The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring Read Free Book Online Page A

window seat. Now she has one.”
    â€œI bet your sister is gonna pick the pretty room across the hall, then,” I said.
    â€œNo, she won’t,” Winnalee said. “She won’t sleep in an upstairs. She’ll use the one downstairs.”
    Winnalee and I put her play clothes under the lid of the window seat and her for-real clothes in the dresser and in the closet. We put her shoe box with her “special junk” in it on the shelf above where we hung her clothes. Then, as she was looking for a place to keep her book, I told her that I thought I might have found our next Bright Idea. I told her about how Grandma Mae didn’t like my daddy much, and then I told her what that made me think. When I was done, Winnalee’s eyes looked up for a time, then she smiled and opened her book and wrote down my bright idea, and titled it
Number Eighty-Five
. And this made me smile.

4

    It wasn’t but one day since Winnalee moved into Grandma Mae’s house, and already it felt like she’d been my best friend forever. I jumped out of bed before Ma even had the chance to wake me, and I peed and washed and dressed so fast that she didn’t even have to yell at me to get to the breakfast table, because I was already there. I couldn’t wait, because Winnalee promised me she was going to show me a secret from her shoe box this morning.
    Aunt Verdella said that what we get is
heritated
. Like the way I got eyes the color of mud with some green speckles in them from Ma, and the way Aunt Verdella got her happy-go-lucky ways from her daddy. I thought about this heritatary stuff when Daddy came to the table and didn’t look at me. Not even once.
    Daddy stabbed at his scrambled eggs with his fork and brought a wad to his mouth, then stopped. He turned his fork over and saw that the bottoms were brown, then dropped the fork. Ma was watching him. “I could make some more,” she said. “I was busy buttering the toast, and answering the phone, and…well…” Ma was a good cook most of the time, but sometimes she wasn’t.
    â€œI’m gonna just have juice this morning,” I said to Ma, quietly, when she tried to give me some burned eggs too. “Aunt Verdella is making pancakes this morning.”
    â€œReece?”
    â€œNever mind, Jewel,” Daddy said. “I’ll have something at Verdella’s, like the kid.” Daddy never called me Evelyn, or even Button. If “The Kid” was supposed to be another nickname, it didn’t feel like one to me.
    Ma took away our plates, with fingers that had nails chewed down so far that they looked like thin little half-moons. Her nibbled-up fingers shook a bit as she set our plates on the counter with a little clank.
    â€œIs your coffee strong enough?” Ma asked, and Daddy told her it wasn’t. She reached for the can of Folgers, saying she’d brew a fresh pot, but Daddy told her not to bother. That he’d fill it at Verdella’s, along with his stomach.
    â€œWhy do you have to go there this morning?” Ma asked.
    â€œI brought Rudy a tool from the mill yesterday,” he said. “I’d best get it back there today.” Daddy worked fixing machines at the Dauber Paper Mill. They made boxes, and toilet paper, writing paper, and whatnot. Daddy brought home free toilet paper that scratched your butt when you wiped, and he brought home notebook paper that they were going to throw out because it wasn’t perfect. I used it to draw on, but I couldn’t use it for school, even if it was free, because the lines were crooked, or the ink almost invisible.
    Daddy grabbed his lunch bucket and his empty thermos from the counter. Then he grabbed a hunk of ham with his fingers as he passed the table. He headed out the door without saying good-bye.
    â€œDid you put your pajamas in the hamper?” Ma asked me. I nodded, and she said, “I can’t hear a nod, Button. You