The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [2]
“Shish! Grum! Look!” Shish is what I very affectionately call my twin sister Barbara, short for Shish Kebarb.
“Oh, shush yourself,” she said. She was born seventeen minutes before me but always acted like it was seventeen years. Everything I could do, she could do first. She’d always been taller than me—taller than everyone in our grade, actually. Her eyes were darker brown than mine. Even her feet were bigger. But my hair was blonder and curlier and that drove her insane with jealousy. As opposed to just driving her insane.
“What’s gotten into you kids, raising your voices like that?” Grum rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, warning us. The cobwebs dangling from the light fan were vibrating with Pa’s snores. Pa snored like a jackhammer. It was never a good sign when he stopped jackhammering before 9 AM.
Jed used to say that one good reason Ma raised hens was so we’d always have plenty of eggshells to walk on around Pa.
“But, Grum!” (That was me.)
“Drink the rest of your milk, Barbara Arleene Daniels,” Grum added.
A few years ago Grum had broken both of her wrists carrying too many plastic grocery bags. The doctor said it happened because she had bone loss due to osteoporosis. Ever since then she was a lunatic about everyone getting enough calcium and Vitamin D.
“I got an emergency here!” (Me again.)
“Aw, Grum, I hate milk when it’s all warm.” Barbie can make hate sound sweet.
“Drink it all when it’s still cold, Missy, and you won’t have that problem. Don’t drink it now and you’ll have worse problems when you’re old like me. You’ll be Miss Now-I-Walk-with-a-Cane-and-Should-Have-Drunk-My-Milk-When- I-Had-the-Chance of the Universe. Young women have to put bones in the bank. And sit up straight while you’re at it. Slouching leads to—”
This could go on forever. “But the chickens!” I yelled, stomping my feet.
Grum peered at me in her sneaky way, eyes snooping above her glasses as she looked up from the snarled ball of string that she untangled hour after hour because she liked to keep her hands busy, and, “Waste not, want not.” I knew I was in for one of her lessons of the day.
“But the chickens? But the chickens! Is that what passes for a complete thought nowadays? The chickens are a lonely subject in search of a predicate.”
“They have a pox! Look!” I held my hand out and dropped the egg.
“Seb!” squealed my perfect sister.
The egg went BUMP! wobble-wobble-wobble and stopped against Grum’s slipper. She put her string ball down and made clickety noises with her false teeth as she poked at the egg with her toe.
“Why, it’s like a rock! I’ve never seen anything like it. Were there others?”
I made a face and shrugged. I didn’t recall encountering any other eggs in the hospital.
“Well, pick that egg up for me, please, then go back out and finish your chores. While you’re at it, send up a prayer for Jesus to lift the burdens from those hens.” She started humming a hymn, and I was out of there.
I used to love every minute with Grum, when she had her own place across the road in Kokadjo Gore and I could visit her whenever I wanted. But after she moved in with us it was too much of a good thing. Worst of all, she took the room I used to share with Jed, so I had to move into the upstairs foyer with Barbie. Jed moved into the stone playhouse us guys had built in the backyard. That was back in the days when Pa got up at 6 AM and had a charming personality. When I used to follow him around and “help” him be a fixer-man.
Finishing my chores in the henhouse turned out to be impossible. I kept looking and looking, but I didn’t find enough eggs to refill a carton for the Dogstars, our regular Thursday customers. Finally I realized the reason was that the eggs just weren’t there. And neither were some of the chickens. They must have gotten out when Jed’s Stupid Cat let himself in. I certainly would never