When Mum Went Funny Read Online Free Page B

the buggy whenever they saw us going into Waharoa. One or two other people started using their old buggies and carts. Not a lot, but enough to make us feel we weren’t on our own.
    Most of the Maoris down at the pa still had buggies or gigs, so Timmy Tremble told Jimmy that his mother must be a Hori. And Jimmy said he told Timmy hismother was a Redskin, because we’d just seen a picture at the hall about cowboys and Indians, and that made Timmy start stuttering and fixed him good and proper. After that, we all used to say, “R-R-R-R-Redskin!” whenever we saw Timmy Tremble, but we didn’t let anyone hear. We knew we’d get into trouble for teasing him because it wasn’t his fault if he stuttered, still he shouldn’t have said that about Mum.
    Some people put gas burners on their cars, to save petrol, but Mum heard about one that blew up, over at Te Awamutu. “I don’t trust the things,” she said to us. “It doesn’t make sense, driving along with a fire burning on the side of your car, so close to the benzine.”
    “Doug Robinson said his father told him it wasn’t the gas burner that blew up the car at Te Awamutu,” I told Mum. “He said they were playing round with the fuel lines, and some benzine dropped on the hot manifold and it went up.”
    “Do you know what a manifold is?” Mum asked me. “No!” she said. “And nor do I, and I’ve no intention of finding out. Even if I did know, I still wouldn’t feel safe. Fire and benzine just don’t go together. Besides, there’s all of you to think of.” And she shoved-to the big doors on the car shed, down the side of the barn, and she swung down the top end of the big wooden bar so the bottom half swung up and both ends fitted into their latches, and she put a big padlock on so nobody could get inside.
    Grass grew up in front of the doors, and we forgot about our old Chev car sitting on blocks in the dark. Kate and I pulled aside a loose plank in the wall, from inside the barn, but you couldn’t see much. So we gave up thinking about it for a couple of years while the war went on.
    Then I took off the loose plank and squeezed into the car shed. Our old Chev waited there, silent in the gloom. I patted and spoke to it, opened the door, climbed into the driver’s seat, held the wheel, and pretended I was Dad.
    I tooted the horn, put my toe on the dip, and turned the lights on and off, but nothing happened. My voice disappeared into the dark, and it got a bit scary. I closed the door quietly, wriggled through the hole, and nailed the plank back into place.
    I never told anyone and never went near the car again because somehow it might be unlucky for Dad. And I tried to hold my breath as I ran all the way back to the house.

7
Mum and the Beanstalk
    W
e came home from school, and Mum wasn’t there, so we tore through the house, shouting for her.
    Jimmy stopped and said, “Remember at breakfast she said she might run away from us?”
    “She hasn’t run away,” Kate told us. “Her clothes are in her wardrobe. She’ll be out in the garden.”
    We raced each other up the path, yelling, “Mum! Mum!”
    “There she is!” said Betty. “Mum! Why weren’t you there when we came in?”
    Mum had picked a basket of runner beans and was standing there with one broken open in her hand. It must have been one we’d missed picking, and it had grown about two feet long. Beans like that are tough and stringy, and no good to eat.
    “Why is it I can’t even rely on my children to pick all the beans that are ready?” Mum said, asking the question up into the air. “You know perfectly well that, if you don’t keep them picked, they stop flowering.”
    We grinned at each other. When Mum asked questions up into the air like that, we called it, “Talking toGod.” And she only ever talked to God when she was complaining to him about having to grow vegies and cook for us. The moment we saw her doing it, we knew she’d had another of her funny ideas.
    “If I