The Pink Glasses Grandma Threw Away

“She did what?” he finally said.

“In the trash can at the park. By the bathrooms.”

He let out a long breath. “Kenna, I’m sorry. I’ll call her tonight. I will.” Then he said, quieter, “Mama’s had a thing about glasses as long as I’ve been alive. She wouldn’t let me get my eyes checked either. I never knew why.”

“Well, I need to know why,” I said. “But first I need to get Lark another pair.”

He sent forty dollars to my phone before supper with a note that said “for the glasses, I’ll send more Friday.” He is not a rich man. Forty dollars on a Tuesday is not nothing on a pipeline wage with his own rent to pay.

Then I put Lark in the car and drove to the park. It was a little after four. The sun was still high and hard and the heat was coming up off the parking lot in waves.

I knew which trash can she meant. There are two by the bathrooms, the green metal kind chained to a post. I took a deep breath and looked in both.

They were empty. Clean black bags. The city crew had come through after lunch, like they do on Tuesdays.

I stood there in the heat with my hand on the edge of the can. Lark held my other hand and looked up at me.

“Are they gone?” she asked.

“They’re gone, baby,” I said.

She thought about it. “Will Grandma get in trouble?”

I knelt down on the hot concrete so I was looking at her straight. “Grandma made a mistake,” I said. “It’s a grown-up mistake, and I’ll talk to her about it. You didn’t do one thing wrong. You hear me?”

She nodded. Then she said, “Can I still have pink ones?”

“You can have pink ones,” I said.

I did not sleep much that night. I lay there doing arithmetic on the ceiling. My plan covered one pair a year, and Lark had used it up. Whatever came next was coming out of my pocket.

At eight o’clock sharp the next morning, I called Dr. Bratton’s office. The girl at the front put me on hold, and then the doctor himself came on the line.

“She threw them away?” he said, after I explained. He did not say it in a judging way.

“In a park trash can,” I said. “The city emptied it before I got there.”

“Bring her in,” he said. “I keep stock lenses in her strength. It’s a common one for kids. I can cut them here today on the edger in the back and have them on her face before lunch.”

“Today?” I said.

“Today,” he said. “If you can get here by ten.”

I called the care home next. A man I work with named Cyrus, who has three kids of his own, said he would swap me his late shift for my early one before I even finished asking. I owe that man a pie.

I put on my teal scrubs anyway so I could go straight to work from Stillwater. I clipped my hair up off my neck. Then I went to wake my girl up.

Lark wanted to do her own hair. She is seven and has opinions. She sat on the bathroom counter and did one brown ponytail with a purple elastic, and it sat a good inch off to one side.

“Is that even?” she asked me.