A Place of Our Own

It was the time of year for school to start, and I was feeling sad, so Ed took me down to the junkyard to cheer me up. He was sad, too, but for a different reason. He had to go to school and didn’t want to; I wanted to go and couldn’t. It didn’t seem fair to me at all. I thought my talking was coming along pretty good, but Mama said, “First time anyone says anything to you, you’ll get nervous and stutter. Then they’ll tease you and you’ll stutter worse and pretty soon you’ll hate school. I’ll get you some ABC’s to study at home, and if you work hard on talking plainly, you can go next year.”

I was sitting on the back step, about ready to cry, when Ed came by and said, “I saw the Coopers go by with a load for the junkyard yesterday, so there’re bound to be some good things they threw away.”

“I hope there’re some pretty bottles,” I said and jumped up. I had a whole row of bottles on my ledge in the barn. Some of the bottles were of colored glass and made bright reflections on the straw when the light shone through them. I had filled one with pickled beet juice, and it glowed like a ruby. Sometimes I picked a yellow rosebud with the petals all wrapped tightly like they were hugging each other. And then I’d put it in a clear glass bottle filled with water that made the stem look fat and the thorns as big as my little finger. I watched as the petals uncurled and the bud opened to make a golden cabbage that I could hold up to kiss my face with its softness. I breathed the sweet perfume so deeply that it seemed to reach my toes. When the rose was dead and had dropped its petals in a pile, I always kissed it before I threw it away.

We hurried along to the junkyard. I couldn’t understand how some people could throw away such good things. We took to the junkyard only old leaky teakettles that let out enough water to sputter and dance on the hot stove and had lime deposited so thick inside that it fell out in flakes when we poured hot water into the dishpan; or broken plowshares that couldn’t be fixed; or other things that were completely worn out. I decided that the Coopers must be rich.

When we got to the pile of junk, we had to lift off an old bedspring so that we could sift through the smaller things underneath. Ed found a rusted shovel he could sharpen and fit with a new handle. And I dug out a powder compact with a mirror. There was a pretty good washbasin that could be fixed by pulling a rag through the hole, and one or two bottles to add to my collection. We found a stove poker and a coal scuttle that were better than the ones we were using at home, so we decided to take them to Mama.

We put the other treasures inside the coal scuttle and sat down on the edge of the bedspring to talk. “You’re lucky you’re not going to school,” Ed complained. “There’s always some big bully who wants to beat you up at recess. And the teacher is mean. If you don’t know the answers, he cracks your knuckles with a ruler, or makes you sit in the corner, or has you write I WILL NOT FORGET TO STUDY MY LESSONS a hundred times on the blackboard after school. Just think of all the fun you can have outside while I’m cooped up at school!”

“It’s no fun being all alone,” I disagreed. “Besides, I want to learn to read.”

“What for? Who needs to read?”

“I do. There are places to find out about that I’ll never see and lots of things to learn that are written down.”

“It’s not fair that you get to stay home.” Ed accented each word with a bounce on the springs. “Say, these are pretty good springs. Couldn’t we use them?”

“There’s no place to put them,” I replied.

“That’s too bad,” he said, jumping higher.

“We could take them to our Indian grandma,” I suggested. “Then she wouldn’t have to sleep on that hard ground.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Maybe I could make her a mattress with corn shucks like Mama made.”

The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. Piecing together the scraps for the mattress would help fill the days when everyone else was at school.

Ed picked up the coal bucket with our treasures, and we hurried home to ask Papa if he’d pick up the springs with the wagon.

All of a sudden I felt anxious for school to start so I could get on with my project for Grandma. Mama was glad I had something to keep me busy and helped me find plenty of scraps of heavy material to stitch together for the mattress. She was true to her promise about the ABC’s, too, and took me to the store the first day everyone else was back in school. She hesitated a little over the cost, and Mr. Younger said, “I have another set I can let you have for less because the box got lost when they were displayed in the window, and I had to put them into another box.”

Mama said that would be fine, and he climbed up his ladder to get the box off a high shelf. It had a picture of a beautiful lady in a wide-brimmed hat, and I liked it better than the proper box that only had a picture of the ABC’s that were already inside. The letters were printed in black on blue cards, and some of them had faded in the window, but that didn’t matter. Mr. Younger said there were four sets: lower and upper case in printing and cursive, with extras of the most-used letters.

“She can make words until the cows come home,” he said.

That’s exactly what I intended to do. I didn’t know what he meant by cursive and upper and lower case, but I knew right where I was going to hide the box in the loft so no one else would find it and lose any letters.

The days went fast while the others were at school. I made words with my cards the same as the ones in the nursery rhyme book and practiced copying the letters on a piece of blackboard I’d found at the junkyard. When I got tired of that I’d come down from the loft and sew on the quilt pieces until Caroline and Ed came home.

To make sure I could go to school the next year, I practiced talking while I sewed. I learned to say things like, “Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly, pickled peppers,” or “Bumpy rubber buggy bumpers.” Sometimes I could say them better than Ed.

After I’d pieced together the top and bottom for the mattress, Mama showed me how to put the clean, dry corn shucks between the layers of cloth and tack it together in enough places so they stayed where they should. Corn shucks make a nice, friendly mattress that whispers and sighs all night, like someone is keeping you company. It would keep Grandma from being lonely while she slept.

Each spring we got more of our land under cultivation, and by the third or fourth year it was producing abundantly. The pastureland was fenced, and the eucalyptus trees we had planted for shade and as a windbreak were starting to do their job. The orchard was growing bigger, both in size and number of trees, and we had more horses, cows, chickens—even some new pigs. Every penny Papa earned went back into improving the farm.

As the farm grew, so did the family. Soon we had three more girls, and they, too, were named in alphabetical order—Helen, Ida, and Janice.

Janice was a weak little girl with a bad heart. If she cried hard or got too excited, she couldn’t get her breath and went into a fainting spell.

One time Papa and Mama took Janice to the doctor in Harmony to see if anything could be done for her. The three boys and I were trying to think of a game to play while they were gone.

“Want to play hopscotch?” I asked as I scratched the pattern in the dirt with a stick.

“Naw, that’s a sissy game,” Ed scoffed.

“Besides, it makes you too hot,” Frank said.

“Let’s go over to Grandma’s then,” I suggested, “and see if she still likes her mattress.” Even after all this time I could get excited just thinking about how much I’d enjoyed making it and how pleased she was when we took it over to her.

(To be continued.)