Keep Smiling Through by Ann Rinaldi Read Free Book Online Page A

Tony still couldn't be found. Neither could my jar of sugar.
    Because there was such a shortage of sugar, in our house we each had our own jar with our name on it. Every month the jar
was filled up. It wasn't a big jar, either. So if you used too much on your cereal, you went without until the next month's supply came through.
    All the jars were kept in the kitchen pantry.
    My jar was missing. Along with Tony, who hadn't showed up for chores since he chased Tom with the knife.
    That did it for my father. That plus the fact that Marie had broken a pink glass dish in the china closet the night before. Nobody ever said so, but I think those dishes belonged to my own mother. Amazing Grace doesn't like them. She never uses them. And once she and my father had a fight about keeping them there in the china closet. She wanted them out. He said they stayed. And they did.
    That morning my father told Marie that she and Tony would have to leave.
    "Wherever we go it is always the same," she said. "My man gets into trouble."
    I felt sorry for Marie. But I just sat there at the table, staring at my Wheatena and wondering how I would eat it without my sugar. Wheatena was good for you; it was hard to take without sugar.
    "Maybe your brothers and sisters will help
out until we get next month's supply," my father said as he went into the hall to get his coat and hat.
    They did. They each gave me two precious spoonfuls. They filled half my new little jar.
    Amazing Grace didn't offer any of hers.
    When my father came back into the kitchen with his fedora hat and coat on, he looked pleased. But he didn't stay that way long. He never did. Soon enough, he looked serious.
    "I have an announcement," he said.
    We all got quiet.
    "Your mother needs help with the house. And no one seems to be working out. So we're going to have Nana and Grandpa come until the baby arrives. And for a while after."
    Everybody started talking at once then. Elizabeth said Nana was too old. Mary said, "Now Kay will have to move into our room." She didn't seem pleased about it.
    Martin said Grandpa would teach him to play poker. Tom said, "Well, I guess I'll have to keep milking Daisy. Grandpa won't do that."
    My father looked like the Germans were in our apple orchard. He couldn't wait to catch the 7:35 and be out of there.
    I ran into the little back hallway as he left. "Daddy."
    He turned. "I'm late now. What is it?"
    "Do I have to wear a dress made of feed bags?"
    "If your mother makes it, you'll wear it, Kay. She's doing her best. We all are." And he went out the door.

    Nana and Grandpa are Amazing Grace's parents. They live in a little rowhouse in Brooklyn. It has a sunporch where a bird in a standing cage lives, a parlor with a piano, a small dining room and kitchen, and an even smaller backyard.
    To get there, we have to take the train to New York first, then the subway that goes miles underground. The cars shake and screech and bang. The lights go off and on. Then suddenly we come out into the bright sunlight of Brooklyn, where we have to take a bus, then walk about four blocks.
    I like going there. Brooklyn has neat little houses. Nana sends us out to the corner deli for cold cuts for lunch and makes pot roast for supper. We can make faces at the kids next door and they can make faces at us.
    Of course, we don't dream of playing
together. Grown-ups think kids just play when they don't even know each other. But they don't. There are certain rules that apply before you can play together, certain things you have to do. One of those things is making faces. We kids all know that. And if grown-ups don't, well, that's their problem. We don't have to tell them everything, do we?
    "Well, John," Nana always says at supper, halfway between the pot roast and dessert, "and how is business?"
    You can count on her saying it. And when she does, I know dessert is coming soon.
    If we go on Saturday, my father always takes Mary, Elizabeth, Tom, and Martin to Coney Island while