The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky (5 page)

“Dear Mom,” I scribble in my notebook, then tighten up my face as I wait for the words to start flowing. I think if I were to tell her some of what's happening—with Lexie or the church or school—it might be different, somehow. Maybe she'd show up, and I'd find out that a mother's shoulder feels different than a grampa's. That it's softer and stronger all at once.

But I'm not quite sure how to cram all this into a letter, so I put my notebook down, and set up the TV trays in the living room: one in front of Gus's chair and one in front of mine. We play tug-of-war over what we watch during dinner. When I win, we watch game shows. When Gus wins, we watch the news.

As I lay our silverware out, the station's already tuned in with the help of our duct-taped rabbit ears. The news. I wrinkle my nose, disappointed, until halfway through my corn bread and beans, when Chuck's face fills the jerky screen.

“Our church family will be having a huge rummage sale,” Chuck says. “The money from the sale will be put toward rebuilding Hopewell. We're taking donations for the sale, which can be dropped off at any time in a bin I've set up in the parking lot of the old Montgomery Elementary School. As the church pastor, I'm also seeking donations on a larger scale—from construction companies and the like—anyone willing to provide building materials, or their time. This is going to be an enormous project. Our recent storm hit Hopewell harder than any other building in Willow Grove, and it's going to take time to secure funds for a renovation. But I'm confident we'll meet our goals, with a generous community like ours.”

He smiles at the camera, and even though I can feel Gus brightening beside me, I accidentally let out a low, wordless grumble.

“What's that all about, Little Sister?” he asks.

“Things don't get fixed,” I say. “When something's broken, it's broken.”

“Everything that gets broken can be fixed,” Gus tries to assure me.

“With what?” I snap. “Glue? Tape? With some stupid mismatched patch?”

I hadn't meant to let my sourness leak out, but now that I have, I can't hold any of it back, not anymore. “It's like—” I go on, “like when something's
old
.” Finally, I say the word like I've been feeling it the past few days. Like it's a scaly, nasty patch of dead skin. “When something's old, it's never new again.”

“Nothing wrong with a thing being a little old,” he says.

I grimace.

“Poor folks have poor ways, Little Sister,” he insists, using the same words that I've heard hundreds of times, but have never really thought about until now. “Folks around here,” he goes on, “they might not have a lot of money, but they've got pride. Everybody keeps their houses tidy. There's not one linoleum floor in this entire neighborhood that I'd have to think twice about eating off of.”

That much is true. Every single day, somebody's mom is outside beating rugs or hanging sheets or scrubbing windows, big streams of white soap running down her arms. But I don't want to admit he's right. I shake my head hard enough to make my braids ripple like tall grass in the breeze.

“Little Sister,” he starts.

“Why do you call me that?” I blurt. “I'm not your little sister. I'm nobody's little sister.”

He leans back in his chair, eyes me suspiciously. “I call you that,” he says softly, “because you're mine, every bit as much as your mom was. Child number two. A little sister.”

I feel even worse than before, because now I've hurt Gus. I think I can hear his heart cracking inside his chest.

“Where's all this coming from?” he asks.

“It came from the fact that they shut down Montgomery and sent me to Dickerson,” I say. “It came from the fact that Victoria Cole's in my class, and she's on the House Beautification Committee with her dad. And she—” But I can't finish:
She's got Lexie
. The sting is too fresh.

I steer around that to go on, “. . . and her hair is straight and she's like a magazine picture, and we live in a neighborhood that's—
old
.” I don't say anything about wishing Old Glory would stop picking me up in the afternoon with a wrecked car attached to her back, or how I think it's a little embarrassing now that he's a trash hauler. I've hurt him enough already.

“Well,” Gus says. “Maybe we could do our own renovations.”

A tiny ray of hope appears inside me, the same way a little stream of light pours from the hallway through my bedroom door's keyhole at night.

Gus must see that burst of light right away, because he instantly warns, “Remember, we're not the kind of people who can go hire some ritzy interior decorator.”

“I don't care so much about the inside,” I say. “I care more about what's on the outside.”

Sure, Gus and my teachers and Chuck like to talk about how the outside of a person doesn't matter as much as the inside. But all Victoria's passed judgment on are my outsides—my clothes, my grampa, Old Glory. If I ever want her to think of me differently, the
outside
is what I've got to fix.

“Think about it, Gus,” I say. “Somebody who doesn't know us, who's just passing by, they look at the front of our house, and maybe they think we're run-down people. If anybody's inside our house—well, then, they know us. They know we're not run-down.”

Gus smiles and nods in agreement before he offers me a big helping of his hearty pumpkin pie laugh.

I'm way too old for my wagon. Too old to be heading down the sidewalk dragging the red Radio Flyer Gus gave me back when I was about four.

But I don't care. I can't waste time feeling a little silly, not when I'm on a mission. I'm in such a rush, I forget about keeping a safe distance between myself and the wagon, and yelp a couple of times when it nips at my heels.

I look for Chuck first at Hopewell, but the building is boarded up and deserted. The broken fragments of wood and plaster and glass the storm tore off have been swept away from the lot and the sidewalk. But the church still stands like a broken twig.

I head straight for Montgomery and find Chuck in the parking lot. He looks like half a person, the way he's bent over the lip of the donation bin, sifting through the contents. He looks like the legs-only part of a man, still wearing his black-and-white high-tops.

The squeak of my wagon wheels makes Chuck pull his head from the bin. “Hey, Auggie,” he says. When Chuck says my name, it doesn't sound awful at all—it sounds chewy and sweet, like saltwater taffy.

He looks at my wagon, points, and says, “That's empty.”

All I can think is,
Not for long
.

“Auggie!” our forsythia bush hisses when I get close to our backyard chain-link fence. I drop the handle of my wagon and wipe the sweat from my face. It's been a long walk back from Montgomery, hauling such a full load.

But I'm starting to think maybe my load was too heavy—because now I'm hearing things.

“Auggie!” the bush shouts again.

I squeal and start to back away.

“Don't be afraid,” the bush hisses. “It's me! Look!”

I tiptoe up to the bush. When I lift a branch and peer inside, I realize that Weird Harold is standing at the chain link, too, but on the opposite side, in his yard. The lenses of his glasses shimmer in between the forsythia's yellow limbs. Today, his cap says
DON'T TRUST THE NEWS
.

“What are you doing with your face in that bush?” I ask, but Weird Harold gives me a, “Shhhhhh,” and puts his finger to his lips.

“This is the only way we can relay secret messages,” he says. “I warned you. You and Gus and Irma Jean and Chuck—everybody at Montgomery. I said it was weird that they were interested in this neighborhood, even though it looks the same as always. None of you would listen. You laughed at me. Now, it's all coming true.”

“Warned us about what?”

“The House Beautification Committee. Look at what I found in our mailbox,” he whispers, stretching his arm through our shared bush to show me a notice:

 

ATTENTION
MARTIN BRADSHAW

An Individual Residing at 778 Joy Boulevard

Willow Grove, Missouri

The property located at the above address is currently in violation of the following ordinances mandated by the city council and enforced by the House Beautification Committee:

1.) Properties shall not have more than one (1) standardized rain barrel. This rain barrel must be covered with committee-approved mosquito screen.

2.) Vegetable gardens shall be confined to backyards, to preserve the curb appeal of all adjacent properties.

As the owner of this property, Mr. Martin Bradshaw shall have forty-five (45) days to address these issues.

If the condition of the property does not improve in that time, the House Beautification Committee will enforce fines for the prior forty-five (45) days and every day this property remains in violation thereafter.

The amount of the fine will be determined by committee vote and will be based on the severity of the offense(s).

Thank you,

The House Beautification Committee

(Making our city beautiful, one house at a time.)

 

“What'd your dad say?” I ask.

“Shhhh,” Weird Harold scolds. “He hasn't seen it yet. It'll kill him. He cans and freezes all the stuff we grow in our gardens. It's how we make it through the winter.”

“I know. You guys give plenty of your vegetables to the rest of us, too. If you'd explain that—” I start, but the bush rustles again as Weird Harold tries to push another sheet of paper through the limbs.

“I'm starting a petition,” he informs me. “Against the committee.”

“I don't need to be part of any petition,” I say. “Gus and I don't have a garden. You're the only one in the entire neighborhood who has a front-yard garden and rain barrels. Move the front-yard garden into the backyard, where you grow the rest of your vegetables. If you really tried, I'm sure you could make it all fit. Take one of the barrels down. That's easy enough.”

“It's not just about the barrels, Auggie.”

I shrug. I don't see why he's so mad.

“
Think
about it,” he says. “What's beautiful? What's ugly? Their rules are as clear as chocolate syrup.”

I fight the urge to make little circles in the air above my ear. If this isn't cuckoo, I don't know what is. Beauty isn't exactly hard to figure out. It's not a complicated math problem—it's
beauty.
Irma Jean starts a new project with an old hand-me-down shirt filled with stains and holes, and after she's done sewing on it, she's got a pretty new skirt that doesn't have a single frayed spot or discolored patch. Once, it was used up and ugly, and now it's pretty—obviously.

“Fine. Be that way,” Weird Harold snaps, angry about the frown that confusion has etched into my face. “But you'll care when they come after
you
.”

When Gus pulls up, I tuck Weird Harold's warning into the back of my mind and rush to meet Old Glory.

“What do you want to do with all this glass, Auggie?” Gus asks when I drag him to my wagon, parked under the sweet gum tree out back.

“Not any old glass, Gus,” I say. “Glass from Hopewell.”

Gus leans down and takes a look. Gingerly, he slides a big piece of red out and holds it to the light. The edge looks so jagged and dangerous, it makes me nervous to see it between his fingers.

“I don't really like the idea of you picking up such sharp things when I'm not around,” he says.

“I didn't—Chuck did,” I say.

“But broken glass?” Gus asks, his face wrinkling.

“That came from the old stained-glass windows, Gus.”

“Right,” Gus says, still not seeing what I'm hinting at.

“I know that glass has already been used once,” I say. “But maybe we could use it, too. The same way Irma Jean sews new outfits out of fabric that's already been worn by somebody else. Maybe that glass might like to find a new home in a new window—nothing as important as Hopewell's. But a nice, cozy little window where it can get plenty of sun, just the same.”

A slow smile spreads across Gus's face. “Got it!” he shouts.

Of the two windows that face the front porch, we start with the one that's the easiest to get to—the one next to the door, with nothing in its way, not even the old swing. Gus takes off the screen, so he can get closer to the wooden slats that divide the window into eight equal sections. He cuts one of those eight clear panes out, leaving a hole that looks like a spot in a mouth where somebody's wiggled a loose tooth free.

“Sure am glad it's decided to turn cold,” Gus says, pointing at the missing pane. “No problems with mosquitoes today.”

Gus measures the hole and cuts a new pane out of a big chunk of scarlet glass. He winks at me when he gets it set in right. “Little Sister,” he says, “this is a fantastic idea. Quick—what color do you want the next pane to be?”

Gus and I become a two-man team. Gus cuts new panes out of glass—panes tinted fuchsia and purple and green and blue. I come along behind him with some old glazing putty that Gus had in the garage, which is white sticky gunk that makes sure the glass stays in place tight and solid.

“Really pack that stuff in good, Little Sister,” Gus says. “We don't want a bunch of cold, drafty air leaking in on us this winter.”

When we get the first window completely done, all eight panes, we rush out into the middle of the front yard to get a good look.

“It's like—it's like—” I stutter, but I can't find the right words.

“Come here,” Gus says, tugging on my sleeve. When we race inside, Gus steps right in front of our new window. “Watch this,” he says.

He holds both his arms out like a scarecrow. But it only takes a couple of seconds for me to stop thinking
scarecrow
. Instead, I start to think
mistletoe
and
fat holiday stockings
and
candy canes
.

Because that's exactly how Gus looks. With his arms held out, the colored light dances off the sleeves of his white shirt so that he looks like a lit-up Christmas tree.

I clap. “This is amazing, Gus!”

“Told you it was a good idea, Little Sister,” Gus says. “Come on now, let's do the other window.”

Together, we rush outside like it really is Christmas. Like carolers are on the lawn and Santa is on the roof, dancing between crisp, clean snowflakes.

But even when we finish both windows, it's not enough. I glance down into my wagon, at the tiny little shards on the bottom, and say, “Too bad we can't scatter this on the ground—or down the front walk.”

I've never seen Gus run to Old Glory so fast. I break into a pant to keep up with him and hop in. I'm so excited to find out where we're going that I pet the dash right along with him. “Come on, Old Glory,” I chant. “You can do it. Come on.”

Somehow, the whole town looks a little fresher as we drive.

We wind up at the hardware store, where Gus buys an enormous bag of QUIKRETE concrete mixture—a whole eighty pounds—for a little over three dollars.

“
This
we can fit in the budget,” he announces happily.

Back home, Gus adds water to the dry mix, turning it into gray mud, and starts spreading it over our cracked front walk. I crouch down low, dragging my wagon behind me. I lay thumbnail-sized pieces of glass on the wet concrete, pushing them deep enough to cover all the sharp edges, but not so deep that the smooth tops won't be able to sparkle in the sun. Once it's dry, it'll be safe to walk on.

When we're done, we race each other to the end of the front yard.

“It's like looking straight into a kaleidoscope,” I say. “The way all those brightly colored pieces shimmer in the sunlight.”

Only, it's not a kaleidoscope—it's where we live.