Free Grover G. Graham and Me by Mary Quattlebaum

Grover didn’t know his own mother.”
    “We want moons, too!” Kate hollered as she and Jango skipped after Tracey, with Charmaine skittering behind.
    Suddenly the dining room was quiet. I picked a few green beans off Grover’s tray.
    “You must be Ben,” came a low voice. “Tracey told me about you.”
    Ha, I thought. I bet she had said nothing good.
    “I’m Jenny. Tracey’s sister.”
    I continued to clean, giving the woman a side-eyes glance. Short hair. No pouty lips. No spider lashes.
    This
was Tracey’s sister? Tracey’s tight clothes and makeup screamed, “Look at me!” but Jenny, with her plain shirt and plain face … well, Jenny seemed to blend in.
    The woman wiped squished banana off the floor. Tracey would never have done that. She’d cut out every single blue moon from her fingernails before she would stoop to help me.
    “You two sure seem different,” I said.
    Jenny gave me a little smile—and you could tell she didn’t smile often. “I’m the quiet one,” she said, screwing the lid on Grover’s baby-food jar of green beans. “Tracey, on the other hand … I remember my mother saying that even as a baby Tracey had no trouble letting her feelings out.”
    Tracey as a baby. With big blue eyes and a Tweety Bird head and fat little fists like Grover’s. What a weird thought. I wondered what I’d been like as a baby. What my mother—what Sarah Jewel might have said about me.
    “But we’ve both got a stubborn streak,” Jenny continued, wiping the table while I wiped the high chair. “When we make up our mind—that’s it. Tracey used to smoke about two packs a day. As soon as she found out she was pregnant—not a puff. Didn’t want to hurt her baby.”
    Well, she hurt him anyway. What would you call running away?
    Jenny gave
me
a side-eyes glance. “I bet you’ve got a stubborn streak, Ben.”
    Me? I thought about Gram sticking it out with her Ben-gayand great-grandbaby. Doing the whole feed-change-play thing with me.
That
was stubborn.
    And Jenny was seeing some of that stubborn in me. Huh. Maybe I had a bit of Gram’s spirit inside. More than just memories of false teeth and Jif.
    “What are you stubborn about?” I asked.
    “Right now? Finishing college, even though going part-time takes forever.” Jenny continued to wipe the table. “And sometimes,” she went on, “I’m just plain mule-ornery
stubborn.”
She shook her head. “Stubborn can make you tough,” she sighed, “or it can make you hard. There’s a difference.”
    Tracey’s stubborn streak had made her hard. I could tell.
You been raised by a perfect mama?
That girl liked being flat-out mean.
    “Tracey is—” Jenny began.
    “Tracey is
what?”
Tracey surveyed us from the doorway. Her eyes moved from Jenny to me back to Jenny, like someone left out of a secret.
    The twins squeezed past her. Their fingers fluttered like hyper butterflies. “Moons! Moons! Tracey made us moons!”
    The chaos was starting again.
    Plop! crash! bang!
came from upstairs.
    “Your baby’s calling, Mama,” Jenny teased.
    “Grover just went to sleep,” Tracey sighed, “and now he’s playing dropsy.”
    “That’s how he learns.” Jango poked a painted fingernail into my rib. “Right, Ben?”
    Tracey frowned, than turned suddenly to Jenny. “Whatwere you talking about?” she demanded. “Tracey is
what?”
    “Wonderful,” Jenny said lightly.
    “Ha!” Tracey’s laugh was bitter. “Like you or
he
would think that.”

Chapter Fifteen
    A s if Tracey’s visits weren’t enough, Mrs. T. had to plan what she called a “family picnic” for the third Saturday in July. I almost faked a stomachache when I found out Tracey was going. But if I stayed home, who would watch Grover?
    Of course it was 94 sweaty degrees when we set off for Greenfield’s not-so-green park. But with all us “family” wedged inside the car, the temperature must have hit 110. As usual, Mrs. T. reminded her husband
to please
fix that jiggling door