Autumn Street Read Free

down, that touched the sea. In that sky the colors would blur, as if you were looking at them through a haze of tears.

3
    "I DON'T LIKE it at Grandfather's," I said sulkily to Mama.
    "Why not, Elizabeth?" She buttoned my pajamas and began to brush my hair.
    "There are too many rooms. I get lost."
    Mama smiled. "That will just take some getting used to. You know, this was my house when I was a little girl, even smaller than you. I used to like all the stairways, and the closets, and porches, and halls. Think of it as a place to explore."
    "And Jess won't play with me anymore."
    "Well, Jessica is making friends who are her own
age, Liz. You will, too. And you know, when I was little, I didn't have a sister. So I played by myself."
    "I'm scared of that boy," I confessed.
    Mama looked puzzled. "What boy?"
    "In the kitchen. I was in the kitchen talking to Tatie—she lets me lick the bowl when she's making cookies. And there was a boy hiding in the pantry. Tatie made him come out and say hello, but then he ran back in the pantry again and hid, and I could see him looking at me through the crack in the door. Tatie said not to pay any attention to him because he was being rude and no-account."
    Mama began to laugh. "That must be Tatie's little grandson. I haven't met him yet, but your grandmother told me that he comes sometimes to visit her. He must be just about your age, Liz. He would be someone you could play with."
    "I don't want to play with someone rude and no-account."
    "He was just being shy. And what about
you
, Elizabeth Jane Lorimer? If you didn't make an effort to be nice to him, it sounds as if
you
were being rude, too."
    "And no-account?"
    Mama laughed. "Yes, and no-account, too. Did you say hello to him?"
    I shook my head.
    "Did you ask him his name?"
    I shook my head. "Tatie told me his name. Charles."
    Mama patted my hair, put the brush away, and tucked me into bed. "I'm going to go to find Jess and bring her upstairs now. You remember, though, Liz, that you're six years old now. That's big enough to be polite to people. The next time Charles comes to visit Tatie, you try to make him feel welcome. It must be hard for him, visiting here where he doesn't know anyone except Tatie."
    "And
she's
only the cook," I said smugly.
    Mama frowned. "Elizabeth..."
    "I know," I said. "That was rude and no-account."
    ***
    "Mama?" I called before she closed the door "When you were a little girl, living here, did you have a pet?"
    She thought. "Sometimes. I remember that I had..."
    "A turtle?"
    Mama laughed. "No. I never had a turtle. Why did you ask that?"
    I snuggled into my pillow. "I don't know," I said sleepily. "I was just thinking about turtles."
    ***
    Three children in the green, lush-lawned neighborhood where I lived, a stranger in my grandfather's house, had small, moist turtles that they kept in glass bowls from Wool worth's and fed, with their fingers, tiny pieces of limp lettuce. The turtles had American flags hand-painted on their backs, because it was war-time.
    Pre-war turtles, I learned, had been decorated with scenic paintings: rainbows, sunsets, and carefully lettered messages from tourist spots. Yosemite. The Grand Canyon. There had been a turtle for every natural wonder of the United States, and all of them had found their way to this small Pennsylvania town, where they had been nurtured in glass bowls, extending their tiny prehistoric heads now and then if you watched long enough.
    "They grow to be giant turtles," the doctor's daughter, Anne, told me, as we sat on her back porch and watched her little flag-festooned creature move sluggishly against the sides of his bowl. "They live to be a hundred years old, and by that time they're as big as—oh, as big as the kitchen table!"
    I glanced through the screen door and measured her round kitchen table with my eyes, seeing it as a shell, imagining a huge, lizard-like head extending slowly, near the place where the toaster stood. I imagined a thin brown tongue