Everything about Mercedes Walcott crackled and bit. The only soft thing about her was her hair. Speaking of her hair…
“Merce! You’re bald!”
“Really?” Mercedes widened her eyes and ran a hand over the top of her head. “Crudsicles!” Mercedes laughed again. She adored teasing Mo. And Mo didn’t mind. Much.
“You shaved it? How come? And how come you’re here so early?”
“I took a plane.” Mercedes yawned. “Then a cab.” She plucked at her jeans, which were black and, Mo suddenly noticed, the precise kind the popular girls at her school wore. Her tank top was black, too, with little sparkles around the edge. Mo smoothed her own baggy, wrinkled shorts.
“Wow,” she said. “Cool.”
Every June before this-and there had been five so far-Mercedes had ridden the Greyhound out of Cincinnati. Da would send the money for the ticket, and Merce would jump down the bus steps holding one practically empty suitcase. Every August she staggered back up, that suitcase weighted with all the books Da gave her. Da also tried to plump up her only grandchild, but that never took.
“My new stepfather,” Mercedes said now, as if those two words carried as much meaning as a whole chapter book. Her mother, who’d never had a husband, had gotten married that winter.
“He’s rich?” Mo asked.
“We’re
“Oh.”
Mercedes had a way of raising her chin that elongated her entire self, as if she were about to turn into a human steeple.
“Not that he corrects me,” she said. “I have to admit, he’s too smart for that.”
“Oh.” Mo smoothed her wrinkled shorts again. “Soooo, you don’t like him?”
“Did I say that? If only it was that simple.”
Mo was saved from saying “Oh” again by a voice that had set hundreds of schoolchildren quaking like wind chimes in a high wind.
“Mo Wren!”
Mo told herself that Da didn’t try to make her name sound like “moron” on purpose. All the same, she was grateful that Da had retired and there was zero chance of ever having the woman for a teacher. Da was tall as a man. Her beautiful skin had a midnight sheen that reminded Mo of silk or satin, the sort of delicious fabric you long to lay your cheek against.
Her voice, however, was the kind of wool that rubs your neck raw.
“I wasted time, now time doth waste me!” cried Da, who, if she ever went on a quiz show and got Shakespeare for her category, would become an instant millionaire. “Your beans and rice are getting cold, Mo Wren!”
Da’s red beans. Mo would choose them for her last meal on Earth. She was already up the front steps before she noticed Mercedes still rooted to the sidewalk. Her best friend stared across the street, past the parked cars gleaming in the sun and Mrs. Steinbott’s roses blooming like a piece of heaven, directly at the porch of the tiny, blue-white old lady, who stared steadily back. For a brief, bizarre moment, Mo saw something identical in the way they cocked their heads, as if listening to a bit of music just out of range of everyone else’s hearing.
“Mercey!” Mo called, breaking the spell. Her best friend whirled around and ran to join her.
Stumps
BACK WHEN DA STILL TAUGHT SCHOOL, she’d stalked her classroom in shoes adorned with buckles and buttons and rhinestone bows. Da didn’t just have smarts-she had style, which made it especially disturbing to watch her clomp down her front hall now in shoes heavy and ugly as miniature coffins.
Stumps. That’s what was inside those special shoes. This past winter, Da’s sugar had acted up again, and she’d gone into the hospital, missing her daughter’s wedding at the last minute. Not only that. When she came out, she left behind four toes.
But something about a three-toed foot made her knees wobble. Mo liked things whole. She refused to begin a jigsaw puzzle unless she knew all the pieces were there. A puzzle was nothing compared to your own body.
Da had the table set with her good dishes, yet something wasn’t quite right. Normally this house was all about neat corners and polished surfaces, but today it had a dull, unwashed look. Mercedes ran a finger through the dust furring the windowsill and frowned.
But the food! Da’s cooking was like an excellent mystery story, with spicy clues and sweet clues and then a great whammy of an ending when it all came together. Mo had just put her napkin in her lap-Da was a stickler for manners and posture-and picked up her fork when the glasses began to shiver and the dishes to tremble. A redheaded torpedo fired into the room, scoring a direct hit on Mercedes.
“You’re here!” The Wild Child squashed her face in the vicinity of Mercedes’s belly button. “I thought you’d never get here!”
Mercedes managed to peel Mo’s little sister off her, all except for a sour-apple lollipop, which hung suspended from her black tank top. Dottie retrieved it and graciously offered it to Da.
“Oh, wait, you can’t eat candy. You’re diabolic.”
“Diabetic!” corrected Mo.
Wrinkling her nose, Mercedes peered down at Dottie’s knotty red mane. “Eeyoo! What’s that? A fly that got caught and buzzed itself to death?” Mercedes did not exactly return Dottie’s affection. In fact, Mercedes preferred not to associate with anyone under four feet tall.
Dottie scrambled up into a chair and lovingly spread Mercedes’s napkin across her own lap. She wore an enormous T-shirt advertising hot sauce and, given how much she hated underwear, probably nothing else.
“Your head’s like a bowling ball,” she said pleasantly. “Dude, it’s hot in here. It’s hotter than h-”
“Lord give me strength!” Da’s face was arguing with itself, her mouth frowning while her eyes danced. “When was the last time those hands met soap and water? No one sits at my table with hands like that!”
She hauled Dottie into the kitchen. Mercedes and Mo took the opportunity to clean their plates and slip out the front door.
The heart-shaped leaves of a big ancient lilac drenched Da’s front porch in shade. If you sat here for a while, Da would pop out with lemonade, or a Band-Aid for the splinter you always got from a floorboard. Those rough, gaping floorboards had a ferocious appetite-over the years Mo had played here, they’d swallowed down more Barbie shoes and game pieces than she could count.
Her mother used to sit here with Da, listening to ball games on the radio. Mo could remember that. Mr. Wren watched on TV, but Da and Mrs. Wren claimed the more you had to imagine, the more exciting a thing was.
“Mo?”
“Yeah?”
“I just had a funny thought. You know all the toys we lost down the porch? Not to mention all the candy wrappers and Popsicle sticks we pushed through the cracks.” Mercedes sounded wistful, which was disturbing, since she was not the wistful type. “Imagine someday an archaeologist excavates down there. What would he or she think?’
“That it was the royal burial ground of an ancient civilization where Uno cards were sacred.”
“Where they worshipped tiny plastic shoes.” Mercedes laughed, and Mo forgot to be disturbed.
“Not to mention peach pits and repulsive Band-Aids.”
Oh, it was good to have Mercedes back!
“Come on,” said Mo. “I’ve got the Den all stocked, and we seriously need to catch up.”
