Rain Reign (3 page)

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?”

We reached School Lane. Ahead was Hatford Elementary. Mrs. Ringwood turned the wheel to the right and we started to swing into our bus lane.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Mrs. Ringwood, stop right now!”

Mrs. Ringwood slammed on the brakes. “What's the matter?” she cried. She stood up to look out her window. Behind me, all the kids crowded to the other windows to see what had happened. Traffic came to a halt.

“You didn't use your directional,” I said. “That's against the rules.”

Mrs. Ringwood sat down again. She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel. Then she turned around and said to me, “Are you freaking kidding?” After she parked Bus #7 she went into Hatford Elementary and spoke with the principal.

That's why I don't ride the bus anymore.

 

8

In My Classroom

My classroom faces southeast and has windows along one side and 21 desks for students, plus Mrs. Kushel's desk, plus Mrs. Leibler's chair, which sits next to my desk and blocks the aisle.

There are 11 girls and 10 boys in my class.

There are 2 gerbils in my class.

Our classroom rules are written on a sheet of oaktag, which is posted next to the door of our room.

Mrs. Kushel smells of apples and has a husband and a girl who is six and has the prime number name of Edie (23).

Mrs. Kushel knew last spring that she was going to get me as her student and she scheduled a conference with my father who said, “I promise Rose won't be any trouble.”

When Mrs. Kushel asked what my father does about my tantrums at home, he said, “Rose doesn't have any tantrums at home, not while I'm around. She knows better.” And then he said, “Ha-ha. Just kidding.”

I know this because I was sitting in the waiting room outside the school psychologist's office and I could hear every word of the conference. I hear lots of things I'm not supposed to hear, and lots of things nobody else is able to hear, because my hearing is very acute, which is a part of my diagnosis of high-functioning autism. The clicks our refrigerator makes bother me, and so does the humming sound that comes from Mrs. Kushel's laptop computer. One day in school I put my hands over my ears and said, “I can't concentrate! Please turn that thing off.”