Experiment Station Road

By Gwen Mansfield

In 1962, twelve-year-old Ellen Merrill finds herself in the midst of a revelation: the townsfolk of Hayford, Oregon live with two sets of standards--one for the Anglos and one for the Mexicans. "It was the only time I ever heard from God. 'Prejudice demands an age of accountability--how old are you?' It was the weirdest thing. His voice sounded just like Johnny Cash, but his vocab reeked like someone studying way too hard for the SATs." Through the next decade of her life Ellen chases equality, and in spite of her parents and the heritage of a town's racism, she catches glimpses of justice.

Beneath the most successful pear industry in the nation, blight grows and plucks at the lives of the residents in the Rogue River Valley. Ellen's journey to expose the twisted mores of the quiet town links her to the migrant families. Through a spider web of orchard back roads, Ellen discovers a boarded up experiment station, formerly used to provide scientific research to aid the orchard economy. She spies on the migrants' quarters adjoining the orchards. Befriended by three Mexican grannies, she meets a grandson, Juan. Ellen imbeds herself in lies and deception to keep her secret life hidden from an intolerant family and town, while her understanding of humanity expands.

Juan and Ellen connect with union workers for Cesar Chavez, and Ellen arranges a covert meeting at the experiment station, inviting a Chavez spokeswoman to initiate the groundwork for a union. The boldness of Ellen's experimentation with an unfamiliar culture grows and in March of 1966, after Chavez announces his famous 340 mile march from Delano on behalf of the Farm Workers' Union, Ellen and Juan join the marchers.

Finally, her voice for migrant rights collides directly with the townsfolk and her commitment to marriage with Juan shakes a bigoted town, bringing felony charges against him that he did not commit and placing Ellen and Juan in a flight for their lives.

Experiment Station Road, a quirky but poignant coming-of-age story invites the reader through a decade of discovery with Ellen Merrill as she slams into community prejudice, advocates with Cesar Chavez and conceals a clandestine but sweet romance. Ellen's revelation is clear: the value of a solo voice lifted in a community of noise shakes up the world and allows the experiment to continue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gwen Mansfield
• Release date: Aug 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465769091

Gwen Mansfield

Gwen Mansfield lives in the Northwest with her family. She completed a BA and a MA in Theatre and an MFA in Creative Writing from University of New Orleans. She teaches theatre and creative writing. EXPERIMENT STATION ROAD is her first novel. "Captured in a world of words and driven to invite the reader on a redemptive journey, I am committed to explore the condition of humanity, assemble the puzzle pieces of plot and find a way to tell my tale." Gwen Mansfield

Book preview

Experiment Station Road

a novel by

Gwen Mansfield

Smashwords Edition

Experiment Station Road is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 Gwen Mansfield

http://gwen-experimentstationroad.blogspot.com

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for

my writing teachers

Amanda, Joseph, Dinty, Christine, and Rose

***

Chapter 1 - Shoulders Broad Enough

Ellen Merrill Gómez, 1972

Two funerals on the same hill. Both families encircled caskets. Each group separated from the other by a couple hundred feet of terraced dirt planted with the dead and their history. We, the Gómez mourners, stood on the upper level, Consuela clutching the deed to Abuelita María’s plot in her fist, and Abuelita María lying in a wooden box dreaming of God’s right hand. The Anglos below us guarded their casket with their own collection of bereaved. We were not close enough to hear their preacher speak, but their hymns climbed the breathless air of August and settled in among us.

At the head of their casket stood Hilda Thorson, my former Sunday school teacher. She mouthed something in my direction. Was it Hello, Ellen, or Traitor? I wasn’t sure. I must say, watching the Anglos, I am savvier now at twenty-two, using my new surname of Gómez. Such a different world than when I saw my first Mexican in 1962 near the orchards of Experiment Station Road.

*

My first sighting of a caravan occurred when I turned twelve and walked down the street to the swimming pool with my brother Charlie. Mexican migrant workers, seasonal fruit pickers, rolled into town in droves, their old pickups and laden-down station wagons loaded up with more kids than I could even imagine might be stacked in one vehicle. The butt of Anglo kids’ jokes. Charlie yelled at them as one of their cars backfired, then stalled in the intersection of 10th and Grape. Rust-bucket! Might as well get a wagon—hitch up some mules. Charlie’s one line compositions spouted in mockery at the pickers weren’t any better than his English papers. I know because he would always ask me to write them, and I wouldn’t. No one could fake being Charlie.

Charlie reached over into the vacant, unplanted garden on the corner of Grape Street, picked up a dirt clod and lifted his arm to hurl it at the caravan. I grabbed his quarterback-wannabe bicep and said. Hey, idiot, there’s kids in that truck.

Charlie threw the dried dirt ball on the ground and yelled at me as he hustled away, I wasn’t gonna’ hit the kids. I was gonna’ hit the truck.

Later that summer, after I had an unusual introduction to Juan Gómez and his family at the migrant quarters, I watched from our opened kitchen window as Juan confidently walked up to my mother, Nadine, who was watering roses in our yard. He surprised her from behind. ¿Trabajo? he asked. She whipped around, hose in hand, dousing his wiry teenage body with the cold water. Juan laughed, and I watched from behind the window pane. Nadine stopped herself, mid-laugh, attempting to turn the garden hose into a weapon, holding her arms out toward him, stiff and straight, hose dripping powerless from her hands. She looked ridiculous.

Sorry, she squeaked out, realizing she had soaked the stranger.

"¿Trabajo?" He was asking for work. Juan carried a hoe in his right hand and leaned his left arm on a homemade crutch, giving leverage to a bandaged foot.

I’m sorry I got you wet. Nadine paused, I’m sure she expected an English response, and relaxed her arms, the hose spilling precious summer water. She spoke to Juan like he was a kindergarten child, slow and deliberate. I was watering roses. She paused again. So they’d grow.

"¿Trabajo? ¿Tiene usted trabajo para mí?" Broad smile, he persisted.

You need to leave. Her arms stiffened once again in defense. Go on. Shoo. Right now. Leave! Juan turned away, headed down the road—rejection complete. Thank goodness, said Nadine and returned to watering her rose bush. She didn’t know she’d just drenched her future son-in-law.

*

In the last few decades our little town of Hayford, Oregon has expanded its international flavor, and I’m proud to say we and our cemetery have quite the melting pot of departed. Daniel O’Shea, the Irish pub owner, took a spot on the middle of the cemetery hill long before I was born. And Professor Grant Howard, a transplant from England, died in 1944 of pneumonia and a broken heart—so said Hilda Thorson in my Sunday school class when we were learning about the dead Lazarus. That made her think of Professor Howard and his demise. Apparently, they had to bury the professor twice as the first time he wasn’t quite dead. Hilda said the Bible told more details about Lazarus than she could get out of the mortician about Grant Howard. Two plots over from where we stood, Ivar and Kristina Norveld, Norwegians buried side by side in a family plot, left room for three more souls yet to join them. Today, we were adding a Mexican to the graveyard mix. I love progress.

I tried to ignore Great is Thy Faithfulness, ascending from the lips of solemn mourners’ down the hill, by focusing on my memories of our Abuelita María. An image of her from last year popped in my head, and I suppressed a laugh. Sitting on the black leather parlor chair of the funeral home, arms folded on her chest, she insisted as Juan translated to the nervous funeral director, that she receive a stamped, official receipt with the cemetery name, her pre-purchased plot number and signature of the director. No one would take from her what she paid for.

Was it my imagination that found the Anglos glancing sideways up the slope at our fifty or so family members? Juan would say Let it go. Use your imagination elsewhere. But then, in unison, they turned, seven of them, their eyes seeking a mark, and they found me. I tried to lift my Anglo foot from their world and shake the dust from my shoes, and yet, somehow, I couldn’t quite plant both of my feet in my husband’s Mexican culture either. One foot entrenched in heritage, the other rooted in my sworn commitment.

Two grannies left now, the first, Abuelita Luz. Captured in the leathered skin of age, Luz lifted our departed Abuelita María’s faded lacquered drum from a woven bag and placed it on the center of the closed pine box. Abuelita María’s hands had drummed the hollowed gourd, covered with a stretched goat skin, over decades of celebrations and tapped innumerable gentle nighttime rhythms for grandchildren seeking a peaceful night’s sleep.

My husband Juan held the arm of the second granny, Abuelita Esperanza, and guided her to a place beside the casket. The thoughtful attention Juan paid to Esperanza touched me, and the lullaby he hummed to comfort the family’s children reminded me of why I loved him. Juan. Storyteller. Healer. I didn’t go looking for a husband. I didn’t need one, but I needed Juan.

Abuelita Esperanza and Juan knelt together by the casket. Father Ferguson, our local priest, officiating at the funeral, glanced my way as the entire Gómez family followed him, rosary beads in hand, through the magical movement of Catholic chest-crossing. I hurried to cross myself starting the movement later than the others, racing to catch up to the final touch—acknowledging the Holy Ghost. Father Ferguson, with a touch of mirth, kept score of all my missed cues and late arrivals, and when the Catholic tally of rituals was added up, I was always behind in the numbers and a Presbyterian at heart.

Juan stood and gently reached for María’s drum, brushing it tenderly over and over so the soft rustle of his four moving fingers, back and forth, created a comforting sound like the evening weeds that swayed in the hands of dusk winds, applauding the arrival of sunset. I closed my eyes, cherishing Juan’s remedy for grief, and could see her face so clearly. Abuelita María.

*

When I was fourteen, Abuelita María had allowed me to tag along with her, Abuelita Luz and Tía Consuela to a Mexican funeral. The other granny, Esperanza, had stayed home with the children. The girl had turned four years old the week before she died in a swimming accident in the man-made lake just outside of town. My father George was all for our county building that lake, and he didn’t blink an eye when the news came on TV and announced the death of the Mexican child. Who was watching over her when she went near the water? Wet-backs don’t know how to swim, he said. They just float their way across the Rio Grande.

Through Idaho, Oregon and Washington the dead girl’s family had worked side by side in the fields and the orchards with the Gómez family. You were good friends? I asked. Placing her hand on my arm, María opened her mouth to speak, but Luz cut in, leaving no time for Abuelita María’s response.

We share migrant quarters. Luz was abrupt with her answer. "Cook tortillas on open fire—Yakima—on cook stove—Eugene. Travel dirt road to orchard every day—four-thirty—again at three. We work together. Trabajamos juntos. Her mouth seemed tense, as always, and I wondered how words escaped from lips that barely opened. To me, this was not an answer, but I did notice how strong her English had become. Years later, I would ask the question again, but this time of Juan. Were your families friends?"

His eyes penetrated mine, the dark brown swallowing up the black of his pupils, erasing the dividing line between the two. It wasn’t until after we were married that I realized answers from Juan led the asker on a journey. A friend is someone you sit by the fire with and drink a cup of coffee together. But this family we knew because we picked the crops side by side. We shared the work, and together we dreamt of the next job and the orchards that would keep us busy through the summer. Feed our families. Juan spoke the name of the fallen child as a blessing. "Daniela’s family—many were still in Mexico—could not come and fill the church. Así que vinimos. So we came."

But at fourteen outside St. Andrews, I let the question about Daniela go as María placed a black lace shawl over my head, tied the loose ends under my chin and with the faintest of smiles, demonstrated how to cross my chest with a Catholic flair. Thoughts of all the times I had sworn I would never do something so foolish couldn’t stop me from the ritual. I recited, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the three of us entered through the side door of the building.

Right away I liked the candles. We Presbyterians lit candles only at Christmas during Advent season—a mere five flames huddled on our altar. Advent: The Coming. I remembered, at my First Presbyterian Church of Hayford, that one white candle, the Christ candle, in the center surrounded by four purple ones. There, I learned about Advent at an early age when Hilda Thorson would drill us on our Christmas memory verse starting the first week of November. That way our children’s choir would be ready for the Christmas ceremony to say: Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the glorious light. Romans 13:12.

St. Andrews Catholic sanctuary definitely cast off the darkness. At the side of the altar, where the tiny casket rested, a cast iron holder with rows of ascending candles, like bleachers at a baseball game, illuminated the enormous church with a soft, secretive flicker.

María pressed a nickel in the palm of my right hand, and I followed her example, dropping the coin through the slot on the top of a small metal box secured on the edge of the candle rack. She lifted a thin stick with a glowing tip and lit a candle, whispering Geraldo. My stomach muscles tightened in a retch, and I wondered how she could speak the name of a man who’d beat his wife, even if the man was her own son.

I lit my candle and said, Chávez. The name actually on my lips was Juan, but I changed the name at the last moment to avoid an inquisition from the abuelas over my relationship with their grandson. An entire quarter was dropped in the box by Consuela. She lit five candles, and I didn’t understand a word of what she prayed for, but felt the prayer’s importance.

Luz slipped her nickel in the box, and her coin struck the bottom of the iron container with a resounding clank that filled the almost empty sanctuary, its tall ceilings and wooden floors magnifying the clattering collection. With each coin that dropped into the small box, the Mexican family in the front row turned to us and nodded, acknowledging our arrival.

Father Ferguson, the only priest in the county that held any type of a service for Mexicans, presided. In spite of all I’d heard about the Catholics being obsessed by idol worship, it pleased me that he was helping this family bury their child.

We chose a pew behind Daniela’s relatives, and I noticed a teenage boy at the end of the row who kept a regular rhythm going with a shaker in his right hand, a small shellacked gourd, fitting neatly in his palm. It must have been filled with rice. Its sound, tender like a rain storm in its infant stages, circled us. Father Ferguson, speaking easily in Spanish, wore the robes of sorrow, black. Draped around his neck and shoulders hung a shawl embroidered with purple and green threads. He dipped a small willow branch into an urn of water and sprinkled the casket several times. María leaned over to my ear and said, "Holy water. Agua bendita. I wondered where the holy water came from and what purpose it might have for a dead child, but I just nodded to María. With Juan’s family, I had found there were times when watching and listening revealed more than asking and questioning. María bent her head closer to me, so close I could smell the onions from her noonday tortilla on her breath, and she whispered, Bendición. He speaks a blessing."

The father chanted in a language I didn’t recognize. Did he intentionally allow his words to keep time with the shaker in the boy’s hand, or was the beat of death a common one?

Interspersed between the rhythmic blessing and the boy’s percussion, sobs wrapped around us. Cries for mercy. Deep travail. Community of sorrow. I tasted my own tears running down my face, seeping into the corners of my mouth.

*

Great Is Thy Faithfulness faded while the heat blazed and the celebration of life for our beloved Abuelita María meshed with our sorrow and the finality of a closed wooden casket. Our son Miguel wiped the sweat from under the bangs of his shaggy auburn hair, its color a counterpoint to the midnight black locks of his Gómez cousins. My sweet boy, two years old and so full of music, slipped one hand in mine, and the other patted out a rhythm on the back of my knee, keeping time with Consuela as she sang the lullaby known to all of us.

Arrurú mi niño

Arrurú mi sol

Eres un pedazo, de mi corazón

Arrurú mi niño

Arrurú mi sol

Eres un bombón

Juan adjusted his guitar, swung over his back, to the front of his chest. He plucked the strings, joining with the singers of the lullaby, each note reminding us of María. Mama, Mama, Miguel whispered, Can you hear Papa’s song? Every song Juan played was to me a love song, even on the day we laid Abuelita María to rest.

"Sí, mi hijo, I hear it."

Between lullabies Juan bent to brush the hair out of Miguel’s eyes then pushed a strand of mine behind my ear, letting his fingers rest on my neck. He traced the indigo eagle that peaked over my left shoulder, framed by the black halter dress I wore. My tattoo, a miniature version of the ones the Mexican men had etched on their forearms in support of Chávez, drew notice from just about everyone. Another decade would have to pass before the scandal of a woman’s tattoo faded and became a fashionable mark of distinction. The eagle on my skin stood erect, his feathers squared to attention in an Aztec style, and his head looking to the side as if expecting a review from his commander. The design measured the size of a child’s hand, its color like a winter night against my white and freckled skin. I loved Juan’s touch on my shoulder.

*

My dad, George, always said I had swimmer’s shoulders—wide and strong. Like him, he said. Broad enough to hold the world and all its problems. I thought it an odd comment since he ignored half the world’s problems and griped about the other half. It was the only time I ever heard George say I was like him. Life’s experiences always pointed out our differences.

Dad, Charlie and I fished together when I was eight ‘cause we were family. We were Merrills. One day after a taxing day of boating and a catch of a few pitiful trout, I helped Dad sort the fishing gear. Thanks, Daddy for the fishing trip, I said.

Need my girl to love the fish as much as I do. He laughed.

I do, Daddy. I bit my lip as he slit the stomach of the trout from tail to just under its mouth. Good thing it’s dead or it’d hurt.

Yeah, they never feel a thing. God put these creatures on the earth to give us food and a little Saturday recreation.

You mean the ones a foot long are food and the others are recreation? I asked.

What?

The foot long ones are food, but the nine, ten and eleven inch ones—even with a hook in their mouth—you throw them back.

Charlie barged in and said, "What do you want the fish to do—measure themselves before they bite?" He and Dad laughed and Charlie plunged a fillet blade into a fish of his own.

You hook every fish like you really want it, I said. Then you get it out of the water, look at the size, change your mind and throw it back. But the fish can’t change its mind—it’s stuck with a hook.

George strung a twine through the gutted trout’s mouth, and handed one end of the line to Charlie so the twelve-incher hung like an unmatched sock on a clothesline. You’re thinkin’ way too much about this, baby girl, said George. Go get the fire going’ for the fish fry. I started the fire, but I ate tomatoes and hamburger buns for dinner.

Maybe I was thirteen or fourteen when I started calling him George right to his face, though it was much earlier for me that mom turned into Nadine. During that decade Martin Luther King Jr. defined march while César Chávez demonstrated, didn’t eat for weeks at a time and redefined the word break-fast. Maybe as blacks became African Americans and Mexicans became ‘Hispanics mom and dad became Nadine and George." Change was hard fought.

For some reason around that time I began to care what my copper spiraled curls looked like from behind. Perhaps I imagined boys being fascinated, watching. One day, while standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I used a hand mirror to bring the back of my hair into focus, pulling up a clump of red ringlets. The upswept hair revealed a surprising sight I wasn’t prepared for. Muscles. Small, but lean and defined, they ran horizontally across both shoulders. I dropped my rusty locks back into place, not sure what I thought about my own strength. Today, years after George’s comments, when Juan’s hand touched my permanently inked eagle mark, I realized that I still had swimmer’s shoulders, wide and strong, but now that I’d uncovered the World’s problems, my shoulders never seemed broad enough.

*

Abuelita Esperanza contributed a soft hum to our Mexican tune, and I did battle with the heat, struggling for enough air to let the funeral lullaby rise and drift among the branches of the aged oak trees.

All of the grandchildren—María’s, Esperanza’s, and Luz’s—swarmed over Maria’s casket each with a crayon, coloring the coffin with personal hieroglyphics. Two hands sketched on the pine box lid—one brown, arthritic and withered, coddling an infant’s smooth new fist, fingers clinging to those of the abuela’s hand. Three sets of lips drawn in a cluster with smiles wider than any human mouth could open, and a chant scrawled beside it: "Amor—amor—amor. A child’s face, colored along the coffin’s edge, with tears falling down her cheeks and a hand extended, brushing the tears away—letters on the fingers of the hand spelled María."

Carlos, one of Juan’s cousins, known for the magic of his drawings, drafted his vision of Abuelita María on one end of the pine box. Young and radiant, her mouth in a laughing pose. Her jet black tresses, straight with no memory of the wild, white spirals that had overtaken her raven hair in the decade I had known her. Family members scattered sage phrases of endearment across the casket top and down each side like a drooping grape vine laden with fruit. Una bendición sobre ti Santa María. Blessing on you Saint María. Siempre te quiero, abuelita. I will always love you, granny. Quiero ser como tú algún día. I wish to be like you someday. Te echamos de menos. You are missed. Vives en mi corazón. You live in my heart.

*

As a kid, I anticipated our trips to the graveyard on summer mornings. To avoid the heat we’d leave early and ride our bikes the four and a half miles from the town of Hayford to Buck Creek, the location of the local cemetery. Charlie, where do they bury the Mexicans? I loved questions.

What do you mean? Charlie asked.

It’s a simple question. I don’t need to explain it. If you don’t know the answer, just say so. Where do they bury the Mexicans?

I knew at ten years old Charlie hated the idea of not knowing the answer to something. That’s why I knew if I asked my older brother anything I’d get an answer. I just wasn’t sure it’d always be true.

They bury the Mexicans in the pear orchards. Now shut up. You’re disturbing the dead. Oak twigs littered the ground, fallen during the recent thunderstorm, indifferent to the tidy rows of graves. The storm shook every dry brown leaf off the multitude of branches that shaded the hillside cemetery.

I selected a hefty stick, squatted right down at the foot of Crucibal Mellon’s tombstone, and scratched to find the indented letters filled with years of dirt and decades of dark green moss. I finally broke through the encasement and read out loud: 1884-1917—A father who treasured his children. I loved the sound of a person’s life read out loud. Charlie seemed to have a lack of interest as he adjusted the chain on his bike so I added, It honors the dead when you read their tombstones.

Charlie kneeled down on the grass staring at the headstone. I asked him, What do you think they’ll say about our dad on his stone?

Ellen, you’re crazy to wonder about that junk. It’s bad luck—a jinx. You’re gonna’ get hexed, he taunted.

By who? I turned to face him.

He squinted at the mound on the ground. By Crucibal.

I sat down on Crucibal’s rounded lump of grass to compose an epithet for my father. George Merrill—best split-rail-fence-builder in the county.

Charlie couldn’t help himself. He had to join in. George Merrill—never paid us for any chore we ever did.

I kneeled on the mound, announcing in a loud ministerial voice, George Merrill—could really throw a baseball. When Charlie failed to one-up me I hollered another. George Merrill—liked a beer by the fireside after roasting hot dogs.

Charlie tried to win the last word. George Merrill—after four beers and a Twinkie—forgot about the fireside—forgot about the hot dogs.

The liturgy of George’s last days brought me a surprise of sentiment, and my eyes stung from the thought of a dead dad. I tried to change the subject. That’d be an awful lot of words on one marble tombstone. Mom should probably get to write some of it.

Charlie grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. He’s not even sick, and he’s not going to die. You’re morbid. He started to count the gravestones. He loved this pastime and never once succeeded in getting them all counted.

What’s morbid?

Shut up, the dead don’t like it when you talk about the living. He went on counting.

I interrupted his counting on purpose. Thirteen, forty-six, twenty-one, sixty. Charlie swore one day he’d get the count right, and I pledged he never would. Eighty-five, seventy-one, sixty-eight.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Or else, he said.

They bury them in the pear orchards? I asked again.

Who?

The Mexicans. They’re buried in the orchards? Are you sure?

I’m sure. Charlie started counting again.

*

Father Ferguson laid his prayer book at the foot of the casket and accepted a crayon from Abuelita Esperanza. Like a crown over the drawing of María’s head, he printed the words Blessed is she who walks in righteousness. Miguel handed his papa a black crayon, and Juan squatted at the side of her coffin and drew the eagle. Chávez eagle. Farm Workers’ Union eagle. Our eagle. There was freedom for an eagle to be buried in the ground with her and resurrected with her as she rose to heaven.

How far we had come since 1962 when I had both feet deeply rooted on the task of growing up. A happy, lazy childhood filtered through the heritage of those who’d lived before me, until the migrants of Mexico packed up their rusted, green Ford and showed up in the backyard of Hayford, Oregon.

***

Chapter 2 - Experiment Station Road

Ellen Pebble Merrill, 1962

In the summer of 1962 when the orchard pears were ripe for the picking, my brother Charlie and I decided risk made life worth living. The liturgy of rules wasn’t long at our house, but at the top of the list was one unbreakable regulation. We could wander and explore any of the orchards that edged the three sides of our property or ramble past the country intersections connecting our streets with other roads, but Mom and Dad had placed a prohibition on our traipsing anywhere close to the trash-shacks where the Mexican migrant workers lived. Even in the winter when the transients moved out and the shacks on the hills of the Rogue River Valley remained vacant, the declaration was enforced. Charlie missed his freshman homecoming dance just because old Mr. Jepson three houses down, thought he saw Charlie heading up the road to the transients’ quarters. Dad said, Disobedience will not be rewarded in this house.

At twelve years old I argued constantly with my mom, and I knew she’d never let me head out to explore on a Saturday unless she had a believable explanation of my destination. So I thought about a plan that utilized the institution of Scouting and its reputation for integrity. Set the alarm on the stove to go off in two hours, I told her. Charlie will go with me to sell the Girl Scout cookies and by the time the buzzer goes off we’ll be home. Promise.

Mom said, Transients might be out, Pebble. You know what’s been going on with the Mexicans. She tried to get on my good side by using my nickname. Five summers ago, after my seventh birthday, I threw pebbles into the river for two straight hours to get one to skip across the water, but they all sank. Dad and Charlie laughed at me, and finally Charlie examined my pile of small rocks.

He emptied his bulging pockets of stones into my pile and said, Next time—try a flat stone and not a pebble. Part of me wanted to say Thank you, but most of me wanted to kick him for not telling me sooner. Right then and there I skipped a stone.

Mom turned her back on me and continued cleaning carrots at the kitchen sink. That meant: argument over. She never listened to new ideas I suggested regarding my independence. I’m pretty sure it was that day that I decided to call her by her first name out of spite. So I told her in my soon-to-be-teenage-voice, "Nadine, Charlie will be with me. I won’t be alone. Nothing will happen, Nadine."

She swung around from the sink. Don’t call me by my first name. Her voice seemed mad, but there was a little smile on her face that I didn’t understand, and I wondered what she’d do the next time I called her Nadine.

Not sure if I should be defiant and stomp off down the road or subservient and retreat to my bedroom, I looked to Charlie, fourteen, pushy and not a Girl Scout, for advice. We left Nadine alone at her sink, headed for the living room, and Charlie whispered, Timing is everything. I knew right away what he meant. Every week on Saturday Dad worked a half