Read Online Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco - Free Book Online Page B

out the door. “Now come on. You have to learn this.”
    â€œI just don’t get it—why doesn’t it sound right?”
    There’s a bang at the door; we both jump before we realize it’s Agatha.
    â€œI got all these tomatoes here,” Agatha yells in to us. She dumps the tomatoes into the sink and covers them with water.
    â€œOkay,” I say, turning back to Bo,“it just doesn’t make s-s-s-sense to ask all these questions. Everyone asks these questions and it gets them nowhere. Now just say after me—aa, aa, aa.”
    Bo rolls her eyes.
“Aa, aa, aa
.
”
    She turns her face into a sour ball. “I don’t want to do
aa, aa, aa,
Corney, I want to read. This is for babies.”
    â€œBo,” I say, raising my voice just the tiniest bit, “you have to start at the beginning if you don’t want to
be
a baby.”
    Bo squinches her face and tries again.
“Aa, aa, aa,”
she says softly.
    â€œThat’s b-b-better. Now for
i,
you make the s-s-sound like in
itch
or
igloo
. Say it—
ih, ih, ih.
”
    Bo crosses her eyes at Agatha, who laughs.
    â€œThis is so dumb,” Bo complains.
“Ih, ih, ih.”
    I ignore them.
    â€œNow why don’t we p-p-play a game,” I say. I tear a piece of paper into four squares and on one square I write the letter
a,
on another an
e,
and on a third an
i
. Then on the fourth square I draw a goose.
    â€œI told you this is for babies,” Bo says.
    â€œNo, it’s going to be fun. Now look. We’ll f-f-f-flip these cards over and if you get one of the vowels, you make the sound, but if you get the goose, I make a honking sound and flap my arms like this.”
    Agatha pulls a tomato out of the sink and begins chopping.
    â€œOkay, pick a card.”
    Bo picks the goose.
    â€œHonk, honk, honk, honk,”
I scream. I stand up and run around the table, flapping my arms.
“Honk, honk.”
    â€œWhy ain’t you teachin’ her the words, silly goose?” Agatha says from the counter, chuckling to herself.
    â€œIt m-m-makes sense to go slow and make it fun so she can learn it this time,” I say, slightly miffed. “I b-b-bet if they made it fun in school, Bo would have learned it the f-f-f-first time around.”
    Agatha pulls out a knife and starts quartering the tomatoes. “At least she’s not too scared to go to school.”
    I ignore Agatha and turn the page. “We say
o
like
ostrich
.”
    Bo interrupts me. “Yeah, Corney, I never knew anyone who reads as good as you. You could go to college.”
    College? Me? Do you have to talk in college?
    Agatha interrupts my thoughts. “How long you goin’ to hide, Cornelia?”

65
    Hide? I’m not hiding. I’m waiting for my mother to come back and take me away. I sink my arms deeply into a basket of wet clothes. I grab towel after towel, shirt after shirt, hanging my madness out with wooden clothespins.
    â€œWhen you goin’ to talk about it?” Agatha has walked up behind me. I stiffen but don’t turn. Two clothespins jam into my mouth, and I reach down for a pair of my socks.
    â€œYou don’t talk about your mother, your stutterin’, you keep all that inside you, you’re goin’ to rot like an apple.”
    I pick up a pair of my socks and add those to the line as she walks away.
    She wants me to talk? How? I stuff my feelings and they layer themselves like a parfait dessert in the innermost part of my being.
    Inside, where nobody can see, I am glorious with the colors of the girl I wish I could be.

66
    One day a postcard comes with a mother walking hand in hand with a child, and I know, even without flipping the card, that there’s been a shift in the barren landscape between my mother and me.

67
    Something itches at me. It’s itched for weeks now, ever since Bo started coming around for reading lessons.
    I stand at the counter peeling potatoes and