Rocky Road (20 page)

“What are we going to do about money, Ma—and the dipping cabinet? We’re supposed to open next week!”

She hopped off the chair. “Stall, that’s what. Delay the Grand Opening for a little while till I make some quick cash.”

“How?” I asked, unable to hide my doubts.

“I’ll only tell if you quit your worrywarting.”

I crossed my arms. “Tell me.”

Ma took a straw from the straw dispenser and tucked it between her lips. “I’m going to be a barmaid at Little Miss Muffet’s on Eastern Parkway.”

“What’s a
barmaid
?”

“A waitress who serves booze. After being married to your father, I’ve got plenty of job experience.”

“Doesn’t that mean working late at night?”

“Probably from suppertime until one a.m., but only for a little while. Little Miss Muffet’s is a hole-in-the-wall, mostly for the Union College students. Tips are good and the owner says he’ll pay me off the books.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes to make two thousand dollars.”

Two thousand dollars is
a
lot
of money. It made me think about doing well on my math test and how the teacher recommended me for the advanced class.

But I didn’t tell Ma about that.

Dobson insomnia struck again that night. I got out of bed without stirring much so I wouldn’t wake Jordan beside me, and I pulled a spiral notebook from my backpack.

With the night-light softly illuminating the page, I sat cross-legged on the floor and started writing Pop a letter. Didn’t matter that I had no stamps or envelopes handy. I had something to say.

I formatted the letter like the script that peer mediators use in a session. I began with a greeting and told him a little about what was happening in my life. Then I got to what was (and wasn’t) going on between him and me since we hadn’t heard from him in two years. It’s hard to conduct a peer mediation when you’re both mediator and disputant—not to mention the other disputant not being present—but I tried my best to state the facts and my feelings using those empathetic I-statements. How at times I was doing his job. (Basic need: to play.) How Jordan and I missed being with him. (Basic need: to be loved.) Lastly, I closed with a few open-ended questions that gave him the chance to respond.

I tore the page out, placed it on the night table, and crawled back into bed. I was about to close my eyes and fade off to sleep when it hit me: Ma didn’t even have Pop’s address. After all that, I couldn’t even mail the letter.

So what? I was glad I did it.

I wrote that letter for myself.

I
found a yellow slip of paper in our mailbox after school a week later.

RENT LATE. PAY IMMEDIATELY WITH $50 PENALTY OR BE SUBJECT TO EVICTION
.

There was also a bill from Ma’s car insurance stamped
OVERDUE
! and one from Sears, the only credit card Ma still had.

I knew that the Mohawk Valley Village wasn’t going to be patient about missing rent. Rental managers smile and offer
treats from their candy jars before you sign the lease, but afterward, all they care about is getting their money on time. This meant trouble. A few nights of work as a barmaid wouldn’t be enough to cover both the rent and store lease, never mind the dipping cabinet and ice cream.

My head felt like it was balancing a sack full of marbles. And on top of this, Mr. Win had stopped me after homeroom to remind me that my first peer mediation was scheduled for Wednesday. Only two days away and I still hadn’t memorized all the steps in the process. Even worse, last night I had a nightmare that my first mediation turned into a slugfest with disputants throwing punches and me crying like a baby.

I left the mailroom and saw an
OUT OF ORDER
sign taped to the elevator again.

“Psssst, Tess—over here!”

Winnie and Jordan had just stepped through the automatic lobby doors. Jordan was carrying a bulky brown box. Winnie carried a grocery bag and held her finger to her lips.

I relaxed both of my Five hands in front of me, hunched my shoulders, and jutted my head forward a little. “What?”

Jordan let out a squeal, then tapped his A hand against his mouth. “Secret.”

My brother looked ready to burst with excitement. But if he kept making those dolphin-screeching sounds, I wasn’t so sure that whatever was in that box would
stay
a secret.

I touched the cardboard top. “Show me,” I sign-pleaded, and Winnie laughed. A blue headband was wrapped around her bouncy curls like a Hula-Hoop.

Jordan gently rested the box on the floor and lifted one flap, revealing a rectangular glass tank and a turtle about eight inches long. It looked like a red-eared slider, with a speckled shell and a red patch behind each eye. Just like Bandito back home.

No sooner had I looked in than Jordan covered the box and signed furiously, “Hide! No turtles allowed!”

Now, that was impressive. Not only did Jordan understand that turtles were unwelcome so he needed to be discreet, but he knew that
hide
combines
secret
and
under
. Lately Winnie carried a compact ASL dictionary in her purse everywhere, and she frequently whipped it out to look at the pictures and show Jordan.

“There’s a spring fashion show going on in Assisted Living,” Winnie said. “We’re taking advantage of that distraction to smuggle this in.”

I glanced out the window at the parking lot. There were more cars than usual parked by Building Three. But a maintenance worker carrying a toolbox was headed this way. I tapped Jordan’s shoulder to get his attention, then pointed toward the stairs. “Hurry,” I signed. “The elevator’s broken again and someone is coming to fix it.”

Quickly we climbed the stairs. Winnie stopped to catch her breath after we passed the second floor.

I turned and looked at her. “Winnie, will they make us leave if they find the turtle?”

“Oh, they’d squawk for a bit because reptiles carry germs, but they’d get over it,” she said. “No worries. We’ll keep this
little fella undercover. Just like we would expensive jewelry, if we had any.”

I took the grocery bag from her arms before we continued. Her forehead already had tiny sweat beads.

Up we climbed the last two flights, slowly now—Jordan feared we were scaring the turtle. The whole time I kept thinking about our late rent. When we reached the fourth floor, I asked Winnie another question. “Have you ever known anyone who got kicked out of this place?”

“There was that retired roofer two years ago in Building Two. If you ask me, he’d baked in the sun too long, because he showed up in the laundry room buck naked on a Sunday morning. I couldn’t blame them for sending him packing. Who wants to see that sorry sight in between wash and rinse cycles?”

I giggled. “Anyone else?”

“Can’t think of any. But I’m sure they’ll make folks leave if they don’t pay rent,” she said as we reached our apartment.

In the living room Jordan pulled the tank from the box. He rested the turtle on the floor while he filled the tank with gravel and moss, and he added a tiny plastic frog from his animal collection. Then he plugged in the sunlamp and pointed it overhead.

“Turtle likes sunshine,” he signed.

Lastly he pulled a handful of twigs from the box and scattered them in the tank, using a wider one to form a bridge across the tank.

“What about food? He can’t eat mostly peanut butter like
you,” I signed, and Jordan reached into the box and pulled out a bag of live crickets.

Yikes, a snack with legs
.

Winnie gave Jordan an old margarine tub for a water bowl, and after he filled it, he put the turtle back into the tank. We all stood there ready to watch that red-eared slider run for its supper.

But it didn’t move. Its head was tucked in, and it stayed still like a stone, even when Jordan gave it a gentle nudge.

Jordan’s face cringed with panic. “Dead! Dead!” he signed. Then he fell backward on the carpet, kicking his legs up and shrieking à la FrankenJordan.

But Winnie reached for the ASL dictionary in her purse, thumbed through it, and signed and spoke the same words over and over: “Scared turtle,
not
dead turtle. Be patient, Jordan. Be patient.”

So Jordan got up and composed himself. And after a few long minutes, the turtle pulled its head out of its shell and crept toward the water.

“
Not
dead. Happy turtle!” my brother signed, beaming.

“The man at the pet store said you can tell if a turtle’s healthy by the brightness of its eyes. Looks to me like this fella’s fit as a fiddle,” Winnie said. “All my years nursing would’ve been a breeze if a diagnosis was that simple.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t really listening. I was back mulling over our money troubles. If only we could find a solution as easily as this turtle found food.

Winnie looked up from the tank to me. “Wouldn’t it be
nice if we could stick our heads down our shirts when life gets rough like this creature can?” Then she took my hand and led me into the kitchen. “Is the turtle what’s got you looking glum? I promised Jordan I’d get it for him if he didn’t scratch his pox marks, and your mother seemed to think it was okay. But if it upsets you, I’ll keep it at my place.”

I shook my head. “The turtle’s fine. Everything else is a mess.”

Winnie looked around. “This apartment sure isn’t a mess. You’ve done a fine job sprucing it up with your painting and crafts.”

I shrugged, not ready to talk.

“Sounds like something inside of you needs pulling out. But first I’m making a cookie run. I give better advice when I’m nibbling on a cookie,” she said as she walked out the door.

Minutes later she returned with a plate of cookies and a thermos full of Chocolate Heaven. She called the cookies snickerdoodles, and I wolfed down three big ones at the kitchen counter with her. They were left over from the Salty Old Dogs jam session, and they sure tasted buttery sweet and full of cinnamon.

There was no getting Jordan to sit still. He stuffed a whole cookie in his mouth, picked up his turtle, and charged to the bathroom. “Turtle swim!” he signed.

A few sips of Chocolate Heaven later, I was pouring my troubles out to Winnie again. Everything from the melted ice cream to Ma’s overspending and how I was afraid we’d get kicked out of the apartment. I even admitted that I was picked
to be a peer mediator, but I was afraid that I’d be awful at it. I swear Winnie could make a tree talk about why it was mad at the wind.

“Kids scream and fuss in peer mediation, and it’s my job to keep things calm and under control. I’m not sure if I can handle it,” I said.

But Winnie said I had the perfect disposition for the job—steadfast and patient, and nonjudgmental. “It makes sense that you’d feel nervous about this, Tess; you’ve never done it before. Sometimes nervous energy is good. Kind of like a runner who’s trembling before the race starts, and then it turns to adrenaline when the gun goes off. I think you’ll help those kids, and you’ll help your ma.”