Duckling Ugly Read Free Page B

rumors still hung like sheets on a clothesline, twisting more and more the longer they stayed in the wind.
    Her whole life now was spent in her cottage, and the huge greenhouse behind it that had once been the centerpiece of the botanical garden. It was a grand Victorian greenhouse, with a high crystalline dome, and smaller wings on either side.
    She didn’t take me to the cottage—instead she took me right to the greenhouse, which was even more spectacular inside than out. Strange black orchids grew from the dark soil, and up above hung carnivorous pitcher plants so big they could drown a rat. I took a deep whiff. Every inch of the place was alive with aromas. Turn your head and the scent would change to something else.
    “Being as I can’t quite see the things I grow anymore,” she told me, “I cultivate things that appeal to the other senses.” The greenhouse was full of flowers that not only smelled sweet, but were softto touch as well. Some of the plants grew exotic berries that danced on your tongue when you tasted them. I could see Miss Leticia more clearly in the greenhouse lights now. She was a heavy woman, but she wore her weight well. She had skin like dark chocolate, and her hair was a mess of steel wool pulled into a bun.
    She led me to a little cast-iron table and chairs surrounded by staghorn ferns and lilies, but she walked a little too close and banged her shin against one of the chairs with a nasty
clang.
I grimaced, practically feeling it myself.
    “You all right?” I asked.
    “Yep. It wasn’t me anyway—it was this thing.” She lifted her skirt a bit to reveal steel braces that ran up either side of her shin, practically up to her knee. She had them on both legs. “Metal on metal—that’s why it sounded so loud. I got steel rods in my back, too—and a pacemaker. Got a grandson calls me Nana Cyborg, on accounta all that metal.” She laughed so contagiously, I had to laugh, too. “Then, after all that, I got these cataracts in my eyes, and I said, ‘No more!’ There’ll be no more doctors touching this here body less’n it’s to pretty it up for my wake.” She laughed again. It seemed strange that she could joke so easily about dying, but then, when you’re as old as Miss Leticia, death stops being the enemy.
    “Now you just sit yourself down, and I’ll go get that tea,” she said. She went off into her cottage and returned a few minutes later with a tray.
    “It’s good to have a guest,” she told me. “No one comes around but my son and that horrible wife of his. And all
they
want to talk about is putting me in a home. But I tell them I got a home.”
    I breathed in the steam of her tea, then took a gentle sip. Although her cloudy gray eyes had been disturbing at first, after I’d been sitting and drinking with her for just a few minutes, any sense of discomfort faded away. “Now you tell me your troubles,” she said, “because my guess is you got no one else worth tellin’ em to.”
    “I just had a bad day, is all.” I didn’t say anything more, hoping I wouldn’t have to get into it—but Miss Leticia wasn’t going to let me off the hook.
    “Hmm,” she said when she realized I wasn’t talking. Then she rapped her knuckles against one of her leg braces. “These braces here give me support. I don’t mind, on account of I know my legs need it—otherwise they hurt something awful. I know you’re hurting as well. Ain’t no shame in needing a little support.” She took a long, slow sip of her tea. “Now, why don’t you tell me what happened that’s got you so upset?
    “Clammed up, are ya? Hmm. Must be a lot going on in that head of yours.”
    Then she smiled a little too mischievously for a woman of her age. “What could it hurt to let some steam out of that pressure cooker?”
    I sighed. “Well, I was in this spelling bee, and—”
    “Ah,” she interrupted, “I knew you were the type for casting spells!”
    “No, not
casting
spells,” I told her.