out at the picnic table.
But most nights at the trailer, Mommers was not interested in dinner—not in cooking it anyway. Then I’d scrounge around in the minikitchen—Mommers was not a good grocery shopper—and make something up. Often we’d agree that this meal or that meal hadn’t come out too great. But there were other things besides the food that could ruin dinner.
Mommers liked to watch the TV and surf the Net at the same time. If she looked at the TV too long, the Internet kicked her off and then she got mad. Sometimes that ruined dinner. And on this night she tuned in her favorite show:
Jeanette for
the Judgment,
which was always on at seven o’clock—dinnertime.
I hated
Jeanette for the Judgment
.
“See that, Addison?” Mommers said. “I always make the same decision as Jeanette. I could’ve done that job.” She inched forward in her chair.
“I wouldn’t wanna be Jeanette,” I said. I cut two pieces of toast into squares, poured some cream of chicken soup over them and set the plate down in front of Mommers.
“Why?” Mommers asked. She did not look away from the TV.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I said. “I mean, she can never be sure.” I looked at Jeanette up there in her black robe and my stomach got all nervous. I couldn’t watch. The bad thing about the trailer was there was no way to get away from that show.
“Watch this, Addie,” Mommers said, pointing to the set. “See, the woman owned the catering company before she became partners with the pastry chef. He’s the little guy with curly hair and …”
I didn’t want to care about the caterer or the pastry chef. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Even the person Jeanette rules in favor of isn’t gonna really feel good when it’s over,” I said.
“Why do you say that?” Mommers asked.
“Because they
still
had the fight in the first place,” I answered. I finished making up my own plate.
“Look at Jeanette,” Mommers said. She shook her head adoringly at the woman on the TV screen. “She is gonna skewer that little sleaze. Just watch!” We waited silently while the verdict came down. “See, I knew it! I knew it!” Mommers let out a yell. “I was right again!”
“You’re very good at being Jeanette,” I told her.
Maybe if I’d had the Love of Learning, I’d have understood why it was such a good show. But I crawled into my bunk with my plate and closed my curtain. The second case would be presented right after the commercials. I ate my toast dinner, plugging my ears between bites and humming my new flute music while I chewed. I didn’t have to hear anything that Jeanette or Mommers decided about those poor people on the TV.
"
H
ello!“ I waved my arm over my head so hard my shoulder ached.
“Hey, Addie! Come see what we’ve got in the truck,” Dwight called.
I jumped down the trailer steps and headed across the tar-patch yard. Brynna and Katie leaned close to Dwight from either side. All three of them were trying to hide smiles. The Littles each rubbed their faces against Dwight as if they could somehow wipe those grins off on his jeans. They had a secret, and I felt a little bad that I wasn’t in on it.
But October had come and I was one month closer to having them all back near me. Dwight’s renovation project was on schedule so far, and I figured I could stand it if they wanted to come surprise me every once in a while.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We picked out something special for you,” Brynna said.
“Guess what it is, Oddie.” Katie jumped up and down. “You want it!”
I peeked into the bed of the truck, where a few canvas tarps were heaped over a lumpy something or other.
“We got enough dirty laundry around here,” I said.
Dwight flashed his white teeth at me. The Littles giggled.
“Guess, guess!” Katie pleaded.
I took her hand and began to swing it in mine. “Well, let’s see. Is it a Christmas tree?”
“No!” More giggles.
“A snowman?”
“No, no, no!”
“Let’s see. Halloween is two weeks away. Must be a …
pumpkin
!”
“Not just a
pumpkin
,” Brynna said. She swung her shoulders from side to side, still full of their secret.
Dwight pulled back the canvas cover. There was a pumpkin, but nestled beside it was a small wire cage.
“Oh, Dwight. What is it?” I asked.
“Hampister! Hampister!” Katie yanked on my arm as she jumped up and down. “We got you a hampister!”
“She means a hamster,” Brynna added.
“I don’t believe it!” I said. “It’s really mine?”
Dwight lifted the cage out of the truck and handed it to me. A little pink nose tunneled up out of the wood chips. Then a pair of black eyes blinked open and out wiggled my own cream and honey–colored hamster.
“Wow!” I whispered. “Thanks, you guys!”
“It’s a girl one. What you gonna call it, Oddie?” Katie asked.
“I have to think about that,” I said. “I want to give it just the right name.”
Mommers met me coming in the door. “Oh yuck!” she said.
“I’ll keep her out of your way,” I promised, holding the cage to my chest.
“Oh Mommers, she’s so cute!” Brynna swooned.
“Hampister!” Katie shouted again.
“Katie, it’s
hamster
,” Brynna said patiently. “There is no
P
in it.”
“If there’s no pee in that thing, I’ll eat my hat,” Mommers said. She turned to Dwight, who had come in behind us carrying the pumpkin. “This is lovely, Dwight.” Mommers fixed a look on him and gestured toward the cage with her cigarette. “Where are we supposed to put it? In the fridge? Look at this place!” She blew a puff of smoke away from Katie, who was hugging her hip, then took another drag.
Dwight gave her a nod. “So, Denise. How’s the job hunt going?”
Mommers sneered at him. “Ha-ha,” she said.
“The girls want to go out for lunch. We could find a diner,” he said. “That sound good to you?”
“Are you
inviting
me?” Mommers asked.
“Of course. This is your time with them.”
So we ate at a place called Numbskull Dorry’s Pretty Good Pub Food. Crazy name, but I didn’t think about it much at the time. I was nervous going in there. Mommers seemed like a walking grenade around Dwight, and I hated to leave my new hamster at home. But I wanted to make everything go as smoothly as possible so I let myself be herded into a booth with the rest. Mommers sat on one side with Katie and Brynna glued to either side of her, and I sat next to Dwight. “Addie, you are getting so tall.” He tilted his head sideways as he looked at the top of my head.