Cosette's Tribe by Leah Griffith

Author:Leah Griffith [Griffith, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780985306625
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2012-06-09T14:00:00+00:00

When we got back to the house Ma already had some potatoes on the boil, and asked me to open up two cans of green beans. Tommy made himself scarce because he was worried that Ma would have him doing chores too. Ken’s working nights this week, so it’s kind of like a holiday around here.

Diana came in and plopped down in a kitchen chair. She makes herself invisible when Ken’s home, mostly staying in her room, but sometimes she hangs out with her new best friend, Gina Castrati. Gina’s shorter than me and she’s sixteen. Everyone in her family calls her half-pint, but she hates it, so we just call her Gina.

I dumped the green beans into a pan and set it on the burner for Ma to heat up later.

“So, how was school today, Cozy?” Ma’s voice sounded friendly, like the doorbell ringing on Christmas Eve. She used to sound like that most of the time but I forgot all about that voice. She dropped a pork chop into the hot frying pan, and I watched it spit and hiss, like an angry cat.

“Well?” Ma said.

“Great. School was great,” I said, grinning up at her because I was feeling so good about supper, and Dewey, and Ken being at work. Diana rolled her eyes at me, and I knew she was thinking that I was kissing up, but I didn’t care as long as Ma stayed in a good mood.

Then Ma asked, “How about you Diana, how was your day?” in the same jingly voice. I stared at Diana thinking she better not screw up Ma’s good mood, but Diana didn’t look at me because she knew it was her turn to be a kiss up and she was embarrassed. “Mine was great too,” she said, while her cheeks turned red.

“What’s so great?” Janice asked, bouncing up to the kitchen table like she missed out on some big news. Diana and me both said “School” at the same time and gave Janice the biggest eyes we had. Janice looked confused for a second, because she knew we hated school, but then she caught our clue and said, “Yeah, school was great for me too, Ma.”

We didn’t have one argument during supper tonight and there was no fighting during clean up either. Ma didn’t run into her room right after supper, like she’d been doing since she married Ken. Instead, she hung around with us in the parlor and we played some of her old records on the hi-fi.

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