You Are My Only by Beth Kephart Page B

these days passing, and by the time I finish that thought, Miss Cloris has gone notch to notch with the string and is tying a double knot back up top, and Miss Helen is tired but eager.
    â€œNow,” Miss Helen says, “for the fun part.”
    Miss Cloris goes away and returns with a big cardboard box, which she plonks down to the kitchen floor, scooting Harvey off, but just for a second. “You’re such a pooch,” she tells the dog, pulling his snout out of her way, unlocking the box flaps and digging in. “Ah, it is here,” she says, dragging a big sheet of electric-orange fabric up to the table, which Miss Helen, sliding plates and glasses to one side, has made nearly clear.
    Miss Cloris smoothes the fabric and lays the wood frame down upon it. She cuts it to the pattern and hands me a bottle of Elmer’s. “Outside edges,” she says, pointing to the orange diamond, and I squeeze the bottle and smear the glue along the fabric’s borders. I check with Miss Cloris, to see how I’m doing. She says, “Don’t go shy on the Elmer’s.” when I’m done, she leans in and shows me what’s next—how the orange diamond with its edge of glue is to be pressed to the lengths of string that connect the sticks. I do as she says, and Miss Helen encourages me, until finally the glue and the diamond edge and the string are one thing, and meeting Miss Cloris’s satisfaction. She lifts what we’ve made, holds it high.
    â€œPicture this,” she says, “in the sky,” and I remember, a long time ago, in a drive from one house to another, seeing a kite on the end of a string, knocking around in the wind. I didn’t understand how the kite had gotten there or how it kept its distance from the ground, and I must have asked a million questions, because the next week, when we were settled, Mother came home from the library with a stack of kites-in-stories books. The Sea-Breeze Hotel. The Dragon Kite. The Flyaway Kite. “Kites are better in stories,” she said, “than they are in actual life.”
    â€œNow comes the best part,” Miss Helen is saying while Miss Cloris knots what we have so far with more turns and strengths of string. “The very art and heart of the thing.” She clears the table, best she can. Miss Cloris stoops to the box on the floor. When she stands up tall, her arms are full—of collars and shirtsleeves and buttons.
    â€œThat’s almost every dress she ever wore,” Miss Helen says, smiling. “Before she decided against dresses. We had a scissors party. It was …” Miss Helen writes into the air with a finger, as if she’s tracing the word she’d like to say but can’t find the voice for it quite yet.
    â€œExquisite,” Miss Cloris says, finishing the sentence, after a while. She stoops again and straightens again, her arms heavy with more scraps and ribbons and pins and threads. “Now it’s your turn,” she says, looking at me. “You’re in charge.”
    â€œIn charge?”
    â€œOf the tail of this kite. Make it anything you please.”
    I stare at Miss Cloris and her pile. I look back toward Miss Helen, who has left the trace of her word in the air.
    â€œIt’s Joey’s birthday coming up, a few months from now,” Miss Cloris says. “It’s up to you to make the tail right nice.”
    â€œThe kite’s a surprise?”
    â€œIt’ll be Joey’s surprise. We’ll drive out to Carter, choose a place on the hill. we’ll have him close his eyes until we get the thing flying high. That’ll be our job, see? Yours and mine. Miss Helen will keep him occupied, make sure he stays true to the rules.”
    â€œThat’s nice,” I say, but suddenly my eyes are hot and everything’s swimmy, and where my hunger was my heart is hurting.
    â€œNow, now,” Miss Cloris says, leaning toward me,