Chapter 37

Mrs. Canberry

Daddy wouldn’t like that I’m not keeping an eye on Grandpa, and Mama would raise a fuss that he’s not keeping an eye on me.

Mrs. Canberry points out hooks to hang my dresses. The torn sleeve of my good dress causes a shiver to slither through me. What would Gerald have done if my knife hadn’t stopped him? I refuse to let the shiver catch hold.

I finger the ivory lace Mama tatted and sewed on. Touching the delicate knots and loops, I almost see Mama’s hands. I wish I were close enough—and young enough—to crawl in her lap.

“What a shame!” Mrs. Canberry says when she spots the dress. “Mrs. Grome has needle and thread. We can fix that.”

She leads me to the kitchen, where Mrs. Grome peers into the oven and bastes two hens crisping in a pan. Mrs. Canberry fetches a paper of needles and a spool of thread. She offers to help, but I want to do it myself.

She sits me at a small kitchen table, and plunks her bulk on a chair across from me. She fans her flushed face with a newspaper, while I thread a needle.

At the stove, Mrs. Grome stops stirring to wave her wood spoon at a fly. She drops the spoon into a pot and reaches for a wire fly-killer. She raises her hand. Splat! She flicks the dead fly off the stovetop with her swatter.

“Dang flies!” she mutters, waving her spoon over the stove. She can wave and swat until Kingdom Come, but flies are as certain as heat in summer. The screen door a few feet away has a hole big enough for a crow to fly through.

Mrs. Canberry doesn’t pay heed to the flies. She fans her face and talks. She tells me about her daddy who fought in the War. He came from Maine for the Reunion, and she and her son came from Ohio for a reunion with him.

I try to listen while I mend, but her words change paths so often she’s hard to follow. A ringing bell finally silences her.

Mrs. Grome hurries to a contraption on a shelf. A telephone! The first I’ve ever seen! Mrs. Grome holds it to her ear and talks into the mouthpiece. “It’s Minerva,” she tells Mrs. Canberry, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

“Minerva lives down the road,” Mrs. Canberry says and leaps into a story about boarders at Minerva’s house.

Her words fly past my ears, as I concentrate on repairing my dress. The rip doesn’t follow the seam, and I labor over every stitch. I had thought it silly of Aunt Freddie to leave growing room at the seam. I’m right certain my arms will grow no longer, but now the extra fabric gives me something to work with.

I stroke Mama’s lace. If she had a telephone back home, I could hear her voice and talk to her. But what could I say? Better I say it to someone who won’t worry.