Singing Hands Read Free Page B

to my shoulders. I sighed. I had planned for a transformation in my appearance to occur before I started South Glen Junior High School in the fall. But time was running out. Although I diligently applied Vanish Freckle Fading Creme every night, my freckles hadn't seemed to fade one bit, and my eyebrows were hopeless, stretched out in a fuzzy caterpillar line straight across my brow. Every time I asked Margaret if she would help me tweeze them into pretty arches like hers, she would smirk and say something like, "I'll have to put that on my calendar. Those monsters are gonna take two or three hours,
at least.
"
    I leaned closer to the mirror, inspecting more carefully. At least I didn't have eyebrows like our upstairs renter Mrs. Fernley. Hers were so sparse she had to fill them in with a brown pencil that left her with two sharp arcs across her brow and a permanent look of surprise. I cocked my head up at the ceiling, listening. She was playing her opera again, just as she had on Sunday afternoons ever since Mother and Daddy had decided to take in roomers last year. I was sure Mrs. Fernley had chosen our house because my parents were deaf and she could play records on her phonograph as loud as she wanted.
    Besides being an opera lover, Mrs. Fernley was a divorcee—another fact that made us all a little suspicious, although she was at least fifty and never entertained gentlemen callers. "I enjoy my freedom," I had heard her tell Daddy firmly when she first came to see the room. "The ability to come and go as I please is a luxury that was not possible during my years of marriage."
    I couldn't help making fun of the way Mrs. Fernley talked. She spoke as if she might aspire to have a British accent instead of the Southern drawl the rest of us had. At first I thought she spoke in that prim way to help Daddy with lip reading. Then, after several months of listening to her careful enunciation, I decided she was just plain prissy.
    She dressed just as carefully as she spoke. Every morning she tip-tapped down our front walkway at eight-twenty to catch the streetcar for downtown Birmingham, where she worked as the chief millinery buyer for Blach's department store. I was fascinated that an adult could have such a job—picking out hats for eight hours each day, week after week. Whenever I could, I rushed to peek out Margaret's window just to see the smart hats or tailored suits Mrs. Fernley wore to work each day.
    Then there were the strange odors that wafted down from upstairs whenever she cooked on her hot plate—smoky, musky smells of exotic spices that clung to our clothes and reminded me of the time I stuck my nose in the clove jar when Mother was baking a ham for Christmas.
    Mother had a bird-dog sense of smell, and if Mrs. Fernley happened to be cooking, she knew it immediately, even if she was all the way down in our kitchen at the back of the house. She crinkled up her nostrils and pursed her lips with distaste. "Curry!" She spelled out the letters harshly with her fingers, then swept her hands through a scornful combination of signs. "She must have foreign blood."
    Just as I was getting ready to apply another layer of freckle-fading cream to the bridge of my nose, Nell burst through the door again.
    "Mother told him."
    I cringed. "What'd he say?"
    "Not much ... that is, until they called Margaret in and Daddy asked her to tell him the names of all the songs you've ever hummed in church."
    "All of them?" I moaned.
    "Yep. She even told him about that time you hummed 'Happy Birthday' during the nativity play at Christmas when Mary put Baby Jesus in the manger."
    "Gah!" I cried. "That stinking tattletoad Margaret! Did she really have to tell him that, too?"
    Nell tried not to smile. I was famous for inventing catchy new insults like "tattletoad." "Daddy wants to see you in his office, Gussie. He sent me up to get you."
    I crossed my arms over my chest, plunked myself down on the edge of the bed, and stared stubbornly