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44 Belle’s Gift Spokane, Washington, 1961 I could be quiet for five whole minutes. If I wanted to. I wouldn’t say a single word. Like luminous, pumpernickel, snout. Mama says I should be quiet. But I like words too much and can’t keep them quiet any more than I can stop an orange from squirting juice when I bite into it. That’s what words are for, right? You think of something. Then you say it: Glass. Celestial. Paperweight. Put words together and they make pictures. The sky is a rounded globe where stars twirl around when I shake my head. Mama says I’m too fanciful, but if words could make things change, I would call her Bianca or Eve, and change her fate. If her name wasn’t Meg (Meg, Meg, gotta wooden leg), she wouldn’t look like a woman hanging up wet sheets on a clothesline, with a mouth wide enough to clamp six clothespins between her taut lips and still have enough room to yell at me. “Clarabel, get down from there this instant!” Clarabel. My name hangs around me like a cowbell. If I changed Meg’s name, my fate would change, too. If she was Bianca, she wouldn’t have frizzy red hair that looked like my tattered Raggedy Ann doll. Her hair would be smooth and coiled at the back of her neck, held in place by a shiny barrette. Then I would be beautiful. Belle. I wouldn’t have her nose that looks like a petunia just about to bloom. I would be Eve’s daughter, and my face would be a perfect oval, like that woman stepping out of a seashell in that painting. My skin would be silky seawater, and my eyes would know how to be coy. I would change Dad’s name, too. His real name is Leif Octavio Jensen. Everyone calls him Leaf Jensen, cuz they don’t know any better. You’re supposed 45 to say “Life Yensen”; that’s the right way to say it. His mom came from Mexico, but his dad is from Denmark. I think his name should be Sven, and he should wear a thick white sweater with little specks of green yarn in it. He should have a helmet on his head with two horns sticking out the sides. He laughed when I told him this. “It ain’t Halloween yet, Jumpin’ Bean!” I hate it when he calls me that, because Mexican jumping beans are just beans full of worms, and that’s what makes them move. It’s disgusting. It makes me feel crawly inside. He says I just jump around a lot. When Mama’s hanging up the wash, I play on my swing. It’s made of metal and squeaks. “Lord, I wish he’d squirt some oil on that thing,” Mama says out of the corner of her clothespin mouth. She looks like Popeye. Ar, ar. “You’d think a mechanic could do that in a wink, but you know the old saying about cobblers and their children.” “What’s a cobbler?” I yell. “A shoemaker.” She snaps out a bra, puts her fist into the cups to give it some shape, and pins it on the line. She stands with one hand on her hip and stares at the bra. It shimmies in the small wind, sideways breezy breasts of wind filling up the cups. Behind the thin sheets, worn almost through in the middle in certain spots, I can see Mama’s flowers blooming. Along the edge of the garage, she has softened the wooden lines with flags, iris, gladiolus . . . say the word gladiolus . . . it makes you glad and full of sunshine. It’s a word that means what it says. I stop swinging. Mama bends over, pulling out another faded housedress from the basket. If her name was Bianca, she would wear silk suits and pillbox hats like the president’s wife. Daisy moos. Her name used to be Cow. One day, though, she ate some wild onions in the pasture and soured the milk. Dad yelled at her. “You do this one more time and you’ll be pushing up daisies!” “Oh, Leaf,” Mama said. “She can’t understand you! She’s a cow!” “Well, we need that milk.” He squared his shoulders. “For little Jumpin’ Bean, here.” “Belle.” I said. “What?” He looked at me. “My name is Belle.” “For chrissakes! You and your fancy ideas...

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