Read Online Sound Of Gravel, The by Ruth Wariner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ruth Wariner
Tags: Biography
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really nice, but she and Natalia looked so different that I realized they must have different mothers. They showed me how to play hopscotch: how to draw out the squares and the circles in the sand with the tip of my forefinger and the importance of choosing a unique stone.
When we returned to the classroom, Brenda sat with Natalia and me in the back of the room, and at lunchtime we ate together. Natalia had a whole-wheat sandwich like mine, although hers was square and mine was round. Remembering the fly at the bottom of my bowl that morning, I lifted the bread of my peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich to inspect it.
The smell of green, spicy peppers filled the air the minute Brenda opened her bean-and-cheese burrito with pickled jalapeños, and when I couldn’t resist trying a bite, the morsel exploded in my mouth and burned all the way down my throat. My eyes watered and my lips burned. The girls giggled at my reaction.
“Make sure to drink lots of milk when you eat peppers,” Brenda said in a thick accent that convinced me that Spanish was her first language and that her mother was Mexican. “It will take the burn away. Water makes it worse.”
At the end of my first day at school, I rushed home to tell Mom about my two new friends who were also my sisters. While stirring cheese curds on the stovetop, she explained that Brenda was the daughter of my dad and his first wife, and the youngest of their thirteen children. Natalia was the youngest of three children born to my father and his sixth wife, who was another one of Lane’s sisters. With a laugh, Mom said she felt sorry for the man who tried to draw our family tree.
It had been a long and confusing first day of school, and I couldn’t wait to go back.
8
As the school year progressed, so did I. By December, I was singing the Spanish alphabet, I knew how to pronounce all its exotic vowels, and I could even read books if the words were short. The once rapid-fire sentences began to slow down in my mind, and when I didn’t understand what was being said, I didn’t worry about it too much. Much of this progress I owed to my half sisters. Because of them, I woke up excited for school every morning and walked there as fast as I could with quick, light steps.
Winter arrived with gloomy gray clouds, and the skies became damp and dim. Getting ready in the morning now meant the smell of burning wood from the barrel heater and mud-caked shoes that had once been white. Going to school meant walking past round-piped chimneys that billowed out smoke like giant steel cigarettes, and air that had grown thick with the scent of burning wood.
Meanwhile, Mom’s lap became smaller and smaller as her belly grew larger and larger, and in mid-December she gave birth to a baby girl in the same Casas Grandes hospital where I’d been born. Mom’s cheeks were ghostlike when she came home, and her eyes were swollen and red, but she had had fewer complications than with Aaron, and Mom brought Meredith home the day after she was born. Everyone called the new baby Meri, and we all wanted to hold her from the moment our pale-faced mother came through the door.
Meri was beautiful, with porcelain skin like Snow White and a tiny, molelike birthmark on her upper lip that made her look like a movie star. Her eyes were crystal blue, and she had long, dark eyelashes that curled up just below thin, blond eyebrows. When Mom placed the little bundle that was Meri into my arms, they naturally folded around my sister, who, from that moment forward, always seemed to rest comfortably in my lap. For this reason, Lane decided my Christmas break should start early. I was needed at home to help with the baby while Mom recovered.
The season’s other new arrival was electricity in our home, at last. Lane took the same black tubing that brought current to the shop and extended it from there along the barbed-wire fence and into our house. The cable carried 220 volts of electricity, too strong for
When we returned to the classroom, Brenda sat with Natalia and me in the back of the room, and at lunchtime we ate together. Natalia had a whole-wheat sandwich like mine, although hers was square and mine was round. Remembering the fly at the bottom of my bowl that morning, I lifted the bread of my peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich to inspect it.
The smell of green, spicy peppers filled the air the minute Brenda opened her bean-and-cheese burrito with pickled jalapeños, and when I couldn’t resist trying a bite, the morsel exploded in my mouth and burned all the way down my throat. My eyes watered and my lips burned. The girls giggled at my reaction.
“Make sure to drink lots of milk when you eat peppers,” Brenda said in a thick accent that convinced me that Spanish was her first language and that her mother was Mexican. “It will take the burn away. Water makes it worse.”
At the end of my first day at school, I rushed home to tell Mom about my two new friends who were also my sisters. While stirring cheese curds on the stovetop, she explained that Brenda was the daughter of my dad and his first wife, and the youngest of their thirteen children. Natalia was the youngest of three children born to my father and his sixth wife, who was another one of Lane’s sisters. With a laugh, Mom said she felt sorry for the man who tried to draw our family tree.
It had been a long and confusing first day of school, and I couldn’t wait to go back.
8
As the school year progressed, so did I. By December, I was singing the Spanish alphabet, I knew how to pronounce all its exotic vowels, and I could even read books if the words were short. The once rapid-fire sentences began to slow down in my mind, and when I didn’t understand what was being said, I didn’t worry about it too much. Much of this progress I owed to my half sisters. Because of them, I woke up excited for school every morning and walked there as fast as I could with quick, light steps.
Winter arrived with gloomy gray clouds, and the skies became damp and dim. Getting ready in the morning now meant the smell of burning wood from the barrel heater and mud-caked shoes that had once been white. Going to school meant walking past round-piped chimneys that billowed out smoke like giant steel cigarettes, and air that had grown thick with the scent of burning wood.
Meanwhile, Mom’s lap became smaller and smaller as her belly grew larger and larger, and in mid-December she gave birth to a baby girl in the same Casas Grandes hospital where I’d been born. Mom’s cheeks were ghostlike when she came home, and her eyes were swollen and red, but she had had fewer complications than with Aaron, and Mom brought Meredith home the day after she was born. Everyone called the new baby Meri, and we all wanted to hold her from the moment our pale-faced mother came through the door.
Meri was beautiful, with porcelain skin like Snow White and a tiny, molelike birthmark on her upper lip that made her look like a movie star. Her eyes were crystal blue, and she had long, dark eyelashes that curled up just below thin, blond eyebrows. When Mom placed the little bundle that was Meri into my arms, they naturally folded around my sister, who, from that moment forward, always seemed to rest comfortably in my lap. For this reason, Lane decided my Christmas break should start early. I was needed at home to help with the baby while Mom recovered.
The season’s other new arrival was electricity in our home, at last. Lane took the same black tubing that brought current to the shop and extended it from there along the barbed-wire fence and into our house. The cable carried 220 volts of electricity, too strong for
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