“Josie! This is not death! It is a rebirth!” She exclaimed dramatically.

I stared at her with a dumbfounded frown.

“It is not surprising, you know. You are beyond your years in every other way. You have earned this right of passage much sooner than most girls. Josie, womanhood is an incredible gift! It is God-given. It is bestowed upon us. Womanhood is incredibly powerful, and you have been entrusted with it years before your peers. This means you are very special in His sight. We must celebrate!” She clapped her hands and rose with a swoosh of her long red kimono.

So we did. We lit candles and had sparkling cider in crystal goblets. She read the story of Queen Esther with great passion, telling how her beauty, grace, and courage had saved her people. How her power had influenced nations. She read to me the story of the Virgin Mary from the New Testament - only a few years older than I was, and mother to the Savior of the World.

Days later, Sonja and I drove to the city, and she bought me new underwear and bras in pretty pastels with matching undershirts to wear until the bras were absolutely necessary. We got our nails done, and she purchased enough feminine supplies to stock my bathroom drawer for several years. I felt my mother’s presence that day and knew she had been instrumental in bringing Sonja Grimaldi into my life. After all, hadn’t I been at her grave the day I first saw the white Cadillac? After that, I was much more secure in God’s love for me, and I did not curse my rapid ascent into womanhood again.

One afternoon in early spring, I arrived for my lesson to find Sonja lying on the sofa with a book lying on her chest, her eyes closed.

“Sonja?” I whispered, not wanting to wake her, but not wanting to leave if she was in need of something. I was a little scared. She looked small and tired and it made me think of my mom before she died, shrunken and pale.

“Sonja?” My voice quavered, and I put my hand on her arm.

She opened her eyes sleepily, her brown eyes huge beneath the thick Coke bottle lenses of her horn rims.

“Oh, Josie! Is it that time already? I was trying to read and my eyes just get so tired when I read lately...I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up my books.” She said the last part a little mournfully. Sonja was not a mournful individual in the slightest, and I looked closer at the book that she had been reading.

“Wuthering Heights,” I read aloud. “What if I read to you while you rest your eyes? I’m an excellent reader.”

Sonja smiled at this serious declaration of my ability and handed me the book. “All right then, you read for a while, and then we’ll practice.”

I hated Wuthering Heights. Each day I would come for my piano lessons, and I would read to Sonja for a half hour before we began. After one week of Wuthering Heights, I threw the hated book down in disgust. Though I was young, I was sensitive and thoughtful, and with Sonja’s explanation of different words and phrases, I had grasped most of what I had been reading and had comfortably followed the story line.

“These people are horrible! I hate them! I can’t read this anymore!” I surprised myself by bursting into violent tears, and gulped desperately to rein in the embarrassing display.

“They are, aren’t they?” Sonja agreed quietly. “Too much ugliness for a tender spirit. Maybe someday you will read it with different eyes…but maybe not. No more Heathcliffe for now. Off to the piano with you, child!” She said briskly, and I followed her meekly, scrubbing my eyes and feeling relieved that I would not have to spend any more time wandering the moors with ghosts.

The next day a new book was waiting for me. I noticed the author was also named Bronte, and cringed inwardly. But Jane Eyre was nothing like Catherine Earnshaw Linton. I adored Jane Eyre and begged Sonja to let me take it home to read between our visits. She acquiesced graciously, but made me promise to write down every word I didn’t understand and look it up, so that I would truly grasp what I was reading. When Sonja found out I didn’t have a dictionary of my own at home, she gave me a copy of Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. She said it was the second most important book in the English language, next to the Bible.

I kept my promise and, reading late into the night, would pencil words I couldn’t define onto the wall above my bed. The next day I would delve into my heavy dictionary and look up all the words I had written the night before. With every book my “Wall of Words” grew, as did my hunger for more words. One day many months later, my dad climbed into the loft that served as my bedroom - which he rarely had reason to do - looking for something. I was downstairs whipping up a new recipe in the kitchen, and I dropped the mixing bowl when he bellowed my name.

I came running, fearing some disaster had occurred, and found him staring at my wall in outrage.

“Josie Jo Jensen! What in the world is this?” He threw his hand towards the wall behind my bed which was now partially covered in words.

“It’s my Wall of Words, Dad,” I supplied meekly. When he glowered at me and folded his arms across his chest, I decided I’d better explain myself further.

“See, at night when I’m reading I don’t like to stop in the middle of the story and look up words I don’t know…so I write them on my wall and look them up in the morning. It’s very educational!” I said brightly, smiling at him hopefully.

My dad shook his head, but I saw a flicker of a smile across his lips. He walked over to the wall and read some of my words.

“Ameliorate?” he read doubtfully. “Now that’s one I’ve never heard before.”