Also Known As Harper by Ann Haywood Leal Page A

kindergarten bus to the motel.” She was talking as if I cared one ounce about what she did with her day. “Mama told the school I had an important doctor’s appointment and she didn’t have a car to pick me up.” She talked out of the side of her mouth, like she was sharing some big secret with Hem and me. “But really she’s getting off work early and taking me to her hairdresser to get my hair permed. We are trying out a new hairstyle. If we don’t like it, we still have plenty of time to switch to something different. She wants me to look nice at the hospital when the new baby comes.”
    I raised one eyebrow at her, because who caredabout what she looked like, anyway? Her enormous mother was having the baby.
    She fluffed the frizzy tuft of hair at the side of her head. “Miss Cynthia didn’t have any more evening appointments, so Mama took me out of school.” She looked me dead in the eye with those beady pig eyes of hers. “I didn’t leave till
after
Mrs. Rodriguez had me practice reading my poems in front of the class.” The left corner of her mouth always got to twitching to the side when she was lying. “She said I read better than anyone she’d heard in all her years of teaching school.”
    I knew Mrs. Rodriguez hadn’t said any of that, I knew it in my heart. But my mind was asking, what if she had? Maybe Daddy was right. Maybe my words really didn’t matter to anyone.
    I’d had enough. Winnie Rae was getting to me so bad, my fingers were tightening themselves into hard fists. Those daisy decals were swimming around in my head, and I hated Winnie Rae Early more than a person ought to hate someone. I stood up so the toes of my sneakers were getting ready to bump up against hers.
    â€œYou stole my dresser.” I said the words slowly, and evenly, so she wouldn’t miss one bit of what I wassaying. “You took it and sold it and it wasn’t yours to be selling.”
    She took a step back and looked to be gathering herself up to leave. But then she leaned in again so I could smell her lying Early breath. “My mama says we had plenty of right to it.” Her evil eyes were pinholes. “She said we could consider it as a tiny drop in the big bucket of rent your daddy owes.”
    She had torn open the Daddy wound, but somehow all I felt was a strong, sad anger at Daddy for giving Winnie Rae a good reason. He had made it all right for the Earlys to do what they did. And he’d gotten off free of charge. He’d taken everything he cared about with him, so it was all safe from the Earlys’ thieving hands.
    And then, even though Winnie Rae knew she had me with that one, she had to keep on with her venomous viper words. “Besides,” she said, “I needed to get
my
daddy a birthday present. I needed some quick cash. He works long hours driving across the entire United States of America in his eighteen-wheeler.” She shrugged. “You got plenty of dresser drawers at the motel, anyway. What would you be needing that ratty old green dresser for?”
    My toes were itching to kick at her legs. Theywere so close in front of me, it wouldn’t be much of a reach. But I knew it might really have been Daddy I was kicking.
    She finally stopped for a breath of air, and I didn’t think she meant to, but she looked at me. Her eyes found mine, and her words held still in the air between us. She stared for a minute and looked as if someone had pressed her
Stop
button. After a good while, she took a sharp breath and spoke. “I wasn’t going to let her sell it.”
    â€œWhat?” She wasn’t making any sense.
    â€œThe dresser.” Winnie Rae’s shoulders hunched forward, and her voice had gotten so quiet I had to move in till we were practically sharing the same puff of air.
    She bent down and unzipped the front pocket of her book bag. She held up two daisy decals, one in each hand.