The Pantry Door - Julie Steimle (reading strategies book txt) 📗

she saw a lumpy brown man peer at her from under the bushes, scratching his chin before continuing on his way. Shaking her head and squeezing her eyes closed before opening them again with a blink, Katy continued to thin the beets and radishes, dumping the young ones into a basket her grandmother brought.

“That’s enough for today.” Grandma Schmidt stood up, dusted off her hands onto her apron, and lifted her gardening basket off the ground. “I think we mostly need to water this week. It looks all thinned out. Maybe we ought to start pruning the bushes tomorrow.”

“Pruning?” Katy grimaced while climbing to her feet, wondering what kind of work that entailed.

Her grandmother chuckled and patted Katy on the shoulder. “No biggie. I’ll show you tomorrow. Right now, I was thinking we’d make some cookies. Would you like that?”

Cookies sounded good. Katy tried to shrug nonchalantly but really, that sounded like the best idea yet. She forgot about the tiny man in the shadows, or the itchy feeling she was getting urging her to check if she had stepped on an anthill on accident. Both she and Grandma Schmidt went directly into the house with a quicker step than usual.

 

That afternoon, Katy climbed into the cupboard with a bag full of cookies for Nissa. When she entered the room, Nissa was sitting with her small jewelry-making box, stringing beads on a thread of dental floss. She looked up when the door opened and smiled.

“I was hoping you’d come today. I can’t come tomorrow. Mom’s taking me to the doctor for a physical.”

Crawling on all fours to where Nissa sat, Katy set down the cookies and frowned. “That’s like last week. Last week you went to the dentist.”

“That was Wednesday,” Nissa said. “But, yeah. It’s for all the paperwork. The school won’t take me if I have some chronic illness or something. I dunno. That’s what Mom said.”

Nissa then held up the string of beads she was making. On the string were several colors of swirled opalescent type beads, mostly ranging from one shade of blue to green to white and back again. “And—you’re going to hate me, but, I was invited to a birthday party on Wednesday—all day. This is my present. What do you think?”

What did she think? Katy frowned more. She thought it stank that Nissa had only one week left before it was good-bye forever. She thought it was awful that Nissa was going to be gone for two of those days, leaving her all alone to face the Gibsons and the boring little town. She thought it was unfair that her best friend didn’t live in her town in her dimension so that they could go to the party together and face the Gibsons together. And, she was jealous of whoever would be getting that bracelet.

“It’s beautiful,” Katy said.

Nissa grinned, sitting more erect. “Really? Good! I’ll make you one too, then!”

Suddenly Katy smiled and immediately opened the cookie bag, holding them out. “For you!”

Giggling, Nissa took one, acting dainty with a pinky stuck out as she plucked it from the bag. “I don’t mind if I do.”

Both girls burst into giggles together, Katy rolling on the carpet. A pleasant flute’s tune echoed from outside, the melody reminding Katy of happy times when she went picking berries on long walks with her grandfather. She wished now she could take Nissa on one of those walks and show her the places her grandfather had shown her when she was little.

*

Tuesday came, and Katy helped with the pruning of one of their berry bushes. She and her grandmother dumped the leaves in the compost heap near the corral and gathered the sticks to be used for kindling later that winter. After a good wash and then lunch, Katy took a small peek into the attic room before climbing back down again to the kitchen where she called Martha to ask if she could come over.

Martha’s mother picked Katy up in her car, grinning at her.

Martha Sandburg lived in a large two-story modern style house. It was built on a hill with shrubbery everywhere and very little yard for playing in. The rest of their property was for horses. Mrs. Sandberg spent most of her time at home with her little children while their father worked with the animals. He also kept fields of alfalfa, which he sold to other farmers for profit. But mostly he kept it for himself and his horses. He was a professional horse breeder, Martha said. But that also meant that Martha and the other Sandbergs all learned how to ride as soon as they could sit in the saddle. Katy spent most of her time sitting on the corral fence staring at the horses as Mr. Sandberg trained a young horse.

Martha talked a lot, mostly about the foals that were born that year. She said one of them was hers to care for, and she wanted Katy to meet it, which meant they had to go into the barn and walk through a lot of horse droppings to get there—not at all a pleasing idea in Katy’s mind. However, when Martha led Katy to the stall where her much older filly was eating, Katy’s eyes grew wide at its smooth brown coat and long, beautiful mane.

“Her name is Dippity. Do you want to pet her?” Martha was smiling as if the horse were her child she was showing off.

Desiring more to run from the animal almost taller than she was, Katy followed Martha inside the stall, hesitantly reaching out her hand.

“Don’t be scared. She won’t bite.” But Martha was secretly laughing. She took hold of Katy’s hand and set one of the brushes into it. From there, she guided Katy in, putting the brush to her horse’s back. “Just brush along like this. Gentle like.”

Following her strokes, Katy started to brush on her own, though her heart pounded a mile a minute as she did. The young horse tromped her hoofs, anxious being so close to a stranger, likely to stomp on Katy’s foot. Martha guided her for only a short while before turning toward the feed barrel to see if there was enough in it.

“Where are you going?” Katy stopped brushing.

Martha looked back with a smile. “Keep brushing. I’m just fetching some water.”

Katy started to brush again, but glanced nervously at the horse who noticed Martha leaving, and seemed to disapprove.

“Hum to her, or sing softly,” Martha said, still going. “They like that.”

Biting her lip, Katy continued to brush down the horse’s back and neck. Then she went into a hum, hesitant at first. It wasn’t so much a tune for the horse as it was for herself. One of her grandpa’s melodies, Katy hummed until her own heart calmed. As for the horse, it perked its ears and listened.

Up above, the swallows that had made their nests in the rafters fluttered and settled, tipping their heads over the edge of the beam, listening also.

Down in the other stalls, the other horses and also some of the goats and chickens in the far end tilted their heads, ceasing their neighing, bleating, and clucking all to hear Katy’s melody. But Katy hadn’t noticed it. She was too busy smoothing out the horse’s mane, brushing and detangling its tail. When Martha came back with the water, she stared, first at the horses, then at the chickens that had walked over to the stall door where Katy was oblivious to her audience.

“I don’t believe it,” Martha uttered before Katy saw her.

Looking up, Katy quit humming and stopped brushing.

Almost immediately a bedlam of noise broke out. The chickens scattered, their feathers flying everywhere. The birds fluttered away as if a cat were on their tails. The goats bleated in protest. Martha walked through it to get to the stall, though Katy peered over at the animals with the same bewilderment as she had when she had stepped on to the farm that afternoon. Even Martha’s horse whinnied like she wished for Katy to continue.

“I really don’t believe it,” Martha said again and set the water bucket down just outside the stall door. “Carly Hillerman said you were a witch, just like old man Schmidt—but you really did that, didn’t you?”

Katy just blinked at her. “Did what?”

“Made all the chickens stand still. And the birds—” Martha was shaking her head. “I thought what happened in the park was funny, the way you whistled. I swear I suddenly saw a party full of wonderful things, but I had thought I’d dreamed it. But now—”

“What do you mean, but now?” Katy set the brush down, stroking the horse’s back with her hand to calm it, no longer nervous at all. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Martha narrowed her eyes, turning her head to inspect Katy. “Don’t you know what people say about you, Kathleen Neilson?”

Katy shook her head.

Sighing, Martha leaned back along the stall door. “They’re saying your family is weird. The Gibsons go on and on about how you can call up swarms of bees to attack them. They say you are crazy weird, like a witch. They say your mother is a witch and your grandpa is a devil.”

Immediately Katy’s face felt hot. “He is not!”

“I know that,” Martha said, walking over and stroking her horse’s neck now.

Calming down, Katy frowned at the straw on the ground.

“I’m just saying, what I just saw right now was freaky.” Martha looked back into the rest of the barn. “The animals were listening to you.”

“I was just humming a song like you said.” Katy stuffed the brush into Martha’s hands. “You told me to.”

Martha blinked, her thoughts going as she watched Katy gingerly step through the horse pats on the ground to the barn entrance to escape. Martha hurried after her, closing the stall door to keep the horse in, and picking up the water pail.

“Hey, wait!” Martha dumped the water into the trough and then chased after Katy.

“If I am so weird, why did you invite me?” Katy’s eyes burned with tears. The echoes of the Gibson’s rumors repeated over and over in the back of her mind.

Suddenly Martha blushed, silent with guilt. It was a secret, and one Martha was ashamed of. “My mom asked me to. She said you looked lonely.”

Huffing, Katy whirled around with a stomp and marched out of the yard. As she climbed through the fence Martha called after her, though she heard it distantly.

“Where are you going?”

“Home!” Katy shouted back, and she tromped straight to the road.

Why? Why, oh why, oh why did she have to ask it? Of course Martha invited her over only because she pitied her. No one in the real world ever liked her for who she was. Only girls through magic cupboards and old men people called devils liked her as she was.

Tears rolled down Katy’s cheeks. Was she a witch? Was she really destined to be some kind of ugly green-faced hag that people despised and wished for houses to drop on? Clenching her teeth, Katy glared at the road, glared at the street signs, glared at the hicks driving by in their trucks, glared at the stray dog that barked at her, glared at the blue sky as tears dribbled out the sides of her eyes, blurring her vision. After crossing several country roads, Katy dropped her rear on the rim of an old tractor that had been long abandoned and was flaking with rust. She set her face in her hands and sobbed.

They had called her mother a witch.

Though earlier she might have agreed with that argument, now it was an added stab into her already hurting heart. Had Grandpa Schmidt been there, he would have chased all her angry thoughts away with a song. Had her mother been there, maybe, just maybe her arm would have wrapped around Katy’s shoulders with a soft word of comfort. But here, as Katy sat alone on that country road far away from civilization, as far