Ship of Dolls (13 page)

She felt Grandma look at her, probably wondering if she would remember to smile and congratulate the winner. She couldn’t think of a single thing she would rather do less.

Beside her, Jack said with surprising loyalty, “She brought in the most money. Maybe that’s why they chose her.”

In silence, not trusting her voice, Lexie watched Louise thread her way from the audience and walk to the front of the room. She looked proud and not at all surprised.

“Congratulations, Louise,” Mrs. Phipps said. “Your letter is lovely. We would like to have you read it to everyone.”

Louise looked startled. She took the paper Mrs. Phipps was handing her and looked over at her father, then out at the audience. Her gaze brushed Lexie before moving away.

There was a long pause. Mrs. Phipps said, “Go ahead, dear.”

Louise looked at the paper again, then said with defiance in her voice, “This is what I wrote.” When she began to read, her voice rang over the crowd.

Jack nudged Lexie. “Her letter sounds a lot like yours.”

It did, but they must have all written the same things about hoping the girls in Japan would welcome Emily Grace and telling them the doll brought their friendship with her.

“I decided to include a Japanese poem to say how I felt,” Louise finished. “It’s called a haiku, and this is what it says:

Lexie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. While the audience murmured appreciation, she sat in stunned silence. “Grandma,” she said, her voice sounding strangled.

Jack shot to his feet. “You didn’t write that poem! Lexie did! You’re the one who stole the letter from her desk!”

“J
ack Harmon!” While Lexie looked at him in astonishment, Mrs. Wilkins rose from her chair. Her face flushed such a bright pink that the feathered dove on her cloche looked in danger of bursting into flame. “How dare you spoil Louise’s proud moment?”

“She shouldn’t be proud,” Jack said, setting his chin at a stubborn angle. “She didn’t write that.”

“I did too write it.” Louise darted a glance between her mother and Jack.

Who did Grandma believe? Remembering the night she had had to burn the doll dress, Lexie lurched to her feet. This time, she meant to stand up for herself. “Jack’s right. I wrote that haiku.” She pointed at Louise. “You took my letter from my desk.”

“When could I have done that?” Louise asked in a smug voice that reminded everyone that her parents were important.

“At noon recess,” Lexie shot back. “I looked for you. You weren’t on the playground. Alma said you were looking for woodpeckers.” And Jack said the only woodpeckers Louise’s mama cared about were on her hat, but she had better not say that.

“Wicked stories,” Mrs. Wilkins exclaimed. “The idea!”

“It’s not a story!” Lexie rushed on. “You weren’t anywhere on the playground, Louise. You were in the classroom stealing my letter!”

Mrs. Wilkins turned toward Lexie like thunder rolling in. “Young lady, you should be ashamed of yourself. We all know you have proven to be less than truthful.”

Like everyone else in the audience, Grandma had been turning from one speaker to another. Now she surged to her feet. “Eleanor Wilkins, you are the one who should be ashamed. To attack a child!”

That sounded like Grandma was on her side, Lexie thought with a rush of hope. Grandma didn’t like Mrs. Wilkins, so that might have been part of it.
But she sounds angry
for
me, not
at
me.
Despite the tension in the room, she felt a corner of her heart dare to grow warmer.

“Ladies, please!” Mrs. Phipps held out her hands as if to separate the two women. “Please. We hope to
prevent
a war with these dolls, not
start
one!”

The audience laughed uneasily. Mr. Wilkins stepped forward. “Well said, Mrs. Phipps. If the two girls and the ladies will join me in private, we will get to the bottom of this.”

He turned to the rest of the parents and children. “In the meantime, the first-​grade class will entertain with a song popular in Japan called ‘The Blue-​Eyed Doll.’ Here is Esther Hall to tell you the story behind the song.”

Six-​year-​old Esther marched importantly to the front of the room, dressed in a kimono. The rest of the first-​grade class lined up behind her, twirling paper parasols painted with butterflies and flowers. A flashlamp blazed. A reporter from the newspaper must have been there.

Grandma marched through the crowd toward the door where Mr. Wilkins waited, towing Lexie with her. Onstage, little Esther began, “The song is about a celluloid doll that came on a ship.”

Jack made his way through the audience, following them to the smaller room. Lexie gave him a quick, grateful smile. The moment the door closed behind her, Mrs. Wilkins said to Grandma, “I hope you are not forgetting a certain lie over the matter of the doll’s dress.”

Grandma’s mouth took a dangerous set.

Mr. Wilkins motioned to chairs around a long table. “Please, everyone. Sit down.”

Lexie sank into a chair beside Grandma, feeling excited and scared and angry all at the same time. Was there a chance she might be declared the winner after all? The winning letter was hers, even if it did have Louise’s name on it.

She wasn’t the one lying. She hadn’t lied about the dress, either. She just hadn’t found a good time to tell the truth. But she should have. Would all this be different if she had been truthful with Grandma from the start? Could
when
you told the truth be as important as
how
you told it?

“Louise,” said Mr. Wilkins, breaking into Lexie’s swirling thoughts, “have you anything to say?”

Louise leaped to her feet. “I wrote the letter and the poem. If she says she did, she’s lying. Again.”

“You’re the liar,” Lexie said. She started to get up, but Grandma reached over to press her hand and she sank back down.

Mr. Wilkins said quickly, “Young lady, you will have your chance to speak.”

Jack jumped to his feet. “Then I’ll speak. Lexie read her letter to me days ago. We talked a lot about the poem she was putting in it. That’s her letter Louise read.”

“He’s mad at me,” Louise told her father, tears brimming in her eyes. “Because I won’t kiss him. Like she does. He’ll say anything for her!”

“What?” Lexie exclaimed.

Jack’s cheeks blazed red. “I don’t want
anybody
kissing on me!”

“Enough!” Mr. Wilkins strode to the door and held it open. “You may rejoin the others, Jack. You have had your say.”

“But . . .” Jack looked at Lexie. She shrugged, wanting to sink through the floor. Fiercely, she wondered, what would Mama do? She knew the answer to that. Mama would hold her head up and laugh at someone trying to embarrass her. Lexie didn’t feel much like laughing, but she raised her chin and stared straight at Louise.

Louise was too busy looking sorrowful to notice. Anger and disappointment crashed together inside Lexie, helped along by outrage. How could anybody believe Louise, with her pout and phony tears?

“Louise,” her father said, returning to his seat after closing the door behind Jack, “tell us about the letter. You are the only one who included a Japanese poem. How did you think of doing that?”

“She didn’t.” Despite the pressure of Grandma’s hand, Lexie couldn’t keep silent. “I did! We all wrote haiku in class. Mine was best, and Jack Harmon said I should put it in my letter. Then I wrote a different one because the first one was sad. That’s the one Louise stole!”

Louise looked at her father with fresh tears shining. “Jack did suggest putting in
my
haiku. That was when I talked to him about
my
letter. He must have told
her.
When she kissed him.”

L
exie silently promised never to kiss a boy again in her entire life. She had only done it to spite Louise. She glanced at Grandma and saw her eyes flashing. She looked like Mama when someone who should say hello remembered that she sang in clubs and looked away instead.

This was hurting Grandma, Lexie realized. She had been so upset over losing the letter, she hadn’t thought about Grandma’s feelings. The new warmth inside tightened into a cold lump.

“Perhaps we can solve this with a simple test.” Mr. Wilkins walked again to the door, this time calling, “Mrs. Phipps, Miss Tompkins, will you join us, please?”

Miss Tompkins knows I wrote the best haiku, even if she didn’t see the second one. She knows my letter disappeared.
Relief swept through Lexie.

Mrs. Phipps came inside, looking as if rotting fish had been discovered under a table, causing all the guests to hold their noses. “I had such high hopes for this day,” she said in a wistful tone that still managed to hold accusation. “We need to settle this quickly.”

Miss Tompkins took a seat near Mr. Wilkins with a troubled look on her face. It was the same look she had had when Mr. Wilkins said there wasn’t time for Lexie to rewrite her letter. But Miss Tompkins knew the truth. Didn’t she?

“The girls will each write a new poem in the Japanese style,” Mr. Wilkins explained. “Mrs. Phipps, we need your expertise. You read all the letters submitted for the contest. Miss Tompkins, you are familiar with the girls’ work. With that understanding, we would like you both to read the two new poems and tell us which is most likely to have been written by the girl who wrote the letter.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Phipps clasped her hands together. “Mr. Wilkins, I’m not sure that would be a fair test, considering the pressure they are feeling.”

“Nonsense! We are not asking the girls to create art, just to prove they can write. Miss Tompkins, will you please locate pencils and two sheets of paper?”

Grandma said in a flat tone, “Electra will not have a problem.”

The dove on Mrs. Wilkins’s cloche fluttered as if about to fly off. “Louise will do fine.”

Lexie couldn’t wait to prove that Louise had stolen the letter and pretended she wrote it herself. To write haiku, you had to be calm. She tried to put everything from her mind but a new poem. Still, her thoughts jittered faster than the dove on Mrs. Wilkins’s hat.

Miss Tompkins asked each girl to move to a separate end of the table. She handed out pencils and paper and told them to begin.

Lexie was sure that Louise would not write a haiku as good as the one she had. Sure, she knew how many syllables to use, but Louise had not studied the feeling a haiku should raise in the reader. Mrs. Phipps was wrong. This was going to be a fair test. It would prove who had written the letter. Lexie bent over the paper, eager to begin.

At first, she felt the others in the room watching her, but gradually the haiku took over her mind. She counted syllables, chose words, counted again, and chose new words. The feeling had to be right.

“We’ll stop now,” Mr. Wilkins announced. “Those are short poems, are they not? They require only a few words. The girls have had plenty of time. Louise, stand and read your poem.”

Louise stood, holding her paper in both hands.

Lexie saw Mr. Wilkins nod. Didn’t he know the poems usually included nature?

“Thank you, Louise,” Mrs. Phipps said. “Electra, read your poem, please.”

Lexie stood. The paper trembled in her hand. She drew a breath to sound more confident.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Wilkins. “You may both take your seats. Mrs. Phipps, in your judgment, which of these girls wrote the letter?”

Mrs. Phipps looked as if she had been asked to choose among her own children. “Oh.” She twisted her hands together. “Poetry is very personal. Everyone hears the words differently, depending on their own life experiences.”

“I believe we have a question of style rather than one of art, which indeed can be subjective.” Impatience stole into Mr. Wilkins’s voice.

“Both girls have written well,” Miss Tompkins said, “particularly when asked to create without warning and under considerable stress.”