R My Name Is Rachel (9 page)

We walk up the path and angle back toward the barn. The goat lady sits on the ground, her legs stretched out in front of her. Next to her is a gray goat with pale green eyes and two small horns next to her ears.

The goat lady looks up and smiles. “We’ve been waiting for a buyer,” she says. “Xenia and I.”

“Is that with an X?” Cassie asks.

The goat lady nods. “She’s my twenty-fourth goat. I’m going right through the alphabet. Maybe because I’m a teacher.” She smiles at us. “Mrs. Collins.”

Cassie and I look at each other. X my name is Xenia. Then I stare at Mrs. Collins. “A teacher?”

She’s still patting Xenia. “The school is closed.” She leans forward. “Do you know that schools have been closed in twenty-four states?”

“Because of the Depression?” I say.

“Exactly.”

I shake my head, but Cassie puts her arms around the goat’s neck. She looks thrilled for the kids in twenty-four states, especially herself.

“In the meantime,” Mrs. Collins says, “someone broke into my school.…” She looks as if she’s going to cry.

I feel heat creeping up my neck.

She tries to smile. “But you’re new.” She closes her eyes. “Let me guess. You live on the farm with the stained-glass window.”

“Yes.” I hope she doesn’t see that my face is red. I want to blurt out,
I wasn’t the one, I would never—

“You walked a long way,” she says. She begins to tell us how to take care of the goat. What to feed her. How to keep her warm and happy. That goats like to eat strange things.

I can hardly listen. If only I could tell her I’d give anything to go back to school, to learn new words, to write … write letters, write poetry, write anything.

She must see that I want to say something. She stops talking, one hand in the air. Her eyes have lines around them. She squints and the lines become deeper, almost like rays of the sun.

“It’s just …” I shake my head.

She smiles, waiting.

But I never say any of it, because I see a flash of something from the corner of my eye.

I turn quickly. Is that the mountain lion boy, standing behind a fence, back by the trees? I can almost hear his voice.
You don’t belong here
. I take a step back.

Mrs. Collins doesn’t see that. She waits for a minute more, but then she gives us a bag of feed. “To start you off.”

“Thank you,” Joey and Cassie say together, but I’m still staring over Mrs. Collins’s shoulder.

She turns. “The stream out back is great for trout.”

She waves at the boy. He has a fishing pole in his hand, Was he at the school that morning? Was he the one who saw me?

“Would you like to see the cows?” Mrs. Collins asks, but before Cassie or Joey can answer, I say, “We have to get home. We have to get the goat settled.”

For once Cassie doesn’t argue. I can’t imagine why, unless she sees how anxious I am to get out of there.

I take Xenia by the rope Mrs. Collins has tied around her neck and lead her down the driveway, listening to the bells on her collar.

When we reach the road, I stop and look back over my shoulder.

“What’s the matter with you?” Cassie says.

I turn to Joey. “Did you see that boy fishing?”

He shakes his head.

I breathe again. We take turns leading the goat, petting her, and I’m so glad to glimpse the house ahead of us that I smile at Cassie.

This morning, I stand in my bedroom with Miss Mitzi’s letter in my hand and read a piece of it aloud: “ ‘Look in the mirror and tell yourself what you did wrong, Rachel. Then figure out how to fix it no matter how hard that is. Know that I love you.’ ”

I stare at the mirror, with its wavy lines. “I shouldn’t have broken into the school. I shouldn’t have borrowed those books,” I say aloud.

I know I have to go back to the school. At least I’ve finished
Anne of Green Gables
. I loved it when she said her life was a graveyard of buried hopes. I close my eyes and wish there were a house down the road and Anne lived in it.

I sit on the floor and read a couple of pages of
Understood Betsy
, but I’ll never get to finish it now. Then I tiptoe downstairs with the books, careful not to wake Joey
and Cassie, and let myself out. It’s early; a few stars are visible and a dusty moon lights the road ahead.

By the time I reach the school, daylight has edged its way up over the trees, and the moon has become a pale white sliver.

I wait for a few minutes, making myself count to one hundred and then another hundred, but no one’s there. “Poor school,” I whisper. “All alone with nobody getting ready to come for the day. No teachers. No children.”

At last I walk around to the back, on tiptoes again even though there’s no one to hear. The box is still there under the window, but a few weeds have begun to sprout around it.

It takes only a few minutes to climb inside and go down the hall to the principal’s office. I slip the two books back onto the shelf, filling the space where they belonged. I touch all the books; I have nothing new to read now and no way of getting a book. I run down the hall and climb out the window. I toss the stones and the box away, and I’m on the road.

Safe.

But not safe. I see a boy and I know who he is. And he sees me, too.

I take the long walk home and let myself into the kitchen. Cassie sits at the table, holding her head in her hands. I remember Pop sitting at that same spot, the day he told us he had to leave.

If only we could hear from him.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Cassie.

She doesn’t answer. She gets up and works the pump at the sink, up and down, up and down; the water splashes.

What can I say? “I wish I had something new to read,” I tell her at last.

“Is that all you think about?” she asks. “Always with your nose in a book instead of doing something instructive.”

“Constructive.”

“What a know-it-all you’ve turned out to be,” she says. “Just read that Betsy book.”

I can’t tell her it’s gone.

But she’s on to something else. “When does the man come for the rent?”

“Soon.”

She leans her head against the pump, but before I can figure out what’s the matter, Joey comes into the kitchen. “Ready to work on the garden?” he asks.

Cassie turns. “How about going fishing?”

We both blink. Cassie hates fish.

But Joey and I love fish. Pop used to cook smelts at home, and sometimes fluke.

“We need to save,” she reminds us.

I can’t believe it. She’s worried about money.

Joey looks at me.

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll work on the garden.”

Before I go outside, I lean over the gate we’ve put up. Xenia’s eating some of the food Mrs. Collins gave us. She wiggles her nose with each bite and I pat her long ears.

In the barn I find a cloche hat on a hook. The felt is torn and dusty but I pull it down over my hair like a bell.
It reminds me of Miss Mitzi in the blue cloche that matches her eyes, her curls escaping from the sides. Miss Mitzi, ready to take me shopping at the department store on Fulton Street.

Ah, Miss Mitzi.

I look around. I’d like to lie there in the hay with a lovely new book—and forget about gardening. Instead, I drag out a bunch of farm tools, most of which are incomprehensible to me.

Is that the right word?

Is that even a word?

I think about my garden. I’m going to make it even bigger than the one Joey and I began. I bend over, using a shovel. I hack away, but almost nothing happens. The ground is hard as cement.

Overhead, the sun is strong. It’s much too hot for the hat. I toss it over my shoulder and hack some more. And then I start to get into the rhythm of it. Dig, dig deeper, turn the weeds up, the soil up.

After a while, I throw myself on the warm earth. I grab a long brown weed and yank it. And then another.

Lying there, I keep pulling. I can see the clear spot becoming larger, the edge of the garden uneven, but satisfying. I get on my knees and reach for a trowel that will fit in my hand. I rough up the ground …

And keep going.

At last Cassie raps on the kitchen window. It’s lunchtime. I stand up and nearly fall over. My face is stiff; my knees ache; one foot is asleep.

I look down at my work. The earth is dark and rich.

I love the way it looks.

It’s almost as good as reading.

In the kitchen, I’m surprised to see three plates with paper napkins underneath them. On each plate is a sandwich. The bread is cut unevenly, but I love the peanut butter and jelly.

“Best lunch I’ve had since Pop left,” Joey says.

I gobble down the sandwich and then I go outside again. I wander into the barn to find a wheelbarrow that I saw the other day.

On the back wall is a drawing. It’s rough, because the wall is rough. The picture shows a girl. She’s reading a book that covers her face.

What is she reading?

Who is she?

Around the drawing is a pile of hay. From the way it’s pressed down, I figure the artist must have knelt there as she drew.

I wheel the wheelbarrow outside and throw in the weeds I’ve pulled up. I spend the rest of the afternoon pulling and throwing, then emptying the wheelbarrow behind the barn.

From there I see the stream. Joey, his feet in the water, waves the fishing pole Miss Mitzi gave him. Beyond him, I see rows of fern.

Oh, Miss Mitzi, you’d love this
.

I don’t stop working until late in the afternoon, when Joey walks by with three fish on a string.

Poor things.

Never mind the poor things.

We need the food.

And it’s free.

We eat the fish from head to tail. It’s crispy; it’s so good; I’ve never tasted anything so good. I thank Joey. I even thank Cassie.

She’s a good cook; I have to give her that. And she’s put a couple of wild onions and chives on top to cover the fish. “So we don’t have to see their sad eyes,” she says.

She looks sad, too. Her eyes are red. I wonder if she’s been crying.

I try not to think about it. In the field, she’s found wild strawberries for dessert. They’re no bigger than my pinky nail, but they’re sweet; we sit there, satisfied.

Imagine, strawberries!

But something’s wrong with my face. I feel it and Cassie sees it. “Rachel’s as red as a beet,” she tells Joey.

“You’re sunburned,” he says.

“Didn’t you wear a hat?” Cassie’s eyes are narrowed, as if the sunburn is all my fault.

That Cassie.

My face is so stiff now, I can hardly open my mouth. I push my plate away and go into the living room to ease myself down on the mattress. The pain is worse every minute.

Joey comes in with thick white paste in a small bowl. “Baking powder and water,” he says. “It’s old and wormy, though. I found it in the cupboard.”

I try to smile at him. I know he was remembering last
summer after a hot day swimming. Pop made the paste and spent the night slathering the three of us with it.

I don’t care that Joey’s paste is old, or even that it’s wormy. I sit up and smear it over my face. It’s cool and it helps. I dab some on the back of my neck, and so what that it’s in my hair?

Then I sleep through until the next morning. I wake up as soon as it’s light and roll off the mattress, easing myself up. As sunburned as I am, I can’t wait to get outside to work on the garden. I can see the square of deep brown earth. I’ll rake it until it’s smooth and ready to plant.

The green plants will come up, and then we’ll have vegetables!