Sister of Silence by Daleen Berry

up, that’s how Carla and I, and all the neighbor kids, stayed cool on the hottest of days.
    My girlhood dreams came alive and found fruition in the tiny town. I was an entrepreneur, so by age eight I spent countless hours dreaming about what I would do if I could earn my own money. Not long after, I got the job delivering more than fifty newspapers on my bike, covering a two-mile route each week.
    Dad had convinced me to get the route selling the quarter-a-copy papers. Having grown up during the Depression with a single mother and four other siblings, he had once had a Grit route himself.
    One ordinary house near the middle of my route, though, created within me a fear that threatened to eat me up. That’s because “Lurch,” as I named him, lived there. He was tall and towered above me, and he scared many neighborhood children. He was also a stranger and because he looked mean and had a deep voice, I was terrified he would kidnap me. Fortunately, his parents usually answered the door, smiling and trading coins for the Grit I held out. I was always eager to leave before Lurch could appear. Each time, I talked inside my head, telling myself, just like my mother had chided me, that Lurch only looked mean. That he was just different, and that he did, in fact, actually have a problem: he was a boy trapped in a man’s body.
    So one day when I nervously knocked at his door, praying his parents would answer, I was hardly able to speak when Lurch opened the door and looked down at me. I swallowed hard and managed to squeak, “Here’s your paper.”
    “Hold on,” he said, turning away.
    I wanted to bolt. Instead, I tried to tell myself that he wouldn’t hurt me, that my parents had checked with Jim, who’d told them Lurch was harmless.
    But it seemed to be taking Lurch more time than it should just to get the money to pay me. My mind began racing . Could he be getting a knife?
    The door opened in the middle of my fanciful fears, and Lurch reached out, coins in his palm. “Here you go,” he said, smiling as he emptied them into my hand.
    “Thank you,” I said, handing him the paper and turning to leave. I forced myself to walk slowly when my feet wanted only to flee, because I knew he was standing in the doorway watching. But as I got on my bike and glanced back, I saw him wave.
    I gave a shy wave back.
    I hated to spend the money I collected from my customers each week, knowing I was my only reliable source for getting more. But even beyond carefully counting and stashing it away in a dresser drawer, was the joy of sitting down at the end of the long route and reading the weekly serial story within each issue. I would lie on my stomach across my bed, head in hands, and read furiously, trying to race to the final few words to see how it ended. Most of the time, I was forced to wait until the next week, and the week after, until the story finally ended weeks later.
    I got lost in other reading adventures, especially Nancy Drew mysteries. I read every book I could get my hands on, and when it was time for our family vacation, I always took along a tall stack of books I had gotten at the library, or borrowed from classmates. About four hours into the first day of our trip, I could count on hearing one of my father’s favorite expressions. A geography and history buff who taught us all the names of the states and their capitals, Dad loved to relate tidbits of information about the places we passed, and it irked him that his eldest child wasn’t as interested in our travels as he was.
    We were driving through St. Louis, Missouri, when he spoke up. “There’s Scott Joplin’s house,” Dad said to no one in particular. Or so I thought.
    “Remember , Daleen? He’s the famous jazz pianist.”
    My ears barely caught the sound of my name being spoken, and by the time I looked up, I saw my father glaring at me from the rearvi ew mirror. “For crying out loud Daleen, get your nose out of that book! You’re missing all the