Sacred Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

were painted with enamel. Bianca’s turtle was pink and named Vanessa-Marlene; while Belinda’s was green and named Bob. Their house was a turtle dish made of plastic, the size of a dinner plate, with curved sides. Inside, you poured gravel and snapped in a palm tree with six leaves. A ramp for the turtles led to that tree. The twins would have turtle races on the sidewalk and prod Bob and Vanessa-Marlene with twigs. If the turtles didn’t budge, they’d lift them by their shells—the size of walnut shells, only flatter—and jiggle them hard to get their legs moving; but the turtles would pull in their claws and heads, hiding inside their glossy shells.
    Before Uncle Malcolm bought the turtles, six baby chicks used to live in the tub. That’s how you had to buy them at the pet shop, my uncle had said—“six chicks in a box”—and he asked my mother if we wanted to split the cost. But she didn’t want to share our bathtub with filthy chickens. “I don’t know how your sister can live like that,” she’d told my father. I loved those chicks and tried to hold them whenever we visited. Though I was careful with them, they’d squirm in my palms, peck at my fingers. Aunt Floria fed them baby food, and the chicks would walk through the pablum and drag it all over the tub. Before anyone could take a bath, Aunt Floria would catch the chicks, set them into a carton, and scrub their pablum footprints from the cracked porcelain. Because they were so messy, they didn’t stay long enough to get names. Uncle Malcolm gave them to the milkman, who had a farm in New Jersey. “They’ll be so much happier in the country,” he’d said. New Jersey was “the country,” green and mysterious, with lots of trees and chickens and cows.
    Of all the pets who’d lived in the twins’ tub so far, my favorite was Ralph, and as I touched the velvet-soft pads beneath his paws, I swore to myself I’d never let Uncle Malcolm take Ralph to New Jersey. “I want to hold Ralph,” I said.
    â€œNo,” Belinda said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause you got skinny legs.”
    â€œAnd you are BaBelinda,” I yelled. “BaBelinda with ugly boogers inside her head.”
    She reached into the tub, threw a fistful of brown pellets at me, and chased me from the bathroom, the rabbit bouncing in her arms; we ran up and down the dim hallway, dodging four suitcases, their bulging sides secured with rope.
    â€œBaBelinda…BaBelinda…”
    â€œSuuu-per-mannnn…”
    As Bianca galloped past me, trailed by the cape Aunt Floria had patched together from various colors of bridesmaids’ gowns, I was glad Riptide wasn’t allowed to take my cousins to the pool. Aunt Floria was afraid they’d catch polio, even though we’d been vaccinated. At my school, the doctor with the syringe stood at one end of the cafeteria, and the lollipop nurse at the other. The only thing worse than polio vaccination was the screaming of sirens during air-raid drills, when we had to hide under our desks or got marched into a hallway without windows. “Just a drill,” Sister would say.
    â€œSkinny legs…”
    â€œUgly-booger BaBelinda…”
    â€œEggplant time,” Aunt Floria called. “Time to eat.”
    â€œSuuu-per-mannnn…Suuu—”
    â€œGirls. Anthony—” Aunt Floria stepped into our path. “Please? Do you have to be that noisy? You put that rabbit back in the tub. Now.”
    In the kitchen, the warmth of the oven was releasing the smells of my father’s food: garlic and Parmesan cheese and tomato sauce. He was stacking wrapped plates in a carton I recognized from previous moves.
    â€œI want to eat honeymoon salad,” Belinda said.
    â€œA house full of children for Christmas, Anthony…” My father gave me a warning glance. “Won’t that be nice?”
    My