Only it's Uncle Gabriel who has made a small carpet-covered jungle gym that he can't wait for me to open.
"What's it for?" I ask, and he puts a kitten in my arms.
It's a little bigger than my opossum was the last time he scrambled up the porch steps to me. He didn't stay even for a whole bottle that time, and it made me realize he had stopped needing me. That he'd learned how to live on his own.
But this kitten—oh, I can love this kitten even when it's all grown up. I snuggle it close while it explores with tiny paws to find out who I am.
Then my aunt and uncles are telling me to circle the tree and feel all the other presents under it. "All the velvet bows, those are all for you," Aunt Emma says. "Open one."
But I rub my face in the kitten's fur. I make my voice stay steady because this is a dumb time to get weepy. I say, "It's your turn now."
I want them to like their gifts. Want so much that I ache.
Uncle Abe goes first. I've made him a tiny circus of toothpicks tipped with colored flags, planted in a surface of plaster of paris textured with dust. Little plastic people sit on a ring of pebbles, watching pill bugs climb a slide. Ted made the pill bugs for me out of clay, after pointing out they weren't really bugs at all but a land-living crustacean called an isopod. Right.
Emma and Gabriel don't know what to make of the circus, and for a while I'm afraid Abe doesn't, either. Then he says, "If you can get a message through to Gwen, tell her thanks for remembering."
Gabriel whispers, "What's all that about?"
Emma shushes him.
Then Gabriel opens his gift, a combination knife and screwdriver. "See," I tell him. "It's got two sizes each of Phillips and slot, and three blades and..."
"And just what I need," he says. "I'm going to keep it right where I can always get at it."
And then Aunt Emma is lifting tissue paper from the sweater I've bought her. "It's for your pleated skirt," I say. "The new one from the mall."
"I'm wearing it," Aunt Emma says. "Mandy, the color match couldn't be more perfect."
"Hannah helped me. I asked her."
And I give Aunt Emma a big hug. Her cheek is wet against mine.
"Don't cry," I say. "Merry Christmas. I love you."
Chapter 18
SPRING has come, and I leave my window open to it all the time. Open to the wind that blows almost constantly, that Emma tells me I'll wish for, once summer gets here.
Ask me what has changed and I'll tell you.
I'll say how the figure that cartwheeled from the sky lies still and rests now. I think of him and the others in graves beneath budding trees, under yellow sun and blue sky and red tulips.
I especially imagine a lot of red tulips about my mother's grave because she liked to respect her contrasts.
Aunt Emma and the uncles act younger than they did when I first came here, even though Gabriel says I'm giving him more gray hair every day. "Mandy," he tells me, "you think of stuff to do faster than I can think of rules for keeping you safe doing it."
But his only real rule is that I don't worry Aunt Emma.
The opossum doesn't come back anymore, but thanks to Uncle Abe I'm still in the stepmothering business, taking care of an orphaned calf now. Abe named her for me, Mandy Girl, because she was born on my sixteenth birthday. I give her milk from a huge bottle, and one of these days she's probably going to get tired of my kitten trying to get in on the feeding.
And Abe likes to talk with me about Gwen. He's remembering more and more about being a boy, more than his pill bug circus.
Yes, ask me what has changed and I'll tell you.
I have.
I can't pretend everything is OK. I can't see, and in some ways I'm just now beginning to realize how huge that loss is. Maybe it took getting past being angry to know.
And to realize how much more I have to learn.
I'm going away for eight weeks this summer, to live in a dorm with other blind kids and work in a day care center. My caseworker helped set it up, and Mr. Burkhart wrote me a great letter of recommendation. It has me scared, both the job and how I'll get along in the dorm, but I keep telling myself the Great Om wouldn't send me off to something I can't handle.
Hannah and Ted have both promised to visit.
The town I'll be in is just a couple of miles from where Mrs. Welsh is living now, and I think maybe Hannah might try to see her, too.
And Ted's been saving money so he'll be able to call often. He's got this special phone that puts the volume high enough that he can usually hear what's said.
And some things are better than they ever have been, maybe the more important things.
Uncle Gabriel says every person's life has a time when he lives the fullest, the most aware. The army was like that for him, he says, the time he goes back to and longs for, with all its good and bad.
Aunt Emma says nonsense, and she can think of lots of years when she's been quite fully alive, thank you. No one tells her how her voice softens and yearns when she talks about the few months she and Uncle Gabriel lived in Mexico, when she was expecting the baby that died.
So I wonder. I hope my time is still out in front of me, that it will be more spectacular, bigger, than it is now, but ... I don't know. Right now I feel more alive than I ever have.
No, that's not exactly it.
Right now the world feels more alive to me than it ever has, a world for me to reach out to and touch.
And I've changed in one more way.
I've made room for Gwen inside me, and for my mom, and maybe even for Gwen's mother. I know how to feel, and love, for us all.
Reader Chat Page
Why doesn't Mandy want anyone's help at her new home and school? Would you want people to help you if you were in Mandy's shoes? Why might people want to help?
Mandy is used to moving from school to school, but she knows that the difference between being "Mandy the new girl" and "Mandy the new blind girl" is a big one. How could she or her classmates make her first days easier?
Marissa has a vision disability, too, but why doesn't she want to have anything to do with Mandy?
Do you think Ted and Mandy make a good couple? How might their disabilities enrich or challenge their relationship?
Mandy learns to be independent despite her disability. Have you ever faced a challenge that seemed too big to handle? How did you get through it?
When Ms. Z. reads Mandy's sensory detail assignment, the teacher comments, "You make it seem real.... Being able to remember details is a gift." What details would you use to describe a particular instant or event in your own life, like waking up in the morning, the last day of school before summer, etc.?
Chatting with Jeanette Ingold
Question: How long have you been writing? Was there a moment when you chose it as your life's work?
Jeanette Ingold: I've been writing as long as I've been reading, in the sense that all readers help complete a book by using their own experiences and understandings to flesh out the author's words. Writing became a career when a newspaper job taught me the excitement of searching out and interpreting a story.
Q: What is your writing process? Do you work certain hours or days?
JI: When I research, I hunt out primary source materials, go to where my books take place, and try to learn what my characters must face. When I'm writing, I keep a pretty set routine, getting up early and working for several hours five or six days a week.
Q: How many drafts of a manuscript do you writer?
JI: It varies, but several. I also do rolling revisions within drafts, working on structure, experimenting with voice and tense, worrying over scenes and sentences and single words.
Q: Are your characters inspired by people you know?
JI: Not directly, not usually, because if I base a character on one particular person, I'm limited by what I know and feel about him or her. More often, bits and pieces of many people join together in my characters.
Q: How do you come up with
story ideas?
JI: It's more a matter of being open to them. Ideas lie in bits of history, in newspaper stories, unexplained pictures, overheard conversations. The're in the why and who and what did it mean questions that all sorts of things present.
Q: Most of your novels are historical fiction, and even your contemporary stories incorporate past events and people into the story lines. What is it about history and historical fiction that intrigues you?
JI: I like the context that history provides for understanding the present. And historical fiction is fun—a passport to time travel and a way for me to take part in exciting times that were over before I was born.
Q: Which books or writers have influenced you?
JI: There have been hundreds—or maybe thousands—beginning with the books I loved when I was a kid all the way to today's great writers. Together, they've taught me what story is and what language sounds like when it's used well.
Q: In The Window, memories are important to Mandy. How have memories played a part in your writing?
JI: Mandy sorts through her memories both to hold on to them and also to come to new understandings, and I do, too, recasting and writing my memories into my books. They keep me connected to people I don't want to lose.
Q: Mandy is good at recalling vivid details. Has being a writer sharpened your own observation skills?
JI: Writers are watchers and listeners by nature. Observing—paying attention—that's what we do. But I have gotten better at recognizing which details I need to write down, and I've learned to observe with all my senses.
Look for Jeanette Ingold's
Mountain Solo
A love of music links two young people
Sixteen-year-old Tess's life has been shaped by her violin.
From the moment she picked up the instrument, it's been clear she isn't like other kids. She is a prodigy, and her life is that of a virtuoso-to-be: constant training, special schools, and a big debut before an audience of thousands. When she blows her moment in the spotlight, she throws it all away and moves from the big city to small town Montana, where she joins her father and tries to lead a normal life—whatever that is.
But Tess has hardly arrived before she is drawn into a mystery: a hunt for the wilderness homestead of a lost pioneer who played violin himself—or fiddle, as he called it. Maybe, through his story, Tess will find the strength to pick up her violin again.
Other Books by Jeanette Ingold
The Big Burn
Beware of the fire you can't fight
Jarrett is sixteen—old enough to reject the railroad job his father wants him to take, old enough to court Lizbeth Whitcomb, old enough to join the fight against the forest fires that are destroying Idaho and Montana. But the fires are worse than anyone dreamed, and when the raging blazes join, they become one vast inferno that threatens to destroy everything—and everyone—Jarrett holds dear.
This fast-paced story re-creates the heart-stopping drama of one of the biggest wildfires of the twentieth century: The Big Burn of 1910.
"Excellent ... The action builds
to a fevered pitch."
—VOYA
"Ingold captures the momentum
of a wildfire."
—Publishers Weekly
"An exciting tale."
—Kirkus Reviews
Pictures, 1918
Gaining focus
Asia McKinna may live in rural Texas, but she's hot out of the reach of World War I. The strain of the raging war infects her town, her family, and her own life. She's doing her part for the war effort, but she feels overwhelmed. Each day her beloved grandmother grows more frail. Each day her friend Nick's departure—either to college or to war—nears. And the entire town is on edge from a rash of mysterious fires. Only through her growing passion for photography can Asia hope to gain perspective on the times—and on her place in the world.
A TEXAS LONE STAR READING LIST BOOK
"An innovative novel [with]
believable characters and
complex, evolving relationships."
—Kirkus Renews (starred review)
"Riveting."
—The Bulletin
"Endearing."
—VOYA
Airfield
An aerobatic adventure
In the early days of aviation, Beatty and Moss hang out around the airport Beatty's uncle manages. Beatty's hoping to see her father when he flies in—and quickly out again—on a mail flight. And Moss is hoping his mechanical skills will help him to support himself. Neither anticipates their crucial roles in the airfield's survival—or in saving Beatty's father's life.
A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
BOOK FOR THE TEEN AGE
"Engrossing."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Beatty ... is a heroine of vim and vigor."
—The Bulletin
"Excellent."
—School Library Journal
The Window Page 10
