Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [34]
“Miss,” one of the boys said. “Miss Codi.”
I tried not to smile. “Yes.”
“That’s Mr. Bad Bones.” He enunciated the name in a way that made everybody laugh. “The seniors use him for the Halloween Dance.”
“Well, not anymore,” I said. Mrs. Nash was my compatriot from the Midwest; a possible relative, even. I could see her as somebody’s mother, out pruning roses. This isn’t a toy,” I said, my voice shaking slightly. “It’s the articulated skeleton of a human being who was at one time, fairly recently, walking around alive. Her name was Josephine Nash and she lived in Illinois. And it’s time she got some respect in her retirement.”
I glared at them; teenagers are so attached to their immortality. “You never know where you’re going to end up in this world, do you?” I asked.
Nineteen pairs of blank, mostly pale-blue eyes looked back at me. You could have heard a cigarette drop.
“Okay,” I said. “Chapter one: Matter, Energy, Organization and Life.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to live through this,” I told Emelina, collapsing in her kitchen. Her kitchen chairs were equipales that took you in like a hug, which I needed. My first day had gone as smoothly as anybody could reasonably hope—no revolts, no crises major or minor. Still, I couldn’t put a finger on what it was, but standing in front of a roomful of high-school students seemed to use up a ferocious amount of energy. It made me think of those dancers in white boots and miniskirts who used to work bars in the sixties, trying desperately to entertain, flailing around like there was no tomorrow.
Emelina, Mason, the baby, and I were all exiled to the kitchen; Viola had taken over the living room with her friends for a special afternoon meeting of the Stitch and Bitch Club. They were preparing for their annual fundraising bazaar, and as a backdrop to our own conversation we could overhear the exchange of presumably vital information:
“Last year the Hospital Equipment Committee didn’t make fifteen cents on them sachet cushions.”
“Well, it’s no wonder. They stunk.”
“Lalo saw in a magazine where you can make airplanes out of cut beer cans. The propellers go around.”
Emelina set a cup of tea in front of me. I picked it up and let the steam touch my eyelids, realizing that what I needed most at that moment was to lie in bed with someone who was fond of every inch of my skin.
“It must be weird, going back to that school,” she said.
“Oh, sure. It is. I didn’t let myself think too much about that part of the job. Till today.”
Mason was on the floor, coloring, and Emelina was moving around the kitchen in an effortless frenzy, closing drawers with her hip, cooking dinner, and feeding the baby at the same time.
“Let me do that,” I said, scooting myself over to the high chair and taking the cereal bowl from Emelina.
“Here, he makes a pretty fair mess, let me give you Grammy’s apron,” she said, tying around me a splendid example of Stitch and Bitch enterprise. The baby snapped up cereal as fast as I could spoon it in, wasting little on mess as far as I could see.
“You’re having dinner with us tonight, right?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Honestly, Codi, if you think one more mouth to feed is any trouble you’re out of your mind. If I woke up one day and had six more kids I don’t think I’d notice.”
“No, Em, thanks, but I feel like resting in peace.”
“You’re not dead yet, hon.”
From the living room we heard Viola raising her voice now in Spanish, saying something about peacocks: pavones. The other women answered in Spanish, and I could follow just enough to know that they’d moved rapidly onto the subject of fruit trees. Doña Althea sounded agitated. Her high-pitched voice was