Kahasi was sitting at the kitchen table showing me how to mix the flour, baking powder, and water with a fork to make the dough for the fry bread. She showed me how to stretch the balls into flat circles, and dimple the edges with my thumb and fingers. Flour was everywhere – over the table, on the floor, on my shirt, even on her face. I reached over to wipe a spray of flour from her cheek, but I made it worse. Now there were pieces of dough there, too. “You look so funny!” I laughed.
Kahasi reached over and stuck some sticky dough on my nose. She laughed. “Now we are twins. You look funny, too.”
It was easy to see which pieces of fry bread were the ones I had made and which were the pieces my grandmother had made. Hers were so perfect they looked as if they had been made by a machine. Mine were all different shapes, and some had holes in them. “Don’t worry how they look, they will all taste the same,” she said.
We kept busy, making lots of fry bread so we would have some left over. As her hands worked quickly to make the circles, Kahasi told me, “I have something I think you will like, Lacey. It is something of your father’s from long ago. I think it is something you should have.”
I looked at her expectantly, thinking she’d take the gift out of her pocket.
“It was too heavy for me to carry. When your dad comes, he can bring it to you.”
“But Dad’s not going to be home for days yet. Can’t you tell me what it is?”
“It is something old and maybe broken,” she said. “But, like most things, not so broken it can’t be fixed.”
Who would want something old and broken? “What is it? Please tell me.” Her riddle was making me crazy. But she must not have heard my question.
“It doesn’t seem to have any rust,” she added. “We found it in the basement when your uncles were moving my things. It must have been there a long time. I had forgotten all about it. Your father, too, maybe.”
“What is it?” I asked again.
“You come home with me to Uncle Douglas’s, and I will show you.”
It was a good thing Kahasi was moving in with family. She had gone deaf, I was sure of it. I didn’t bother to ask again. Even if she heard me, she would just tell me to practice my patience and wait.
I tried to think of what the present might be as I stirred the hamburger in the big frying pan. When I heard the sound of tires on gravel, I glanced out the window above the sink. It was Uncle Douglas’s green van! Dad waved wildly out the window when he saw me, then reached over and honked the horn, “Beep! Beep! Beep, beep, beep!” “It’s Dad!” I yelled. “Dad’s home!”
I rushed from the kitchen and down the stairs so I could be at the front of the stampede. I wanted to be the first to hug Dad. I was so happy to see him that I started to cry. He lifted me up as if I were little. “How’s my princess?” he laughed, as he swung me in a circle. When he set me down, he was dusted with flour from my shirt. My brothers had flooded out of the house and surrounded Dad and me. The little boys pushed and wormed their way to him. Auntie Michelle came running from her house to clutch Uncle Douglas in a hug. All of his kids mobbed him, too. The side door of the van slid open, and Liland and Jack crawled from the back seat. By now, Kahasi had come out of the house, and Angel had brought Mum. After he hugged his mother and Angel, Dad drew Mum into the biggest hug of all, and kissed her.
Liland and Jack gave high-fives to all their brothers, then pulled open the back doors of the van. Piled on top of the guitars, drums, and amps were bags and bags of groceries. It looked like enough food to feed an army.
Dad kept his arm wrapped around Mum’s waist as they walked to the house. Davis, my smallest brother, held my dad’s other hand. “You coming in?” Dad called to Uncle Douglas.
“No, I think I’ll let these kids carry me home. We’ll come over a bit later, so I can correct all your stories,” said Uncle Douglas.
Making the fry-bread tacos with my dad and Kahasi and all my family around was one of the happiest times of my life. It didn’t even bother me that Kelvin was there. Dad and my big brothers kept smiling as they told stories about being on the road, and how the people in one town liked the band so much that they asked them to play for ten days straight. “We’re rich, by the way,” Dad laughed. “At least, we were rich until we stopped at the grocery store!”
It was a noisy night at our house. There were stories and laughter and singing, and as much happiness and love as there possibly can be in one house.
By the time the darkness started to come, Kahasi said to Dad, “I am tired now. Perhaps, my son, you would take this old woman home to rest?”
“Of course, Mum. Of course,” he said, letting go of my mum’s hand.
“Lacey, maybe you could help too,” she said to me. She gave me a big wink with her left eye, and I remembered the surprise she’d promised. The three of us went to my uncle’s house.
“It’s up here, in my room,” said Kahasi. She opened the door of her closet.
“A sewing machine?” I exclaimed. “A sewing machine! You found a sewing machine?”
“It was back there at my old house all the time. Hidden in the basement.” She smiled. “Sometimes old women forget about things.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Dad, lifting the machine from the closet. “I bet this thing hasn’t been used for twenty years. Remember I used to use it when I started dancing – to make traditional outfits? I had so much fun with this machine. I don’t know why I ever stopped sewing.”
“Perhaps the machine stopped sewing,” suggested Kahasi.
“I don’t know if it works.”
“Well, that should be easy enough to figure out. We’ll plug it in and see. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll get Kelvin to have a look. He can fix anything with a motor.” He said these words with pride in his voice. How could he be proud of Kelvin? I didn’t want that creep touching the sewing machine.
Dad kissed his mother on the cheek and wished her good night. I gave her a kiss too, and a hug. “You’re the best, Kahasi. You’re the best,” I told her. She smiled at me, took my hand, and didn’t let go.
“Talk to your father, Lacey. Tell him your troubles,” she said. Then she called after me, “Be careful, you. Don’t be getting better at sewing than I am. Old women have pride, too, you know.”
I kept smiling as we walked from Uncle Douglas’s house to our house through the cool darkness of night, with Dad carrying the sewing machine. I wanted to tell him about all the terrible things that had happened while he was gone, but I was afraid of spoiling his homecoming. He seemed so happy that I pushed the difficult things from my mind.
“This was yours, Dad? I can’t believe you never told me you could sew.”
“Well, my girl, I guess you never asked. Besides, I didn’t know you had such an interest,” he said. “You’ve been busy while I’ve been gone. I’ll be anxious to have a look at your beading.”
That was when I remembered that he didn’t know yet about the African grandmothers or the letter I had sent, so I told him about it. He also didn’t know about Kelvin and Angel’s problems, but I didn’t tell him that.
“That’s quite an offer you’ve made, Lacey, very generous,” he said. His smile told me he was proud. “But do you really think you can do it? After all, you’re just beginning to sew. To raise enough money to make a difference, you’re going to have to sew – and sell – a lot of purses.”
“With a machine, I’m sure I can do it,” I said, but I wasn’t really as confident as my words. If Dad wasn’t sure, how could I be? What if it turned out that I was bad at sewing with a machine? What if no one had money to buy the purses? What then? I pushed thoughts of failing from my mind. Instead I asked, “Will you teach me?”
“Once we clean it up – and if this thing runs – I’ll start teaching you tomorrow,” he said. He put a plastic bag on the floor beside my bed, then put the machine down on it, so it would be the first thing I saw in the morning.
“Now,” he said, “off to bed with you
. Go say good night to everyone, then crawl under the covers. There’s school tomorrow and sewing lessons after school. Be gone!”
I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. “I love you, Dad,” I said.
“I love you too, my daughter.” He slipped his hand into his pocket on his way out the door. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, pulling out a small packet of sunflower seeds. “I bought these for you, for your gardening project. They grow really fast, and they have happy faces just like yours. How are your plants growing, anyway? No, don’t tell me.” He held up his hand to stop my words. “We’ll save that for tomorrow.” He shut off the light and closed the door on the sounds of people talking in the kitchen.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, when we were alone, I would tell Dad everything.
Chapter 11
The Lesson
The smell of stew simmering on the stove greeted me when I opened the door of my house after school. It was so good to have Dad home. The first thing I saw was the sewing machine on the kitchen table. Dad had cleaned it up so it looked almost new. It was a color between white and yellow, and had a few knobs on the front and a big wheel on one side.
Giggling voices came from the basement, so I guessed Dad was there with my little brothers. I started to go down the steps. “Where are you heading off to?” asked Dad, coming down the hall. “Don’t we have a date?”
My big smile said yes.
“Come on then. Into the kitchen with you. I cleaned the machine up, and Kelvin oiled it. It seems to work just fine.” I winced at Kelvin’s name; it reminded me that I had to talk to Dad about him. “Sit here, in front of the machine,” Dad said.
He took a spool of thread from the table and put it on a sticklike thing on top of the machine. “Now, watch carefully,” he said. He pulled the thread and wound it slowly through the metal loops and knobs until it snaked to the needle. The eye of the needle was at the bottom, not at the top like on regular needles. He pulled the thread under a little flat part he called the foot, and fished another thread from the bottom part of the machine.
“You use two threads?”
“Uh-huh.”
He pressed a switch on the machine, and a light shone on the area near the foot. “You see that box on the floor? That’s the pedal. It’s what gives the machine power. You press it just like the gas pedal of a car. You push just a little if you want to go slowly.”
I put two pieces of fabric together the way he showed me, dropped the foot of the machine in place, and pressed the pedal with my foot. It made a humming sound as if it wanted to start, but nothing moved. I looked up at Dad.
“Press a little harder,” he said.
I pushed my foot down on the pedal. The humming stopped, but the needle punched up and down furiously, pulling the fabric from my hands.
“Dad! Help!” I yelled as the machine sucked in the fabric. “It’s going by itself!”
“Take your foot off the pedal.”
Learning to use the machine was tricky at first.
With a little patience and practice, sewing became much easier.
I did, and the machine stopped immediately. Dad released the foot of the machine and showed me what I had sewn. The line of stitching was crooked and bunched up in places.
“OK, so…” he said, “I guess I need to tell you a few other things.” He showed me how to use the dials on the front of the machine to adjust the tension of the thread, to keep it from bunching up, and the little marks on the machine where I needed to line things up to get a straight seam. “You’ll catch on with a little practice,” he said. He also showed me how to rip out a seam that wasn’t right.
The machine sewed quickly, but what use was it if it didn’t do a good job? If I was going to spend my time ripping out seams, I might as well do the sewing by hand.
“You’ll get the hang of it. It’s all about tension and control. Tension with the thread and control with the speed. It just takes patience.”
Great, I thought, patience again. The one thing I was short on, I seemed to need the most.
Dad ripped out the rest of the seam for me and passed me the pieces. The machine was slowly pecking up and down when the phone rang.
“Hello,” said Dad. “Oh, hi! Yes. Yah. Uh-huh. Tonight?” He looked at the clock on the stove. “That doesn’t give us much time. Dang it, that’s too bad. I’d like to help you, but – Sure. Sure. It’ll take us an hour to get there and then to set up, but I suppose we could do it. The van is still loaded, and as long as you don’t mind if we start a bit late.”
I didn’t like the sound of this conversation. Red Lightning must be going back on the road. Tonight, he’d said. Tonight.
Dad hung up the phone. I looked at him expectantly.
“I guess your brothers and uncle and I are back on the road. But it’s just for a couple of days. The band they had booked cancelled at the last minute, when the singer got laryngitis.”
“But you just got home, Dad,” I complained.
“I know, honey. I won’t be gone long.”
He picked up the phone to call Uncle Douglas, went to talk with Mum, and called downstairs to Liland and Jack, “Time to pack up. Come on, let’s go.” I know he hated to leave so soon, but he also sounded excited that people needed him to sing and play his guitar.
It seemed just minutes before Dad, Liland, Jack, and Uncle Douglas threw their duffel bags into the van and drove off. They didn’t even take the time to eat the stew Dad had made. And I hadn’t found the time to talk to Dad about all the things that were troubling me.
Chapter 12
The Blow-up
My younger brothers were asleep in their beds when Angel, carrying Kayden, slumped onto the sofa. It was technically past my bedtime, but it was Saturday, Dad was still away on that emergency trip, and Mum was in her bedroom.
“Mum sick again?” I asked from behind my sewing machine.
“She’s been throwing up again, and she has a real bad headache. She’s in bed, trying to get some sleep,” said Angel, not even looking up from her magazine. Kayden was on the sofa beside her. “Pretty. Pretty lady,” she said to Kayden, pointing to the pictures. “Dog. See the doggie? Woof. Woof.” Kayden batted the magazine with her hand and slobbered like a dog. Angel turned another page. “Oh, shoes. Nice shoes. Pretty shoes. Purple. Look at the pretty purple shoes. Mommy would like to have those shoes. Pretty. Would Kayden like some pretty shoes?”
I wished she would shut up. The gold fabric I had cut out was slippery and hard to keep together. The thread from the bobbin kept tangling in a heap and puckering the fabric.
“Kitty cat. That’s a kitty cat. Pat the kitty. Nice kitty. ‘Meow,’ says the kitty,” said Angel. I sighed loudly and snipped carefully at the mass of threads.
“Angel? Angel? Are you there?” came Mum’s faint voice from the next room.
“Mum is calling you, Angel,” I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to listen to the baby talk.
“I’ll be right back. Watch Kayden, OK?”
“Uh-huh.” I glanced at Kayden. She was safely holding onto the sofa and slapping it with one hand. She had a homemade rattle filled with rice in her other hand. I turned back to my sewing. Every time I got everything in place, it would slide away. I stuck in pins and more pins, trying to get it to all hold together. I slid the piece beneath the foot of the machine and started the line of stitching. The machine helped drown out the annoying ticka-ticka-ticka of Kayden’s rattle, but I could still hear it, so I knew she was fine. As the machine pecked slowly at the fabric, I glanced over to check on her. She was smiling so happily that I could see her two bottom teeth.
“Ga!” she said.
Crunch! The machine’s needle hit a pin and snapped cleanly in two.
“Arghh! I hate sewing,” I growled, as I cut the thread and loosened the bolt to the needle. I hoped there was a spare needle in the small box of extra parts Dad had put in my sewing box. If not, I wouldn’t be able to get another one until someone went to the city. But when
I reached down, my sewing basket wasn’t beside me. Spools of my white and black thread were unraveled all over the living room floor. Appliques, badges, and hundreds of beads were scattered everywhere. Kayden was plunked on the floor beside the sewing basket, clutching a plastic case with pins inside.
“Kayden! You stupid, stupid baby!” I shouted as I jumped up. The shiny fabric slithered to the floor, and the chair banged backwards as I ran to her. I grabbed her pudgy arm and pried the case of pins from her strong fingers. It wasn’t her rattle I had been hearing; it was my pins.
“You’re a brat, Kayden. Just a stupid brat!” I screamed. She stopped smiling and gurgling. Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears as I lifted her from the floor.
Angel walked into the room and shrieked. “Don’t call her that! She isn’t stupid, and she isn’t a brat!”
“Look what she did! Just look!”
“You’re the stupid one, leaving stuff everywhere,” Angel said, pulling her crying baby to her chest. “It’s OK, Kayden. You’re smart. Really, really smart,” she said quietly, but loud enough for me to hear. “It’s Lacey who’s stupid, leaving her things where your little hands can get them. She’s so stupid she thinks she can help people in Africa. She can’t even help people in her own family when they need their baby watched for a few minutes.”
“I shouldn’t have to watch your stupid baby. She’s yours. Not mine!”
Joseph and Davis came out of their room, Davis wearing his Scooby-Doo pajamas and Joseph in his boxers. Their eyes were puffy from sleeping. “What’s going on?” asked Joseph. “We heard yelling, and Davis was scared.”
Kayden had been soothed by the sound of Angel’s voice and her gentle jiggling. She stopped crying. “Nothing important is going on,” Angel said. “Come on, boys, back to bed. I’ll tuck you in.” I glared at her back as she left the room talking sweetly to all three children. She turned and stuck her tongue out at me, and Kayden laughed.
Lacey and the African Grandmothers Page 6