The Pumpkin with No Face

—How many do you sell in October?

Miss Ada puts her glasses on her nose.

—Why do you ask? —she says.

—Somebody puts a pumpkin on our porch every morning, —Mia says—. There are four now. And there is one word on every pumpkin, in white chalk. Do you know about it?

The shop is very quiet. Somewhere behind the wall there is a clock.

—No, —Miss Ada says.

—You don’t know anything?

—I sell vegetables, —Miss Ada says—. People come in, people pay, people go out. I don’t ask what they do with a cabbage and I don’t ask what they do with a pumpkin.

—But do you remember who buys the big ones? The very big, round, dark orange ones?

Miss Ada takes her glasses off again.

—Child, —she says, and her voice is not unfriendly—. In this town, in October, everybody buys a big round dark orange pumpkin. That is what October is.

Tommy makes a small noise. It is the noise of a boy who wants to say something and knows he must not.

—OK, —Mia says—. Thank you.

—Do you want carrots? —Miss Ada says—. For your grandmother. She makes soup on Friday and she always needs carrots. Take these. No, don’t pay. Take them.

She puts eight carrots in a paper bag and gives the bag to Mia. The carrots are cold and they still have earth on them.

—Miss Ada, —Mia says at the door—. One more question.

—Yes?

—Does my grandmother buy pumpkins from you?

Miss Ada looks down at her table.

—No, —she says—. Rosa Delgado does not buy pumpkins. She never buys a pumpkin. Not for thirty years.

—Why not?

—You must ask her that.

Outside, the sky is white and the air is cold. Mia and Tommy walk up Bell Street with a bag of carrots.

—She knows something, —Tommy says.

—Yes.

—She definitely knows something.

—Yes, —Mia says—. But she is not going to tell us.

—How do you know?

—Because she gives us free carrots, —Mia says—. People give you free things when they want you to go away and be happy about it.

Tommy stops in the middle of the street.

—That, —he says—, is a very good detective thing to say.

At home Mia gives the carrots to her grandmother. Grandma Rosa looks at them and she knows immediately where they are from.

—Ada gives you these, —she says.

—Yes.

—How is she?

—She is well. She has got fourteen pumpkins in front of her shop.

Grandma Rosa cuts a carrot in two.

—Grandma, —Mia says—. Why don’t you buy pumpkins?

Her grandmother puts down the knife. For a moment she is not in the kitchen at all. She is somewhere else, and it is not now.

—Because for thirty years, —she says—, somebody gives them to me.

Then she picks up the knife again, and that is the end of the conversation, and Mia goes upstairs and writes it in her notebook with hands that are not completely steady. ## Vocabulary exercises