Special Delivery! by Sue Stauffacher Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t know it,” Razi whispered back.

Chapter 6
    “Carters’ Urban Rescue!” Razi shouted into the phone on Monday morning. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to answer the business line, but this morning he’d asked Mama, since he was now an official member of Wild 4-Ever, if he could and she’d said, “We’ll see.”
    But Mama’s hands were wet, Grandma was upstairs wiping off the lipstick she said was “too winter” and Keisha was wrestling Paulo into the stroller. Ever since he started pulling himself up and balancing, Paulo didn’t like to be put in the stroller unless he was tired. So he arched his back and Keisha had her hands full to keep from dropping him onto the kitchen floor.
    “Yes, we have a skunk, too!” Razi was saying. “He lives in the forest now. Under the big tree. Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh … Mama!” Razi held out the phone. “It’s for you!”
    “I’m right here, Razi. Let him grip your fingers a little while, Ada. Grandma isn’t down yet, so we have some time.”
    “Skunk tracks and cat tracks look alike, Mr. Peters. Can you see the toenails? … Well, they shouldn’t be that hard to see if you got a good print.… Skunkscannot pull back their toenails, so they show right in the print.… All right, then. Can you see well enough to count the number of toes? … I understand. We will come by this morning. Mrs. Zadinkis invited me to come and pick some squash and beans for my pepper soup.… Thank you, I would love a tomato.”
    Mama had a pot of red pepper soup going on the stove most mornings, even when it was hot outside. Red pepper soup was made out of tomatoes and peppers and chicken broth. Then Mama added whatever vegetables she had around. Red pepper soup was for guests as well as for family. Anyone could drop by and have a little around dinnertime. Mrs. Zadinkis liked to drop by when she was in the neighborhood, so she gave Mama lots of good things from her garden. That’s when Mama liked to say: it takes many raindrops to make the pond from which we drink.
    Keisha was glad she hadn’t finished putting Paulo in the stroller because now she had to buckle him into the car seat in back. He was just as stubborn about being put in his car seat. But Mama had a way with him. It was a short trip to the community garden and soon they were driving on the old track that had become a service road for people to load and unload their equipment and produce.
    Mama loved to honk. It was a habit she learnedgrowing up in Nigeria, where people greeted each other with their horns. So as she honked her greeting, heads popped up all over the garden and hands waved to them. Keisha marveled at how much things could change in a garden from one week to the next. She and Wen and Aaliyah often rode by the community garden on their bikes, and it seemed like, once it got hot, the plants grew a foot every time. By this time in August, you couldn’t even see the neighbors’ yards that backed up to the garden because the sunflowers and hollyhocks were so tall. Straight rows of bush beans, long yellow peppers and juicy ripe tomatoes filled the gardens. Squash leaves, like big fans, grew right out onto the service road.
    “Careful, Mama,” Keisha said as they came close to squashing a basketball-sized watermelon that sat near the edge.
    Mama pulled the truck over to the side and the children tumbled out.
    Razi started to run in the direction of a big patch of daisies, but Mama caught his hand. “I need you with me.”
    He skipped alongside Mama as she went to the message board near the big toolshed. The shed was the gathering place for all the gardeners because it had the tools, potting soil, wood chips, watering cans and other things that they needed.
    In the summertime, gardeners were in the garden all the time, but in the fall, when no one was around, children sometimes messed with the shed. Last fall, they’d broken the lock and left the tools all over the ground. Someone threw a rock and