The Wonder of Charlie Anne (15 page)

I watch to make sure Anna May and Belle are watching me and they are. They are looking up and asking what the dickens I am doing climbing the ladder to the hayloft. I tell them not to worry. I wonder if Phoebe can see my new shoes. I tap a soft little shuffle, I am so happy. Then she soars into the barn and lands on her landing platform and hands the rope up to me.

“Do you remember how to do it?”

“Yes, Phoebe,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I know how to swing.” Then I jump onto the seat, and I am whooping because suddenly I am more than just Charlie Anne. I am Charlie Anne who can fly.

Rosalyn comes out and tells us that she has some raspberry heart sugar cookies for us.

“Where’s your yellow trousers?” she asks as soon as we get up on the porch.

“Mirabel won’t let me wear them,” I say between one bite and the next. “She says they are for boys.”

I see Rosalyn get that shadow over her face again. “Is that so?” she says, munching her cookie. Then she stands up, goes into her parlor, and comes back with a book from the bookshelf. She hands me another cookie. “I brought this book from Mississippi. I thought we might try a page or two.”

My breathing stops. Just the cover, with the words
First Reader
on it, sends my memory flying back to how it used to be with Miss Moran and the terrible place under her desk she made me go when I switched up my words.

“Saw
is not the same thing as
was.
I don’t see why you keep mixing things up,” she’d say. There were spiders and dead flies under there and Becky Ellis would laugh.

“No,” I say to Rosalyn, standing up. “I don’t like that book very much.”

Both she and Phoebe are looking confused. “Thank you for the cookies,” I mumble, and I hurry out, because even mending is better than that book.

I go look some more for Big Pumpkin Face. I look everywhere. All around the grain bins and the apple barrels and the chicken coop, up in the loft (three times) and down by the pigpen. I call to her over and over and over.

I stop and give Minnie and Olympia and Bea a good lookover to make sure they don’t know where she is hiding. Olympia wants a handful of corn, but I tell her she’s not getting any on account of her being such a tight-fisted old hen. That’s what Papa used to say.

I am thinking about Papa when Big Pumpkin Face meows from the hayloft. “What are you doing up there?” I say, hurrying up the ladder and not paying a bit of attention to Olympia, who is making mad looks at my back.

“Here, kitty. Here, kitty,” I say to the dark corners, and then very big purrs come out from deep inside a stack of hay. I kneel down and look into the dark tunnel between bales, and smell a lot of hay all at once. It is the best smell in the world, just like dried-out sunshine. I sniff lots of times as I’m trying to get my eyes to see better in the dark.

I lift the bales out of the way, and when I do, one of
them is singing happy news. I pull the next hay bale with soft hands, and the next ones I just push a little out of the way. And there she is! Right in front of me is my Big Pumpkin Face, looking all proud, because nestled up to her are three new kittens.

I scream a very big whoop. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be a mama? I would have made you a nice basket.” I sit back on my heels and watch. “I thought you were eating too much, you big bugbear.” I scratch her a little behind her ear, but she pushes closer to her babies, so I stop. I reach over and rub a little black kitten, but Big Pumpkin Face mews that I better knock it off right now, so I stop and sit back on my heels. I don’t try and pick up the kittens, even though I want to more than just about anything.

Big Pumpkin Face is singing happy mews to them and I don’t want her to stop, so I just watch them and remember how I used to like to climb up on my mama’s bed, right between her and Papa, when I had the middle-night scares. Every so often, Big Pumpkin Face licks one of the babies. I think she looks happy to be a mama. My mama used to look as happy as Big Pumpkin Face.

The sun is shining through the window of the barn and splashing all over me and the happy new family, and as I sit on my heels and watch them, I hear Mirabel calling me and yelling that they are going to walk to
Evangeline’s and where am I, and I think, who wants to go to the store when you can stay and watch new kittens. The sun warms my skin. It has been a long hard summer without Papa. I curl up on the hay, watching the mama cat and her kittens. I feel myself falling asleep, and I hear Mama telling me that everything always looks better after a nap.

You can tell Rosalyn is worried she did something wrong, because I wake up to Phoebe calling for me and carrying a big basket of something that smells so warm and buttery that Big Pumpkin Face and I can smell it way up in the loft.

“What’s in there?” I want to know.

“It’s for you. Can I come up?”

Well. Phoebe is bringing two tiny pies, each with a crust that smells like butter, and each has a mountain of glistening strawberries on top. I take a bite and can’t believe how happy my tongue is. Rosalyn knows how to cook. She has the same things as Mirabel, but she turns a pile of strawberries into strawberry tarts and Mirabel makes strawberry fool.

Phoebe sees the kittens and gives a little happy yelp.

“Big Pumpkin Face, this is Phoebe. Phoebe, this is Big Pumpkin Face and all her new kittens.”

Phoebe says lots of things like Oh, my! and How cute! and You are so lucky, Charlie Anne, and then she picks up the little orange one that looks just like Big Pumpkin Face and rubs it behind the ears. I am surprised Big Pumpkin Face lets her, but she does.

We sit admiring the kittens and I eat both strawberry tarts and my belly is sticking out.

“Rosalyn wants to know how come you got so upset and how come you don’t want to read that book?”

I pack the little tart plates back in the basket and wipe my hands on the bottom of my dress. I tell the bad thoughts to go away, that I don’t want to be thinking about them right now, that I don’t want to remember the underneath of Miss Moran’s desk, or the even worse places.

“The words jumble up when I read.”

“Like what?”

“Like
bed
and
dad.
It looks like the same thing.”

“Yes,” says Phoebe, “they are close,” and while she says this, I am thinking about Miss Moran.

“How come you don’t know the words
they, what, where, does?”
Miss Moran is saying. I am standing for my reading drill and everyone is watching. Mama has already gone straight to heaven and I am very lonely. I look out the window.

“Stand up straight, Charlotte Anne,” Miss Moran is saying. “Self-composure and self-confidence are most important. Straighten that back. All right, now read.”

I look at the book I am holding,
First Reader
, where the letters are jumping like corn popping. Miss Moran sighs, again and again and again.

“I am losing patience with your lack of attention, Charlotte Anne.”

I squint my eyes and stumble on the words. Miss Moran stops me. “How come you don’t know this when we practice every day? Are you just fooling with me, Charlotte Anne?”

“No, ma’am, I am not.” I see the blackboard giving me comforting looks.

“Well, I think you are fooling me,” Miss Moran says, walking closer. “I think you are trying to make a joke of my class to get a little attention. Otherwise, why would your sister be so much better at reading than you? She’s not that much older. Now you just go stand in that trash bucket over there until you remember what we’ve been practicing every day for the last week.”

Even Ivy is looking all sorry for me as I walk over and step into the trash bucket. But no one is sorry as me when we have our spelling bees.

“Spell
bad.
We do not like bad little girls.”

I have no stomach anymore. It has already fallen all the way down to my feet. I am hot, and sweat is pouring down my face, and sweat is making my back itch, but I’m afraid to scratch it because Miss Moran will get mad. I can’t remember how to spell
bad.
I can’t remember if it has ds or bs. I can’t remember what the first letter is, and I can’t remember what the last letter is, and I can’t remember what is in the middle.

b
s and
d
s look the same to me. I think they do a
little dance, and one day they are one way and another day they are a different way. I tell them to stop fooling with me, but the
b
s and
d
s, they just don’t listen.

Miss Moran is already plenty mad. “Spell
bad
, Charlotte Anne.”

I take a gulp of air. Thomas is looking all sad for me. Even then, his legs were so long he couldn’t keep them under the desk.

I take a deep breath and feel tears coming.
“D-a-d.”

Miss Moran throws her cleaning rag at me. All she has to do is point outside. I already know what she means.

I pick up my lunch pail and go outside to the woodshed so I can think about things. I sit on a pile of oak logs the rest of the day, and while I am there, it starts to snow.

“Was it really like that?” Phoebe wants to know. “Was it really that bad?”

“Yes, it was.”

We look at Big Pumpkin Face and are quiet.

Then Phoebe sits back on her heels. “You have to sweep out all the bad memories inside of you and start over again,” she says. “That’s what Rosalyn says.”

“Bosh.”

“Bosh?”

“Bosh.”

I scratch Big Pumpkin Face right behind the ears, just like she likes. She starts purring.

“I have lots of bad memories, too,” whispers Phoebe.

“My mama was tall, taller even than Rosalyn,” Phoebe says as we both watch Big Pumpkin Face get up for a minute and stretch and then lie right back down next to her kittens.

“That is why you are tall,” I say.

“Yes,” says Phoebe, settling back against a bale of hay. “Now stop interrupting. It’s a long story, and I don’t like to stop when I get going.”

“Okay.” I settle back against a hay bale, too. My stomach is very uncomfortable from being so full of strawberry tarts. I lie down on my side.

“Well, my mama and Rosalyn lived together when they were little and they were best friends, and when they grew up, they wanted to go to college together, but my mama couldn’t go to Rosalyn’s school because she was colored.”

Phoebe reaches over and pats one of the kittens and Big Pumpkin Face lets her.

“So my mama worked hard and saved her money and went to a different school, one for colored girls who wanted to be teachers.

“She and Rosalyn stayed friends and wrote to each
other and planned how one day they would open a school where everyone could sit side by side, no matter what color your skin was.”

The sun is getting really warm, and it is beating through the window and making me a little sleepy again. Plus Phoebe’s voice is so gentle and soft, like breathing. I have to force my eyes to stay open.

“When Rosalyn finished school and came back home, my mama already had me by this time, and during the years when I was little, they planned the school they would open someday. And then they did, right in an old school way out in the woods that no one used anymore, and Rosalyn took out a notice in the paper announcing the school and that all were welcome, and on the day we started, no white children came.”