Memento Nora by Angie Smibert

loaves of bread in another. Instead of going in the front door, Micah led me around the side to a wrought iron gate with an A UTHORIZED P ERSONNEL O NLY sign hanging on it. A stone wall seemed to encircle the actual junkyard part behind the building.
     
    “Don’t worry, I’m authorized,” Micah said, laughing, as he pushed open the creaky gate.
     
    Once inside, we wound our way through a maze of junk. Stacks of wrought iron fencing. More old-fashioned bathtubs. Stained glass windows. Doors. As we turned a corner and I caught a whiff of fresh-baked bread, we ran into a black dog. A big one.
     
    “Bridget, this is Nora,” Micah told the dog. She sniffed me once and then ran back the way she had come, tail wagging as she trotted. “She won’t allow strangers past this point without an introduction.”
     
    We emerged from the junk maze; and Micah opened another gate, this one with a dog flap at the bottom. Bells tinkled as he shut it behind us. Inside was something almost as surprising and wonderful as Winter’s garden.
     
    We stepped onto a neat green lawn with a stone path cutting through it to a brick square. There was a row of miniature town houses on one side of the square and a covered pavilion on the other. The town houses looked like giant doll- or playhouse versions of the ones in my neighborhood. These were skinnier and much shorter—only one story, if that—but they had windows and shutters and even flower boxes. The exteriors were painted in alternating colors: blue, white, yellow, green. My first thought was that Mom would love these.
     
    “Welcome to Black Dog Village,” Micah said proudly, as if he’d created the place himself.
     
    The smell of baking bread filled the air. Several people waved to us. A group of small children played on the green lawn near the jungle gym while an older woman watched from her porch.
     
    “Young man.” A tall, wiry black woman with short gray hair steamed up to us. “What is your mother going to think, you coming home in the middle of the school day? And don’t think she’s not going to find out. And bringing a girl? A real pretty one at that.”
     
    I blushed.
     
    “She’s going to think I was hungry for some of that good rosemary sourdough bread you’re baking, Mrs. Brooks, and maybe some of that stew.” Micah turned on the charm, charm I didn’t know he had.
     
    Micah introduced me to Mrs. Brooks. She laughed and said she was still going to tell his mother. Micah didn’t seem very worried about that.
     
    “Amelia,” a skinny white girl in a sundress called from the pavilion, “I think the bread is done.”
     
    Mrs. Brooks shooed us toward the girl, who upon closer inspection must have been about thirty. She was opening the black iron door on a low brick oven. The heat and the warm-bready smell washed over me, and I realized I was starving.
     
    “Those look good, honey,” Mrs. Brooks told the woman. “Melinda is learning the trade,” Mrs. Brooks explained to me, “in exchange for showing me how to do pottery so I can make flowerpots and plates and such.” She pointed to a stack of pretty light blue and creamy brown bowls stacked by the oven.
     
    “Oh, I want to learn, too,” Micah said.
     
    “You want to learn everything, child,” Mrs. Brooks replied. “Did he tell you he learned how to weld so he could make the iron flower boxes and the jungle gym?” she asked me.
     
    I watched Micah as he ran his finger over the swirly texture of one of the bowls. I noticed he latches on to some things, things that intrigue him, I guess, with this sweet, open eagerness.
     
    “Most times he needs a kick in the pants to finish one thing before he’s off to the next,” Mrs. Brooks said, chuckling.
     
    Micah ignored her as he examined a big blue plate with this greenish glaze on it. It was glossy in all senses of the word.
     
    “Now that Winter girl,” Mrs. Brooks added. “She’s good at getting things done.” She pointed to the solar