Beat the Turtle Drum Read Online Free PDF Page A

was adding up the money she planned on getting.
    â€œThat sounds horrible,” I said. Actually, Grandmother probably would give her twenty-five dollars. She was a creature of habit. She had given us both that amount as long as I could remember. When we were little, my mother and father used to put the checks in the bank in our savings account.
    But for the past few years we’d been allowed to spend part of it. Last year I was going through an altruistic phase and said I was going to give five dollars of my birthday money to an organization which fed children overseas.
    â€œMe too,” Joss said. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to give all of mine.” She settled on giving five dollars too. It made us feel good, knowing we were doing something for other kids.
    â€œAre you going to spend the whole twenty-five on the horse?” I asked her.
    Joss poked the pencil in her ear.
    â€œI’ll have to see,” she said.
    â€œYou better cut that out or you’ll puncture your eardrum,” I said. I know this kid at school who had a thing about her ears being dirty. She was always attacking them with cotton swabs. Finally she had to go to the doctor and have him remove all the wax she’d been packing down in her ears all that time. That’s kind of disgusting, but it’s true. This same girl also used to smell her dog’s ears to see if they smelled musty. If they did, she said, it meant he was sick.
    She was definitely hung up on ears.
    I knew another girl who had a fungus inside her ear. Every time she dove off the board at the Y pool, the fungus began to pulsate, due to the large dose of water it had received. Funguses—or is it fungi?—anyway, they thrive on water. Ear plugs didn’t do any good. Eventually she had to give up diving entirely. Which was too bad, since she’d been planning to make the U.S. Olympic diving team.
    This kind of information gives me goose pimples, it’s so revolting. But it has a terrible fascination for me.
    â€œYou sound so mercenary when you say things like that,” I told Joss.
    â€œI don’t know what ‘mercenary’ means,” Joss said, still poking at her ear. “I’m just being realistic.”
    â€œMaybe she’ll pick this year to give you a good book. A dictionary or something,” I said. “Or how about The Joy of Sex ?”
    Joss liked that. She imitated Grandmother going to the bookstore.
    â€œMay I help you?” Joss, as clerk, asked. “What age group are you looking for?”
    â€œIt’s for my granddaughter, she’s going to be eleven.” Joss could sound like Grandmother when she concentrated. “She’s mad about horses. That’s all she talks about all day long.”
    Joss jumped to the other side of the rug. “Then we have just the thing,” Joss, the clerk, said. “ Black Beauty .”
    Joss jumped back to Grandmother’s side.
    â€œOh, no, she’s read that a thousand and twenty times. No.” Joss put her finger against the side of her nose the way Grandmother does and looked thoughtful. “I think it’s time she learned the facts of life.”
    â€œI have just the thing.” Joss was the clerk again. “It’s called The Joy of Sex .”
    Grandmother looked doubtful. “Do you think it’s suitable for a young girl?”
    Joss pretended she was the clerk wrapping up The Joy of Sex . “It’s one of our best sellers. It’s number one on our best-seller list,” Joss said firmly. “And it’s only twenty-five dollars.”
    â€œWell, that’s nice.” Joss paid the clerk imaginary money. “That’s just what I usually spend so I guess that’s all right.”
    We rolled on the floor, laughing. Both of us could see Joss opening her birthday present in front of Mom and Dad and the expressions on their faces.
    My stomach ached from laughing. There’s