Noni has a secret

Impatiently fiddling with her shoelaces, Noni looked up again and again, past the shed and the lumber trucks parked in the alley. Today was Wednesday and that was usually the day the Gypsies came to see Grandma. It seemed like visiting to her but Granny told her they came to buy old clothes and lumber from her. But it was a party when three women, two men and a little girl piled out of a large Cadillac, windows rolled down and she heard the familiar foreign language tossed from front to back seat. There was Sonya! Another brown eyed, dark haired girl her own age who wore mismatched clothes like she did.

While Granny bartered with the visitors Sonya and Noni grabbed hands and ran to the pole yard, nimbly climbing to the very top. Shyness and smiles, they smoothed their skirts and looked through the trees. Then they heard it, the soft scritch, scritch of little rodent feet moving quickly along the wood where they sat. Chipmunks! Striped little creatures that made them laugh out loud. Once they found Noni's grandmother's raspberry patch where they ate their fill until Sonya's family came looking for her. Not before, however, she and Sonya rubbed a ripe berry on each other's arm and decided with that gesture they were now sisters. Until next Wednesday.

Noni heard the news while Granny held her in her lap one afternoon. It seems Sonya had fallen out of the Gypsy's car while it was moving and a rear tire ran over her. Noni asked if her friend just got up after that and climbed back into the car. Granny shook her head.

Whenever Noni sees chipmunks, tall, dark, blue-eyed men, ladies' sling-back pumps or big jangly earrings she gets it, the real reason why she loves Cadillacs, raspberries and roaming the earth.
More secrets out in the open at Sunday Scribblings.