Tending to Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand?”
    â€œYou stop just to give me help, Moss?” Agatha says.
    The man laughs. “Sure.”
    â€œWell, the job’s already done. Two chairs for my garden.”
    â€œI did want to talk to you about that woodlot, Agatha. You gonna sell it to me this year?”
    She snorts. “I knew there was more. I got the same answer I gave you last year, Moss. No.”
    â€œYou can make a good pocket of cash off it—I keep telling you that, Agatha.”
    â€œAnd I keep telling you, I’m not lettin’ no one buy my land.”
    He takes off his cap and wipes his forehead with his arm. “Your house, Agatha, it could surely use a little money put into it. Be a shame to let an old place like that go.”
    â€œMy business, not yours,” she says.
    He winks at me. “I’m Moss, Moss Jackson.” He reaches his hand out to shake mine. “I own the land right up to Agatha’s. Isn’t that right, Agatha?” He looks back at me. “And you’re?”
    Think about
anything
else, I tell myself as I reach out my hand. I turn to Agatha, hoping she’ll tell him who I am. Instead, she looks back at me. I begin turning myself to stone.
    Think about all the fish heads and old bologna sandwiches and half-eaten Pop-Tarts that rot inside all the garbage bags at the dump, I tell myself. Think about tuna in a lunch box, six days old.
    â€œUmmm,” I say finally. I breathe deeply through my nose. I loop my thumbs in my belt loops and pull until they are as red as cherries. “C-c-c-c ...”
    A grin moves across his face. He chuckles. “Cat got your tongue?” I turn miserably to Agatha. She is not chuckling. She is looking straight at me.
    Why doesn’t she do anything? She could just say my name, make this all go away, but she stands there, still as pond water.
    I am a stone, sinking. “C-c-c-c-c ...”
    He looks down, away. He turns to Agatha. “You change your mind on that woodlot, you give me a call now, you hear?” He hurries to his truck and climbs in, starts it, and drives off.
    Agatha looks at me a long time. She puts her arm on my shoulders and then we walk to the truck and ride home in silence. I want to slip into the quiet and never talk again.

34
    â€œYou c-c-c-could have helped me,” I say later, after we push the chairs off the truck and shove them against the barn, where they sit in the shade of the maple tree. Agatha flips a cucumber basket upside down and sprawls in one of the chairs and puts her feet up. She raises an eyebrow. “How?”
    â€œYou c-could have said my name. S-s-something.”
    â€œSeems like no one should be doin’ that but you.”
    I turn away and storm into the house.

35
    Agatha sleeps under a heap of sheets and blankets, with her feet sticking out the bottom of her bed. The whole thing drives me crazy and one day I tackle her room. I strip the bed and wash the sheets and blankets and hang them on the line. I wash her overalls and T-shirts that are strewn over chairs and across the bedposts and are stuffed behind the door. The dust chokes me as I yank things out from under her bed. It’s an archaeological dig: I pull out a stuffed owl with one eye missing, yellowed newspapers from 1961, a purple hat with a long sweeping feather, and a small wooden box with a hinged cover.
    I brush off her bed with my hand and sit down and open the cover of the box and find the tiniest sweater I’ve ever seen, a pair of booties, mittens the size of strawberries, and a hat that could fit an orange. A thin thread of lace edges the sweater and when I rub it against my cheek, the yarn feels as soft as the dandelion fluff in the yard.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Agatha’s voice claws at me; her eyes are nickels on fire. In one leap she hovers over me, pulling the sweater out of my hand. “I ain’t never told you to clean in here. Now get out.”
    I run out to a tree in the