Lacey and the African Grandmothers (9 page)

“Once we clean it up – and if this thing runs – I'll start teaching you tomorrow,” he said. He put a plastic bag on the floor beside my bed, then put the machine down on it, so it would be the first thing I saw in the morning.

“Now,” he said, “off to bed with you. Go say good night to everyone, then crawl under the covers. There's school tomorrow and sewing lessons after school. Be gone!”

I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. “I love you, Dad,” I said.

“I love you too, my daughter.” He slipped his hand into his pocket on his way out the door. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, pulling out a small packet of sunflower seeds. “I bought these for you, for your gardening project. They grow really fast, and they have happy faces just like yours. How are your plants growing, anyway? No, don't tell me.” He held up his hand to stop my words. “We'll save that for tomorrow.” He shut off the light and closed the door on the sounds of people talking in the kitchen.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, when we were alone, I would tell Dad everything.

Chapter 11
The Lesson

T
he smell of stew simmering on the stove greeted me when I opened the door of my house after school. It was so good to have Dad home. The first thing I saw was the sewing machine on the kitchen table. Dad had cleaned it up so it looked almost new. It was a color between white and yellow, and had a few knobs on the front and a big wheel on one side.

Giggling voices came from the basement, so I guessed Dad was there with my little brothers. I started to go down the steps. “Where are you heading off to?” asked Dad, coming down the hall. “Don't we have a date?”

My big smile said yes.

“Come on then. Into the kitchen with you. I cleaned the machine up, and Kelvin oiled it. It seems to work just fine.” I winced at Kelvin's name; it reminded me that I had to talk to Dad about him. “Sit here, in front of the machine,” Dad said.

He took a spool of thread from the table and put it on a sticklike thing on top of the machine. “Now, watch carefully,” he said. He pulled the thread and wound it slowly through the metal loops and knobs until it snaked to the needle. The eye of the needle was at the bottom, not at the top like on regular needles. He pulled the thread under a little flat part he called the foot, and fished another thread from the bottom part of the machine.

“You use two threads?”

“Uh-huh.”

He pressed a switch on the machine, and a light shone on the area near the foot. “You see that box on the floor? That's the pedal. It's what gives the machine power. You press it just like the gas pedal of a car. You push just a little if you want to go slowly.”

I put two pieces of fabric together the way he showed me, dropped the foot of the machine in place, and pressed the pedal with my foot. It made a humming sound as if it wanted to start, but nothing moved. I looked up at Dad.

“Press a little harder,” he said.

I pushed my foot down on the pedal. The humming stopped, but the needle punched up and down furiously, pulling the fabric from my hands.

“Dad! Help!” I yelled as the machine sucked in the fabric. “It's going by itself!”

“Take your foot off the pedal.”

Learning to use the machine was tricky at first.

With a little patience and practice, sewing became much easier.

I did, and the machine stopped immediately. Dad released the foot of the machine and showed me what I had sewn. The line of stitching was crooked and bunched up in places.

“OK, so…” he said, “I guess I need to tell you a few other things.” He showed me how to use the dials on the front of the machine to adjust the tension of the thread, to keep it from bunching up, and the little marks on the machine where I needed to line things up to get a straight seam. “You'll catch on with a little practice,” he said. He also showed me how to rip out a seam that wasn't right.

The machine sewed quickly, but what use was it if it didn't do a good job? If I was going to spend my time ripping out seams, I might as well do the sewing by hand.

“You'll get the hang of it. It's all about tension and control. Tension with the thread and control with the speed. It just takes patience.”

Great, I thought, patience again. The one thing I was short on, I seemed to need the most.

Dad ripped out the rest of the seam for me and passed me the pieces. The machine was slowly pecking up and down when the phone rang.

“Hello,” said Dad. “Oh, hi! Yes. Yah. Uh-huh. Tonight?” He looked at the clock on the stove. “That doesn't give us much time. Dang it, that's too bad. I'd like to help you, but – Sure. Sure. It'll take us an hour to get there and then to set up, but I suppose we could do it. The van is still loaded, and as long as you don't mind if we start a bit late.”

I didn't like the sound of this conversation. Red Lightning must be going back on the road. Tonight, he'd said.
Tonight.

Dad hung up the phone. I looked at him expectantly.

“I guess your brothers and uncle and I are back on the road. But it's just for a couple of days. The band they had booked cancelled at the last minute, when the singer got laryngitis.”

“But you just got home, Dad,” I complained.

“I know, honey. I won't be gone long.”

He picked up the phone to call Uncle Douglas, went to talk with Mum, and called downstairs to Liland and Jack, “Time to pack up. Come on, let's go.” I know he hated to leave so soon, but he also sounded excited that people needed him to sing and play his guitar.

It seemed just minutes before Dad, Liland, Jack, and Uncle Douglas threw their duffel bags into the van and drove off. They didn't even take the time to eat the stew Dad had made. And I hadn't found the time to talk to Dad about all the things that were troubling me.

Chapter 12
The Blow-up

M
y younger brothers were asleep in their beds when Angel, carrying Kayden, slumped onto the sofa. It was technically past my bedtime, but it was Saturday, Dad was still away on that emergency trip, and Mum was in her bedroom.

“Mum sick again?” I asked from behind my sewing machine.

“She's been throwing up again, and she has a real bad headache. She's in bed, trying to get some sleep,” said Angel, not even looking up from her magazine. Kayden was on the sofa beside her. “Pretty. Pretty lady,” she said to Kayden, pointing to the pictures. “Dog. See the doggie? Woof. Woof.” Kayden batted the magazine with her hand and slobbered like a dog. Angel turned another page. “Oh, shoes. Nice shoes. Pretty shoes. Purple. Look at the pretty purple shoes. Mommy would like to have those shoes. Pretty. Would Kayden like some pretty shoes?”

I wished she would shut up. The gold fabric I had cut out was slippery and hard to keep together. The thread from the bobbin kept tangling in a heap and puckering the fabric.

“Kitty cat. That's a kitty cat. Pat the kitty. Nice kitty. ‘Meow,' says the kitty,” said Angel. I sighed loudly and snipped carefully at the mass of threads.

“Angel? Angel? Are you there?” came Mum's faint voice from the next room.

“Mum is calling you, Angel,” I said, relieved I wouldn't have to listen to the baby talk.

“I'll be right back. Watch Kayden, OK?”

“Uh-huh.” I glanced at Kayden. She was safely holding onto the sofa and slapping it with one hand. She had a homemade rattle filled with rice in her other hand. I turned back to my sewing. Every time I got everything in place, it would slide away. I stuck in pins and more pins, trying to get it to all hold together. I slid the piece beneath the foot of the machine and started the line of stitching. The machine helped drown out the annoying ticka-ticka-ticka of Kayden's rattle, but I could still hear it, so I knew she was fine. As the machine pecked slowly at the fabric, I glanced over to check on her. She was smiling so happily that I could see her two bottom teeth.

“Ga!” she said.

Crunch!
The machine's needle hit a pin and snapped cleanly in two.

“Arghh! I hate sewing,” I growled, as I cut the thread and loosened the bolt to the needle. I hoped there was a spare needle in the small box of extra parts Dad had put in my sewing box. If not, I wouldn't be able to get another one until someone went to the city. But when I reached down, my sewing basket wasn't beside me. Spools of my white and black thread were unraveled all over the living room floor. Appliques, badges, and hundreds of beads were scattered everywhere. Kayden was plunked on the floor beside the sewing basket, clutching a plastic case with pins inside.

“Kayden! You stupid, stupid baby!” I shouted as I jumped up. The shiny fabric slithered to the floor, and the chair banged backwards as I ran to her. I grabbed her pudgy arm and pried the case of pins from her strong fingers. It wasn't her rattle I had been hearing; it was my pins.

“You're a brat, Kayden. Just a stupid brat!” I screamed. She stopped smiling and gurgling. Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears as I lifted her from the floor.

Angel walked into the room and shrieked. “Don't call her that! She isn't stupid, and she isn't a brat!”

“Look what she did! Just look!”

“You're the stupid one, leaving stuff everywhere,” Angel said, pulling her crying baby to her chest. “It's OK, Kayden. You're smart. Really, really smart,” she said quietly, but loud enough for me to hear. “It's Lacey who's stupid, leaving her things where your little hands can get them. She's so stupid she thinks she can help people in Africa. She can't even help people in her own family when they need their baby watched for a few minutes.”

“I shouldn't have to watch your stupid baby. She's yours. Not mine!”

Joseph and Davis came out of their room, Davis wearing his Scooby-Doo pajamas and Joseph in his boxers. Their eyes were puffy from sleeping. “What's going on?” asked Joseph. “We heard yelling, and Davis was scared.”

Kayden had been soothed by the sound of Angel's voice and her gentle jiggling. She stopped crying. “Nothing important is going on,” Angel said. “Come on, boys, back to bed. I'll tuck you in.” I glared at her back as she left the room talking sweetly to all three children. She turned and stuck her tongue out at me, and Kayden laughed.

I swept the beads into the small tin that Kahasi had given me, and stuffed my sewing things into the basket. I could feel tears filling my eyes.

What if Angel was right? What if I was stupid to try to help the African women? What if I couldn't learn to sew? What if I wasn't smart and talented like my dad? What was I going to do then?

Chapter 13
Changes

D
ad came home after a few days, which was a huge relief. It took a few weeks for things to settle back to normal, but I felt happy again, and good things had started to happen. Unfortunately, Kelvin was still Angel's boyfriend, but he wasn't at Sequoia much. He was still mad about having to take math over again, so he hardly ever showed up for anything. I thought he should get Angel to help him, since she was good in math, but – as usual – he didn't like my ideas.

When he wasn't holding Angel's hand or hugging her – which just made me feel sick – he was just as mean as ever. He spent most of his time at the gas station across the street from Sequoia, mostly just hanging around. That had been Dad's idea. Dad figured if Kelvin could make himself useful, maybe he could get a job there, maybe apprentice. But Dad also wanted Kelvin to finish school. I don't think the man who owned the garage liked the idea of letting someone who had stolen a car and had a criminal record work for him. He probably wasn't even crazy about having a thief there at all, but sometimes Kelvin would pump gas, sweep out the garage, pass tools to the mechanic, and pretend he was useful.

That was the bad part – that Kelvin was still around. The good parts were that the sewing machine was working better for me now, Mum had gone to have that operation and was feeling much better, Dad was home more often, and those plants I had been watering every single day weren't so little anymore. They had grown way too tall for the containers with plastic lids.