up my lima bean plants, putting them back in the box. “I want to go home.”
“Honey? Are you sick?” My mother reaches over to feel my forehead.
I pull my head away. “Yes. I want to go home.”
“Okay,” she says. She looks at Eileen and nods. “I guess we’re going to go.” She does not seem too sad about this, and I know that she is ready to go home too. All morning she has kept her hand on her stomach. She is really the one who doesn’t feel well. She wants to go back to Kerrville so she can get back into her nightgown with the stains on it and lie around on the floor.
“We’ll go home right away, kitten,” Eileen says, taking the lima bean plants from me. “Right away.”
We get out to the registration area, and when the woman at the door sees us, she gives me a funny look, her head tilted. “You’re leaving already?”
“I don’t feel well.”
She glances down at my triptych, folded under my arm. “You’re not leaving because you weren’t selected as a finalist, I hope.”
I say nothing. I take the number card off from around my neck and try to hand it to her.
“Because that’s not the point of the fair. You should go around and read what the other kids have done.” She smiles. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
“She wants to go home,” my mother says, using the voice that makes some people jump. The woman takes my number card and reaches into a box behind her that says HONORABLE MENTIONS and takes out a certificate with a blank line in the middle. She writes my name on it and hands it to me.
On the way home, we are quiet. Every now and then, Eileen smiles at me in her rearview mirror and tries to say something nice, like how getting an Honorable Mention is pretty darn good in her opinion. She says she hopes I am proud of myself, and that she is proud of me, and that the girl with the rats and the maze looked like she might be an Oriental and that they should only let real Americans be in it. My mother puts her hand over her eyes and makes a sound like she might be sick again.
I look down at the certificate—swirling calligraphy with an official seal at the bottom, my name written on a blank line in blue ballpoint pen.
I hereby solemnly swear, on the twenty-first day of July, 1982, EVELYN BUCKNOW received an Honorable Mention in the Kansas State Fourth Grade Science Fair
On the highway, we pass a billboard that says ONE KANSAS FARMER FEEDS 87 PEOPLE…AND YOU!!! The 87 part of the sign is in a different color paint than everything else. You can tell they change it all the time. Eileen says the number gets higher every year, never lower. The poor farmers, she says. They’re having a bad time. It’s the Zionist bankers, she says, pushing the farmers out, making a killing.
She asks my mother what the matter is. My mother says she’s fine. It’s quiet after that, but I watch Eileen’s face in the rearview mirror, the crooked side of her mouth starting to pucker, her eyes moving back and forth.
“You’re pregnant,” she says.
My mother says nothing. I look at the statue of Jesus, still friendly and waving between them, like if they get into a fight, he will try to break it up.
“Are you, Tina? Am I right?”
“Can we discuss this later?”
“If you are, she’ll know about it soon enough.”
My mother moans and puts her arms over her ears. “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
I look back out the window, feeling cold, my forehead pressed against the glass. My mother shouldn’t be pregnant. You’re supposed to have a husband.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Eileen says. “You’re a piece of work, Tina.”
My mother fingers the silver handle on her door, saying nothing. Eileen pushes a button on the dash that goes click, and the lock on my mother’s door goes down.
“Who’s the father? Do you know?”
“Yes I know. God, Mom. God!” She puts her arms back over her head.
“Well, is he going to help out? Maybe even marry you? Try something different this time?”
My mother shakes her head. “Stop talking, okay? Just stop talking.”
“Is he? Does he know?” Eileen looks at my mother, and when she does, the car veers to the right of the road. “Is it the man who gave you the car?”
My mother knocks her head