Broken Flower (Early Spring 1)

"She's helping Grandmother Emma with us this summer," I said. "She used to be a school teacher, but she lost her job."

"Is that right? Do you like her?"

I shook my head. I was afraid to lie and I really didn't see why I had to lie anyway.

"Why not?"

She washed out my mouth with soap. She slapped me. She locked me in my room. She took my medicine and kept it in her room. She took all of Ian's things out of his room because we went to see my mother in the hospital."

"Is that so?"

"Uh-huh," I said, nodding.

"So I guess Ian's mad at her, too?"

I was going to just nod, but again I remembered Miss Harpers warning about saying yes and saving no.

"Yes. She shouldn't have taken his things. He was upset, too, when she didn't give me my medicine. He said if I didn't get my medicine in an hour, he would get it for me."

"I see. So, did Ian say you guys should do something to Miss Harper because of all she had done to you two?"

"No," I said.

"Never?"

"Didn't you and Ian go to the shed to get something?"

"Do you know if he did yesterday?"

"No. He couldn't. He had to stay in his room. Miss Harper said so. She said if he disobeyed her, she would have Grandmother Emma send him away and he wouldn't get to see Mama or Daddy."

"I see. All right. You wait here," he said, and started out of the living room.

I was uncomfortable sitting on the Victorian parlor settee. Grandmother Emma was never happy about either me or Ian lounging about on this furniture, especially without anyone else in the room.

Suddenly. I heard Grandmother Emma's voice coming from the stairway. "What do you think you're doing?" I heard her demand. "Where is my

ganddaughter?"

I rose and went to the doorway. The detective was at the bottom of the stairs waiting as

Grandmother Emma came down.

"It's pretty clear that someone put that rodent poison in her water glass, Mrs. March," he said.

"Nevertheless, you know you don't speak to children, especially my grandchildren, without an adult present and certainly not without counsel."

"But Mrs. March..."

"I'll thank you to wait for the arrival of my attorney. He should be here momentarily,"

Grandmother Emma said.

She looked past him toward me. "Jordan, I'd like you to go directly up to your room immediately," she said. ''Go on.

I hurried to the stairway and past the detective. When I got upstairs. I looked down the hallway and saw the policemen standing outside Miss Harper's bedroom doorway. Ian's door was still shut. I couldn't help but wonder what he was doing in his room without any of his things, the things he loved, and with all this commotion in the hallway. Ian hated not knowing things.

When I went into my room. I stood there for a moment deciding what to do. I put my medicine in the bathroom cabinet and then I went to my desk and despite how much I had not wanted to do it before, started to thumb through the schoolbooks Miss Harper had given me. I even found myself doing some of the workbook pages as if I thought she would be in at any moment to check on me.