The Reading Lessons Read Free

the spice bottles. Footfalls thumped overhead. Mama ladled food on the shiny blue plates and poured cups of coffee, bellowing out her niggery songs . . . 
    AIN’T BUT ONE TRAIN RUNS THIS TRACK. 
    IT RUNS TO HEAVEN AND RUNS RIGHT BACK. 
    SAINT PETER WAITIN’ AT THE GATE. 
    SAYS, “COME ON SINNER, DON’T BE LATE!”
    Mama always said, “The boss’ll notice a mouse squashed in a trap before he’ll notice us. We’re like the furniture, Hadley. If we do things right, we’re a nice comfy chair, and nobody thinks a thing about us so long as we stay comfy.” 
    Well, Hadley wasn’t so sure about that anymore. He had a notion he was a bit better than an old piece of furniture. Didn’t the boss give them a canning closet? 
    The kitchen belonged to them, too. That is to say, unless Lucinda Browning was throwing a fit. The kitchen was where Hadley came to learn just how apt Lucinda’s empress title really was.
    Hadley’s mama was what you might call an Ear Reader. She could tell all sorts of things about a person by the shape or size of their ears. Hadley, for instance, had little ears. According to Mama, little ears indicated benevolence and kindness. Problem was, they were hemmed in at the lobes, and this meant there was every reason to beware. Small hemmed ears could just as easily signify insanity as benevolence. Lucinda Browning had flat ears. Flat ears sifnified a coarse nature. 
    When aggravated, the girl would steer her father into the kitchen and let him have it in front of God and everyone. It didn’t matter if Hadley was snapping peas two inches away. If you were Lucinda, the kitchen was where you went to have a tantrum. She would stomp her feet and cry and throw roast beef at the wall while Hadley peacefully snapped his peas. 
    “I want a new blonde Kewpie doll, and I want it now.” Watch out if there were uncooked eggs around. Mama made a certain kind of look sometimes that meant Hide the honeydews! “It’s bad enough I don’t have a mama. How can you expect me to live without a blonde kewpie?”
    Mr. Browning was in charge of two hundred coalminers at Browning & Beeson Coal, yet he was weak as a noddle when it came to Lucinda’s meat-slinging. “Of course we’ll get you a Kewpie. Get your hat, and we’ll go over to Merkin’s right now and buy you as many Kewpies as you like.”
    Lucinda would pull a hat from behind her back and off they would go.
    Sometimes she hauled her daddy into the kitchen to complain about how much he was ignoring her, or how cruel it was for him to plan a business lunch during their Daddy and Daughter Day, or how bored she was eating the same desserts week after week.
    Usually though, it was because Lucinda wanted or needed something on the double. Often she wanted or needed something on the double because her mother died when she was a baby. Regardless of the reason, Hadley and Mama learned to clear away the cutlery when they heard Lucinda coming.
    One morning, after she exploded a jar of piccalilli in the name of loneliness, Lucinda looked over at Hadley, who was chipping mud off the foot scraper quite contentedly just then, and loudly declared, “I need a pet!”
    She’d torn her father away in the middle of breakfast, but still he gave her a sympathetic smile. “Of course you do, sweet pea. What would you like?”
    “Something little,” she said. She snapped at Hadley with the miniature riding crop she was so fond of snapping for no good reason. “Something cute.”
    “Like what?” her father asked.
    “Something black. No. Something white. Oh never mind, Daddy. I can get him on my own.”
    ###
    Like the Tweebs before them, The Brownings did not communicate directly with the staff. Mr. Browning spoke only to Mr. Sweet, the head butler, and then simply to say things like, “There’s gray mold on my berries!” or “My shoots are bleeding entirely too much sap.” Being a wine-man, Mr. Browning was all about his berries. 
    Likewise, Lucinda did not speak