The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,42
out falls a lumpy, hand-knitted hat. It’s orange, of course, and extremely large.
Dear Ruth,
Your gran called the other day and gave me your address; she thought you might like news from home. Wasn’t that nice? My knitting gauge is still a little off, but I made this for your baby anyway. I hope it gets there in time so he/she can take it with them to their new family. (I think orange can be good for a boy or a girl, right?) I know it won’t fit until the baby is probably grown up, but I thought it would be nice to have something so they’d have a little connection to their first family. We don’t have to be blood to be family. (I can see you rolling your eyes, don’t think I can’t!)
I think what you’re doing is really brave. I know you’re frustrated with me, and I know you feel that always thinking the best of people isn’t that easy, but I’m just going to go ahead and keep disagreeing with you. It really is that easy. I still think the best of you and I think your baby will, too—when they’re old enough to understand. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much and that you get to come home soon.
Love,
Selma
Over the past couple of weeks, fish camp has been nonstop busyness. Relatives just keep showing up, bringing their boats with wide hulls and their elders with wide, calloused hands, who have been cleaning fish for almost a hundred years. The camp is now full to the brim with wild boy cousins who roll around in the dirt and aunties with empty spaces in their mouths that make it hard to chew the dried fish, so they just suck on it all day long. For some reason there is always enough of everything, even places to sleep.
Dumpling’s mom makes the same joke every day—“got to keep working till the sun goes down”—and everyone laughs, out of respect.
But kids here aren’t really expected to work all the time and the adults never push or nag us—so nobody says we have to stay and help instead of going into the village. There are so many people at fish camp—there’s always someone around to stoke the fire or help Dumpling’s mom—so it’s not like we’ll be missed. Dumpling’s father has to get some parts for the outboard again, so Dumpling, Bunny, and I come along.
“Auntie says you can borrow the three-wheelers, at least until the gas runs out,” he tells us. Maybe he just wants us out of his hair, but that’s fine with us.
Once we see the three-wheelers, we forget everything that is going on back at camp. We tear up and down the main street of the village with the dirty wind in our hair, no purpose whatsoever other than to make a lot of noise and go really fast.
When I try to keep up with Dumpling, all I can see is her red ribbon waving at me like a flag. The mud from her back tires spits me with gravel pellets if I get too close; I have to slow down, and then I spray Bunny on her three-wheeler behind me and she yells as if she’s been shot with a BB gun. We drive back and forth on the main street until only the whites of our eyes pop out of our mud-splotched faces.
“Damn village kids!” a priest yells as we spray him, too.
“I want to go back to the skiff,” Bunny tells Dumpling when we finally nose our three-wheelers close enough to talk to each other. Dumpling has turned off the main street and taken us a ways from town, close to the slough. The wind is stiffer over here with no buildings around for shelter. The bent beach grass looks just like the hunched-over aunties in their kuspuks, waiting for us back at fish camp.
Dumpling hops off her three-wheeler and walks slowly toward three white clapboard houses sitting off by themselves: one with blue trim; one with a big, muscular dog in front; and one with a curtain that seems to be moving by itself every couple of seconds, behind broken glass. She tramps along the edge of the slough and up the bank. I follow, hoping she’s watching out for dogs. Village dogs are always charging out from behind outhouses or woodpiles when you least expect it. There was a funeral the night we got here. Three-year-old Willard Hunter wandered out into his family’s