Read Online Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman - Free Book Online Page B

wrong like Calle folks, she’s good about double negatives, so I know this means she really doesn’t want to go.
    She says, “I’m not supposed to go into drinking establishments.” That’s the way she talks, formal, like a book from a long time ago, and I think her family must all talk like this, like her house is still in black and white with dinner on the table and no phone ringing.
    “The Truck Stop is a bar,” I tease her, “but you can wait outside while I run in. Okay?”
    This works. “Okay, but be quick so I don’t catch it,” she says, and we run on.
    At the Truck Stop I’m barely in the door before Mama’s on the phone with Grandma and giving me the thumbs-up for coming straight down. I climb up on a barstool and give her a kiss and hop right down like I’m supposed to, but when I see her start making me my usual, a Shirley Temple with more than the legal limit of maraschino cherries, I say, “I’m not thirsty, Mama. Besides, Viv is going to the playground too, she’s waiting outside.”
    Mama is surprised. She stands there frozen, the jar of cherries in her hand.
    “You remember Viv, we walk to school together.” I turn to the door and shout over the music from the jukebox, “Wave, Viv!”
    I see the flutter of her dress as she steps in the doorway and waves quick, “She’s not allowed inside ’cause—” and just then I learn that what Grandma says about Dennis is right, he’s the true gentleman of the Calle.
    “A friend of R.D.’s doesn’t only deserve a wave, she deserves a bow,” he says, and he does it, leans down from his barstool and bows at Viv’s shadow in the screen door. I hear her giggle. “And a
flower.” Dennis hands me two toilet-paper flowers this time, one for me and one for Viv, and Mama seems to relax.
    “Remember the rule, one hour and stop by here on your way back so I can call Grandma,” she says; her hand is already on the phone to call Grandma again as I wave my flowers and run out the door.
     
     
    Viv is careful with her flower all the time she’s swinging, she says it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever gotten, but when our hour’s up she asks if I’ll keep it at my house since her uncle will want to know where she got it. I do, of course. I have a garden of Dennis’s flowers on the shelf by my bed, and when I get home I put Viv’s right in the middle.

shoot
    I ’ve been keeping my mouth shut but this morning the silence isn’t my fault. There’s no school today and no Grandma’s either because snow snuck down quiet and deep last night, buried the roads and our front porch and there’s no driving until they’re cleared. No matter what, I haven’t told Mama anything because the Hardware Man said not to, and even though he’s gone I know he meant it. And I’m not telling her now because I don’t want to start an avalanche, don’t want to shake all that we’ve built up out from under us, send us sliding back to where we started. If she thinks everything’s all right, everything is all right, and so I keep the words in but they curl tight in my throat and under my tongue and sprout out of my lips like bean sprouts twisting up from the egg cartons on Grandma’s windowsill. I keep holding my hands over my mouth, watch TV over my fingers, go to bed with both hands under my nose in case one falls away and the truth comes pouring out in my sleep, but I must have Grandma’s green thumb too because red blossoms around my lips, and when I wash the red skin off the new skin grows back too fast to hide and the new red speaks louder than the words I won’t say no matter how much TP I hold over it. I stay in the dark and talk down to the linoleum, hide behind books and under the covers, but the secret climbs up like tomato vines until this slow morning with time to spare and early light. Mama grabs my chin with one hand and
spills her coffee cup all over the dining room table with the other. “Rory Dawn, what is wrong with your mouth?”
    I