The Wonder of Charlie Anne (26 page)

“This is how you milk a cow,” I am telling Phoebe. “You have to stay away from her kicking foot, though.”

We do this every morning together, now that March has come and the sun is trying to turn everything to spring. Phoebe is just terrible at milking Anna May. She can never get the milk started. When she gets a little trickle, she squirts in all the wrong directions, and now Little Peach Fuzz knows to come running and wait for all of Phoebe’s mistakes.

“Well, will you look at that cow!” It’s that voice—that deep, deep voice—that I haven’t heard for a long, long time, and I don’t need to turn around to know who it is.

“Papa!” I screech, and then I am flying up into his arms, and there is my brother Thomas, rubbing his chin, asking for something to eat.

“Any of that vinegar pie left around here?” Papa wants to know, and then he asks me other things, like who is my new friend, and I say, “Papa, this is Phoebe,” and “Phoebe, this is Papa.” Then I hug him some more and I bury my face in his neck and smell the soap he uses for shaving, and after a very long time, he pulls out
a whole bag of lemon drops, and we hurry to the house because he wants to see Peter and everybody else. As we are all hugging and Birdie is jumping up in his arms, we make room for Phoebe, and then I am laughing out loud.

I have thought about this moment for a very long time, and I am glad it is just the way I wanted it to be.

Papa has a talk with Mr. Jolly. They decide we can keep Belle in our fields as long as I milk her twice a day and give Mr. Jolly half the milk.

“She’s his cow, Charlie Anne.”

“But we don’t even milk her yet,” I say, my cheeks puffed out with vinegar pie.

“Well, we’re going to have to turn her into a milk cow, get her to give us a calf. I never heard of anyone waiting this long.”

Another baby calf! My heart splits right there at the table, just like an old melon. But two seconds later I am thinking about new babies and mamas going straight to heaven and I am shaking my head.

“She’ll be fine, Charlie Anne. She’s fit as a fiddle. You’ve been taking fine care of her.”

I send a little prayer to the angels, just to be sure. I tell them thank you for watching over us even when we are mad about things. Prayers are powerful things.

I feel a little terrible that I haven’t been spending as much time with Mama. I have been reading so much and being with Phoebe and working on a new play for next Christmas, and I haven’t been going up to see her. So one day when the sun is out, I put on my new coat and new boots that Papa brought home and go up and find a warm spot where the sun is beating down, and it feels almost like spring.

Papa’s home, I tell her.

Mama smiles her warm happy smile that spreads all over me.
I know, Charlie Anne. He’s been out to see me.

I missed him so much.

I know
, she tells me, pulling me close.

I don’t want him to go away again.

Did you tell him that?

Yes. But he keeps saying there’s more than one way to keep a family together, and if it gets bad again, he may have to go, but he’ll try not to.

I lean back. Papa says Mirabel can stay, too, because we need her. I told him I don’t want her to be our new mama, and he said he doesn’t like her like that anyway.

This makes Mama laugh. Then she notices my boots.

I wiggle them out in front of me. I don’t have to put rags in to make them fit, I tell her.

I see
, says Mama.

After a while, I am so happy and warm being close to Mama and with the sun beating down that I start feeling a little sleepy. I’ve been reading, I tell her as I start closing my eyes.

Mmmmmm
, says Mama.
I’ve been listening.

Sometimes you really do get what you hope for, don’t you?

Mmmmmm
, says Mama, pulling me closer.
Sometimes you do.

With sincere gratitude, I thank my readers for their insight and encouragement: my parents, the Still River Writers, elementary and special-needs teacher (and fellow writer) Laurie Smith Murphy, and folk musicians Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, who also contributed their knowledge of traditional music and song.

Thank you also to my research help: retired elementary school teacher Beverly Pettine for introducing me to the Hornbine one-room schoolhouse, a living-history museum in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, where she teaches, for sharing primers used during the Great Depression, for reading the manuscript, and for also introducing me to Evelyn Rose Bois and Frances Magan Jones, who attended the school during the 1920s and 1930s. I thank these women for their humor and keen memories, and for sharing the trash-bucket, under-the-desk, and woodshed punishments (which went to the boys, not to them).

Thank you to Elizabeth Stevens Brown, 1879–1941, an African American woman and daughter of a coachman, who began teaching in a Swansea, Massachusetts, wooden schoolhouse in 1901 and who became a beloved principal in that town in 1932. Her students remember her writing the “Whatever you are, be noble” poem on her blackboard each morning.

I am indebted to Janette Huling, 4-H Dairy Club leader in Exeter, Rhode Island, for introducing me to her Holstein and Brown Swiss dairy cows and for answering all my questions. Although I spent many hours as a child around cows on family farms in Maine, I needed a refresher course.

I am thankful for Helen Ekin Starrett’s
The Charm of Fine Manners
, published in 1907. There is much in the book that Charlie Anne rebels against, but there is much that still shines. As Charlie Anne learns to read, she becomes able to evaluate information and ideas and can decide for herself what parts of a book to accept and believe and what parts to ignore.

I thank my agent, Elizabeth Harding, vice president of Curtis Brown Ltd., for her encouragement, and my editor, Michelle Frey, executive editor of Knopf Books for Young Readers, for her talent and for believing in me and in this novel.

Finally, I thank my husband for his encouragement and assistance throughout the many months of writing, and for reading
The Wonder of Charlie Anne
over and over again.