“Hey,” he said with a fake scowl. “Get off my feet.”
“I need some ice cream.”
“You do, huh? Well, goody for you. Now get off my feet.”
“No, sir. I think I’ll stay right here until you give me some money.”
Ben smirked. “Then I guess you got another think coming.” He scooped her up under the arms and dropped her beside him.
“Hey,” she squealed. “No fair.”
My throat burned hot and tight. Mama was into hugs and pats and stuff. But it sure would be fun to have a daddy to roughhouse with.
An old lady in a straw hat watched us from the next row of cars. She wore a dopey smile, as if Ben and Ginger horsing around was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. It reminded me of Miss Claudia’s face when she talked about her great-grandbabies.
The old lady looked from Ginger to me, and I could read what she was thinking just as plain as if it were stamped on her wrinkled face. She thought Mama and Ben were married and Ginger and I were their kids.
And for just a second, I wished it were true.
But then I thought of Daddy. I owed it to him to set that old lady straight, to tell her she had it all wrong. That Ginger wasn’t my sister and Ben wasn’t my daddy. That my daddy had been an Air Force pilot and not just a prison guard.
But of course I didn’t say anything. I just glanced down, and it felt as though somebody had jabbed me in the chest with a sharp stick.
Ben reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out four one-dollar bills. “This is all I’ve got, so if it costs more than this, you’re out of luck.”
He offered two of the bills to Ginger and the other two to me. Ginger grabbed hers.
I squirmed, staring at the money. It would’ve been okay if Mama had offered it, but I just couldn’t take it from Ben. After all, going to buy ice cream was the very last thing Daddy and I had done together. I took a step back. “That’s okay. I’m still full from supper.” I fumbled with the hem on my shorts.
“You sure?” Ben asked.
No, I wanted to say, I’m not sure about anything. But I just said, “Yes, sir, I’m sure.”
Ginger wrinkled up her nose. “You don’t got a speck of brains, Piper Lee.”
I turned my back on Mama and Ben. Ginger sped off through the crowd toward the ice cream stand and returned a few minutes later with a giant scoop of strawberry swirl. It looked so good, I could hardly stand it. I wanted to grab it and splat it in her face.
“Mmm,” Ben said. “I think I need some of that. Want to share a scoop with me, Heather?”
“I don’t know. I’m supposed to be watching my figure.”
“Oh, come on, now,” he said. “That’s my job.”
Mama giggled. “You and your sweet talk, Ben Hutchings.” She winked at me as Ben pulled her off toward the ice cream stand. “Be right back, honey.”
I shrugged. Ginger found a shady spot behind an old Chevy to sit. I tried to act interested in the Chevy, but the tears in my eyes made it too blurry to see.
7
IT TOOK ME three days of brainstorming to come up with what I named “Operation Finding Tina.” The details took another two days. But by late Sunday night I’d boiled the whole thing down to two simple steps.
Step one: find Tina. Step two: convince Ginger to call her.
Things would just happen natural-like after that. Ginger and Tina would talk, and then Tina would come to visit. She’d realize what she was missing out on, that she never should’ve left in the first place, that she still loved Ben. The two of them would get back together. Mama and Ben would cancel their wedding.
I grinned into the darkness as Mowgli purred beside me. It was a perfect plan—as slick as spitting watermelon seeds. How come I hadn’t thought of it sooner?
The only downside was Mama—she’d be pretty disappointed. But I knew she’d be okay. She’d still have me. And I’d find some way to make her feel better.
“Mama, can I ride my bike to the library?” I asked the next morning.
Mama gave up her struggle to open a plastic bag of Toasty O’s and reached for the scissors. “The library? By your lonesome?”
“It’s only a couple miles.”
“But you’ve never done it alone.”
“I can do it, Mama. I’m not a baby, you know.”
“I never said you were. I’m just not comfortable with you riding around downtown by yourself yet.”
I clamped my teeth. Getting to the library was supposed to be the easy part. “How old do I have to be?”
“What’s going on? You act like you’re all put-out with me.”
“No. I just think I should be able to ride to the dumb library by myself.”
Mama sighed. She tipped the bag of cereal and poured herself a bowl. “Tell you what—tonight after work, we’ll swing by the library ’fore we come home. That good enough?”
I dug my nails into my palms. I didn’t want to put off Operation Finding Tina for another minute. But if I acted too restless and eager, Mama would get suspicious. “I guess.”
“Great. So what do you and Ginger have planned for this afternoon?”
“Oh, let’s see. She’ll probably try to talk me into painting my toenails. Then she’ll want me to listen to a hundred stupid cheers. And then who knows.”
Mama clucked her tongue. “Oh, Piper Lee.”
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “That’s the kind of stuff she likes.”
“And have you ever thought about trying to share some of your interests with her? How about taking your scrapbook over and showing it to her?”
“She doesn’t care anything about airplanes.”
“You assume that. How do you really know?”
“I just do, Mama.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s a case of not being able to see the orchard for the fruit trees.” I had absolutely no idea what that meant.
After breakfast I carried my scrapbook to the kitchen table along with a bunch of loose clippings. One of the clippings was about the Aero Flight School in Atlanta. As long as you could pass a physical exam, you could start flying lessons at sixteen years old. In just more than five years I’d be old enough. I mentioned that to Mama as she wiped down the countertops.
“Mmm,” is all she said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Piper Lee. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. I bet flying lessons are real expensive.”
“Thirty-eight dollars an hour for the instructor and about sixty an hour to rent a plane.”
“Oh, Good Friday.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll be old enough to get a job by then. I’ll pay for everything myself.”
She stepped over and kissed the top of my head. “Let’s worry about it when the time comes. Okay?”
I felt like reaching up and rubbing that kiss away. “Daddy would want me to do it.”
“Your daddy would want you to follow your own dream, not necessarily his.”
She didn’t get it. “But Mama, I am. That’s what I am doing.”
As we drove to Ben’s that afternoon, I tried to decide if I should tell Ginger about Operation Finding Tina or wait until I’d made it to the library. By the time we reached Hillman Lane, I’d decided to wait. As badly as I wanted to blurt it out, I worried she’d ask questions I couldn’t answer yet and maybe ruin the whole plan.
We pulled into the driveway, and the roar of the lawn mower greeted us. Ben pushed it around the corner of the house and released the handle. The engine died with an angry sputter.
I gave Mama a quick hug before Ben could reach her. “See ya,” I said. Then I escaped into the house so I didn’t have to watch them kiss and carry on as though they hadn’t seen each other in a year.
I went over to Ginger’s room. Her door was closed.
“Hey,” I said. “Knock, knock.”
No answer. I tapped on the door. “Hey, Ginger?”
&
nbsp; “Go away.”
I let my fist drop to my side. “Do what?”
“You heard me. Just go away.”
I waited, staring at the poster of beagle puppies taped to her door, not sure what to do. If she wouldn’t let me in her room, what in the world was I supposed to do all afternoon? Hang out with Ben?
“I don’t have anywhere to go away to,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
I hesitated a few seconds longer. Then I took a deep breath and opened her door a crack. She lay curled up like a snail shell, her back to me.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you mad at me or something?”
She flipped over and scowled at me, her eyes red and puffy. “I don’t want to find my mama, Piper. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
I felt as if she’d thrown a bucket of ice water on me. “W-why do you think that? You try to call one of those phone numbers or something?”
She sniffed and rubbed a hand across her eyes. “No. I thought maybe Daddy had her number, but then I found this.” She pulled an envelope from underneath her pillow.
All my senses sprang to full alert. I stepped into the room and closed her door behind me.
“It’s a letter that Mama wrote to Daddy before she left us.”
“Where did you get it?”
She sat up. “I found it in Daddy’s box.”
“What box?”
“His safety box, where he keeps important stuff like insurance papers and birth certificates and stuff like that. There were a couple other letters, too, from when he and Mama were dating. But this one . . . you can read it if you want.”
I drew back like she’d offered me a handful of poison oak. “That’s okay. I better not.”
“No. Go ahead. I don’t care.”
I couldn’t believe she was willing to share something so personal with me, especially something that wasn’t any of my business. “Ginger, I don’t think I should.”
She threw the envelope at my feet. “Shut up and read it, Piper Lee.”
I swallowed.
She watched until I bent down and picked up the letter, and then she curled up like a snail again.
I sat on the edge of her bed to read.
Dear Ben,
I hope you don’t hate me for this. I know you probably will. But I just can’t live like this anymore. I thought I was ready to settle down, but I guess I’m not, because each day I feel like I’m going crazy. You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck at home with a baby every day. She cries so much. It’s really, really hard. I didn’t want to be a mother yet. Maybe someday, five or ten years down the road, but I can’t handle it right now. I don’t know how to be a good mother, and I’d rather not be one at all if I can’t be a good one. I know Ginger will be fine with you. You’re so great with her. You’re a terrific dad and a terrific guy, Ben. You deserve a lot better than me. I’m so sorry we didn’t wait until we were older. There’s still so much I want to do first. Please try to understand.
Tina
I took my time refolding the letter. I felt a little bad for Ginger. If I hadn’t suggested the idea of finding her mama, she probably wouldn’t have gone snooping through her daddy’s stuff. But I felt a lot worse for myself. Suddenly Operation Finding Tina didn’t seem so simple.
“See,” Ginger said. “She didn’t love me.”
“It doesn’t say that. It just says she wasn’t ready to be a mama yet.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. Not at all. She wanted to be a good mama. She just didn’t know how yet.”
“She thought I was a pain. She didn’t want to be stuck at home with me.”
“How old was she, again?”
“Nineteen.”
“Well, that is kind of young.”
“Yeah, well, Daddy was young, too. If he could do it, how come she couldn’t?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it depends on the person.”
“What I don’t get is why she had to be stuck at home every day. Why didn’t she just go and do what she wanted and take me with her like other mamas do?” Before I could come up with any kind of answer, she sat up and grabbed the letter from my hand. “Yeah, well, I’m not trying to find her.”
“But it says she’d be ready further down the road. That probably means she’s ready now.”
A knock sounded on the door. Ginger crammed the letter and envelope under her pillow.
Ben opened the door and stepped in, and the room seemed to shrink. It was a perfect rerun of the evening when he and Mama had caught us looking at the phone book, only this time he wasn’t smiling. My heart started jumping like peas on a hot griddle.
“What’s goin’ on here? Why are you crying, Ginger?”
“I’m not. Everything’s fine, Daddy.”
I focused on all the tiny green flecks of grass clinging to Ben’s shoes.
“You girls been fighting again?”
“No, sir,” we said together.
“Well, come on outside. I have a job for you two.”
Ginger and I rolled our eyes at each other as we followed him. What would he think if he knew what was hiding underneath her pillow?
He led us around the side of the house to a wide patch of dug-up earth in the backyard. Eight oily railroad ties lay piled beside it.
“Here’s where your mama’s garden’s gonna be,” he said.
I blinked. Mama always talked about wanting a garden. “Does she know yet?”
“Nope. Just brought in the ties last night. I want to have it done by the time she gets off work tonight so we can surprise her.” It was nice of him to say “we” instead of “I.”
“Anyhow,” Ben said, “there’s a million and one pecans that need to be picked up before I can mix in the manure. You kids can work for an hour before the sun makes its way around here.”
Ginger groaned.
Ben brought over a wheelbarrow and parked it near us. “Call me when you get it full and I’ll dump it. I’ll be around front.”
Ginger waited until he disappeared around the side of the house, and then she slumped against the wheelbarrow.
I knew she was still sad about her mama, so I worked by myself for a while, sifting through nuts and rocks and trying to think of a way to save Operation Finding Tina. But when the wheelbarrow got half-full and Ginger still hadn’t picked up a single nut, I started feeling put-out instead of sorry. “You’re s’posed to be helping, you know.”
“I don’t feel like picking up nuts.”
“Yeah, well, go tell your daddy that.”
“He’s gonna be your daddy soon, too.”
I bristled. “No, he’s not. I already have a daddy.”
“Had a daddy, you mean. Just like I had a mama.”
I aimed low with my next pecan, and it hit Ginger square in the ribs. She hopped up with a yelp. “He-e-e-y.”
“Whoops. Sorry.”
She rubbed her side. “Sorry, nothing. You did that on purpose.”
“Well, jeez, Ginger. You’re sitting against the wheelbarrow. What do you expect?”
She scooped up her own pecan and hurled it so fast that all I had time to do was hunch my shoulders, but it whizzed right past. I smirked. “Thought you didn’t feel like picking up nuts.”
“I don’t. But I feel like throwing them at you.”
We eyed each other silently. Ginger’s eyes were almond—so light they almost didn’t have a color.
“No throwing at the head,” I said.
She kicked a pile of dust at me. I closed my eyes to shield them as the air filled with flying pecans. My shin burned as if it’d been shot, followed by my belly a second later. I hopped around on one foot, trying to rub my leg and throw at the same time. I got her in the ribs twice before she ducked down behind the wheelbarrow.
“Get out from there,” I yelled. “I don’t have nothing to hide behind.”
She pelted me a few times before I scooped up a whole handful of dirt and nuts and ran around
behind the wheelbarrow. She popped up like a jackrabbit and took off.
I gave chase around the yard until I tripped over a railroad tie and landed with a heavy oomph right on my stomach. Ginger hurled two pecans at my butt while I tried to catch my breath. I yelped and rolled back to my feet in a hellfire hurry. “You’re gonna be dead as a doornail, Ginger!”
She squealed and started running in crazy circles, her big feet kicking up enough dirt to choke a mule. The air turned so thick and brown, I could barely see where to aim. My breath rasped in my chest and I stung all over. I finally reached out my leg and tripped her. Before she could get up, I jumped on her back and twisted her arm up behind her. “Say ‘uncle.’”
“Oww!”
“Say it. Say it now.”
“I’m gonna kill you, Piper.”
“That’ll be tough with a broken arm.”
She kept struggling, and I didn’t think I’d be able to hold on much longer. But I had the advantage of being on top, and finally she said, “Okay, fine. Uncle, you idiot.”
I rolled off her and collapsed. We lay next to each other, panting for a little while. Then she turned her head and glared at me through a mask of grime. I grinned. “You look like a raccoon,” I said.
“Yeah? You should talk.”
I rubbed my shoulder. “You threw pretty good.”
“Yeah?” She sounded surprised. “So did you.”
“You shouldn’t have kept hitting me after I fell.”
“Sorry.”
“Boy, I could drink a river.”
She sat up. “There’s Popsicles in the freezer. Want one?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Cherry or grape?” We struggled to our feet. Before I could decide, something caught my eye. I turned and saw Ben leaning up against the side of the house, his arms crossed, looking for all the world as though he wanted to come over and whip us both.
“Oh, shoot,” Ginger muttered. “How long have you been standing there, Daddy?”
“Long enough.”
His voice didn’t match the look on his face. He sounded a little like he wanted to laugh. “So, Piper Lee? You figured out how you’re gonna explain to your mama why you’re covered with bruises tomorrow?”
A Smidgen of Sky Page 4
