Read Online My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath - Free Book Online Page B

just love peanut butter.
    They are all over the trailer and Ginny makes them sandwiches while I pour Kool-Aid. There is peanut butter smeared and dried on a lot of the furniture and my guess is they eat a lot of it. We cannot find the jelly but they don’t seem to notice. I hear a sound and it makes me jump and I realize that Mr. Gourd is sleeping in the next room. He is snoring loudly and thrashing around. Why couldn’t he watch them if he is here all day?
    Just then Mrs. Gourd comes in. She looks at their sandwiches. “I thought I told you to make them peanut butter and
jelly,
” she says to Ginny, who is putting the bread away.
    â€œI couldn’t find any,” says Ginny calmly, but there is an edge to her voice. I imagine her duking it out mano a mano with Mrs. Gourd. Ginny is young and muscular but Mrs. Gourd is mean. It would be an interesting match.
    â€œWell, that’s just fine. I suppose you mean for them children to develop vitamin deficiencies. That there jelly is their
fruit,
” Mrs. Gourd says, pointing to the recommended fruit and vegetable portion of the government food pyramid stuck to the fridge.
    â€œJelly is not a fruit,” says Ginny. I’d better get her home. She has clearly had it.
    Mrs. Gourd reaches up on the top shelf of one of the grimy cupboards and pulls down a sticky old jar. She shoves it right in Ginny’s face, pointing to the word APPLE . “You look right here, APPLES. Are you telling me that apples aren’t fruit?”
    â€œOh, for Pete’s sake,” says Ginny, starting for the door. I follow her.
    â€œI expect to see you girls bright and early tomorrow morning. Yep. Bright and early, because I got the job and I’ll be working nine till three,” says Mrs. Gourd. She smirks but she looks proud.
    As we leave we hear Mr. Gourd’s voice. He has woken up. He yells at Mrs. Gourd. The children start wailing.
    â€œWell, there’s no question who fathered
those
children,” says Ginny as Mr. Gourd and his children harmonize their loud noises. I pretend not to know what she means and then we see a peanut butter jar come flying out the window and we spontaneously break into a run and keep running until we get close to town.
    â€œThat was awful,” says Ginny, panting, as we slow down on the corner where she’ll split off for her street. “That sound he made. I’ve never heard anyone yell at someone like that.”
    â€œGinny…,” I say.
    â€œThis is a horrible predicament,” she says grimly, “but it’s not your fault,” and turns toward her street without a backward glance.
    When I get to the parking lot there is the man with the cigarettes, sitting on a cement divider, smoking and staring down the beach. He pretends not to look at me but I can see he is sneaking glances in my direction. In fact, I can feel his eyes bore their way into the back of my neck as I walk across the parking lot. I pass his car. It has an Ontario license plate. I look at him again. I have never seen a Canadian, at least as far as I know. What is he doing here? Maybe his life is so empty all he has to do is slowly migrate south, smoke and study people. He has seen me three times now so I guess he thinks of me as a regular. He has a nice face, in sort of a distracted way, and I begin to study it but just then I see H.K. heading toward me. Don’t tell me he has been at our house the whole day! What could he and my mother possibly have to say to each other for so long? H.K’s face is in contemplation too but it is not nice, it is closed up tight and he is somewhere so deep inside you will never be invited in.
    At home, my mother is humming and setting the table. She has summer tomatoes on the stove cooking down for spaghetti sauce, which she says she is putting on rice because we are out of spaghetti. We have a huge fifty-pound bag of rice that she bought ages ago. It is only half empty so we will