The Book of Lost Friends(18)
“Benny Silva.” I introduce myself and she reaches across the counter to shake my hand. Her thin, knobby fingers compress my palm. She’s got a good grip.
“Benny?” she repeats. “Your daddy want a son, did he?”
I chuckle. That is the most oft-invoked reaction to the nickname my father saddled me with before deciding he didn’t really want me, after all. “Short for Benedetta. I’m half Italian…and Portuguese.”
“Mmm-hmmm. You got that pretty skin.” She narrows one eye and looks me over.
I offer, “Well, I don’t sunburn too much, at least.”
“Watch out,” she warns. “You best get you a good hat. This Louisiana sun, she is wicked as sin. You got your ticket so I can ring you up, sugar?”
“Oh, I didn’t eat.” I quickly explain the roof problem and why I’ve come. “The old white house out by the graveyard? I tried going by the real estate office yesterday, but the note says there was a medical emergency.”
“You’re lookin’ for Joanie. She’s laid up in the hospital up in Baton Rouge. Got misery of the gall bladder. Just get you a bucket of pitch tar and smear it round that pipe for the stove vent. On the roof, you know? Just smooth it on over the shingles in a good thick layer, like butterin’ bread. That’ll hold out the rain.”
Suddenly, I don’t doubt that this woman knows what she’s talking about and has buttered many a shingle in her day. She probably still could. But I’ve lived in apartments most of my life. I wouldn’t know roof tar from chocolate pudding. “I’m told the house probably belongs to one of Judge Gossett’s heirs. Do you know where I could find the owner? I’d just keep a bucket under the leak, but the thing is, I have to teach tomorrow, and I won’t be there to empty it. I’m afraid of it spilling over and wrecking the floors.” One thing the old house does have is beautiful cypress-plank flooring and timbers. I love old things and can’t stand the idea of letting them go to ruin. “I’m the new English teacher at the school.”
She blinks, blinks again, rolls her chin back in a way that makes me feel like someone has just made bunny ears over my head. “Oh, you are the Ding Dong Lady!”
There’s a snicker behind me. I glance back to see the surly girl who rescued the little grade-schooler on my first day. Even though she’s in class only about half the time, I have now connected her with a name—LaJuna. It’s pronounced as La plus the name of the month, but with an a on the end. That’s about all I know. I’ve tried to make headway with her during my fourth-period class, but the hour is dominated by football guys, which leaves girls, nerds, and assorted misfits with no hope of getting sufficient attention.
“You’d best quit feeding them boys cakes. Especially that Lil’ Ray Rust. That one will eat you into the poor house.” Granny T is still talking. Lecturing, actually. She’s got a craggy index finger pointed at me. “Children want to eat, they can get their skinny behinds up out of the bed and down to the school cafeteria in time for breakfast. That food is free. Those boys are lazy. That’s all.”
I give a half-hearted nod. Word of me has gotten all the way to the Cluck and Oink. I’ve been dubbed in honor of a snack cake with a name that makes me sound like a ditz.
“You let a child be lazy, he’ll grow up to be lazy. A young boy needs somebody to keep him in line, make him a hard worker. Back when I was a child, we were all working hard at the farm. Gals do the cookin’ and the cleanin’ and hire out sometimes, too, soon as they’d get old enough. Time comes to go sit at a school desk, eat food somebody else cooks up for us, we’re thinking we’re on a luxury vacation. That right, LaJuna? That’s what your Aunt Dicey tells you, sure enough?”
LaJuna ducks her head, reluctantly mutters, “Yes’m.” She shifts uncomfortably, pulling a sheet off her ticket pad.
Granny T is wound up now. “I’m her age, I’m workin’ the farm, or in the orchard, or in this restaurant with my grandmama. And I’m going to school, and hired out to one of the Gossetts to watch her babies after the school day and in summers. Time I’m eleven years old, younger than this girl, even.” Behind LaJuna and me, the checkout line is building. “By eighth grade, I’ve got to quit. Crop doesn’t make that year, and there’s bills to pay down to the Gossett Mercantile. No time for school. I was smart, too. But we can’t go live under a tree. Home might not be fancy, but that’s home and we’re glad to have it. Grateful for everything we got, all the time.”
I stand in stunned silence, letting that sink in. Just the concept of a kid…what, thirteen or fourteen years old…having to quit school to help earn a living for the family…it’s horrifying.
Granny T motions LaJuna to the other side of the counter, hugs her around the shoulders. “Now, this one is a good girl. Gonna do all right. What’d you need, darlin’? How come you’re standing here, not seeing to your tables?”
“I’m on break. Got my tables all taken care of.” LaJuna extends a ticket and a twenty-dollar bill toward the counter. “Ms. Hannah ask me to bring this up so she didn’t have to stand in line.”
Granny T’s mouth straightens. “Some people always got to have special privileges.” She processes the ticket and hands LaJuna the change. “You go give this back and then you have a break.”