Uchenna's Apples (12 page)

“Please. Your daddy’s starting to think rice is a whole food group by itself.” Uchenna’s Mam chuckled. “I should be grateful. At least now he believes in a food group besides potatoes.”

They took turns pushing the cart up and down the aisle, popping things into it. Uchenna’s mam had a list and tried to stick to it, but Uchenna took delight in distracting her from it, continually showing her Mam cool new things and teasing or sweet-talking her into getting them. Then Uchenna’s mam would groan about what a softie she was, and try to get back to paying attention to the things on her list again. But Uchenna made sure these attempts were short-lived.

Finally they got up to the checkouts. The Tesco made a big deal of having “sweet-free” checkout lines, where theoretically your kids wouldn’t be tempted by the dazzling array of candy bars and gum. But Uchenna, gazing blankly at them as she and her Mam rolled up, realized that for once she didn’t really have an appetite for any of them. She went right down to the bagging end of the checkout where her Mam had wheeled up, pulling the box of cloth and canvas shopping bags out of the collapsible box so that when the groceries came down the conveyor belt she could start to bag them up. But there was a fundraiser for one of the local charities going on, and a little blonde girl from one of the Naas primary schools—who along with other Naas kids was bagging so that the customers could reward her with a contribution for the charity—came up beside Uchenna and gave her such a pitiful look that Uchenna abandoned the bagging to her and walked off down the line of checkouts toward the door.

There Uchenna paused by the community bulletin board, looking idly at the cards and laser-printed posters stuck up there. Ads for babysitters, pictures of people’s cars for sale and lost dogs, notices about church meetings and charity raffles and lawnmowing…

Uchenna yawned and started to turn back toward her Mam. Then she froze.

Beside her, the automatic door that led out toward the parking lot was making frustrated
clunk, clunk, clunk
noises as it tried to close and then kept pushing itself open again because Uchenna was still standing too near the door’s sensor.
Lawnmowing,
Uchenna thought.
And what’s a lawn made from?

Grass. Which is what the horses don’t have!

But if you mow lawns
and take the grass away
—

She stood there stunned. It was almost too simple.
But what if I’m wrong about something? I don’t know that much about horses—

Her Mam caught up behind her. “Thought you’d want some gum, sweet…”

“Trying to get Emer off that, Mam!” Uchenna said. “Makes her look like a camel.”

Her mother looked at her and burst out in uproarious laughter.

Uchenna stared at her.
“What?”

“No, no, it’s just…” Her mother laughed some more, waving a hand as she pushed the cart out the door. “Sorry, you took me by surprise…” She actually had to stop outside the door, just by the little curb-cut that made it easier for carts to get down onto the crosswalk that led to the parking lot, and wipe her eyes. Uchenna stood there grinning: she couldn’t think when she last saw her Mam laugh so hard, and it made her feel good.

From behind them, coming through the door, a voice spoke suddenly, all tangled up with the jangle and clatter of grocery-cart wheels. “Aah, wouldja ever get outta the way and go back where ya came from, ya great black slag?”

Uchenna and her Mam both looked over their shoulders in utter shock. “Come here ta have yer chisler, have ya, wasn’t one enough for ya that ya had to have another?” said the man behind them as he pushed past them and into the crosswalk that led to the parking lot. He actually glared over his shoulder at them as he passed. “Want twice the benefit cheque every week? G’wan back home ta Africa an’ let
them
pay ya fer havin babbies!”

Uchenna’s mam just stood there a moment, watching him head away. Then she pushed the cart off toward the nearby aisle of the parking lot where she’d left the SUV, in the opposite direction from the way the man was going. Uchenna was hot with fury as she followed her. “Mam,” she said, “you just gonna
take
that from him?”

“I’m not taking anything, sweet,” Uchenna’s mam said. “Insults are like drinks. They don’t affect you unless you accept them.” And she smiled a little, sadly, as they came up beside the SUV. “Besides, why should I yell at that poor man? He’s frightened enough of me already. He thinks I’m here to take his job. Or else he thinks I don’t have one, and he’s angry that he might be paying his tax money to support me.”

Uchenna snorted, indignant. “He thinks
you
don’t have a job? I bet
he
doesn’t have one! Look at him and his bag full of beer and his shiny shell suit! He looks like a career slacker.”

Uchenna’s mam bleeped the SUV’s doors unlocked. “Maybe he is, sweet,” she said. “Maybe he’s just got a habit he can’t break. You see someone else who doesn’t have the habit, maybe it makes you angry at yourself, huh?”

Uchenna scowled. Her mam’s softly-softly attitude bothered her sometimes. If she tried letting insults go by like that at school, she’d be a mass of bruises every day: the other kids were entirely too good at punishing what looked like weakness. But maybe it helped when you were a full-grown woman six feet tall, with a job where people respected you and didn’t give you trouble.
Though I might be six feet tall someday
, Uchenna thought.
Now if I can just get the second part of it right…

She didn’t have much to say on the way home. It was just as well: neither did her Mam. They made their way past the broad lawns of the houses right outside Adamstown on the road north to Naas, the very old houses that weren’t part of the development. One or two of these were world-famous: people came from all over to see them and their grounds. The nearest of them, Old Adams House, had a front lawn that was bigger than Uchenna’s whole circle, and a couple of guys were buzzing up and down it with big ride-on mowers, striping the lawns in lighter and darker green. As she glimpsed them, some of the anger from the parking lot incident fell off Uchenna, slowly being replaced by excitement.
Lots of people don’t have anyone to do that for them,
Uchenna thought.
And it’s the weekend. We could get started right away—

But first she had to talk to Emer and Jimmy. Uchenna fidgeted in her seat until they pulled into the house’s driveway, and the instant the SUV stopped she was out of the door like a shot to help her Mam unload the groceries. “My, we’re being helpful today,” her Mam said, giving Uchenna one of those sly sidewise looks she came up with when she found something funny.

Uchenna just smiled an I’m-being-a-dutiful-daughter smile as she toted in the last of the cloth bags stuffed full of shopping. “Do you want me to help put them away?” she said to her Mam, who had started unloading the contents of the bags onto the kitchen table.

“Oh, no, sweet,” her Mam said. “Not till I have time to do another tutorial with you about where things go. Remember how long it took us to find the toilet paper last month?” Her Mam made a shoo-ing gesture with one hand. “Go on, I can tell when you have something else you’d rather be doing…”

Uchenna didn’t need to be told twice. Five minutes later she was out in the Back Office, curled up on her tatty couch and dialing furiously.

Jimmy’s phone rang a few times: kept ringing.
Come on, come on…!
Uchenna thought.
I have to find out about this! If this’ll work
—

“Yeah?” Jimmy said in her ear. “What?

“What took you so long?” Uchenna said. “Thought I was going to get your voicemail.”

“I don’t have that set up,” Jimmy said. “What’s up?”

“Listen, I had an idea. Horses eat grass—”

“Well,
duh!”
Jimmy said. “You win the smart prize for today.”

“Shut up!” Uchenna said. “What I’m asking you is: sure, they eat it when it’s growing in the ground. But they’d still eat it after it wasn’t in the ground any more, wouldn’t they? After it was cut?”

There was a pause. “Yeah, sure,” Jimmy said. “That’s all hay is, anyway, dried grass, though I think it’s not as good as the fresh stuff.”

“Okay,” Uchenna said. “So let’s say you just mowed the lawn and then you gave them the clippings. Would they eat that?”

There was another pause. “Yeah, they would.”

Uchenna squiggled around where she sat out of sheer delight at her own cleverness. “That’s it!” she said. “I completely
rock!”

“And you’re so feckin shy about it,” Jimmy said.

“Oh don’t be such a begrudger,” Uchenna said. “It’s the answer! We can mow people’s lawns and use the grass to feed the horses.”

“And they’ll
pay
us for it,” Jimmy said after a moment, with a sudden air of someone who’d realized where the real high point of the scheme was.

Uchenna almost shrugged: she was much more concerned with the horses than the money.
Though there’s that new iPod I was wanting and Daddy told me to wait until Christmas…
She grinned. Maybe Christmas was going to come early this year. But it wasn’t an issue right now. “Sure, whatever, never mind—” Uchenna said to Jimmy. “Let’s make a plan to—”

“Never mind? You daft feckin doughnut, this is
money
we’re talking about—”

“Tell me later, I’ve gotta call Emer,” Uchenna said. “Can you meet us at—” She glanced at the phone to see what time it was. “Five? We’ve got to work out the details on this.”

“Think I can get away,” Jimmy said.

“Okay. We’ll meet around the corner from the Spar.”

“No! Anybody could see me there. Us.”

That took Uchenna by surprise. “Okay,” she said. “How about the park by the train station, where the kids’ sandpit and the swing set are? You know that little bunch of trees on the east side there. Is that un-public enough for you?”

A pause while Jimmy thought about it. “Yeah.”

“Okay. See you then.” And Uchenna immediately hung up and dialed Emer.

Half an hour later they were all sitting in among the trees at the back of the little park by the train station, where a few big boulders carved with Celtic spiral designs were scattered among low shrubs and plantings of heather. At the front of the park, on the development side, Adamstown mums could be seen pushing their babies on swings or sitting on nearby benches and gossiping while the wee’uns played in the giant sandbox. No one could see them from that side, which was as well, as Jimmy was still looking nervous about being here in the first place, and Uchenna kept wondering why.

“It’s so retro, though. Mowing lawns?” Emer said. “Why don’t we open a lemonade stand while we’re at it?”

Uchenna looked oddly at Emer. Emer rolled her eyes. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, waving her hands, “I keep forgetting, your lemonade is Seven-Up, not stuff you make at home.
God,
am I not in Kansas any more.” She looked around as if she’d lost something. “Where’s my little dog?”

“Will you cut it out,” Uchenna muttered. “And anyway you have a cat!”

“How’re we going to get the grass out of people’s yards and out to the horses?” Jimmy said.

“Bag it up,” Uchenna said. “Not in really big bags: or we won’t fill them all the way, anyway. Afterwards we’ll carry the grass to where the horses are.”

“It’s a good idea,” Emer said after a moment. “And it beats apples. At least the grass’ll keep them fed until we can find them something better.” She gave Uchenna a look. “Now all you have to do is convince your mam.”

This was in fact the very thing that Uchenna was half wishing she could put off. But there wasn’t any time: she had to get permission for this right away so they could start first thing in the morning. “So let’s get on with it,” she said. “You guys have to come with me.”

Jimmy’s eyes went a little worried. “What?” Uchenna said. “What’s the matter?”

“Not sure I should be seen a lot on that side of town,” Jimmy said, looking away toward the tiny children on the playground swings. “Me mam ‘n’ dad don’t go that way, they don’t want us to go much either—”

“It’s just until we figure out what else we can do about the horses,” Uchenna said. “Don’t worry about it. But we have to get started.” She got up and dusted herself off. “Come on, you guys can stay out in the Back Office while I deal with my mam.”

As they headed out of the park, Uchenna noticed that Emer seemed a little uneasy about something: nearly as uneasy as Jimmy did. “What?” she said under her breath to Emer at one point, when they were heading into Uchenna’s circle and Jimmy had dropped a little behind to tie one of his shoes.

“Nothing,” Emer said.

“Seriously, what?”

“I told you,
nothing
,” Emer muttered. Jimmy caught up with them. “Which one’s yours?” he said.

Uchenna pointed at her house with her chin as they headed toward it. “Over there. Thought you knew.”

“Haven’t seen it from this side,” Jimmy muttered.

Emer snickered, then fell suddenly silent as Jimmy looked at her with an odd hurt expression.
What
is
it with these two?
Uchenna thought. But she had other problems now.
Like Mam,
she thought.
All I have to do is act like everything’s okay…
But she gulped as she waved Emer and Jimmy past her into the back yard, and herself headed into the house.

*

“Mowing lawns?” her mam said, looking at Uchenna with some surprise. She was stretched out on the couch in the front room, reading what Uchenna could see from the drug-company ads all over the back of it was a medical journal. “Whatever for, sweet?”

Fortunately Jimmy had given her just the answer she needed. “Just to make a little extra money,” Uchenna said.

Her Mam looked dubious. “But, sweet one, you get an allowance already, it’s not so bad as such things go—”

Uchenna had known that this line of reasoning was going to come up, and she was ready for it. “Mam, I know it’s the same as what Daddy got when he was little, but this is the twenty-first century, everything costs more! You were saying so yourself in the store.” Her mother abruptly looked a little guilty, and Uchenna knew this was exactly the right note to have struck—especially after what she’d overheard last night. “And I want to start saving more so I can start getting bigger things when I want. Emer’s going to help, and our friend Jimmy from school.”