Livora Gracely

What grows when shared, needs no soil, and sounds like this?

“Does it have teeth?”

Grandma had expected several questions about her riddle. Teeth had not been among them.

Ben leaned across her lap to inspect her mouth. On her other side, Elsie turned an orange leaf by its stem, keeping its brittle edges clear of her coat.

“It isn’t an animal,” Grandma said.

“That wasn’t my question.”

She pressed her lips together. Ben sat back, satisfied that the investigation was making progress.

Something That Grows

The bench felt cold through their coats. Above them, copper leaves scraped together in the wind; one loosened and spun down between Ben’s boots. He trapped it with his heel.

Grandma repeated the first part. “What grows when shared, and needs no soil?”

“A balloon,” Ben said. “If you both blow.”

“And both spit,” Elsie added.

Grandma’s mouth twitched.

“We could use separate ends,” Ben said.

“Then it’s a sausage.”

Elsie lifted her leaf to hide a smile. Ben considered the difficulty of inflating a sausage and moved on.

“A puddle. If everyone pours something in.”

“Possibly,” Grandma said. “Although I wouldn’t sit beside you while you made it.”

A gust pushed Elsie’s hair across her cheek. Grandma tucked it behind her ear and drew the loose end of her scarf away from the child’s leaf. From the café across the square came the smell of coffee and the clatter of cups being stacked.

Elsie leaned forward. “Could it be—”

“Noise,” Ben announced. “Noise gets bigger.”

Elsie leaned back again. Her thumbnail followed one of the leaf’s veins.

The Last Clue

“There’s another part,” Grandma said. “It sounds like this.”

She gave a small chuckle.

Ben pointed. “That! The answer is that.”

“It needs a name.”

“Chuckling.”

“That’s a good name.”

Ben straightened. His trapped leaf crackled beneath his boot. “I’ve won.”

Grandma looked toward Elsie, who was now brushing a crumb of orange leaf from her skirt. She stayed seated between them, hands resting loosely in her lap.

“What were you going to say, love?”

“Nothing.”

Ben opened his mouth. Then he looked at the leaf she had been so careful with.

He closed it again.

“I only had a joke,” Elsie said.

“We haven’t had that yet,” Grandma said.

A Different Answer

Elsie lowered the leaf. “What do you call a dinosaur who’s asleep?”

Ben knew this one. He had told it to her yesterday. His answer reached the back of his teeth and stopped there.

Grandma waited.

“A dino-snore.”

Grandma laughed, a warm, tumbling laugh that ended in a sharp little snort.

Elsie’s eyes widened. Ben tried to copy the sound and produced something closer to a blocked trumpet. Elsie folded against Grandma’s sleeve, laughing so hard that her leaf bobbed beside Grandma’s ear.

“You made it bigger,” Ben told her when he could speak.

Elsie sat up. “So did you.”

Grandma reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. Ben shifted closer, leaving room for Elsie to spread her leaf safely across Grandma’s knee.

“Does laughter have teeth, then?” he asked.

Grandma dabbed her eyes.

“Mine does.”

She showed him.

Elsie inspected the smile. “The dinosaur’s got more.”

The handkerchief had to come out again.