reading

Chapter One

“Sit here and don’t move,” said Aunt Millie, shoving some liquorice candy at me. The bench out near the front door of Mae Cushion’s store was none too comfortable. A person would have to have calluses on her rump the size of barn shovels not to complain. Not that I wasn’t used to it, given how many hours I’d sat there over the years.

I unrolled one of the liquorice whips and started to gnaw my way to the end. Aunt Millie was scarcely out the door when Mae Cushion started chewing about her.

“I wonder where she’s taking off to,” she said, turning around to gawk out the window. I got off the bench and headed toward the back of the store. Something told me I wouldn’t want to sit there and listen to Mae breathing her complaints about Aunt Millie to the woman across the counter.

“Wherever it is, she seems to be in a hurry,” said the woman.

“It’s a shame for the girl, though.”

I snapped my head around. There was a clear view of the counter from where I stood. They weren’t even turned my way, yet their whispers circled around me like blowflies on a rotting carcass.

“Poor dear won’t know a thing,” continued Mae. “Hasn’t been to school a day so far.”

“Is that allowed?” the woman asked.

“It is if no one says anything. Jeff Chisholm never sent his boy.”

“Yes, but he helps out on the farm.”

I sashayed over to the next aisle, taking no care to be quiet. My shoes yelled out “I hear you!” as I stomped across the floorboards. Who did they think they were, talking about me that way?

“Mark my words: if she doesn’t get some kind of education, she’ll end up looking after Millie Turple in her old age. What else can she do, hardly able to see a hand in front of her? Not that Millie Turple would give a flying fig,” said Mae.

I moved in a bit closer, curious about what else they had to say. Why do people think if you can’t see well your hearing must be bad too?

When the woman at the counter made a t-t-ting sound, a queer feeling started in my head and worked its way through the rest of me, filling out my arms and legs like water running over rocks. Mae leaned her ugly mug across the counter toward me. The store wasn’t that big. I should have ducked out of sight.

“I bet you’d like to go to school, wouldn’t you, dear?” she asked in a loud, I-feel-sorry-for-you kind of voice. I stole a glance while pretending to inspect the items on the shelf in front of me. I picked up a can and held it close. Peaches, by the picture on the label.

I could handle an awkward silence better than I could handle a bunch of nosy questions from someone who didn’t have the good sense not to whisper about me when I was right there. And anyway, when you’re different by a mile, you don’t need to follow anyone’s rules. I held my tongue. Mae gave a grunt. Believe me, she didn’t want to hear what was running through my brain.

“Where is her mother?” the woman asked once my silence made it through their thick heads and they realized I wasn’t going to answer Mae’s question.

“Timbuktu, as far as anyone here knows. I don’t think Millie’s even sure.”

“Why would anyone leave a child for Millie Turple to raise?”

There came more t-t-ting sounds.

“What do you suppose really goes on in that house?” the woman added.

A pinprick caught me below the ribs. I wondered how many people in Sheppard Square knew that Aunt Millie sold moonshine. I wanted to tell them both to just never mind about me. Words ricochet off you or else they sink in deep. If you’re good enough at acting, no one knows the difference. Who says there’s nothing to be learned from living with a bootlegger all your life?

A quick image smacked me upside the head while I stood examining the cans on the shelf.

Me, emptying Aunt Millie’s chamber pail in her old age, spooning porridge over her barenaked gums. Aunt Millie drooling like a big old baby, old and grey and wrinkled to the bone. Me, scrubbing and cleaning and doing all the chores, someone knocking at the back door yelling for me to get them some moonshine.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. Before you knew it I’d be grown and Aunt Millie would be old. With no other way to make money, it would fall to me to do all the bootlegging. As much as I hated to admit it, when Mae Cushion told that woman I needed to go to school, she was right. Mae Cushion might have been a meddlesome busybody, but she knew more than Aunt Millie ever would.

“Why don’t I get to go to school like everyone else?” I asked Aunt Millie a few days later. I was sitting across the kitchen table from Ed Hanover, scribbling on a piece of brown wrapping paper. I already knew how to make my letters, thanks to Herb Winters. He’d printed the alphabet on a shingle a few years back with a piece of lumberman’s chalk. I’d practised copying the letters onto paper until I got good at it. But knowing how to make letters didn’t help me learn how to read and write words. I knew a few of my sums and take aways from playing with the buttons in Aunt Millie’s button box and, when she was in a good mood, Aunt Millie would even play along.

“You’ve got to be able to count if you want to make change someday,” she’d say, smug like she thought I wouldn’t know what that meant.

“Why the devil are you asking about school?” Aunt Millie demanded.

“Everyone else goes.”

I’d been trying to figure out some of the words in those old Standard magazines Aunt Millie gave me a while back. Seeing all those photos of the king and queen, not knowing what the words said, put me in hard shape. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but what words? I could stare at them till I got bug-eyed and they still wouldn’t make any sense. The only thing I could print was my name.

“And I suppose if everyone else jumped in the lake you’d want to too?”

I didn’t lift my head up when Aunt Millie spoke. I had my face up close to the table so that I could see the lovely loops and swirls I was making on the paper. I didn’t know a thing about writing, but I figured I should at least show I was interested in learning.

Aunt Millie was at the stove pouring hot water into the teapot. She wouldn’t even turn around to face me.

“How’s it going?” she’d asked with a spark in her voice when Ed walked in a half hour earlier. I figured he was her new boyfriend, maybe someone from over in Sheppard Square. It was the first time I’d seen him around. He tipped his hat to Aunt Millie, walked right over like he owned the joint, and shook my hand.

“I’m Ed Hanover,” he said. “But just call me Ed.”

“Should I boil the kettle?” asked Aunt Millie right away.

Boil the kettle? Aunt Millie was offering him a cup of tea? Moonshine, yes, but tea? I figured there must be something different about Ed if she was being all polite and friendly. Maybe he was one of those “keepers” she talked about finding one day.

He shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?” like it was no big deal, then sat down at the table across from me. He kept looking my way like he was really pleased about something or else thought I was kind of funny looking.

“I’m Cammie,” I said, hoping if I said something he’d stop staring. I was used to people looking at me, stopping what they were doing just to stand back and gawk. People used to watch me down at Mae Cushion’s store when I laid my nickel on the counter like they couldn’t believe I had enough good sense to pay for the candy I had in my hand. When you live in a small place like Tanner, population 206, it doesn’t take much for other people to want to stand back and stare. Only I didn’t get any say in the matter. No one consulted me. Maybe God thought he was being funny when he gave me a set of tiny little eyes, or maybe, just maybe, God needed me to have tough skin is all.

I decided I didn’t like the way Ed was sitting there smiling at me. I really wanted to make a face at him. If I had thought it would make him stop staring I would have. Instead, I changed the subject and asked Aunt Millie for some paper and a pen.

“You don’t need any of that,” she snorted, but then Ed smooth-talked her into letting me use her good pen. He made her scrounge around until she found some brown paper that had been wrapped around a parcel she’d got in the mail last week. When someone goes out of their way to try and make you happy, they can’t be all that bad. He had a nice-enough-shaped head and I couldn’t make out any missing teeth in his smile. His coal-black hair kind of made him look different, but I’m the last one to care about different. Aunt Millie and I both have blonde hair, mine from birth, hers from hydrogen peroxide. At least Ed was paying attention to me, which is more than I could say about Aunt Millie’s other boyfriends.

“Let me see what you’re doing there,” said Ed, pulling the paper away from me. I waited for him to start laughing. Instead he nodded and said, “You’ve got some pretty nice-looking loops there, Cammie.”

“It’s writing,” I informed him. My marks were crude, but he should have known what it was right away.

“Of course it is. There’s lots of loops in writing,” he said. “Here, let me show you how to write your name.” He put some letters on my sheet of brown paper and passed it over for me to inspect. I held it up close. It was the first time I’d seen my name written out like that. I started right in working to make my letters as smooth as Ed’s, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

“How are you going to get to school? Tell me that, ’cause I won’t be walking you there every day,” Aunt Millie said. I don’t think she liked Ed showing me how to write.

“I’ve got two feet. I can walk,” I answered, brave at the thought of walking there all on my own, something I’d never done before. The school wasn’t that far away. I’d been dreaming it in my head, planning out the way to the schoolhouse so I’d be ready when the time came.

Me, just a-strutting down the road without a single care in the world, toting my books and lunch kettle in my hands, walking along like I’ve got just as much business going to school as the next person, one foot in front of the other, out to the end of the Lake Ridge Road and make a right turn instead of a left like when we go to Mae Cushion’s. A piece of cake by my calculations.

“Oh, you’ve got two feet, do you?” Aunt Millie mocked as she moved her head from one side to the other. My face burned. How could she make fun of me like that in front of Ed Hanover, someone I didn’t even know?

“What if you end up getting lost? Besides, you wouldn’t be able to copy things off the blackboard,” Aunt Millie said as she fiddled with the teapot lid. “Have you thought about that, Miss Smartypants?”

As soon as Ed piped up and said, “School might not be a bad idea, Millie,” the little bird inside me made a happy chirp. I gave a quick gasp. I wanted to throw my arms around Ed’s scrawny neck and smother him with kisses. I’d never had anyone take my side before. No one was brave enough to go against Aunt Millie.

“Cammie’ll go when I think she’s ready, and not one day before,” sputtered Aunt Millie. It didn’t look as though Ed was going to change her mind.

“How old are you, honey?” Ed asked, looking over at me. I could tell he wasn’t about to give up without a fight. I was glad to have him in my corner at least.

“Almost ten and three quarters,” I said, stealing a look at Aunt Millie. That sounded better than just saying ten, a hint to Aunt Millie that I wasn’t getting any younger. Life was already passing me by.

“I already know where you’re going with this, Ed, and you can forget it,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. A picture of me heading to the outhouse with Aunt Millie’s chamber pail swinging at the end of my arm sent whatever hope that was inside me spiralling into the dust. I was doomed.

“How’s she going to keep up with the other kids? Look at her. She can barely see what’s written on that paper I gave her.”

“I can too see it,” I howled. Just because I have to look really close to see small things doesn’t mean I can’t see them as good as everyone else. So what if things off in the distance look fuzzy? It’s not as if I can’t get myself around. I’ve been doing it my entire life. It used to give Aunt Millie the willies the way I could tell what she was doing from all the way across the room. There’s a trick to it that I learned when I was little. You’ve got to perk your ears just so. You’ve got to listen for the sound in her voice and the way she holds her head. When your eyes can’t see so good your brain makes up the difference, filling in the details as best it can. Even if you’re not one hundred percent accurate, no one’s ever going to know. But I wasn’t about to make mention about any of that to Aunt Millie.

Ed cleared his throat. “Can’t the teacher help her? That’s what she gets paid for.”

Of course the teacher could help me! I’d only known Ed a few minutes and already I could tell he was a genius. The room went silent for a few seconds. Surely Aunt Millie would see the light and change her mind. Ed’s words swung like a loose hinge in the air until the teacups clattered against the saucers when Aunt Mille set them down on the kitchen table.

“I don’t want to hear any more about this. Do you hear me, the both of you? Ed, you’ve got no business butting in. Cammie’s my responsibility. Remember? So you can keep your two cents to yourself.”

Another moment of silence followed. All I was to her was a responsibility, someone for her to feed and water, like a dog tied out back, at least until my mother returned. As if that was ever going to happen.

“Guess who just told us off, Cammie?” Ed said, rubbing at the back of his neck.

That was it. I was done for. With my luck, Aunt Millie would live to be a hundred. I’d be stuck in Tanner all my days. Mae Cushion as good as said so. You don’t get anywhere these days without going to school. How would I ever get away if I couldn’t read or write?

That little bird inside my chest made a feeble chirp before falling to the bottom of its cage. It lay there, flicking its wings back and forth. I held back my tears. The back of my throat burned.

“So Ed, how’s it feel to be back in Tanner after all these years?” Aunt Millie poured out tea and started chatting away like a chipmunk. How could she sound chipper when the bottom had just dropped out of my world?

I should have known better than to get my hopes up. Aunt Millie didn’t care if I learned anything so long as she gave me a roof over my head and I did what she asked. Who cared if I lived in ignorance all the days of my life? No one, that’s who!

A huge ball of anger began to sprout inside me, burning and pulsing with each beat of my heart. I wanted to grab Aunt Millie’s voice and rip it through the middle, let her know what it felt like to have your words mean nothing.

I grabbed her pen off the table and scribbled over my beautiful writing, over the place where Ed had just written my name. I scratched the pen into the paper over and over until I’d made a hole. When I was done I threw the pen to the floor at Aunt Millie’s feet and ran from the kitchen like the house was on fire.