Read A Place Called Wiregrass for Free Online Page B

Laurel might be. I thought it curious that Cher would spend so much timetalking with Laurel since she lived in a double-wide across from us. Why didn’t the two girls just meet in the middle of the crumbled asphalt street to do their talking? But after raising two kids, I knew all sorts of odd things the early teen years did to kids. Besides, I trusted Cher. I always told her I’d trust her until she gave me reason not to.
    Then the phone bill came in.
    Our bill jumped to seventy-five dollars, decorated with phone calls for various area codes in Louisiana. She passed it off as trying to locate her missing friends. I refused to let this one go by. Although I didn’t want to involve Miss Claudia in this, Cher had to learn a lesson. I brought her with me to work the last two days of her spring break, and she washed all of Miss Claudia’s downstairs windows.
    “Morning. Time to get on up,” I said on the second day.
    She lay in bed, mumbling and grumbling, until I took an ice cube and tossed it in her bed. She screamed and told me I was a child abuser for making her go through such torment. Maybe Mama was right about her being spoiled.
    Stopped at a red light just a mile from Miss Claudia’s, the car died. With blaring horns and the roar of automobiles, I jumped out of the car, and with the aid of my handy pliers we were back in business. An old man in a long blue car pointed his finger at me and shook his head. “Yeah, Buddy,” I screamed with raised hands. What did he think, I had planned all this to slow him down?
    Cher slumped down to the floorboard and refused to lift her head above the door for fear she might be recognized. I laughed at her and threatened to put a sign on the car the next day saying I was her chauffeur and that she hired me to drive her around. “Nuh-uh,” she said while shaking her long brown hair. Even she laughed at that one.
    Miss Claudia made a fuss over Cher the minute she laid eyes on her. “Erma Lee, this child has the prettiest skin I everdid see.” By that time, Miss Claudia was doing much better and dressing herself. Even sitting around the house, she wore the nicest clothes. Cher picked up on her fashion sense and asked her all about the store her husband once owned. They hungered for each other, Miss Claudia never having had any grandchildren, and Cher looking to someone who could be a grandmother image. I was too busy trying to be Mama and Daddy for her. After an hour, I had to remind the two of them why Cher was there. As Cher washed and rinsed the windows, Miss Claudia sat outside on her porch, praising her work. Miss Claudia could always give a compliment that made you feel like she really meant it.
     
    On Friday afternoon, Miss Claudia hobbled on her cane and tried to make lemonade. When she scared me to the point of picturing her falling on the knife she was carrying, I took over. She said she wanted to go outside and have a lemonade party. My warnings that she was spoiling Cher fell on deaf ears. “You hush. A little spoiling never hurt nobody.” So we sat on iron chairs surrounded by latticework, carpeted grass, and award-winning roses and listened to Miss Claudia’s lecture on the finer points of nature. I loved to watch Miss Claudia’s hazel eyes dance as she carried on about this rose or that one.
    “Do y’all know the story about the dogwood tree?” She pointed with her cane to the tree decorated with white blossoms.
    We shook our heads. With a lift, Miss Claudia sprang up from the chair and put her arm in Cher’s as she escorted her towards the tree.
    Miss Claudia carefully opened the bloom and informed us that the tree had a message for us. As if reading a tea leaf, she told us about Jesus dying for us and how He rose up. I stiffened to think she was going to start preaching. Cher pulledher chin down, intently listening to Miss Claudia, and then she examined the white petals shaped like a cross. “See here. The red stains on the tips of the bloom reminds us