Read Online Also Known As Harper by Ann Haywood Leal - Free Book Online

this,” he said. “It makes the dirt settle down to the bottom.” He pushed aside the top of a yellow plastic truck.
    â€œDoesn’t someone come around and clean it, like they do at the Y?” Hem asked. “They come round every Saturday in the summer and chase us out of the pool early, so they can clean it.”
    Lorraine shook her head.
    â€œNo one comes round here but us,” Randall said. “We try to scoop out the big stuff.” He cupped hishands together and lifted some dead leaves from the corner of the pool.
    I couldn’t believe Hemingway remembered about going to the Y. Daddy was the one who used to take us, but that was a good two years ago. Before the whiskey took over his breathing and talking. Before Flannery.
    I could still remember my eyes and nose watering from all the chlorine they put in the pool. And I could almost feel Daddy’s hands, gently wiping over my eyelids.
Blink, Harper. It’ll flush it out. Saturdays are free, and they have to put all the chemicals in because of kids like Hem, who use it for a second toilet.
And he’d laughed and scooped Hem up above the water, like Hem couldn’t do anything wrong if he’d tried. I had always wanted Daddy to laugh that way with me.
    I knelt down and ran my hand along the bumpy edge of the concrete. Daddy used to go in the pool with us. And if we got too close to the deep water, he’d be right behind us.
You’re past the line there, Harper Lee.
His voice was slow and easy, and he’d grab me around the middle and tugboat me back to the other side. Just like he’d done with Mama when he came around and rescued her from her old life. He’d scooped her up from that Louisiana bayou. Iused to like to imagine him carrying her suitcase for her and carting her away.
Come on with me where I can take care of you, Georgia
, he might have said.
We got nothing but time to hear all those nice stories you have in your head.
If I knew I could have that Daddy back, I’d wait right next to Hem every day.
    I stood up and walked to the old blue slide at the end of the pool. The end that was supposed to dip into the pool had snapped off, making it look like you were sliding off a cliff or a big drop-off. I had my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and I was thinking on how I might like to try that drop-off, when I saw the sneaky coyote eyes peeking through the opening in the blackberry bushes.

 
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Chapter Eleven
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    â€œ NO ONE INVITED YOU , Winnie Rae Early.” I saw her poke her nosy old self through the opening in the blackberry bushes. “Go right on back through those stickers and find someone who wants your company.”
    I watched her scrape her arm on one of the blackberry thorns as she moved the rest of the way through the bushes.
    â€œWhat are you doing with the retarded girl?” Winnie Rae rubbed at her arm and pointed her elbow in Lorraine’s direction.
    I thought about the special-education room at the end of the long hallway at school where they had the big tricycles and Sebbie Weaver, the girl who still brought her baby doll to school in the fifth grade. “That word is full of meanness, Winnie Rae,” I said. I remembered what my teacher hadtold me back in the third grade. “You don’t say ‘retarded,’ you say ‘developmentally delayed,’ and Lorraine’s not that
at all.
”
    I looked at Lorraine, who was willing Winnie Rae back against the sticker bushes with her eyes.
    But as usual, nothing stopped Winnie Rae once she got her mouth in motion. “How come you weren’t at school today, Harper Lee? Mrs. Rodriguez finished up my poems today. She said they were the best she’d seen.”
    I’d heard Winnie Rae’s story writing before, so I doubted that. She would never take my place. There was no way I was going to let that happen.
    â€œYou better get yourself to school tomorrow, Harper