Read Online They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

he brought corks, bits of paper, toothpicks, and rubber bands, and he made elaborate contraptionsthat churned downstream in the Sixteen Mile Creek, rotating in the current like a Mississippi paddlewheel. He also taught us how to dig for worms, skewer them onto our hooks, and slosh around in the mud to catch crayfish in the watering hole.
    When it came time to drive back, we piled into the station wagon. The road home was straight south, three miles down to the lake. Dad tied Scrappy to the outside of the car, knotting his leash to the back door handle. Then he started the engine. We fell silent and watched nervously out the back window as Scrappy began running as fast as he could. As Dad accelerated we saw Scrappy’s black spots blur, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, his leash taut against the handle, his body stretched like a greyhound. Robin and Sandy hung out the side window, gripping the ledges, their hair whipping straight back in the wind. In the front seat, Dad focused his view on the side mirror, checking Scrappy’s stamina, but I was focused on Dad. His dark side fascinated me. He had the same expression I saw when we sailed: pushing the limits of endurance, his jaw clenched and a hard glint in his eye. When we all landed safely at the back door, my heart was beating as fast as the dog’s. The rest of the day Scrappy lay in a heap on the verandah, Chris’s arms cuddled around him.
    We weren’t allowed to use the telephone—a luxury that Dad insisted was reserved for adults—unless it was an emergency, and even then he stood beside us with an egg timer, shouting, “Say what you have to say and ring off!” Luckily my best friend, Diana, lived across the garden, so she and I strung a clothesline between properties—between her bedroom window and mine—and reeled across notes to each other, stuffed into empty soup tins. In our free time we created a theatre in the basement, writing scripts and making propsand auditioning neighbourhood children for our cast of characters. If we ran out of girls, we made wigs and conscripted my brothers. For dramatic scenes, we cut up onions to make ourselves cry. When I was ten the local library asked to mount one of our plays, and Mum was so excited she urged me to start writing a few plays like Shakespeare.
    “If he could do it, why can’t you?” she said. “After all, you have the same twenty-six letters he had!” I heard Dad scoff behind his newspaper.
    I hated to disappoint Mum, but nothing I wrote sounded like Shakespeare. I tried to imagine all his letters tossed out of my Parcheesi cup, scrambled like puzzle pieces onto the playground. What was his secret? It must have something to do with which letters he used … and how many of each. I spent months of frustration trying to count Shakespeare’s letters, to crack his code. Mum continued her enthusiastic support, but I discounted her praise. It was Dad’s I longed for because his was so hard to come by.
    People were always saying “You’re so like your mother!” but I hated it when they said that. Dad hurled it at me like an insult, so I didn’t want to be like Mum. Besides, I inherited Dad’s shape—tall, lean, and flat—not Mum’s soft, cuddly, big-bosomed figure. It’s true that when I laughed my nose crinkled up, exposing crooked teeth exactly like hers, but I secretly hoped people might think I was more like Dad. I admired his reserve, his discipline, and his elegance—things Mum didn’t have.
    Mum was the life of the party. Others were titillated by her individualism, but I hated being sucked into the centre of attention where she invariably stood. She was always pushing me forward, volunteering me for things as if I were an extensionof her: “Plum would be happy to babysit/walk your child to school/ help at the church fair!” If I complained, she’d say, “You need to reach out to people! Everyone feels shy, but shyness is a form of selfishness .” Then she’d add, “I know