Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink (24 page)

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You seem better — but I still want you to stay home tomorrow.”

“Another day?” Dusty said. “Can’t she come back? We’ll watch out for her.”

Dad found Lucy and arched his eyebrows. She knew what he was thinking. She was a little confused herself.

“We’ll see. I’ll let you girls do your thing. Luce — take care of what I love.”

“I will.”

“That is so cool,” Dusty said when he was gone.

“What?”

“You and your dad. It’s like, you know each other so well.”

“We take care of each other.” Lucy wriggled a little.

“Wow,” Dusty said. “Wow.”

Wow was right. Lucy had to wonder if Dusty was just being nice to her because she had a concussion and nobody else in school had ever had one before. There had to be some reason why Dusty wasn’t looking at her like her skin was the wrong color. Or, actually, why she was looking at her at all. It was almost fun — but you couldn’t be too careful.

Dad didn’t let her go back to school the next day. The worst part about that — besides not getting to play soccer — was missing J.J.

He didn’t come by after school on Monday, and Januarie had no message from him. As Lucy lay on the Napping Couch Tuesday, sick of doing nothing, she thought about his face the last time she saw him. Was he still mad because she told that he was in the shed? What was she supposed to do? And besides, the only trouble he got into was having to go to Mr. Auggy every day after school. That was better than his dad yelling at him so bad he had to go hide in their backyard.

Thank you for my dad
, she thought. And then she wondered who she was thanking. When Inez set up for Bible study right there at the coffee table that afternoon — with the TV Mora so longed to turn on just a few feet away — Lucy wondered something. Could you think about God without knowing you were? Like even if you were mad at him?

As Inez told her and Mora the next part of the story, Lucy figured if anybody had a right to be ticked off at him it was Ruth and Naomi, who even changed her name to Mara, which meant “bitter.”

“Mora means bitter?” Mora said.

“Mara,” Inez said.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to change mine to Consuela when I’m old enough.”

Naomi had a relative in Bethlehem named Senor Boaz, Inez told them.

“Bozo?” Mora said. “What is up with the names?”

“Boaz,” Lucy and Inez said together.

Could this girl be any more annoying?

He had a field where Ruth went every day to pick up the leftovers so she and Naomi could eat.

“Is that like going through the dumpster behind a restaurant?” Mora said.

“Senor Boaz he is a good man,” Inez said. “When he finds out what Senora Ruth is doing, he tells his other workers leave more for her.”

Mora wiggled her eyebrows. “He thought she was hot.”

“He does. But he shows her the respect. He does not think a beautiful young woman will want the old man.”

“How old was he?” Mora said. “Like thirty or something?”

“Much older than she is.”

“Then he must have been rich.”

“Would you shut — hush up?” Lucy heard herself say. “I want to hear this.”

Mora blinked her big eyes. “You do?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “I do.”

Inez ran her hand across the page in that way she had. “Senor Boaz finally has the cause to talk to Senora Ruth and he tells her to gather grain only in one special field, where nobody will bother her. Other hombres think she is ‘hot’ too.”

Mora nodded. So did Lucy.

“When she asks him why he is nice to her, he says — ” Inez nodded at her Bible. “I will read.” She cleared her throat and began: “ ‘I have been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband — how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’ ”

She closed the Bible and her eyes. Mora rolled the ribbon that trailed from it around her finger.

“Did he do it?” Lucy said. “Did God reward Ruth?”

“Yes. Senor Boaz marries Senora Ruth and gives Senora Naomi a place to live.”

“Cool,” Mora said. “Happily ever after. I’m gonna go put that in my diary.”

“What will you write?” Inez said.

“How if I’m good, I’ll get to go out with Reese.”

“No, Mora,” Inez said sharply. “This is not what it means.”

“Then what does it mean?” Lucy threw off the blanket that was suddenly smothering her. “See, I don’t get it, because my mom was good, and she got killed. And my dad is good, and he got his sight taken away from him. I try to be good, and my Aunt Karen keeps saying I have to go live with her, which would be like, horrible — ”

Lucy stopped, because she was breathing hard, and Mora was watching her with frightened eyes. Artemis, Marmalade, and Lollipop all f led from the living room. Only Inez stayed still and quiet.

“Mora,” she said, “make the tea.”

She did it without argument. Lucy folded her arms around herself and wished she could suck every word back in.

“Everything is not happily ever after for Senora Ruth,” Inez said. “You will see in the next part. And it is not for Senora Naomi — she still does not have her hijos and her esposo.”

Lucy let her chin drop to her propped-up knees. “Then what good does it do to believe in God if bad things are going to happen anyway?”

“How does Ruth get through these bad things?”

“She worked her tail off,” Lucy said, although she knew that wasn’t the answer Inez was looking for.

“And who gives her the chance to work?”

“Bozo — sorry — Boaz.”

“And why does Senor Boaz have such rich fields and so many people looking up to him?”

Lucy shrugged.

“That is right,” Inez said.

“Huh?”

“We do not know why some people have the good fortune and some have the bad. We all have some of each. But Senor Boaz knows God, and so the bad is not so bad, and the good is even better.”

“How did he know him?”

Inez closed her eyes, as if the answer were inside her eyelids. “We all know him somehow different. You will find your way.”

What if I don’t want to?
Lucy wanted to ask. And then she didn’t want to ask. And that confused her.

“Enough for today,” Inez said. “You want the quesadilla?”

“Can I have guacamole with it?”

“Si.”

“The kind that looks like baby food and makes your nose run?”

“Yes.”

“Please,” Lucy said.

And it was better for the moment.

Lucy never thought she would be happy to go back to school, but when Dad said on Wednesday that she could, she was ready long before Januarie showed up at the back gate. J.J. wasn’t with her, but Lucy was afraid to ask why. She rode across Second Street in silence.

“Don’t you want to know where J.J. is?” Januarie said.

“Is he mad at me?” Lucy said.

“Kind of.”

“Then no, I don’t want to know.”

It was the only dark part of the day, or any of the almost two weeks of days that followed.

Every day at recess, Mr. Auggy worked them hard, only to Lucy it was like working at play, and in a dream world. Each time she thought Mr. Auggy had taught her everything he knew, like he promised, she learned something new.

And just as he said, as long as she concentrated on the game, it didn’t bug her so much that Gabe called her Lucy Goosey just to make her face turn the color of a hot chili pepper, or that Veronica yelled “Foul!” every time anybody touched her or Gabe. In fact, Lucy grinned like no other when Dusty finally said, “Veronica, is that the only word you know in soccer?” After that, Veronica didn’t do it so much.

Now J.J. — he said almost nothing at all. Lucy noticed — because she watched him, begging him with her eyes — that he was getting better at soccer too. He could dribble with almost as much control as Gabe, and he blocked most of Gabe’s shots before Januarie even saw them coming, although that wasn’t saying all that much. She
wasn’t
getting better at soccer. But J.J. didn’t even answer Lucy when she told him at the water fountain that he rocked.

And he didn’t smile back at her when she grinned in class because his paper that Mr. Auggy read out loud was longer than one sentence and made actual sense. He didn’t even agree with her when she whispered to him in the milk line at lunch that Januarie was never going to be good enough for their big team. Not so much as a grunt came her way.

Those were the dark spots. The bright ones came on Saturdays when they could open up and play their best. It helped that Januarie wasn’t playing. Mr. Auggy explained to her that she would have to improve her skills the captain’s satisfaction, and that he would help her if she wanted. She said she did, but as far as Lucy could tell, she just spent her Saturdays pouting and glaring, especially when Lucy was talking to Dusty.

Januarie also had her lip stuck out every day after school when Dusty and Veronica walked Lucy home. Lucy didn’t invite them; it just happened. Inez always invited them to stay for a snack before she shooed them off so Mora and Lucy could do their homework. Januarie got to stay too, but she was always so miserable-looking as Lucy and Dusty talked soccer and Mora and Veronica discussed imaginary boyfriends. Lucy didn’t see how she was eating without getting indigestion.

It was still hard to believe that Dusty and Veronica really wanted to be her friends. Lucy wanted to ask Dusty why it was suddenly okay that she didn’t know a hijo from a hija and had a last name like Rooney. But it was so different, talking to a kid her age who spoke in long sentences and didn’t grunt. She actually hated to see them leave in the afternoons, except on Mondays.

She read the whole book of Ruth on her own one Sunday afternoon, but she didn’t tell Inez because she liked hearing the story from her. She didn’t tell her that, either, because every time she decided maybe she liked Inez after all, Inez would take over one more thing in the house. She bought the groceries and stacked them neatly in the pantry. She scrubbed the kitchen floor until it became its original creamy white; Lucy had always thought it was supposed to be brown. She folded the towels so they had creases in them, and she even bleached out Marmalade’s litter box. On Saturday, Lucy couldn’t put any stickers on the chart, because all the chores were done.

“When is all that happening?” Lucy asked Dad as she stood with a sheet of puffy red hearts in her hand with no place to put them.

“During the day.” Dad chuckled. “You’ve been so busy you haven’t noticed she comes in the morning now.”

“Since when?”

“Since you hurt yourself and she did such a good job with everything.”

Lucy poked at the hearts with her finger. “We did a good job together.”

“We did fine. But you’re a kid, Lucy. You shouldn’t have to be taking care of — well, spending all your time working.”

If he hadn’t added that he was proud of her, and that Mom would have been proud of her too, she might have argued with him.

Besides, she wasn’t quite sure when she would do the chores anyway. Mr. Auggy was giving more homework, though it was getting easier to finish. And he wanted them at the soccer field almost at dawn on Saturday mornings. And sometimes in the evenings, Dusty called to talk about strategy — and other stuff, like little sisters, since Januarie was almost like a younger sibling to Lucy, and Dusty had two of them who sounded even more whiney and pouty. And how Dusty wished she got along with her dad as well as Lucy did with hers. Lucy even told her about Aunt Karen, and Dusty agreed that it would be worse than the worst thing they could think of to have to go live with her.

“It would be horrible,” Dusty said one night when they were on the phone.

“Horrific.”

“Gross.”

“Grotesque.”

“Hyper-noxious.”

“You made that up,” Lucy said.