Miss Sizemore says she wants us to write a report—two pages on one of the fossils we've been studying. We're skipping dinosaurs, she says, since southern Ohio don't have no dinosaur fossils. They come after the Ordovician age, and all them layers was wore off.
Shirley Whirly raises her hand and reminds Miss Sizemore she ain't allowed to write on fossils. Miss Sizemore says she can write on Ohio Valley weather instead. "Is there anyone else whose parents do not want them to report on fossils?" she asks.
Herschel looks at me. I don't raise my hand. I want to learn as much about trilobites as I can. I ask Miss Sizemore if I can do a report on them like an interview. Good idea, she says. So I do some reading, and this is what I write:
MM: Tell us how you spend your day, Mr. Trilobite.
T: Well, I mostly nose around in the bottom and eat.MM: What do you eat?
T: I have worms sometimes. I walk along until I find a worm trail. Then I just wait for them.MM: Then what do you do?
T: I sit around in the mud some more. Then I do some swimming. Sometimes I molt.MM: What does that mean, Mr. Trilobite?
T: Means my shell comes off and I go around unprotected until I grow a new one. That's how I get bigger. I bust out of my old suit and grow me a new one.MM: How big can you get?
T: I got a cousin that's eight inches. Me, I'm only an inch and a half.MM: Mr. Trilobite, do you have any enemies?
T: Yes, I do.MM: Tell us who they are.
T: Cephalopods.MM: What are cephalopods, Mr. Trilobite?
T: Squids.MM: Are you able to defend yourself?
T: I got a few things I can do, like roll into a ball. A squid can still eat me, but I'm not as tasty that way. I can swim into a cave, too. And I can sit with a lot of other trilobites.
Then I got a lot of other questions I ain't got the answers to, but I put them down to find out later.
Do trilobites have families?
Do trilobites have houses, like a hole in the sand?
Do trilobites ever fight with each other?
Do trilobites ever sleep?
I take this home and read it to Granny. Then me and her make up some more verses to our trilobite song.
Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,
Who's his mom and who's his dad?
Eats up worms, then rolls in a ball
Hides from the squid with the big eyeball.
Trilobite crab, trilobite crab. Rolls in the mud and likes to gab. Cracks his suit, that's how he grows. Molts his shell from head to toes.
We put them all together with the verses we made up last week, and we sing away.
***
Tonight Mama and Granny are setting down at the kitchen table, and Mama gets to talking about our boarder Lucinda that went back to Clarksville, Indiana. She don't come right out and say it, but I know what she's a-coming around to. Lucinda, that never had no boyfriends, up and got pregnant, and went back home to have her baby, only Mama don't want me to know.
So now, today, she says, "Mary Mae, I don't think this is for your ears. You better get yourself upstairs."
"I don't want to go upstairs," I say. "I'm old enough."
"No, you ain't, and you better do what I say. You got homework to do."
"I already done it."
Then Mama brings her hand down and says, "Now."
I look at Granny and she just smiles.
I go upstairs and put my ear flat against the heating register. I can hear every word.
Mama says, "Lucinda, she told me she was afraid she'd never have kids. Only had one ovary. And got a uterus half the normal size. Tilted, too."
"Poor thing," says Granny.
"And her being two hundred and fifty pounds," Mama goes on, "she was afraid she'd never have a husband, neither. Well, she up and meets this truck driver, Thornton Cuzick, and next thing you know, she's pregnant. Says to me, 'I'm a-keeping this baby, but I'm not a-marrying Thornton, that's for sure.'"
"Why not?" says Granny.
"Well, turns out, he's a kleptomaniac been arrested for stealing ladies' purses."
"My," says Granny.
"So she went back home to have her baby."
My ear's burning up against the grate, but I don't want to miss a word.
"Went back to Clarksville," Mama says.
"Indiana?" says Granny.
"Says her daddy works for the Clarksville Casket Company."
"So Cuzick follows her down there and just won't give her no peace. Sets out in front of her house in a beat-up Cadillac when he ain't on the road. Follows her to work. Now she's snuck back here to visit her cousin. I seen her at the store today in her maternity dress." Mama scoots her chair. "Big as a house."
"Well," says Granny.
I can hear them clearing the table and pushing their chairs in.
I run to my room.