The Summer Kitchen

by Lisa Wingate

  “I better not.” The idea of Angel being down there when I couldn’t go really bit, but I still couldn’t take the chance of Mrs. Kaye getting in our business anymore. “Opal’s just gettin’ over that flu. She shouldn’t be outside. If anybody asks about us, just tell them we’re sick, but if Opal’s mama or her boyfriend shows up, tell them Opal’s not here anymore, we dropped her at CPS.”

  “ ’Kay.” Angel looked at the sofa, where Opal was showing Boo the Candy Land game. “Hey, you keep Boo fo’ me and I’ll bring you some a’ them sam’iches today.”

  I watched Boo and Opal and thought about it. I didn’t want to be stuck here babysitting while Angel went down the road, but the truth was we needed the sandwiches. Opal and me had used up too much food, being stuck at home all the time. “All right. He can stay.”

  Angel looked real happy about that. “Ronnie, too? He in the way down there.”

  Ronnie was standing by the door, ready to go with Angel. He gave her a dirty look.

  “I guess,” I said.

  Angel pushed him out of the way and couldn’t get the door open quick enough. I stopped her before she went down the steps. “Hey, did Mrs. Kaye … I mean … did she, like, ask about us or anything?” Even though I knew it was better if Mrs. Kaye forgot about us, I kinda wanted a yes.

  I got ready to have my feelings hurt when Angel shrugged. “She ain’t been there. Holly said her boy in the hospital.”

  “Christopher?”

  “Guess so. The new lady nice. She bringin’ Little Debbies, and she cleanin’ up some big pans from the basement. She talkin’ about givin’ hot dog or sam’ich. School bein’ out, they got lotsa people want a free lunch. They gonna put some tables in the yard, so people could sit, if they wanna.”

  “Mrs. Kaye said that?”

  “No, I told’ja, that new lady, Holly. She say so. I gotta go now. I’ll come back after while. Tell Boo I say be good.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just lit out toward the storm ditch.

  I wanted to run and catch her to ask some more questions, but I figured I better not. I couldn’t get over that feeling that Kiki and Uncle Len might be right around the corner. I went back inside, locked the door again, and sat there trying not to think about Angel being at Poppy’s house. I hoped she wouldn’t find the secret room in the summer kitchen. It was selfish of me to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it. It was pretty hard, staying in the apartment with three rugrats, while Angel went down the road and had all the fun. I didn’t know how I was gonna keep them quiet if Len and Kiki showed up.

  By eleven, I was about to go nuts and Angel still wasn’t back. The kids were whining and I couldn’t just use all the food to give everybody lunch. I figured I was gonna have to do something, or go crazy. I decided it’d be okay to go to the bookstore, but there wasn’t any way to know if it was open, so I made up a plan that we’d head down the storm ditch and come up behind the old white church. We could hang out in back of the building where no one would see us while we checked if the Book Basket looked open.

  I got shoes on Opal, Ronnie, and Boo, and put our books in a Wal-Mart sack, and Opal grabbed her doll. I sent Ronnie outside first, like a spy, to see if anyone was in the parking lot. He came back and said there wasn’t anybody, and so we headed out the door, all running and holding hands in a chain till we got to the ditch.

  I made the kids run all the way down the ditch until we were out of sight of the road. They didn’t mind it. I think Opal was as glad to be outside as I was. When we got to the little white church, we hid behind the tree in the prayer garden while I tried to figure out if MJ was in her store. The next thing I knew, Teddy was there with a bucket of dirt in his hands. We scared each other half to death, he threw the bucket in the air, and dirt went everywhere.

  “Hey, Cass-e,” Teddy said, after he stopped stumbling backward. “I doin’ the fo’wers. Got some dirt with Mir’cal Grow.”

  “Cool,” I said, and tried to swallow my heart back down. It was up in my throat like a bat trying to beat its way out of a cave.

  “Where you gone?” he asked, and looked toward Poppy’s house.

  “We’re goin’ to the Book Basket,” I said, and held up the book sack. “To get some books.”

  Teddy frowned. “Where you been gone ye-terday?”

  I clued in to what he was asking. “Oh, hey, Opal’s been sick.”

  “Ohhhh.” He got a worried face, then looked at Opal. “She all better now. You gone Mit’ Kaye house?” He pointed toward Red Bird Lane. “I gone, in a min-it. Mama gone come in the car. We gone help at Mit’ Kaye house, givin’ the Lil’ Debbie, and the sam’ich, and the juice.”

  Everything in me wanted to go. Teddy was a big guy—even bigger than Uncle Len. If we were with him, we might be safe… . As soon as I thought it, I knew it was a bad idea. “We can’t. We gotta get some books. See ya, Teddy.” I grabbed the kids, and we took off through the churchyard, hit a gap in traffic, and ran across to the Book Basket.

  When we got there, I turned loose of everyone’s hands so I could try the door, but it was locked, so I rang the bell. Sometimes MJ would come out from the warehouse when I did that. She had a big room back there, and she rented it to a long-haired dude who made clay pots and painted pictures. He didn’t like to be bothered, she said, and all I knew about him was that I’d seen him come and go a time or two.

  While I waited by the door, Opal stood under the tree with all the glass beads and bottles hanging in it. Looking up at the bottles, she threw her arms in the air, tossed her head back, and twirled round and round with her doll in the colored light, singing a little song. It was something about Old Dan and Little Ann, the red fern, and gak-coons. The high, light sound of her voice mixed with the bottles clinking and the beads jingling, leaves rustling and the wind singing low in the mouths of the bottles. The street noises seemed far away, and for a minute, I just watched her.

  Ronnie and Boo pointed like she was crazy, but I let her go right ahead and dance. She looked like a little fairy princess, with the light sprinkling down on her.

  Boo took off all of a sudden and ran in circles, stopping to put his feet in the patches of light and look at the colors on his skin. Finally he stood in the place where there were the most colors, and he reminded me of Joseph, with his coat in the Bible. I wished, when we left Bismarck, I’d took Mama’s Bible. I could read them that story about the coat. They probably never heard it before, ever.

  I knocked hard on the door and rang the bell again, and finally MJ showed up. When we went inside, I asked her if I could trade Red Fern for a Bible.

  “Sure,” she said. “Help yourself. The Bibles are free, though, so you can pick out another book to trade for Red Fern.”

  I stood looking at the stack of Bibles, thinking if someone swore on that monster, they’d sure enough better be telling the truth. “They’re free?” I asked. “Any of ’em?” There were some nice ones with leather covers, crosses and stuff, and except for being dusty, they looked in good shape.

  “Churches give them to me when they’re left in the lost and found too long, and I pick some up at estate sales. I end up with quite a few.” MJ looked up from the notebook she was busy with.

  “Huh.” I tried to imagine having something nice like that, and just leaving, and not going back for it. “Can Opal have one, too? There’s a kids’ one here.”

  “Sure. Help yourself,” MJ said, which I did. Then me and Opal picked out our book trades and went to the counter with Ronnie and Boo.

  I looked at the pad of paper MJ had on her desk. There were pages and pages of writing that ended where she’d laid down her pen. “What’s that?” I asked, and pointed to it.

  “Another story.” She looked at the pad out the corner of her eye while she finished making my ticket.

  “What kind of story?” I tipped sideways and tried to see it, but I couldn’t read from there.

  MJ handed me my ticket. Her eyes were warm, like chocolate. She didn’t wear lots of makeup, l
ike Kiki, but she was beautiful anyway. Today, she had her hair wrapped up in a turban again. She looked like the ruler of some country way off—a storybook queen with magic in her.

  “Where did this one come from?”

  “A friend shared it with me,” MJ answered. “I’ll share it with you, if you like. The best stories are the ones we share.” Her eyes settled on me very directly, like she might be seeing my story without me wanting her to.

  Ronnie, Opal, and Boo wandered to the door. Ronnie pushed it open just a little.

  “Don’t mash your fingers,” I told him.

  “I ain’t,” he said through his buckteeth, then he pushed the door open farther. “I wanna see da bottles.”

  “Stay right by the door,” I said, but Ronnie had his mind on Opal’s book. He took it from her, and they went out the door, and stopped on the step to look it over. The door hung open a minute, and I watched to make sure they weren’t fighting.

  “My mama says my grandpa was a good storyteller,” I told MJ while she put her ticket book aside. “She said he kept everybody in stitches at weddings and funerals.”

  MJ chuckled. “Then I do suppose you might have a story in you.”

  Some things you can’t tell other people, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Sometimes you gotta keep your business to yourself.

  “Mama always said I was just like my grandpa. ’Course, she also said, ‘Cass Sally Blue, you’d be in a lot less trouble if you’d quit giving me a story and just spit out the truth.’ ”

  MJ laughed, which made me feel good. I liked MJ. Maybe, at least until I got Rusty talked into going for a start-over, I could hang out at the bookstore some during the days and help MJ organize books. It wasn’t a tea party in the summer kitchen, but at least it’d be something to do.

  I leaned back and looked through the door again. The kids had got quiet and let the door close, but Ronnie was still right there with the book. He was sharing it, at least. He’d squatted down so the others could look, too. I could just see the bushy top of Boo’s head by Ronnie’s elbow.

  “How is your mother, by the way?” MJ looked at me like Rusty’s dog used to look at the baby mud birds that got careless and toppled out of the nest on the porch. Didn’t take Missy long to figure out those birds couldn’t fly yet.

  I knew I’d messed up again and mentioned Mama like she wasn’t here anymore. Sometimes when you got to talking to folks, it was hard to remember everything. “She’s a little better. They changed her treatments some.”

  “The dialysis?”

  Geez, MJ remembered more than I thought. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I switched the subject and leaned across to look at her notebook. “So what’s this story about?”

  “A fish. I heard it from a man named Michael, who preaches to the street people under the bridge. He came here for a book, and I traded it for a story. It’s a good trade, wouldn’t you say?”

  I had to think about that a minute. “It sounds like you got took. He can make up another story anytime, but you’ve gotta go out and buy more books.”

  MJ winked at me. “But the story I get to keep, and no matter how many times I share it, I still have it.”

  “I guess that’s true enough.”

  “I’ll share it with you, very quickly.”

  “Cool,” I said, and waited to see what was in the notebook that was worth the trade for a book.

  MJ didn’t bother to look at her writing. I guess she knew the story already. “Once upon a time, there was a grandfather catfish who lived in a big beautiful stream. He was the largest of all the fish, and so he was the ruler of the stream. Everything was under his control, and he was very proud of this.”

  MJ moved her hands slow, like a big daddy catfish swimming along, looking over his territory. “One very hot summer, there was no rain, and the streams began to dry up until there were only pools with long passages of rock between them. As time passed, the pools began to grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until the fish were trapped together in very tiny places.”

  MJ spread her hands along the counter, her long fingers moving as if she were drawing the stream. “The grandfather catfish knew what to do. Being a wise fish and an important fish, he began to pray for rain. He was certain this would solve his problem. Always in the past, when the stream began to dry, he prayed for rain, and rain came. Because he was very important, he knew God would listen to him. ‘Father God,’ he said. ‘Please send rain to carry me out of this trap.’ Then he sat in his pool and waited, but no rain came. The pool grew terribly small, so small that the fish could see above the surface of the water.”

  MJ stopped and looked up, like she was the fish sitting in its pool. “One day, he saw a fisherman above the water, who was just a boy. The pool was so shallow that the fisher boy was able to scoop up fish with a bucket. The grandfather catfish was very frightened, and so he hid underneath a rock to keep from being captured, until the boy left.”

  MJ made one hand swim under the other, like the fish hiding under the rock. “Grandfather fish decided God must have missed his prayer, so he said again, ‘Father God, the pool is getting very small. Please make the river flow and carry me from this trap.’ But no rain came. The pool grew smaller. The fisher boy came back a second time, and he began scooping more fish with a net.”

  “ ‘I’ll not be someone’s dinner,’ said Grandfather Catfish, so he hurried underneath his rock just before the net could scoop him. He hid until the fishing boy was gone, and then he came out into the open to find he was the only fish left in the pool. ‘Ha!’ he said to himself. ‘I’m the wisest of all. God will send the rains, and I’ll have the entire stream to myself!’ He said his prayer a third time, and he waited, but no rain came.”

  MJ frowned, like she was sad for the fish. “The fisher boy came back again, this time with a line and some bait, but Grandfather Catfish was far too wise for that. He didn’t touch the line, even though it sat all day, and he was very hungry and tired. Finally, the boy gathered his line and left, and he never returned. He knew there was no way he would catch the grandfather fish. Shortly after, the stream dried up, and Grandfather Catfish lay in the last patch of mud, gasping his final breath. ‘God of all things!’ he cried. ‘Why, when I prayed three times, didn’t you rescue me from my trap?’ ”

  MJ tapped a fingernail on the countertop, smiling. “And do you know what Father God said to the fish?”

  The answer to the story came to me, and I laughed. “I bet he said, ‘If you wanted out of the pool, you should of jumped in the bucket, or swam in the net, or grabbed hold of the line.’ The boy wasn’t trying to hurt the fish, he was trying to take him someplace where the water was deeper, right?”

  MJ got a twinkle in her eye. “You’re very clever,” she said. “Sometimes we become so set on one possibility, we forget that in God’s eye the possibilities are infinite. It is not He who needs our wisdom, but we who need His.”

  I felt a big smile going across my face, because it was the first time I’d figured out the punch line before the end. “That’s a good story.”

  “I agree.” MJ grabbed her pen and made a quick note on the edge of her pad. “It’s worth trading for, don’t you think?”

  I nodded, but outside Ronnie and Boo were fighting over Opal’s book. Somebody pushed, and somebody landed against the door. I figured I needed to go pull them off each other. “I better head out.” I took my stuff and started that way. “See you tomorrow.”

  The door stuck when I tried to pull it open. I hoped Ronnie and Boo hadn’t tore it up. We sure didn’t have the money to pay for a door. I doubted MJ had much either, considering she mostly seemed to give away books.

  She came around the counter to help me. “It does this sometimes. It’s old.” Butting the door with her hip, she twisted the handle at the same time, and it came open. I got out front just before Ronnie and Boo were about to knock over a flowerpot.

  “You two stop that!” I yanked the book away from Ronnie wit
h one hand, and picked Boo up by the arm with the other. For no bigger than he was, Boo was a scrapper. He kicked me in the shin so hard it hurt.

  MJ helped Ronnie get up and dust off, and I pinned Boo to the wall until he quit being a brat. “We’re going home,” I told them, and looked for Opal. I figured she’d be up against the building trying to hide, because she didn’t like it when anybody’d get in a fight.

  I checked by the front door and the gas pumps, and she wasn’t there. “Where’s Opal?”

  Boo put both hands up with his palms in the air. Ronnie wiped his nose and did the same thing.

  “She was with you two. Where is she?” My voice took on a sharp edge, and Ronnie pulled his shoulders up and ducked his head between them.

  MJ and me checked all around the front of the building. We looked behind the flowerpots, by the trash can, on the side of the building where some old gas station signs were sitting. Both of us ran around to the back, yelling for Opal. By then, my heart was pounding, and I felt like someone had a fist over my throat.

  “Calm down, now,” MJ said. “She couldn’t have gone far. Let me check inside and make sure she didn’t go back in. Keep watching for her out here.”

  “Okay.” Tears crowded into my eyes, and I stood on the curb, turning in a circle, not knowing where she could of gone or what to do next. Keep looking? Try to go find Rusty at work so we could drive around in the truck? The construction site was, like, five miles away. It’d take me forever to get there. What would I do with Ronnie and Boo?

  Should I call the police?

  I couldn’t call the police.

  What if MJ calls the police?

  Settle down. Settle down. Think. Think where she’d go… .

  I couldn’t picture anyplace Opal would go—not on her own, especially. Opal never did anything but stick herself to my leg.

  “Opal!” I yelled up and down the street. “Opal! You come out here!” She’s so little. She couldn’t go very far. How could she get away so fast? She was here a minute ago …