Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink (17 page)

“I’m going to look into it.” Aunt Karen’s voice was business crisp.

“Look into what?” Lucy said.

“The soccer program. If it’s as good as I think it is, I’m going to bring you down here to see some games, introduce you to the coaches. You know, show you real soccer.” Aunt Karen actually took a breath. “You aren’t going to get it in that town.”

“That town,” “this house.” It was like she was saying, “those germs.”

“Okay, well, I gotta go,” Lucy said. “We have to start supper.”

“I thought the nanny was doing that.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Here’s Dad,” Lucy said, and handed off the phone.

How did Aunt Karen know Inez was cooking the dinners? Had that been her idea?

Lucy gathered herself up off the rug and headed for the kitchen. They were having their Sunday Night Special — macaroni and cheese out of a box, which she knew how to make by herself. There were some things that weren’t Aunt Karen’s idea. Sunday night supper and her soccer team were two of them.

And she was going to keep it that way.

11

Oh, nuh-
uh.

Inez had
not
just said they were going to do
Bible
study.

But the fact that on Tuesday afternoon two worn-out-looking leather Bibles appeared on the kitchen table next to the quesadillas was proof that she had.

So was the bug-eyed, open-mouthed expression on Mora’s face. She looked as if Inez had just suggested the three of them get up a game of basketball in the middle of Highway 54.

Lucy would have preferred that. At least it would put her closer to the soccer field, where J.J. and the rest of the team were probably practicing their passing like she’d told them to do until she got there.

As she snuck a glance up at the clock over the sink, she caught a glimpse of a round face peeking in the window of the back door. Even Lucy’s little spy was in place, ready to alert her should Gabe or the Gigglers come on the scene.

“One half hour,” Inez said.

Mora f lung her hands in the air. “I’ll miss
Oprah
!”

“I do not like you watching that.”

“Well, I would watch Hannah Montana, but she — ” Mora f lapped a finger toward Lucy. “ — doesn’t have cable.”

“It’s not like that’s a crime.” Lucy turned to Inez. “I ate. I did my homework. How come I have to spend another thirty minutes doing Bible study?” She fanned the pages of one of the books. “I go to church. I already know about the Bible.”

Inez made her eyes go level like her straight-cut bangs. “Not so much, your father says.”

Lucy stopped fanning. “My dad said that?”

“He says do the Bible study, so we do the Bible study.” Inez pointed to the plate. “Are we finished here?”

Lucy nodded glumly. When Inez had her back to them, Mora leaned across the table, eyes still bulging like a frog’s.

“The man is blind,” she whispered. “Can’t you just tell him you read it?”

“He’s blind, not stupid,” Lucy said.

Besides, he would quiz her over supper if she knew him — which she wasn’t entirely sure she did at the moment.

Inez pulled a sleeping Marmalade off the third chair and deposited him in an empty laundry basket on the dryer. Mora stared.

“He mostly goes for younger women,” Lucy said quickly. The lie didn’t feel like it fit, but, then, what did?

Inez pushed a Bible toward each of them. Her hands, usually so swift in their busyness, were gentle on the covers, as if she were handling china tea cups.

“Open,” she said. “Book of Ruth.”

“I don’t see why I have to do this just because her dad says she has to.” Mora’s fingers f lew to punctuate every pronoun.

Lucy was momentarily fascinated. She’d never seen anyone talk with her hands so much. But Lucy’s eyes went again to the back door, where Januarie was giving hand signals of her own.

“I just need to do one thing,” Lucy said to Inez.

“You need to open to the book of Ruth.”

“As soon as I — ”

“Old Testament. Right after the Judges, just before the First Samuel.”

“Huh?” Mora said.

As Inez opened Mora’s Bible for her, Lucy leaned back and stretched her arms over her head. Closing and opening her hands, she f lashed ten fingers three times and hoped Januarie would get it.

Januarie’s brow furrowed into Tootsie Rolls. She obviously didn’t.

Lucy pointed to her chest, made her fingers walk and do a kick, and then pointed at her watch. Januarie looked as if she were trying to understand brain surgery, but she finally nodded and disappeared from the window. Lucy listened to the gate opening and closing and heard Mudge meow. If Januarie got even half that message to J.J., it would be a miracle.

“It’s on page 289.” Mora tapped Lucy’s Bible with a long, busy finger.

“Like you knew that,” Lucy said.

She fumbled through the pages, thin as the skin of an onion, and located a section with “The Book of Ruth” printed at the top in letters with pictures wound around them. Pretty — but for Pete’s sake, they weren’t in Sunday school.

“Read,” Inez said.

Lucy stumbled silently through the first part of the first sentence.

In the days when the judges ruled
,
there was a famine in the land
,
and a
man from Bethlehem in Judah —

Lucy felt a yawn coming on. If the Bible didn’t sound like some history professor wrote it, people might actually read it.

— together with his wife and two sons
,
went to live for a while in the
country of Moab.

Lucy rubbed her eyes. “How much of this do we have to read?”

“Mora,” Inez said, “you read out loud.”

Lucy groaned inside. Out-loud reading was like a funeral in her class.

“The man’s name was E-lim-e-lech,” Mora read — pretty smoothly — “his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of the two sons were — ” She lifted her big eyes. “Who wrote this stuff?”

“Dr. Seuss,” Lucy muttered.

Mora gave a soft snort.

“Close the Bibles,” Inez said.

“We’re done?” Lucy said hopefully.

“We have not yet started.” Inez folded her hands in front of her on the tabletop, fingers in a tidy stack. “Listen,” she said.

Lucy propped her elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. Mora picked up a pen and fiddled with it.

“You ever been hungry?” Inez said.

“Yes,” Mora said, “for a biscotti at Starbucks to dunk in my mocha.”

“Sorry?” Lucy said. “I don’t speak Starbucks.”

“Very hungry,” Inez said. “So hungry your stomach it feels like it eats itself because it has nothing else.”

“Ewwww!” Mora said.

Lucy was quiet. Dad talked sometimes about the starving children in the places he and Mom had worked. But what did this have to do with anything?

“Think of day after day of that,” Inez said.

“No thanks,” Mora said.

Lucy wished she would hush up so they could get this over with.

“It is that way in Bethlehem, so Senor Elimelech, he takes his family — his esposa, Naomi, and their two
hijos
— to Moab.”

“It didn’t say ‘Senor’.” Mora made quotation marks with her fingers when she said “Senor.”

“I see my world in there when I read the Bible.” Inez ran the side of her hand down the page in front of her. “You will learn that senora Naomi has to leave everything she knows — her family, her amigas, her church.”

Lucy pulled a foot up under her and sat on it. Okay — maybe if she learned it today, they could be done with this. All right — Naomi leaving everything — that might be what it would be like if she had to go live with Aunt Karen. Lucy sighed. That wasn’t going to happen, so why even think about it?

“More worse,” Inez was saying, “Senor Elimelech dies and leaves her with the two sons. It is not so easy raising children alone.”

Okay, okay, so that was like Dad raising her. Which he was doing just fine until Aunt Karen made him think he wasn’t doing a good job, and now here she was doing Bible study with a lady who obviously —

“They marry women from Moab,” Inez said. “And then, the hijos died too.” She shook her head as if the two hijos were relatives of hers. “Naomi decides she will go back to Bethlehem where her family might provide for her.”

“Why didn’t she just get a job?” Mora said.

“Women did not get jobs in those days.”

Then what did this have to do with them? Lucy looked at the clock and pictured Januarie announcing who knew what to her team.

“Naomi’s two daughters-in-law — Ruth and Orpah — ”

“Oprah?” Mora said. She actually looked interested for a second.

“Or-pah,” Inez said, stretching her lips like a rubber band. “But forget her. She does not go to Bethlehem with Naomi. Only Ruth.”

“That’s why the story’s named after her,” Lucy said. “I get it. Can I go now?”

Inez didn’t even look at her. “Naomi tells them stay in Moab with their own people, but Ruth refuses to leave her. She says wherever Naomi goes, that was where she will go too.”

Inez leaned in as if she were about to share a secret. Mora leaned with her.

“Ruth says Naomi’s people will be her people, and Naomi’s God will be her God.”

Mora looked blankly at Lucy and then at her grandmother. “That’s it? That’s the big deal?”

Inez scowled. “It was the great thing to give up her future to be loyal to the old woman. She will be an outsider in Bethlehem. She will look different, and they will ignore her, maybe even hate her.”

A picture of Veronica and Dusty looking right through her, and another picture of Gabe sneering at J.J., popped up in Lucy’s mind. She could almost hear Januarie telling her, “J.J. says they’re out to get you.” Too bad she couldn’t tell Inez she got that part and pass this whatever-it- was test so she could go play soccer. Still, she had to ask —

“So what happened when she got to Bethlehem? Were they evil to her?”

Mora glared at her. “If you ask questions, we’ll be here for decades,” she said between her teeth.

“We are finished for now.” Inez pulled the Bibles back to her and ran her hands over their covers as if to wipe away Mora and Lucy’s disdain.

“Do we have to do this every day?” Mora said.

“One time a week,” Inez said.

Mora looked at the ceiling, hands together as if she were praying, and said, “Thank you.”

“Mora.” Inez’s voice pricked Lucy to attention. “You will not mock the Lord.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Pray with your heart. Never pretend.”

“Whatever.”

“Mora.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry.”

Lucy wasn’t sure she was. She calculated — one month and three weeks — that was seven more times they’d have to do this.

“You may watch the television, Mora,” Inez said, “while I cook the supper.”

Mora shot to the living room. Lucy reached for her jacket.

“You are going somewhere?” Inez said.

“Yes.”

“How far?”

“To the soccer field. It’s just — ”

“I do not know any soccer field in Los Suenos.”

Lucy jammed her arms into her jacket sleeves. “It’s kind of new.”

“Where is it?”

“My dad lets me go — ”

Inez turned to the cutting board. “Where?”

“On the west side.” Lucy jerked at her zipper. “Across the highway.”

She waited while Inez chopped a tomato into obedient cubes.

“I have to check with Senor Rooney,” she said finally. “Not today.”

“He totally lets me!”

“I totally do not. Not until I talk to him.”

Lucy marched to the phone on the wall.

“I will speak with him when he comes home,” Inez said.

Lucy snatched up her backpack and stomped to the hallway. Inez could talk to him — but
she
might never speak to her father again.