It wasn’t a good day. Even though they were going to a party, it wasn’t a good day. Not like it could’a been. It was nice out and warm, but it wasn’t any good.

Her parents said she could play out back for just a little tiny minute because mommy and Daddy had to talk. They both said it, all of it, one after the other.

“You go on outside.”
“You go on outside, and play, Linda Lee.”
“Just for a minute.”
“Just for a tiny minute, Linda Lee.”

Her mother looked at her father like she had a whole bunch of things to say. Linda Lee was told by her mother not to get her pretty clothes dirty. Her mother said it kind of sideway out of her mouth ‘cause she was still staring up at Linda Lee’s father waiting for a chance to say what she wanted to say. Her mother had red eyes, mean, poochy red eyes, like Mr. Tracy’s Pitt Bull.

Her father was pouring himself a drink.

“Oh for God sake, John! Another one?

Her father said , “You go on outside and don’t get your pretty clothes dirty, Linda Lee!” using a high voice and sounding just like Mommy would say it. Linda Lee never got dirty. She wanted to throw her glass of juice on the floor, but she got up from the kitchen table and left it and jumped down to the just waxed and polished kitchen floor that the new maid said not to drop anything on, and like the good little girl she was she just walked out in her pretty clothes letting the screen door slam and her mother said,

“Don’t get dirty.”

Her father said “Linda Lee!” And Linda Lee stopped on the wood porch. “You come back in here!” She took a secret breath and turned around and came back in. “Now go out and close the screen properly.

This time Linda Lee went outside properly. Her mother said she was a good little girl and not to get dirty.

She carried their voices across the green grass and went far down the green grass as far as she could to get away from the voices which now sounded like a hum, a constant, loud hum, quick and then soft and then loud again like a bee’s hum, like one’a them big ole’ scary black ones that bounce against windows and get all mad and just keep on bouncing off windows.

She walked until she stood next to the pond. Right next to it. Way closer than her parents allowed. She thought about walking out into the pond to get farther away from the hum that was not a hum, but words now, mean ones, spat words, and real bad ones.

The frog sat there. It was green and fat and looked like a bathtub toy. Linda Lee’s first thought was it was a bathtub toy. She bent down and picked it up. It was real, boy oh boy was it! and it was cold and sqishy and it was the first real frog Linda Lee had ever held in her hands ever in her whole life, though she had seen them in books and heard stories told. Luchia, used to read about a Princess and a frog to her sometimes but then she quit.

“Linda Lee, we’re going now! Come get your shoes on.”

“Come get your shoes on, Linda Lee!”

She gave the frog a quick kiss on the head. When nothing magical happened she put the frog softly down on the grass. It sat there and looked at Linda Lee for a moment and then jumped in one mighty leap back into the pond. “Mr. Toady,” she whispered.

“Did you hear me?”

“Did you hear your father?”

Linda Lee ran quick as can be and then stopped at the screen door. She looked back at the pond at where the rings from the frog circled wider and wider in the black water. She blew a loud smooch-kiss to the pond and came inside the kitchen smiling like any girl who had herself a secret frog would do—and the screen door slammed hard and felt good, and right, like music.