Free The Star Garden by Nancy E. Turner

pocket was all I had left caused that now-familiar surge of nerves to awaken, and as I ordered things off the list, I spoke slowly, watching Mr. Griego stack goods on the counter, all the while feeling on the verge of panic. What if the flour got weevils, the beans got mold? Should I buy twenty pounds and risk mice eating it up?
    In no time I had a bolt of muslin, boxes of nails, bags of beans, sacks of Indian flour and wheat and coffee. A new paper of pins. Five cards of buttons. Axle grease. Hide glue. Baking soda and liniment. I paused in front of a pyramid stack of five jars of Hagan’s Magnolia Balm, where a sign underneath said the stuff was guaranteed to keep a woman from looking old and worn. I shook my head, wondering how a woman knew when she looked old and worn. There was a handy mirror right next to the balms, just to check. Instead, I took a box of headache powders. When everything was totaled up it was nearly twenty dollars’ worth. I paid off the credit I owed Mr. Griego, too, another three dollars and eleven cents. I tied my string around a thinner roll of bills.
    Well, I was ready to leave when I spied a peculiar item under the glass at the register. “Will you show me that?” I asked Mr. Griego. It looked to be some kind of kitchen tool I’d never seen. A metal box with a glass inside.
    Mr. Griego squinted and felt around until I nodded when he took hold of the box. He said, “A spirit level, this one? A spirit level is a tool for men to put on things they building. To see is she flat and square. See these air bubble in the oil? When she’s lined up in these line, you got you a flat place. It’s not flat, it’s no good. House going to fall down. Got to be level, and only way is to put this on and see. Keeps everything straight. Just like, you no like when the floor go sideways and the stove don’t stand up straight. This fix it. Don’t build her crooked.”
    I set the spirit level on his counter. It was off by a quarter bubble. “A person needs this to build a house?”
    “
Sí.
This
mesilla,
she is too many peoples leaning their arms.” “Level would be better. Makes sense to me.”
    “
Si.
Less than two dollars for a tool she is
indispensable.
Is good price. Fine instrument.”
    I couldn’t possibly give Udell Hanna a shirt the way I’d do for my own family. That was far too personal. But this, this was the kind of thing a man might use if he had it. A better thing than another pair of gloves, fancier than a hammer. Useful but unusual. I counted out the dollar and ninety-one cents very carefully. I tucked the spirit level into my pocket next to the rolled-up bills, where it bumbled back and forth as I walked to the buggy.
    Harland had been busy, and he’d found a lady to cook and clean, too. The place began to feel less mine with every tick of the clock.
    Next morning, Harland and I fetched April and off we went. He bought over two hundred dollars’ worth of furniture and rugs and lamps from Caldwell’s store. Their wagons were loaded and sent to the house in quick order. April said she felt fine and that her baby sickness came on her some days and not others, so Harland took us to lunch at Bell’s Pharmacy where we had sandwiches and phosphates.
    The wagons full of goods arrived that afternoon, and then we were all a-flurry, setting things right. Rachel had brought her own bedstead and two chests, and we prettied up a room for her on the second floor. With everyone helping out, it began to look like a real home in no time. I had become a guest in my own house. It smelled different. Looked different.
    I sent Zack, who is ten, to the attic to sweep so there’d be a clean place to store the few remnants of my furniture. Then I told Ezra to go around all the windowsills with a wet rag. Well, before long I heard them howling up the chimneys at each other, when suddenly Ezra came tearing out of the parlor like a scalded cat, stringing dust and dirt from his hair as he galloped up the