Rain Reign

  5. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes only words that sound exactly alike. Since whine and wine do not sound exactly alike they are not on my list. Neither are haul and hall.

  I guess that’s enough about homonyms for now. You probably want to get on with my story anyway, so now it’s time for me to introduce the next main character to you. The next main character is my father, Wesley Howard.

  Oh, one more fun thing about homonyms: The word pair implies two, but it is part of a homonym trio—pair, pear, and pare.

  4

  Some Things About My Father, Whose Name, Wesley Howard, Does Not Have a Homonym

  Wesley Howard is my father and he’s 33 years old. He was born on March 16th during a quarter moon. He’s 6'1" tall. He has a scar on his cheek that is 1½ inches long. He got it when he was seven and his father whacked him in the face with the handle of a shovel in order to teach him not to leave his bike outside.

  Some things about my father and me that are the same are that we grew up with our fathers but not our mothers, and that we live in the country.

  My father’s profession is mechanic at the J & R Garage.

  My father has one sibling, my uncle Weldon, who is 31 years old and 6'0" tall. Uncle Weldon was born on June 23rd during the kind of moon called a full strawberry moon. My father was born at 6:39 p.m. and my uncle was born at 9:36 p.m. so their birth times are opposite when written out. Also, the numbers are all divisible by 3.

  My father was 21 when I was born. He was 23 when my mother left. He was 26½ when I started kindergarten. He was 26 years and 7 months when my kindergarten teacher, Miss Croon, told him that Hatford Elementary might not be the right school for me.

  “I didn’t know there was another elementary school in Hatford,” my father replied.

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  What Miss Croon meant was that since I was having trouble talking to the other kindergarteners and I cried a lot and was apt to hit myself in the head with a shoe or a picture book if somebody didn’t follow the rules, I might need a special school or program.

  My father told Miss Croon to work harder. Teaching me was her job.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to look into another program for Rose?” asked Miss Croon.

  “Where are the other programs?” asked my father.

  “There’s an excellent one in Mount Katrine.”

  “Mount Katrine that is twenty-two miles away?”

  “Yes.”

  My father shook his head. “Rose will be fine right here.”

  In first grade, my teacher, Ms. Vinsel, called a meeting with the principal and the school psychologist and Miss Croon and my father. I don’t know what happened during the meeting because I wasn’t there. After the meeting my father picked me up at Uncle Weldon’s office and took me home and shook me and said, “Rose, this behavior has got to stop.”

  And I told him that you could write out my name two ways and both ways would be pronounced the same.

  For second grade I had Miss Croon again because she didn’t want to teach kindergarteners anymore. Miss Croon said to my father on the afternoon of September 13th, “I believe Rose would benefit from spending part of every day in the Resource Room, Mr. Howard.”

  Mr. Howard, who is my father, said, “That’s fine with me as long as the Resource Room isn’t for retards.”

  For has two homonyms—four and fore.

  By fourth (forth) grade Mrs. Leibler had become my aide (aid). My father said he didn’t think I needed an aide, but that he wasn’t going to fight Hatford Elementary. “Just stay out of trouble, Rose,” he told me. And everything was fine until fifth grade when Mrs. Leibler thought up the idea of weekly (weakly) progress reports.

  Now I am going to go back in time to report on my father’s childhood some more. When my father was ten years old he went to school with a brown-colored two-inch-long mark on his arm and his teacher decided it was a burn. She called Child Protective Services and that very night the police arrested my father’s father, and that was when my father and Uncle Weldon went into foster care.

  “We were always placed together with the same family,” Uncle Weldon told me once. “We weren’t split up. But we never stayed with any family for very long.”

  My father and Uncle Weldon lived with seven foster families before my father turned eighteen.

  They lived in five different towns.

  They had a total of 32 foster brothers and sisters.

  They went to nine different schools.

  The longest they stayed with any family was 21 months.

  The shortest they stayed with any family was 78 days.

  One night last year when my father and I were eating supper at 6:17 p.m., I said to him, “Did you have a favorite?”

  “A favorite what?” asked my father.

  “A favorite foster mother.”

  “Yes, I did,” said my father. “Her name was Hannah Pederson.”

  “That is very interesting,” I told him, recalling Mrs. Leibler’s conversational tips, “because ‘Hannah’ is a kind of word called a palindrome. That means you can spell it the same way whether you start at the beginning or the end. My name is not a palindrome because if you spell it backwards it’s E-S-O-R, not R-O-S-E. But it does have a homonym.”

  My father said, “Don’t get started on homonyms, Rose.”

  So I said, “Did you have any favorite foster brothers or sisters?”

  “Yes,” said my father after a moment.

  “How interesting,” I replied. “Did any of their names have homonyms?”

  5

  When We Got Rain

  Now I will tell you about when we got Rain. On the Friday before Thanksgiving last year I was waiting for my father to come home from The Luck of the Irish. I knew he was at The Luck of the Irish because it was 7:49 p.m., which meant that the J & R Garage had been closed for two hours and 49 minutes. I had made hamburgers that night and I had already eaten mine because I don’t like to eat dinner after 6:45 p.m. What was for dessert was Popsicles, and I had also already eaten my Popsicle, which was a Highcrest brand Orange Burst.

  I was studying my list of homonyms when I saw headlights circle around the kitchen and I heard a car pull into our driveway. I decided that it was my father’s car. Next I heard a door slam. Then I heard another door slam and I decided that my father had brought Sam Diamond home with him. Sam Diamond is a man who drinks at The Luck of the Irish with my father and sometimes comes here to sleep on our living room couch. After a few seconds I heard footsteps on the front porch, and then I heard a sound like a whine, which was not a sound I had ever heard Sam Diamond make.

  I sat at the table and stared at the door.

  My father appeared in the porch window. “Rose, for lord’s sake, get up off your butt and come help me,” he yelled.

  I didn’t want to help my father with Sam Diamond. But when I opened the front door and looked out through the screen at the rainy night I saw that my father was standing on the porch holding a thick rope in his left hand and that at the other end of the rope was a dog. The passenger in the car had been the dog, not Sam Diamond.

  The rope was tied around the dog’s neck. The dog was very wet.

  “Where did you find a dog?” I asked my father.

  “Behind The Luck of the Irish. Could you bring a towel out here so I can dry her off?”

  “The dog is a she?” I asked.

  “Yes. The towel?” This was my father’s way of reminding me to get the towel to dry off the wet dog.

  “And don’t bring a white towel,” my father called after me. “She’s muddy.”

  I brought a green towel to the porch and watched through the screen door while my father wiped the dog’s feet and back. “She’s for you,” he said to me. “You can keep her.”

  “She isn’t wearing a collar,” I replied.

  “That’s why she’s yours. She’s a stray.”

  “But shouldn’t we look for her owners?” I asked. “
They might want her back.”

  “If they didn’t care enough to get her a collar, then they don’t deserve her,” said my father. “Besides, how would we find her owners? She doesn’t have a collar so she doesn’t have any tags.”

  “Is she a gift?” I wanted to know.

  “What?” said my father. He stopped wiping the dog for a moment. “Yes, she’s a gift, Rose. She’s my gift to you.”

  My father had not given me many gifts.

  The dog stood patiently while my father wiped her fur. She lifted her front feet one at a time when he held out the towel. Then she gazed at me and lifted her eyebrows up and down. She panted, and when she panted she stretched her lips wide so that she looked like she was smiling.

  “All right,” my father said to the dog. “You’re dry enough to go inside.” He held the door open and the dog walked into the living room, which is really just part of the kitchen, and she leaned against my legs.

  I stared down at her. She stared up at me.

  “You can pet her,” said my father. “That’s what normal people do with dogs.”

  So I petted her and she closed her eyes and pressed in closer.

  “What are you going to name her?” asked my father.

  “I will name her Rain,” I replied. “You found her in the rain, and rain has two homonyms—reign and rein—so it’s a special word.”

  “That’s great, Rose. And what about ‘thank you’?”

  “Thank you.”

  That night Rain slept in bed with me. She has slept with me every night since then.

  6

  Who I Wait For

  Uncle Weldon drives me to and from school every day. He does this because I’m no longer allowed to ride the bus, and when my father heard about that he announced that he couldn’t drive me himself. He said, “Rose, what did you go and get yourself kicked off the bus for? How am I supposed to drive you to school in the morning and get to the garage at the same time? And how am I supposed to pick you up in the middle of the afternoon while I’m working?”

  There are a lot of days when there’s no work for my father at the J & R Garage, but on those days he likes to sleep late and then go to The Luck of the Irish.

  Uncle Weldon said, “I could drive Rose to school.”

  Uncle Weldon works at a construction company. He has what my father calls a wuss job and what Uncle Weldon calls a desk job. He doesn’t do construction. He sits at a computer. His job starts at 9:00 a.m., so he could easily drop me off at my school, which starts at 8:42 a.m. before going on to his company, which is called Gene’s Construction, Inc. He said he would ask his boss if he could work through his lunch break so that he could pick me up at 2:42 p.m. and run me home every afternoon.

  When Uncle Weldon mentioned that he could drive me to school, he didn’t look directly at my father. He and my father and Rain and I were sitting on the front porch, and Uncle Weldon stared out at Hud Road while he spoke.

  I waited for my father to say, “I can take care of this myself.” But instead he lit a cigarette and stared at Hud Road too.

  So then I joined them in looking at the road while I said to my father, “Did your father drive you to school?”

  “He didn’t have to. I didn’t get kicked off the bus. Why are you asking about my father?”

  I was asking because my father always says that he’s not going to be the kind of father that his father was. He says he’s going to raise me up by himself if it kills him. This is why he doesn’t accept much help from Uncle Weldon. And this was why Uncle Weldon asked his question so carefully. When my father thinks Uncle Weldon is interfering in my raising, he threatens to keep us apart, which would make my uncle and me feel very sad.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Rain was lying next to me on the old couch that my father had put out on the porch. She rolled over on her back and rested her head in my lap.

  “You asked me a question, but you don’t know why you asked it?” said my father.

  “Yes.”

  “What about it?” Uncle Weldon wanted to know. “Could I drive her? It would solve the problem.”

  “It wouldn’t mean you’re a bad father,” I said.

  Uncle Weldon shifted his gaze from Hud Road to me, and his eyes opened wide. “That is certainly not what I meant.”

  “Well, anyway, I don’t see another way around it,” replied my father.

  And that is how Uncle Weldon started driving me to and from Hatford Elementary. Every morning, Rain and I wait on the front porch for my uncle to come along Hud Road in his black Chevrolet Montana. When I see the truck, I kiss Rain on her head and put her inside the house. Then I climb up beside my uncle and tell him if I’ve thought of any new homonyms since the day before.

  If I have, Uncle Weldon says, “That’s great!” Then we try to think of other new homonyms that sound like the new pair, the way I did with chews/choose and brews/bruise.

  After we discuss homonyms we look out the windows for a while, and then Uncle Weldon will say, “Everything all right with your father and Rain?”

  The least complicated answer is yes. I don’t say more unless I have to.

  Sometimes Uncle Weldon will say, “Would you like to go to a movie with me this weekend, Rose?” Or maybe, “Should we take Rain on a hike on Saturday?” Then we have to think about how to ask my father for permission.

  Finally we drive up in front of Hatford Elementary. Uncle Weldon and I always cross our fingers and touch our hearts before I slide out of the truck.

  * * *

  At the end of the day I wait for my uncle again. I stand by the front door of the school and watch the kids I used to ride the bus with as they line up for Bus #7. I step away from Monty Soderman who is missing one (won) fingernail, and who wears very heavy boots that hurt a lot when he steps on my toes (tows). I wait (weight) and hum and stand by myself and stare (stair) straight (strait) ahead so that I can see (sea) Uncle Weldon the moment he turns onto School Lane (Lain). Then I run to his truck and he smiles as he leans across the seat to open the door for me.

  Sometimes we have a conversation like this:

  UNCLE WELDON: How was school?

  ROSE HOWARD: It was just like yesterday.

  UNCLE WELDON: Exactly like yesterday?

  ROSE HOWARD: No. That would be impossible.

  UNCLE WELDON: Because today has a different date from yesterday.

  ROSE HOWARD: And because the moon and stars are in different positions than yesterday.

  UNCLE WELDON: What’s the most interesting thing you learned today?

  ROSE HOWARD: That if you assign numbers to the letters in “Weldon”—like 23 for W because it’s the 23rd letter in the alphabet, and 5 for E, and 12 for L, and 4 for D, and 15 for O, and 14 for N—the numbers add up to 73. Guess what 73 is.

  UNCLE WELDON: A prime number?

  ROSE HOWARD: Yes! And that is as special as a homonym. My father’s name is a prime number too. W-E-S-L-E-Y comes out to 89.

  UNCLE WELDON: Really?

  ROSE HOWARD: Yes, but I don’t think he’ll be interested.

  UNCLE WELDON: Well, I’m glad your father and I have prime number names, since you and Rain have homonym names. Now nobody will feel left out.

  ROSE HOWARD: I wonder if my father would let me come over to your house on Saturday. I could rewrite my homonyms list. It’s getting crowded.

  UNCLE WELDON: Would you like me to ask him about that?

  ROSE HOWARD: Yes, but just ask if I can come over. Don’t mention the list.

  UNCLE WELDON: I’ll do what I can.

  Finger crosses, heart touches, I wave good-bye to my uncle.

  7

  Why I Don’t Ride the Bus

  I used to ride Bus #7 to school. Bus #7 made 14 stops, which was good because 14 is a multiple of 7. I was the only person at my bus stop, the second stop on the route. At the next twelve stops, every kid would walk down the aisle looking for a seat and pass by the empty space next to me. Marnie Mayhew,
who lives at the prime-number homonym address of 11 Band (Banned) Lane (Lain), would flick a spitball at me as she went by. I would stare straight ahead and let it bounce off my face onto the bus floor. Then Wilson Antonelli would come along and say, “Pick it up, Retard. You’re littering.”

  At each stop our driver, whose name was Shirley Ringwood, would look at us backward in her big glaring mirror and wait until everyone was sitting down. Then she would close the door, put Bus #7 in gear, and start driving again. And I would watch out my window to see who was following the rules of the road. There are lots of rules for drivers, and they’re listed clearly in the New York State driver’s manual, but many drivers don’t follow them.

  “Hey!” I would shout. “That man didn’t use his directional before he turned the corner! Mrs. Ringwood, did you see that? He broke the law.”

  Sometimes Mrs. Ringwood would answer me, sometimes she just kept her eyes on the road ahead. It depended on how close to her I was sitting.

  Rainy days (daze) were difficult. The rule is that if your windshield wipers are on, then your headlights must be on too. “Mrs. Ringwood! Mrs. Ringwood! I just saw three cars with their wipers on and their headlights off!” I would cry.

  Marnie would start to giggle and Wilson would lean over his seat and hold out his cell phone and say, “Why don’t you report that to the police, Retard?”

  “They’re supposed to follow the rules! They aren’t following the rules!”

  One day I sat down in the first row of seats so I could watch Mrs. Ringwood’s driving. She slowed Bus #7 as we approached the intersection of Sandy Road and Route 9W. Then we rolled slowly by the stop sign.

  “Mrs. Ringwood! You didn’t come to a complete stop!” I shouted. “Mrs. Ringwood, that’s against the law. It says in the manual that you must come to a complete stop. A complete stop.”

  Mrs. Ringwood turned onto Route 9W. “Let it go, Rose.”

  “Mrs. Ringwood, are your headlights on?”

  A spitball hit me on the back of my neck.

  “Hey, that driver wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Did you see that, Mrs. Ringwood?”