Egg-Drop Blues Read Free

an idiot. "I'm sure she'll be able to direct us."
    "Your science resource teacher is the young one, right? Looks kind of like a teenager?" Mama asked.
    "I wouldn't say that."
    "Neither would I," I agreed. I knew Jury hated her, but he hated most of the teachers at school. I liked Ms. Hennessey all right, but she didn't look that young to me.
    "She does, Ma. Looks just like one of the kids. She reminds me of how old I'm getting," Mama said.
    "Nonsense," my grandfather said. He loves to point out nonsense wherever and whenever he finds it.
    Jury started laughing. It always cracks him up when Grandpa says "nonsense."
    "You still look like a teenager to me, Ilean," my grandmother told my mother.
    I guess they know how much my mother worries about getting old. Since she broke up with her last boyfriend, she spends a lot of time in front of the mirror using skin creme and plucking chin hairs or smoothing back the gray hair in front of her ears. It's really kind of silly because, as mothers go, she's not bad-looking. She
looks good for her age, but that doesn't seem to be enough.
    "We missed you in church Sunday, Ilean."
    "I went to Macedonia, over in Gerber. I know everybody at First already."
    My grandmother made a little moan that I recognized as her "I know what you mean" moan. When both of my grandmothers are here, at some point they seem to stop talking in English. They use a kind of shorthand language, a lot of moans and grunts and raised eyebrows and words that don't mean what they're suppose to. I think it's fascinating, but Jury thinks it's boring, as apparently do my grandfathers, because Jury leaves before long and both grandfathers usually end up asleep in their chairs.
    My mother and father grew up together on the same street in Plank. They always say they were like sister and brother for most of their lives. My mother told us that, before the wedding, she came to know she shouldn't marry my father, but she didn't have the heart to hurt my grandparents, both sets. It's funny to see my father and mother together now; they get along so well. If you didn't know, you would never suspect they were divorced. It's nothing like the arguing that went on before the divorce. Jury and I rarely talk about anything that happened during our fourth-grade year, the year they split up. I don't know about Jury, but all I remember is the arguing and then the silence after Daddy left. There were things that we could say that would make our mother cry, but we never knew what those things might be, so whenever she was home the house was silent.
    "That's nonsense," my grandfather said, a little too loud. I think he's losing his hearing.
    I don't know who said what, but Jury was dying across the table from me. I tried to kick him under the table, but it was too wide and I couldn't reach him.
    "Would you like some dessert, Judge?" my mother asked.
    "When doesn't he?"
    "When
you
buy it or make it,
Brother,
" I told him. Sometimes I have to get him off my case early or he'll start capping on me all night. My mother shot me "the look," the one that used to come before she thumped me on the head when I was younger. She'd use her middle finger and thumb and just thump, like you would if a ladybug was crawling on you. Not hard enough to hurt you or the ladybug, but it sure was embarrassing if we were out somewhere. Plus you never knew if it was going to be the look and the thump or just the look.
    "Remember how close the boys used to be?" my grandmother asked nobody in particular. "I'd never seen two such loving brothers."
    "That's nonsense, they always fought."
    Jury had to get up he got so tickled.
    My grandparents didn't stay long, even though they only live about five miles away, because Grandpa doesn't like to drive at night anymore. The bad thing about these Friday dinners is the dishes afterward. We don't have a dishwasher like the rest of the kids I know. I've asked my mother if she would get one and she says, "Why should I? I've got two