Excerpt from JUST JUICE
by Karen Hesse
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"Where's Juice?" Ma says, spreading grape jelly so thin on the sliced white bread, you can hardly find the purple. "If she doesn't get herself to school this morning, that truant officer'll be here before I can finish breakfast dishes."
"Won't matter when he comes, Ma," Charleen says. "He won't find Juice, and even if he does, he can't make her stay in school. He'd have to tie her to Miss Hamble's desk to do that."
I hide outside on the back porch, watching them through the window. My fingers rest on the rough wood. Markey, my oldest sister, looks out at me. But she doesn't make one peep about where I mought be found.
Behind me, the rising sun washes the trees in a yellow light. The quiet fills me.
I don't much care for school, and school, well, it cares even less for me. I should be in fourth grade. But my old teacher, Mrs. Deal, she said I didn't try hard enough and now I must stay back. That didn't stop Mrs. Deal from moving up with the rest of my class. They all left me behind with the new teacher, Miss Hamble.
So I don't go to school much. I spend most days with Pa, walking. Since Pa lost his last job, he does a lot of walking. Being with him beats going to school any old how.
Ma puts a sandwich into each of our three bags and folds the bags shut. I like how neat those folds are. It is like unwrapping a gift, opening the bag at lunchtime. Even after I've used the bag all week and it's limber as a dishrag, I still like opening it and taking out that jelly sandwich. And I like that Ma packs me a sandwich every morning, even if I don't end up eating it in school the way she hopes.
"Juice," Ma calls softly, her round face tilted up to the heating grate in the ceiling. She thinks I'm up there, in the tiny room I share with my four sisters. "Come on down, honey."
I jump off the back porch and clap-hat it around the house. Quietly slipping inside the front door, I hush along the hallway and join Ma and my sisters in the kitchen.
Turtle is the youngest, just over two years, with a head full of orange curls. Next comes Lulu. Lulu has black hair and blue eyes like mine. Ma says Lulu is four going on forty, and sometimes I think she's right. My two little sisters sit under the kitchen table. Lulu is pretend-reading our picture book about the boy and his drum to Turtle. She says the book exactly the way I say it when I'm pretend-reading to her.
Charleen, who is eleven and next oldest to Markey, stands beside the kitchen door.
"Hey, Juice," Charleen whispers as I slip in.
"Hey," I whisper back.
Lulu catches sight of me and breaks out one of her best grins. I wave to her under the table.
Markey motions for me to smooth my hair.
I work on a snarl over my ear as Ma comes up. "Juice, honey, you're going to school today."
Ma spits on her finger. She wipes at a smudge on my chin. I lift my head and let her wash me all she wants. That finger of hers reminds me of the ginger cat who washes her kittens down in the Land of the Car Bones, where Pa and I take our walks sometimes.
My stomach growls as Ma spit-scrubs my face. "S'cuse me," I say, grinning. I slap my hand over the noise.
"You're hungry," Ma says. "You can't think on a empty stomach, Juice. How can I send you to school without breakfast?"
I can hardly believe Ma'll let me stay home on account of a growly stomach.
But then I see that is not Ma's plan. She starts to reach for a box of saltines up in the cupboard. But she gets one of her dizzy spells and she holds tight to the sink. I think she gets dizzy like that because she is expecting a new baby, but I don't know. Sometimes I worry it's something more.
Ma asks Markey to fetch the cracker box down for her. Inside the box, one waxed paper stack has about eight crackers left. Ma hands them over to me. I take four out and hand the rest back. "You need to eat, too, Ma," I say.
Charleen puts her hat on. Every day, she wears that little hat tipped back on her head. Ma made that hat for Charleen, braided it out of cloth. Ma's real good with her hands. She makes rugs and baskets to sell in the city.
Charleen thinks when she wears that hat she looks like a picture she saw once of a English girl in a garden. Charleen doesn't look like any English girl.
From Just Juice, copyright © by Karen Hesse.
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