Read Online Where Do You Stay by Andrea Cheng - Free Book Online Page A

always following me everywhere, talking the whole time. What’s he doing up here at Mr. Willie’s place anyway? He’s got his own mom and dad and his own brother.
    I stop to catch my breath in the doorway. Ginny is there with a mask on. She pulls it off her mouth. “Goodafternoon, Jerome,” she says. “I was looking for you earlier.”
    “My cousin said.” I stand there, waiting. “Did you find it?”
    She pulls her eyebrows together. “Find what?”
    “The piano.”
    “Oh, the piano. No. I doubt there’s anything as big as that in the back room. Tom is still trying to find the keys.”
    “Did you check the basement?”
    “No piano down there,” Ginny says. “I was wondering if you’d like to help me sand the front room.”
    My back is tired and I have a blister on the palm of my hand. But it’s my only way to get inside the mansion. And if I don’t find Sharon’s piano, I’m going to have to buy my own.
    “Sure. I can help,” I say.
    She hands me the wooden block, sandpaper, and a mask. “Tom says we should start in the middle and work out.”
    Ginny pulls her mask back over her mouth and nose. I put mine on and crouch down next to her. I take short strokes with the sanding block because the grain is going in all different directions. The floor is made out of small pieces of wood in a pattern, dark, light, dark, light. This must be the mosaic Mr. Willie was telling me about. I clean off the wood with my sleeve so I can see what I’m doing. Small flowers, that’s what it is, like dogwood blossoms all over the floor. Me and Mama planted a dogwoodtree in the back corner of our yard, the white kind she liked so much because the blossoms look like they’re floating.
    Tom is in the hallway talking on the phone. “Yes, we need a dumpster. The biggest one you have. Make that two. One needs to go right next to the mansion. The other one goes next to the shack near the street.”
    I stop sanding for a minute. What shack is he talking about? He is discussing the price with the man. Finally they settle and Tom hangs up.
    “When are they coming?” Ginny asks.
    “Next week or the week after that.”
    Ginny is sanding away. “This floor is gorgeous,” she tells Tom.
    He whistles through his teeth. “Must’ve been a lot of work to cut all these small pieces.”
    Tom goes out to work on the front porch. But I need to know about the shack. “What shack did he mean?” I ask Ginny.
    She can’t understand me, so I take the mask off my mouth.
    “Where is the shack?” I ask.
    “Why, over there by your vegetable garden.” She smiles behind the mask. “I’ll make sure nobody tramples on your plants.”
    “Are you going to fix up the shack?” I ask. But Ginny can’t hear me with all the banging. I shout, “Are you going to fix up the shack?”
    “It’s too far gone,” Ginny says.
    •
    I sit by the door of the carriage house and wait for Mr. Willie. I have to tell him about the dumpster. I have to let him know. And I have to tell him about the lawyer, too. I’ll ask him if he would be so kind as to adopt me.
    Heat waves are rising off the blacktop, making everything all wavy. A mirage. That’s what Mama called it when we looked down the road on a hot day and it looked like water but there wasn’t any. A mirage can make you see anything, like now I see Mama in our garden with a scarf on her head and I say It’s too hot , so she takes it off for all the world to see her baldness. A policeman stops and says Is everything all right , and I say Yes, we’re fine. Just fine.
    I lean back against Mr. Willie’s wall. Shack. Put the dumpster by the shack. That way when they tear it down, they won’t have far to carry the rubble. Two dumpsters, biggest ones they have. I close my eyes and then my fingers start moving, fast, up and down, a mazurka by Chopin, dance music, Mama said. Fast and crisp.
    I wait for a long time, but Mr. Willie does not come home. The sun’s so hot. I stand up and