Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

When Armando arrives the next Friday afternoon there sits a pot or two or three on the backyard patio table. He has to knock on Trudy’s back door and they have to have a discussion about where these plants might go in the garden. Some days that discussion is lengthy because Trudy hasn’t thought through any of these purchases, but Armando never questions her choices. Together they figure it out. It makes his workday longer — he’s often late for his next house — but he doesn’t mind. He thinks of these spontaneously appearing plants as gifts, and Trudy, if she were honest with herself, would say the same about the conversations.

IN JUNE, WHEN SCHOOL IS OUT for the summer, things change. One Friday afternoon, Trudy comes home to find a small boy raking up the grass clippings from her front path. He looks to be about seven or eight, she thinks, dark skinned with thick black hair like a curtain across his forehead. He’s skinny and quiet. Trudy is incensed.

“Who do you belong to?” is what she says to him. The boy stops what he’s doing and considers the question, almost as if he’s pondering the philosophical underpinnings of it.

“Maybe God,” he says, but not with any attitude, simply his evaluation of the right answer, and it disarms Trudy. She puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head.

“No,” she says, “are you here with your dad?”

“Uh-huh,” and he points to Armando, who is just coming around the house from the backyard.

“Armando, what is your son doing working on my property?!” This is not said sweetly.

Armando puts a calming hand on his son’s shoulder before he answers, “Did he do something wrong, Mrs. Dugan?”

“Not him. You . A child this age — how old are you?” she asks the boy.

“Eight and a half,” he says.

“Exactly!” Trudy snaps. “What is an eight-year-old child doing working ?! He should be at camp or riding his bike or just playing! Not raking my front path!”

“Mrs. Dugan,” Armando says quietly, “there are days he does these things, but my wife works and today my sister can’t take care of him and so he spends the day with me. There are worse things, don’t you think, than spending a whole day with your father?”

The boy moves closer to Armando and leans back against his legs.

“What’s your name?” Trudy asks him.

“Ricky,” the boy says.

“Enrique,” Armando says at the same time and then laughs. “Okay, Ricky.” He explains to Trudy, “That’s what the kids at school call him.”

“Do you like stories?” Trudy asks the boy and Ricky shrugs. “Come on”—she holds out a hand—“let’s go get you some books with really cool stories in them.”

Armando grins at the “really cool” reference, and Trudy understands immediately what he’s grinning at. “I can’t be around kids all day without picking up some of their rotten language.”

“Go on with Mrs. Dugan,” he tells his son, “she knows everything about books,” and reluctantly the boy takes the two steps to move closer to Trudy.

“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Trudy tells Armando before she puts a hand around Ricky’s wrist and begins walking briskly back to the library with him. “Really, Armando,” is her parting shot, “there has to be a better way. An eight-year-old working?!”

But Armando just smiles as he watches the tiny, round lady and his skinny and adored youngest son walk side by side down Lima Street. To the library! Only good can come of that.

“What do you like to read about?” Trudy asks the child as they walk.

Ricky shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what do you like to do?”

“Play soccer.”

“Good,” she says, “so we’ll get you some books about soccer.”

When she walks back into the library with Ricky in tow, both Clementine’s eyebrows rise. Trudy marches Ricky past her, explaining, “That’s Clementine, she pays far too much attention to everything that happens around here.”

“Find a seat,” she says to Ricky as they approach the children’s section, “and I’ll bring you some books about soccer.” With that, Trudy disappears behind some tall bookcases and reappears two minutes later with an armful of books.

She takes the child-size seat next to him, which seems to serve her small body well, and lays the books out on the table in front of them like a fan.

“Did you just finish second grade?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then this one— Brendan Wins the Game —should be right at your level.”

Ricky takes the book, head down, and opens it to the first page — a simple drawing of a boy about his age kicking a soccer ball. The narrative starts, “Brendan loved his soccer ball.” The boy stares at the picture, then the words, but only for a split second, and then he turns the page. On page two he examines the picture and ignores the words.

Trudy watches him go through the book, sleuthing out the story from the illustrations and skimming over all the words. Having sat with children in this library for over thirty years, she knows exactly what’s going on.

She watches him go through the second book the same way, his eyes glued to the pictures.

“I’m going to let you take these books home,” she tells him. “Your dad should read these with you. I’ll tell him.”

The boy shrugs. “Okay.”

On the walk back to her house, Trudy watches the boy. He walks with his eyes on his feet.

“Do you like school?” she asks him.

He shakes his head.

“Do you have a rotten teacher?”

He looks up at her, surprised that an adult has made that kind of judgment about a teacher. In his house, no one would say that.

“She’s okay.”

“Then what don’t you like about it?”

Ricky shrugs again, hoping that if he doesn’t say much, she’ll stop asking him questions.

“That doesn’t tell me anything, a shrug. Tell me one thing you don’t like about it.”

“It’s boring.”

“Okay, I get that. Tell me one more thing you don’t like.”

Ricky doesn’t know what this lady wants him to say, why she keeps asking him questions, but he figures he has to come up with something to tell her. “The boys’ bathroom smells stinky.”

And Trudy laughs. “I bet it does. But I have a hunch there’s something else about school that you don’t like.”

Jeez, this lady won’t leave it alone . Ricky risks a glance up at her and she’s looking straight at him. She’s not letting him off the hook anytime soon, it’s obvious, and so he tells her, “I’m in the dumb kids’ reading group and everybody knows it.”

“Ahhh,” says Trudy, “I see.”

They walk together in silence. That answer seemed to satisfy her. Maybe now she’ll stop asking him things. But when they get to the intersection, she starts talking again. “I have a secret for you.”

He gives his all-purpose shrug again. He doesn’t think this lady can tell him anything he’d like to hear.

“Being able to read right away and being smart have nothing to do with each other. Smart kids can have trouble reading.”

After they cross the intersection, eyes down again, Ricky begins kicking a small stone as they walk. Trudy watches him. She wants to tell him to stop that, it’s annoying her, but she doesn’t. She walks and waits. Finally, he says without looking at her, “Is that true?”

“What do you think I do every day?” she asks him and then continues on without waiting for his answer. “I help kids read books and I’ve been doing it for almost as long as your mother and father have been alive, so I know it’s true.”

He doesn’t look at her as she explains and he doesn’t ask anything as they continue their walk. She watches the boy. She’s not sure he believes her.