Read Online Sound Of Gravel, The by Ruth Wariner - Free Book Online Page A

waved us inside.
    The classroom smelled like Pine-Sol and had twenty wooden desks in lines on a cement floor that looked brand-new, smooth and shiny like the film over Mom’s glossy photographs. I scanned the room and chose a desk in a far corner beneath a window, which is when I realized that going to a Mexican school meant being taught in Spanish.
    “Buenos días, alumnos. Me llamo Señora,” the teacher said.
    The words blurred together in fast-paced sentences. I never even caught my teacher’s name; it was forever lost in the torrent of her opening speech. My body went stiff and the blood rushed to my face as I looked at my classmates and watched wide-eyed as they reached down into their plastic schoolbags almost in unison. I followed their lead and took out my new spiral notebook, which Mom had given me as a special present for starting school. Meanwhile, the teacher walked the aisles and made marks in her notebook with a sharp, yellow pencil, smiling and greeting each child individually.
    When she reached my desk, she stopped, knelt down until we were eye to eye, and smiled. She said something to me in Spanish, and all I could do was stare at her and hold my breath in fear. She smiled again, then called someone over, a little girl on the other side of the classroom who promptly picked up her supplies and moved to the desk next to mine.
    The girl had long, straight brown hair pulled back by a barrette, just as I had always wanted, not to mention her straight bangs cut evenly over her green eyes. She had light pink skin with dark brown freckles on her nose. I thought that maybe I’d seen her in church, but I wasn’t sure. I was certain that her yellow dress was brand-new, or almost. It was definitely freshly washed and perfectly ironed.
    The teacher looked back at me, smiled one more time, then continued her walk down the aisle. The little girl in the yellow dress turned to me, grinned, and said hello, in English.
    “My name is Natalia,” she chirped in a quiet, welcoming voice, her English clear and perfect. I felt my body relax into the hard chair beneath me. “The teacher wants me to sit by you so I can help you.” She smiled again. “Is your name Ruthie?”
    “Yeah. How do you know my name?”
    “I saw you at Sunday school, and my mom told me who you were.”
    “You know everything the teacher is saying?”
    “Almost everything. She talks real fast, though.”
    The teacher, back at the front of the room, appeared to be asking for quiet as she began writing with pink chalk on the dark green chalkboard. Natalia turned her attention to the front of the room as she opened her notebook and picked up her pencil, so I did the same.
    Then she whispered something so softly I was sure I had misheard her. “Hey, did you know that we’re sisters?”
    I tilted my head and just looked at her. “Are you sure?”
    “I think so. My mom said that your dad is Joel the prophet.”
    “Yeah. He died, though.”
    “I know. Joel was my dad too,” Natalia said.
    “Really?”
    She pointed to a little girl in the front row. “She’s our sister too. She lives right by me.” My mouth dropped open as I stared at a second sister. Her black hair was shoulder length and curled under at the ends. I was surprised when the girl whipped her head around and smiled under big brown eyes. “Her name is Brenda,” Natalia said. “She can talk in English and Spanish too.”
    The teacher stopped writing, looked at Natalia and me, and shushed us. We both sat up straight and turned our attention back to the front of the classroom. But my mind was a million miles away, too excited and shocked that I had sisters at school, and nice ones at that. Besides, I didn’t understand a word the teacher said.
    I knew I had half siblings all over the colony, but who they were had always been a mystery. Now, in school, it occurred to me that almost every child in LeBaron could be related to me.
    Natalia introduced me to Brenda at recess. She was