Insight by Diana Greenwood

Author:Diana Greenwood [ Greenwood, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-310-42665-3
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Where have you been? Wandering off when there’s work to be done. That behavior won’t do, Elvira.” I had been gone a long time. My mother and the preacher sat at the picnic table, both on the same bench, shoulders touching. She’d pinned her hair in a French knot. Tendrils escaped, curling from the humidity in the air. It still smelled like rain and gray clouds tumbled across the sky, blocking the feeble afternoon sun. I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker high above where the wind was picking up, pine branches swaying like graceful dancers.

My mother had put the preacher to work peeling potatoes. It seemed that’s all we had left to eat. I hoped I could get out of eating. I was still full from my meal with the German lady.

“Sorry,” I said. “I got lost.” I wasn’t going to tell her where I’d been. Not that it mattered, since she didn’t ask.

The preacher waved his peeling knife in greeting. He’d removed the eye patch but his eye wasn’t completely healed. He looked like a raccoon, greenish bruises under and above his eye. The white was bloodshot. He looked less like a gangster without the patch. Friendlier.

The line was gone. So were Jessie and Grandma. The donation pot was the potato pot now, half full of water. I wondered if Jessie’d seen sadness like the German lady said she would. Our neighbors were sitting at their picnic table, heads bent and hands folded, saying grace before an early supper. The two little boys didn’t look my way. They must be keeping to themselves since we were so strange.

“Where’s Jessie?” I asked my mother.

“I’m going to lie down,” she said in response.

The preacher raised his eyebrows and watched my mother disappear into our tent and zip the flap. He frowned and then the corners of his mouth curled in a smile. I remembered that meant he was thinking hard. Or praying maybe. He looked up and I followed his gaze but didn’t see anything except a hawk gliding gracefully over the pines.

“Your mother is worn out. A rest will do her good,” he said, turning to me. “Quite a crowd around here earlier. Took a lot out of her.”

He was sticking up for my mother. Making excuses for her rudeness. I’d never get away with walking off and not answering a question. She never followed her own rules. She wouldn’t need a rest if she hadn’t flaunted Jessie in the first place. Did the preacher think of that?

“She certainly is a beautiful woman.” He blushed. Even his ears turned red.

“Judging by the expression on your face, I probably shouldn’t have said that. She is, though. Quite becoming. You look a lot like her.”

I realized my mouth was hanging open. I clamped my jaw shut and felt my teeth clack together. The last person in the world I wanted to resemble was my mother. For a second I was so stuck on that idea, it didn’t register the preacher had paid my mother a compliment.

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