Ellen Foster (11 page)

But I could tell them some things about what else can come in a box oh not the shiny kind but the black one that fits down so cozy in a hole.

And that is the difference between me and them.

I bet Nadine says to her girl some nights oh your daddy is not dead sugar Dora. He’s up in heaven strumming on a harp with the angels and he’s looking down at how pretty you are smiling at us both right now.

Chickenshit is what I would say. She might as well have said sugar Dora your daddy isn’t dead. Why he’s just up at the North Pole working away on scooters and train sets like a good elf should. Why he’s Santa’s favorite helper!

But they get some comfort out of the made up stories. And if that helps them get along maybe I should not poke fun.

But it is hard for me not to see the humor.

I think they were pleased about my decision to keep to myself. If a girl was staying in my house that I did not want there I certainly would be pleased as punch if she announced one night at supper that you will only be seeing me at meal times unless we happen to pass each other on the way to the toilet.

Then it got my goat when I had to ask for somebody to help me get a new round of clothes. I was growing again.

Nadine took me to the store and I told her just to let me out with some money and I would get exactly what I had to have.

It would seem like logic for me to wear the clothes Dora did not like anymore but neither me or Dora wanted to do that anymore. When she slung such a nasty fit when Nadine suggested that idea I figured I must have sent that red checked suit back to them with a stain. But it was fine for me not to wear Dora’s throwbacks to school.

I have my own style of dressing.

The way to shop when you have a limit on money and you
don’t want to be bothered every morning picking out and matching up items in your wardrobe is to buy everything alike.

Before you leave for the store you check the back of your neck collar to see what size shirt, sweater, and dress you are. Then you reach back and roll the top of your drawers back and write down that size too. That will also be your britches size. Then you look on the inside of your right shoe. Generally there will be a chart in the shoe department where you can figure out about the socks. But you will probably need socks only every third trip or so. They stretch with your feet.

Then you go to the girls department and tell the lady you need the sizes bigger than the ones you have in your hand. You follow her to your racks and say for her to leave you alone now please.

Also if you wear bad looking clothes to shop in the lady will think you are a little thief. I get distracted trying to shop and look very honest at the same time.

And you pick out two of everything just alike except different colors. But get colors that go good together like green and yellow or navy and white. Not a orange or purple you will feel like a fool in.

I always take a long time to try it all on and make sure I feel right. Then I pay for it and make sure I got my receipt in case something falls apart. I even sent the warranty in on my microscope. I paid good money for it even if it was the junior model. They ought to build things to last.

When I get back to where I am living I lay all the clothes on the bed and admire how it all matches.

When Nadine took me shopping that day I bought the most beautiful dress I had ever seen. I mean that. I saw it in with the ordinary dresses and I said this is the dress for me.

And the price was right so I bought it and it is still hanging in my closet even though it comes up to my tail. I have growed right much since then.

It is a dress you catch somebody’s eye with. It is like nothing you have ever seen especially when I put it on and gazed in the store mirror I said Lord I could fall in love with my own self.

It has a row of lace around your throat. Not too much. Just enough to set your face off pretty. And then the dress is green like pine trees down to the waist where it fans out in a navy blue skirt. The sash is reason alone for somebody to want that dress. Already hooked on to the dress with a bow you do not have to worry with. It is the kind of dress that decorates you in the front and the back both. Even when I am walking off I thought while I watched myself turning in that dress somebody could look at me and smile.

That dress was the first sign my luck was changing. Some other girl and her mama could have snatched it up before I got to the store but no it was there waiting for old Ellen.

I could pass for a princess in that dress I thought while I turned some more in the mirror.

And the next day was Sunday oh the day I went to church and figured that woman with all the girls lined up by her had to be the new mama for me. And while everybody else was praying I looked over at my new mama to be and then up to the Lord and thanked him for sending me that dress.

I said I look like I am worth something today and she will
notice the dress first and then me inside it and say to herself I sure would like to have a little girl like her.

Right after the service I asked Dora what all I needed to know about the lady with the girls. Like who is she and do all the girls belong to her or are they nieces and friends of the family?

Dora whispered back to me like she might be talking about special handicapped children behind their backs. She said they are the Foster family and that lady would take in anything from orphans to stray cats. Or so her mama said.

That fit my description perfect and I started thinking hard about how to be her new girl.

My new mama says sure Starletta can come stay with us and why doesn’t she just ride the schoolbus home with me on Friday?

Have you ever felt like you could cry because you know you just heard the most important thing anybody in the world could have spoke at that second? I do not care if the president had just declared war although that is something to think about. I do not care if a thousand doctors had just said congratulations sir you are the father of a bouncing baby something. All that mattered in my world at that second was my new mama and the sound of yes in my ears oh yes Starletta is welcome here.

I will bust before I get back to school to tell her to pack up her bags you are coming to my house this weekend and be sure to bring some of your little rubber bands because I will be asking you to plait my hair again.

It is OK if you don’t own a suitcase. I use a box my own
self. Just put your pajamas and personal hygiene in a bag or box and bring it to school on Friday. Be sure and come to my class when the bell rings and we will ride the bus home together.

And then the most important sight in the world like the sound of my new mama’s yes she can come is Starletta’s face looking up from her lunch plate and I see she wants to come to my house to check if I have some more scratchy carpet on the floor or just anything for her to touch all over again that is mine.

You come to my house and I’ll give you anything you want I thought about telling her but I did not talk then about giving and receiving. I did not want her to think I was bringing her there to give her things she needed. It was just Starletta the girl I was after and she could tote my bed and my checkerboard curtains back to her house if she felt like it. But it is just Starletta I want to squeeze so hard she will remember that every time somebody loves her good. And I want her just to enjoy herself and let me give her without the talking all she has coming her way. Lord I do owe her. And all I want in return is to wake up on Monday knowing the two of us are even.

Lord then we will all be straight.

Then I will not miss her so bad. We will be even friends and I will not need to prove a thing to her ever again. And she will remember me good when she is old enough to think and sort through her own past to see all the ways I slighted her oh not by selling her down a river or making her wash my clothes but by all the varieties of ways I felt God chose me over her.

And I will tell you it is hard and not one bit decent to keep
on with that sort of thinking when you have seen all this world has to offer.

So if Starletta is coming on Friday that does not leave me long to get my room ready. My new mama says she will do whatever she can get around to doing between now and then.

Well I would like to dust and make sure the floor is real clean. Then I want to wash the windows so she can look out and see the view I got here. Then I want to get her a set of towels ready. Do you happen to have any with a S sewed on them? I need to know.

She laughs and says she doesn’t but if it is that important to me she’ll whip it up on the machine tonight and I can see if it passes my inspection tomorrow.

My new mama is always willing to help if it matters to you.

I thank her and then I figure I need a list of all what we can do over the weekend. You just do not invite a friend to stay over and twiddle your thumbs.

Friday after school she can get used to the place. Then we can eat supper. Then Saturday we can ride Dolphin and that afternoon we might go to town. Or the other way around. Then Sunday I don’t know. I always think of something in a pinch. I can change these plans if I need to. Just so she has fun is all.

And I let the whole lunchroom know on Thursday that Starletta is coming to my house to spend the weekend. If you tell two or three girls your secret and say you’ll just die if they tell a soul then usually by the end of lunch people will look at you like they got some dirt on you. So I spread my own rumor and halfway hope the talky girls would dress it up from one table of other talky girls to the next.

I just want everybody to know that old Ellen and Starletta got a ground breaking planned for this weekend.

And make especially sure you don’t let Dora Nelson hear any of what I told you I said to the talky girls right before they went to work.

Now all I have to do is wait.

14

Staying at Nadine and Dora’s house was not as bad as I thought it would be. I had plenty of time to myself. Which is something I always enjoy.

The only problem is that all that free time leaves your head open for thinking and before you know it your brain slips a idea in and you have to shoo it away like that baby Roger clawing around in my business.

So I try to keep my head pretty full at all times. But as soon as a spare room opens up in there here comes somebody like my daddy settling in thinking he might make his self right at home.

But I got my own ideas about what comes and goes through my head and I intend to think about what I please from now on. But I figure it will take a while to get that system down pat.

Whenever I came out to eat or do my business Dora or Nadine wanted to know what I did in my room. I should have said I was going over how grateful I am to have them in my
life but I was afraid they might believe me. So I just said I was reading.

What are you reading?

Oh I’m just reading ahead for school. It starts up again in two weeks and I just figured I’d work ahead a little.

Well aren’t you smart! Nadine says to me like she is honest to God pleased. That surprised me and I looked at Dora and waited for her to say but I’m really your smart girl right mother? And then I looked back at Nadine and waited for her to say some variety of sugar Dora you are the smartest little girl in the whole world. Now they are both happy again and I leave them smooching on each other.

Lord I say to myself and wonder if I could have turned out like that.

Mainly I looked in my old microscope to kill time.

It was in good shape even though I had carted it around in my box. I kept the slides rolled up in toilet paper cushions and then I laid them in their little individual cases.

Nobody knew about those slides. I did not want Dora breathing on them and I certainly did not want her mama asking me questions. Something that small needs to be kept private to yourself.

I only viewed the slides when everybody was asleep. Then I would pretend I was on the brink of a discovery and then here it is. After all these years of research and science I have found the mysterious euglena. I had looked at that slide a hundred times and I knew it was made in a factory in town but that is the way I enjoyed playing. I didn’t see anything wrong with it just as long as I kept in mind that I was old Ellen not a laboratory doctor.

Euglena was just one of the slides but it was my favorite. Euglena. That always seems to make a nice name for a girl. I think it is something I might keep in mind if I ever get a girl baby.

Two other slides came with the microscope. Diatoms on one and a paramecium on the other. They always amaze me how they got something that little onto a glass tray. That would be a job for you.

When I got tired of watching the slides I could always draw what I saw. I still have a whole bundle of drawed euglenas stuck under my bed. They are not normal pictures but they are still pictures of nature if you think about it.

I want to see something live moving under that microscope. You would really have to work fast to get something swimming out of the water and rush back here to gaze at it before it stops wiggling. I saw on the public television the tail of something whipping back and forth magnified up close. Lord I would love to see that for my own self. One day I plan to have a professional model. I could stay excited looking at live specimens day in and day out. I might put that on my job list.

Nadine wants to know what would I like for a Christmas present. She says she and Dora plan to get me a little something.

All I can think of to tell her is a bigger microscope but she does not know about this one. I just say you two don’t worry about me and just take that money and get your own selves something nice. You already bought me these clothes I told her.

But she said it’s Christmas and everybody in this house gets a present whether you want one or not.

Well in that case I told her I could use a handypack of white paper. Not the writing kind but the painting kind. I only got five sheets left.

Is that all? she asked me.

That is all I can think of now.