The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron

Author:Ann Cameron [Cameron, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80013-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

The other thing I did was help my grandmother in the market with the arroz con leche. I learned how to ladle it out, and how to make change and see that nobody took any when Grandma wasn’t looking. And after I did that for a while, my grandmother told me she thought I was ready to have a job alone, and she taught me how to shine shoes, and bought me a shoeshine kit and a stool for customers to sit on, and the two of us figured out where I should stand downtown to get the most business—by the Tourist Office and the giant photo of San Pablo that has writing underneath it.

At the beginning my grandmother watched. The first two customers I did a good job for, and then, on the third pair of shoes, I skipped a little.

The customer said, “Oh, that’s okay.” He was going to pay me anyway.

But my grandmother said, “No, it’s not okay. He has to do them right, all the time. He has to work well, all the time. If he can’t do that, he’ll never earn a living.”

“Okay,” said the customer. So I got his shoes perfect.

“Can you do that every time?” my grandmother asked, and I said yes, and she went back uptown to her rice.

So I shined a lot of shoes, and pretty soon I earned about a dollar every day. Grown men only earn two dollars, so I was doing great.

And I talked to people when I shined their shoes, and asked them where they lived, and what they did, and if they had kids. Working was fun. And I gave all the money to my grandmother. She always gave me a hug and a big smile, and let me keep ten cents for myself.

The only thing was, it got bad when I saw kids who were going past me on the way to school. I was sitting in the dust all smeared up with shoe polish, and they were all neat and clean, with their pencils and their notebooks, going to school.

A lot of kids don’t go to school because their parents want them to work. The law is, they are supposed to go to school until they are twelve. But the school really doesn’t have space for everyone, so nobody makes them go.

Most kids who work, work out in the country, in the onion fields, so I felt alone when I watched the school kids going by.

And after a while I started wondering why my grandmother didn’t send me to school. I started thinking, if she really loved me, she’d send me to school and not just have me shine shoes.

I wanted to ask her to let me go, but I was scared to. I was scared she’d say no. Then I would find out she liked me only because I was earning money for her. I’d find out she was like my father and mother and stepfather, who never cared about me. I’d find out she was just acting like she loved me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.