Chapter 7: The Pointing Finger

Mrs. Tandy sat at my kitchen table and put her phone down between us.

"I'm going to show you what I got," she said. "All of it."

"Why?"

"Because I have watched it forty times, and I think I did something wrong."

I put the kettle on, because I did not know what else to do with my hands.

She pressed play.

The first video was my kitchen window at night, shot from her yard.

It showed me at the stove, reading to Birdie from a picture book with a different voice for every character.

The wolf was deep, the grandmother was shaky, and the pig had a cold.

"That's your pig," Mrs. Tandy said. "It's very good."

"Thank you."

"I wasn't supposed to think that."

The second video was Tuesday morning.

I was in my driveway, in my bathrobe, arguing with a toaster I had carried outside.

"I just wanted to see if it was broken," I said. "I was upset."

"You said, and I have this on audio, 'You are not worth the counter space.'"

"It's a very bad toaster."

"It's the worst," Mrs. Tandy agreed, with real feeling. "I have the same one."

The third video was Wednesday night.

I stood at my sink at midnight, eating cold noodles out of the pan with a fork.

I was crying a little.

Then I looked at the fork, and I laughed, and the crying stopped, and I kept eating.

Mrs. Tandy paused it there, on my laughing face.

"That's the whole thing," she said. "A week. That's everything I have on you."

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