The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,60

you know that Dumpling’s father was a very close friend of Ruth and Lily’s father?” she asks.

I keep my eyes down. Why does everyone keep saying that? Who cares if their father worked for native rights and died in a plane crash? Lots of people die in plane crashes every single day around here.

I do not need to sit here and listen to an old woman who smells like cleaning products talk about dead people. I need to go visit my friend Dumpling and rattle her bones until she wakes up. I push my chair back so hard, it makes a loud screeching sound on her perfect floor and I hope I’ve marked it up.

Gran looks at me. “You seem angry, Dora.”

“I seem angry?” I yell at her, before I can stop myself. “Do you know what Dumpling was doing in that village? Do you know why she was there? It’s all Ruth’s fault! Dumpling was trying to give Ruth’s mother this note.”

I slam the blue note down on the table, making her coffee slosh over the rim of her cup. She doesn’t even seem to notice as she picks up the blue paper and reads the words that have played in a loop in my brain ever since the day Dumpling thrust the note into my hand. All it says is “I forgive you.”

“And that stupid woman didn’t even know who Ruth was, so it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference anyway. Dumpling is in a coma for nothing!” I am out of breath, still shaking.

“Sit down, Dora,” she says.

But I don’t. I stay standing with my hands clenched. She cannot tell me what to do.

“Okay,” she says, “but you should hear me out. If you want to blame someone, and apparently you do, you should blame me—and don’t worry, nobody will be risking their life to get a note like this to me, not anytime soon, anyway.”

I am worn out from my rant and her words are so quiet, hanging in the air next to mine. It is hard to stay angry when nobody challenges you.

“Still want to stand?”

I sit.

“We have something in common—you and I, Dora,” she says. “I see that surprises you.”

I shut my mouth, which has fallen open.

She continues, “My father left me when I was a small child.”

“I wish we had that in common,” I say, and then stop in case she thinks I’m being sassy on top of yelling at her.

But she smiles at me. She is nothing like the stories I heard from Bunny and Lily: a ferocious monster with eyes in the back of her head, waiting to dole out punishment for the smallest infraction.

“Once she made Lily say the whole rosary, on her knees,” Bunny said, “just for hiding peas in her milk glass.”

“You are still young,” Gran says, and I have no idea what this has to do with anything. “You’ve been given a chance to live with a family who loves you. But you have to stop expecting the worst out of life, or believe me, that’s just what will happen. You should listen to an old lady who knows.”

I feel a tear and wipe it away. But there’s another one right behind it, and soon too many to stop, so I don’t try. I cannot remember the last time I cried. Now I worry that I will drown right here in the Lawrences’ kitchen. Gran hands me a box of tissues.

“I know,” she says, patting my hand. “I know.”

She just leaves me to it. I can hear her moving around in the kitchen, getting plates out of the cupboard and clinking the silverware. Soon she brings me a piece of pie and some more watery Tang, and I manage to blow my nose and mumble a feeble thanks.

“I think it’s too late for me to change much about my life,” she says, “but you still have a chance.”

—

I think of the poem about the girl in the magenta pinafore and the woman named Rita dancing the cha-cha in her swishy black dress. So, this is what chopping open your body feels like. It’s just admitting to yourself what you’ve always wanted. And there it is, sitting inside my rib cage like a key in a lock, just waiting to be turned.

“I want to know that I can stay in Dumpling’s family and never have to go home,” I tell her, as if wanting something for myself is as simple as saying it out loud. “I