Finding Grace Read online

  I take lots of trips in the elevator to Granny’s apartment, dragging the laundry baskets, my shopping bag, and blankets and pillows. I pile everything in the middle of Granny’s living room, between the rickety tables and chairs.

  “Be careful you don’t break anything, sweetie,” Granny says. She’s watching me from her recliner, with Jingle in her lap. He’s old, maybe even ancient. Granny got him before I was born and she says he wasn’t a young cat then. She says the reason he has lived so long is that he’s an inside cat and doesn’t have to fend off dogs and cars. He has long, thick, black and gold fur and he may be part Persian. He likes to leap out and scratch your legs when you’re not looking. He really only likes Granny.

  She’s smoking, and a gray haze surrounds her. She never opens windows. She hates drafts. I pretend to cough like crazy, “UGHGHG! UGHGHG! UGHGHG!” but she doesn’t get the hint.

  When everything is moved, we have meatloaf, peas, and strawberry ice cream for supper.

  Mom plays with her food. “Why do I always have such rotten luck?” she says.

  “You make your bed, you have to lie in it,” Granny tells her.

  Granny isn’t really mean. She must hate having us all crammed in here together. And she’s mad that Mom doesn’t even try to get a job. I heard them arguing last week and Mom yelled, “You know why. You know why!” I just wish I knew why, but no one tells me anything.

  I’ve never slept in a living room before. It doesn’t get completely dark because there’s a streetlight right outside the window, shining through the lacy curtains. The mattress on the pull-out couch is as thin as cardboard, and metal pieces stab my back. I’m trying to pretend that this is a pajama party (I’ve never been to a pajama party, but I’ve heard girls talk about them), but it doesn’t work because I’m the only one here.

  I turn on the light, put my hippo, Harry, beside me, and read Jane of Lantern Hill for a while. Jane’s grandmother is plain evil and I take back what I said about Jane suffering almost as much as me. She suffers much more. I feel a little bit better.

  Until I get up to go to the bathroom.

  That’s when I hear Mom, behind her bedroom door.

  She’s crying.

  • • • • •

  Dear Grace,

  We’ve been living in Granny’s apartment for two weeks. I can only write when Mom’s in bed because I have no privacy here, and she’ll freak out if she finds out about these letters.

  Tonight I leaned across a little table and the sleeve of my dressing gown knocked a china figurine onto the floor. It was a ROYAL DOULTON figurine and they cost a fortune!!!!! It was one of Granny’s favorites, of a little boy and a puppy. It smashed to smithereens.

  “No use crying over spilt milk,” Granny said. “It was my fault for putting it on the table and not in the cabinet with the others.” But she didn’t want to play Chinese checkers with me before bed. Proof she is mad: we ALWAYS play Chinese checkers.

  Mom finally went to a job interview yesterday, to be a clerk at a grocery store. She curled her hair and wore high heels and Granny said she looked like a million dollars. But she didn’t get the job.

  I read the sad part in Jane of Lantern Hill today, when she has to leave her dad and Prince Edward Island and go back to her grandmother’s house in Toronto. I cried buckets.

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  P.S. Miss Noonan told us that she read an article in the newspaper about cigarettes maybe causing cancer, and said she hopes none of us ever starts to smoke. Do you think that could be true? Granny smokes like a chimney. Cancer! What would we do without Granny? One more thing for me to worry about.

  Chapter Six

  “This,” Mom says, after we’ve had supper one night, “is a picture of your father.”

  I’m sitting at the dining room table, in the alcove between the kitchen and the living room, sweating over math. The problems are horrible and don’t make sense. I’m petrified all over again about failing grade five.

  Granny is in her armchair, knitting a pair of purple socks for me.

  Mom has been drifting in and out of the room for the last hour, reading a magazine for a few minutes, switching the TV on and off.

  She puts a small square photograph on the table in front of me. “You’re old enough to see this.”

  My heart beats faster as I study the black-and-white picture. It’s of four young men in uniform, standing in front of a train.

  “The one on the right,” Mom says. “His name was Tommy.”

  “Tommy who?” I say.

  She sighs. “I don’t think I ever knew.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “A dance.”

  The photograph is blurry and I can’t tell exactly what he looks like, but I can see that he’s grinning.

  A soldier!

  “Was he devastatingly handsome?” I ask hopefully.

  “No,” Mom says. “He was actually quite ordinary.”

  Ordinary. Like me. I definitely don’t look like Mom. I have straight brown hair (Mom’s is curly and a nicer brown than mine), brown eyes (Mom’s are sky blue), my chin is square, and I hate to admit it, but my nose is a bit too big for my face (Mom’s is perfectly dainty). I am also as skinny as a stick, but my feet are fat. Mom is curvy, but I am all straight lines and bones. My looks must have come from my father, but the photograph is not much help.

  “Why didn’t you marry him?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I only knew him for a week.”

  Granny’s knitting needles click furiously.

  “So what happened?”

  “He went to war.”

  I stare some more at the photograph. None of the soldiers look very old.

  “Didn’t he come to see you when he came back?”

  “He didn’t come back.”

  Holy Toledo! A thrill runs up my spine. “He was shot down by enemy fire,” I breathe.

  “Food poisoning,” Mom says. “I heard that he ate some fish that wasn’t canned properly.” She adds, “You can have the picture. I don’t want it.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  It’s a very disappointing story. But it’s all I have.

  Chapter Seven

  We’re having a Strawberry Tea at school. It’s just for grade five mothers and daughters. The boys grumble a bit when Miss Noonan says they’re not invited, but I don’t think they really want to come.

  I do. I can’t wait. None of the girls at school have seen my mother yet. I’m going to ask Granny to curl Mom’s hair again the way she did for the job interview. I hope Mom wears makeup and her dress with the sunflowers.

  I have never been to a Strawberry Tea. This is how it works: the boys will go home at three o’clock and the girls will stay. The tea will be in the gym – strawberry shortcake and tea in real china teacups. We’ll sit at card tables with our mothers and some of the girls in grade six will serve us. Then we’ll sing a song about robins and recite some mushy poems that we have been practicing.

  In Art today, the girls make invitations while the boys draw anything they want. I draw a bright red strawberry on the front of mine. On the inside, I copy the information carefully from the blackboard:

  Come to our Mother Daughter Strawberry Tea!

  Queens Elementary School

  June 6, 3:30 p.m.

  I take the invitation home and Mom puts it on a table in the living room.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she says.

  • • • • •

  On the afternoon of the tea, I ask Miss Noonan three times if I can go to the bathroom. I don’t really have to go, I just want to peek in the gym. It looks elegant. The card tables are covered with white paper, folded over and taped at the corners. On each table are cups and s
aucers, tiny yellow napkins, and a jar filled with blue flowers. There are also little cards with our names and our mothers’ names on them, printed in Miss Noonan’s calligraphy.

  At first I felt sick to see that nasty Barbara Porter and her mother are sitting with Mom and me. But I’ve seen Mrs. Porter pick Barbara up after school, and she is quite honestly not at all pretty like my mom, so I’ve calmed down about it.

  Everyone is so excited that at two-thirty Miss Noonan gives up and sends the boys outside to play baseball, while we girls brush our hair, check our dresses in the long mirror by the door, and talk about our mothers.

  I’ll admit it. I brag a little. “My mother used to be a model,” I say.

  “Right,” Barbara says snarkily.

  “It’s true. Her picture was in the newspaper. Lots.”

  “Prove it,” Fiona says.

  “I will. I’ll bring some pictures.”

  Granny has a scrapbook full of pictures of Mom from the Vancouver Province. Mom was modeling spring and fall clothes – dresses, hats, even a ball gown – for the fashion supplement. She was eighteen years old and she hadn’t had me yet. She looked ravishing.

  The bell rings. We practice our song and poems one last time and head to the gym. Mothers in their flowery summer dresses are already filling the hallway. I peer around anxiously for mine. She isn’t here yet, but it’s only twenty after three. My mom is never early for anything.

  Miss Noonan herds everyone into the gym and we find our tables. Miss Noonan has made us practice making introductions, and Barbara introduces me to her mother without making any mistakes. “Mother, this is Hope King. Hope, this is my mother, Mrs. Porter.”

  I smile and shake hands but my eyes keep flitting to the door. Mom should be here by now. Where is she?

  A grade six girl brings around a teapot and pours our tea, and another girl brings a tray with plates of strawberry shortcake. It looks utterly scrumptious and I take a forkful but I can barely swallow. Sweat trickles down my back. Where is she?

  Mrs. Porter chatters about how lovely everything looks and how she’s really looking forward to the entertainment. “Barbara’s been practicing in her room, but she won’t let me listen.”

  Barbara gives her mother a blank stare. Then she says, between mouthfuls, “Where’s your mother?”

  I glance around and I almost faint. Granny is standing by the door. Even from here, I can tell that she is dressed all wrong. She’s wearing her hot pink wool suit that’s ten years old, and around her neck is a real fur stole that my grandfather gave her when they got married.

  Her hair is, well, orange.

  This morning when I left for school it was a normal brown, but she’s been talking about dying it for ages. Cripes. Why did she have to pick today?

  Miss Noonan intercepts her and brings her over to our table. I realize, in a sudden panic, that she may introduce Granny as my mother. Miss Noonan has never met my mother, and Granny is old – sixty – but not really old.

  I say quickly, “Hi, Granny,” and Mrs. Porter says smoothly, “What a lovely idea to invite your grandmother,” as if I have done this on purpose.

  Up close, you can see that Granny has put on too much powder and that her red lipstick is crooked, and this is not a nice thing to think, but she reeks of cigarette smoke.

  Barbara’s mouth hangs open.

  The tea passes in a blur. Granny and Mrs. Porter hit it off and talk about all kinds of things. Barbara and I don’t say a word to each other.

  During the entertainment, Granny claps like crazy. People are staring at her. I pretend she’s not related to me.

  When it’s all over and we’re walking home, she keeps saying what a wonderful time she had. I half listen while I plan what I’m going to say to my mother. By the time we get back to the apartment, I’m ready to explode.

  Mom is hiding in her room. The coward.

  I kick her closed door.

  Hard.

  Dear Grace,

  At the Strawberry Tea today I went to the bathroom and I was in a cubicle just finishing when two girls came in. I pulled my legs up on the toilet and held my breath so they wouldn’t know I was there.

  I recognized Lesley Thomas’s shoes. They have bows on them. “Is that Hope’s MOTHER?” she said. (That is exactly how she said it.)

  “I thought she was supposed to be a model,” added a girl who sounded like Lesley’s best friend, Betty Walker.

  “She’s awfully old, anyway,” Lesley said. “And weird.”

  I slammed my feet down and marched out of the cubicle. Lesley and Betty gaped at me. “That was my grandmother. Not that it’s any of your beeswax,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

  It shut them up, but it didn’t feel great.

  How am I ever going to face everyone tomorrow?

  Your best friend,

  Hope

  P.S. Granny won’t even let me take the modeling scrapbook to school. Nobody is on my side!

  Chapter Eight

  A few days later, just before the last bell, the principal, Mr. Hubert, comes to our classroom. He talks in a low voice to Miss Noonan, who is sitting at her desk marking exercise books while the class copies a poem off the blackboard.

  They both look at me. I can’t think of anything that I have done wrong, but my cheeks burn. I slide my eyes around the room. A lot of kids are staring at me.

  Mr. Hubert leaves and Miss Noonan calls me up to her desk. “Your grandmother’s been taken to Vancouver General Hospital,” she says. “You’re supposed to meet your mother there after school.”

  My heart leaps into my throat. Questions fire out of me. “What do you mean? What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Take a big breath, Hope,” Miss Noonan says. “Try not to always overreact to everything. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  Easy for her to say. It’s not her granny.

  “How will I get there?”

  “Your mother wants you to take the bus. She said you’re good with buses. It’s not very far.”

  Miss Noonan starts writing instructions on a piece of paper, but she must be able to tell that I’m not taking any of it in because she finally sighs and says, “I’ll drive you.”

  • • • • •

  A bunch of kids, including nasty Barbara Porter, stand around while I’m getting into Miss Noonan’s bright red car. They must be dying of envy, but I’m way too scared to enjoy this. Please, please let Granny be all right!

  Miss Noonan is a very fast driver. I’m a bit frazzled when she cuts someone off, but I keep my mouth shut. When we’re sitting at a red light that’s taking ages, she suddenly says, “So how are things going, Hope? Generally?”

  Generally? What does that mean? I freeze.

  “Do you feel like you’re settling in okay?”

  Doesn’t she know I have no friends? The first week, a girl called Nicky smiled at me a lot and asked me if I wanted to go to her house after school one day. I said no because if I said yes, I would have to ask her back to my place, and I never know what kind of mood Mom is going to be in. What if it’s one of those days when she stays in her nightie and looks like a mess? Anyway, the other girls in the class have pretty well left me alone since then.

  “I’m fine,” I say stiffly.

  “A little bit of advice,” Miss Noonan says. “Try not to be so prickly. You have a beautiful smile. Show it to the world a little more.”

  I look out the window and don’t answer her.

  The light changes and Miss Noonan spurts across the intersection. A few more blocks and we’re there. She parks in front of the hospital and comes inside with me.

  Except when I was born, I’ve never been in a hospital. It’s a very busy place. Most of the people milling around are in ordinary clothes, but I spo
t some nurses and an important-looking man in a long white coat, who just might be a famous heart surgeon.

  Miss Noonan takes me over to the elevators. “You go up on your own. Your mom said fourth floor. Go to the nursing station. I’m in a no-parking zone and I don’t want to get towed away.” She squeezes my arm. “Everything will be okay.”

  The elevator stops at the second floor and a nurse pushes on a man in a wheelchair. All he’s wearing is a short blue thing that looks like a nightie. He winks at me. I blush and pretend not to notice his hairy legs.

  When I get off on the fourth floor, I spot Mom right away in a little sitting area with plastic chairs and a table of magazines at the end of a long hallway. Her eyes are rimmed with red, she’s wearing one of her oldest dresses and a brown cardigan, and her hair isn’t brushed. “You’re here,” she says, standing up.

  I take a big breath. “It’s cancer, isn’t it?”

  She stares at me. “What?”

  “Cancer. I just know it.”

  “You don’t get cancer in one day, Hope, and end up in the hospital. She’s had a stroke.”

  “What’s a stroke?”

  “It’s some kind of brain thing.” Mom doesn’t sound exactly sure. Tears slide down her cheeks, which scares me to death.

  “Is it bad?”

  “Not too bad,” she whispers. “The doctor said it was a small stroke. They’ve done a bunch of tests and now she’s resting.”

  I start to cry too, and we wrap our arms around each other and have a great big hug.

  “Now,” Mom sniffs, “we’ve got to be brave for Granny.”

  There are four beds in Granny’s room. Two are empty, the blankets and sheets neatly folded. In the third bed there’s a very old woman with a halo of gray hair. Her hands are fluttering and she’s mumbling, “Nurse, nurse.”