The Wonder of Charlie Anne Read online

  Mirabel leaves me as soon as the water cools enough so I will not get burned, and she covers the fire with dirt, and then I have to get all the clothes hung up and the water from the buckets dumped out.

  The clothesline is all fed up that I am making it so heavy with all these clothes on such a hot day, and Minnie and Olympia and Bea are pecking in the dirt around my feet, and I am thinking this is one of the worst days of my life, and that’s when I hear Mama calling me, telling me that maybe I might want to come up and visit for a while.

  I don’t tell Mirabel where I am going. I just start running. When I pass by Ivy, she is sitting in the dirt, looking at all the peas she still has to pick.

  “Wait,” she yells.

  I do not wait.

  * * *

  When I get to the river, I am out of breath. I go up and sit by Mama and rest for a minute, and then I tell her about my awful day, and she tells me she already knows about it all, but I can tell her some more if it will make me feel better. So I tell her about how I did not hug Papa or anything and now he is going to be gone for a very long time. She says it is all right. She knows Papa understands.

  I tell her I think Mirabel has her eyes on Papa in a bad way, and that makes Mama giggle. You don’t need to worry about that, Mama tells me. Then she tells me not to be too sad about all the other things that happened today because good things are right around the corner. I ask her what they are and she tells me she cannot say. They are secrets.

  I like secrets, I tell her.

  Me too, she says.

  We sit for a long time just watching the river. It is swirling and churning and I think it is still terribly angry and in an awful hurry to rush away from here.

  When I get home, Mirabel is sitting at the table, writing. I walk up close and try and read the letters, but they are mostly all jumbled up, except I know what the word Eleanor looks like.

  “It’s for the best” is all she says, and she dips her pen in the ink and starts writing again.

  “Papa said not Aunt Eleanor.” I give Mirabel my most terrible mad look.

  “Have you no manners at all?” asks Mirabel, reaching in her pocket for the book that is hidden there.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I hear Belle bellowing in Old Mr. Jolly’s field when I am weeding in the cucumber patch. I think she is calling to her mama, Anna May, and I can tell Anna May thinks so, too, because she looks up from the clover she is munching and goes and haves herself a look.

  Then I go have myself a look. I am wondering where Old Mr. Jolly is and why he isn’t doing something about Belle.

  No wonder Belle is yelling her head off! She is standing in the brier patch all tangled up. I feel ashamed of Old Mr. Jolly, that he is not taking very good care of Belle. He let his fence get so bad without fixing it, and now Belle has wandered down to the brier patch alone and gotten herself all stuck. She is bellowing. I told Papa that Belle would come to no good living with Old Mr. Jolly.

  Anna May starts mooing and I know she is telling Belle, what the dickens are you doing in that brier patch? I know this because I have listened to Anna May for so long that I can tell what she is saying, even when I don’t put my ear to her heart. She’s that kind of cow. She tells things like they are. If she is hungry, she tells you, what are you taking so long for? If she does not want to be milked, she kicks the bucket. If she is clear worn out from all the milk she has been making, she’ll go have herself a good nap under the butternut tree, and she won’t get up for nobody. When you find her and yell, “What are you doing there under that butternut tree?” she will tell you she is taking a nap, whatever does it look like? Anna May is that kind of cow.

  Now Anna May is bellowing and Belle is bawling. I wonder where Old Mr. Jolly is, why he isn’t doing something about Belle being stuck in the brier patch.

  “Oh, Belle,” I say, hurrying across the road and over the fence that runs on Old Mr. Jolly’s side of the road.

  I can tell even before I get to Belle that it is worse than I was thinking. Briers tangle around her legs, and there is blood, and deerflies are buzzing all over the hurting places. As soon as I get up to her, she stomps around and she gets herself even more tangled, and then a dozen flies start pestering me.

  A cow caught in a brier patch is one of the saddest things you ever will see. Belle’s soft honey-brown legs are wrapped up in thorns, and somehow she has gotten one of the big branches stuck on her back and another on her chest. My heart is sobbing, just looking at her.

  Anna May waits for me to tell her how Belle got stuck in that brier patch. I’m still not sure yet, but I know it is all Old Mr. Jolly’s fault.

  Papa says a cow needs a big bell. Anna May has one. We hear her when she walks around, and it is easy to find her on those days she decides she wants to eat clover for a little longer and not come down to the barn. Old Mr. Jolly never bothered with a bell, so I have nothing to hold on to. I yell up at the house to see where he is, but even the windows are shut up tight. “Where is he?” I ask Belle. She is too upset to have a conversation about Old Mr. Jolly.

  I grab around her neck and try to pull her because now while I’ve been standing here, she has got her head all tangled up in the briers, too. “You have no sense,” I tell her. She starts bawling her head off after that, and I tell her I am sorry for saying that, but when you think about it, you know I am right.

  I go behind her then and give her a big push and get briers caught around my hand, and I start bleeding something awful. Then I start jumping around and sucking on my fingers while Belle stands snorting mad that I’m not helping her quicker. I push her again and she takes a baby step forward, then stops and starts bawling like a baby. Then Anna May calls over, what is taking so long?

  “You better get yourself out of there before I count ten,” I tell Belle. I give her my most terrible mad look. She watches me for a moment, then Anna May yells that she better start moving, and I give her another push. I push again and start thinking about how maybe I should go hunt for a branch to give Belle a you-know-what on the backside, but then Belle looks over at me like she knows what I am thinking, and I feel ashamed of myself for even thinking about a you-know-what, and so I walk around and gaze right into her soft molasses eyes.

  “Look, Belle. Some things you just have to do yourself. That’s what Mama tells me. Now, I can help you a little bit, get some of these briers off you if you’ll stand still, but you have to do the rest yourself. I can give you a little push, but you have to get yourself out of this brier patch. Do you understand me?”

  Belle shakes her head and I know she is telling me her legs are hurting and I need to hurry up. So I reach up and pat her neck and start pulling the big brier off her back and while I am doing this I tell her how pretty she is this morning and when I am done telling her that I move over and start pulling the brier off her chest and that’s when I tell her it’s almost time for her to think about that nice cool spot over by the stone wall where she likes to lie down right in the middle of the buttercups and have herself a nap. Then I am so careful pulling the briers off her front legs and then her back legs, but I still get myself stuck pretty bad.

  Anna May bawls again and Belle decides enough is enough. She runs like a nervous Nellie out of that brier patch, and before I can even get myself untangled, she is at the barn. I run after her, and when I get to her, I am ready to give her my stay-out-of-the-brier-patch lecture, but I think she already knows that on her own.

  I let her stand there for a minute and go find out what’s the matter with Old Mr. Jolly and how come he’s taking such bad care of Belle.

  He is not in the barn or around the chicken coop, and then I go knock pretty loud on his front door, and when no one comes, I go around to the back door and kick it for a while. I look in the windows and see all his dishes are washed and put on the rack to dry, and the cookstove is polished and there is a new cloth on the table, and come to think of it, even his windows are washed.

  “Humph,�
�� I tell Belle when I catch up to her by the stone wall. “What do you think about that?” She doesn’t say much, so I tell her why doesn’t she come home with me since it looks like Old Mr. Jolly doesn’t know two bits about taking care of cows.

  Anna May bellows as soon as she hears us coming across the road. Belle hurries over to her and nestles up to her, happy as a fiddle. Anna May is making moon eyes at Belle, and licking her. I press my face against Belle, smelling her soft neck. She is very happy. “Sometimes you just need your mama,” I tell her.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Olympia, Minnie and Bea forget all about how they are chickens and how they are supposed to be laying eggs, and now we have nothing to trade for the few groceries that Mirabel wants to buy at Evangeline’s store.

  So Mirabel comes up with another idea. “It will be like we’re trading eggs, only you can go to Evangeline’s and say you’ll sweep the floors if she will give us some flour and sugar, and maybe some coffee, on credit.” Mirabel is telling me this while she is frying up the last of the salt pork.

  We have not heard from Papa, and the salt pork and one old ham butt is all that’s left in the smokehouse. Mirabel has a big frown mostly all the time.

  “Is that all you got?” she says when she notices the bucket of strawberries I put on the table. I have been berrying in the hot morning sun, trying to keep away from yellow jackets.

  “That’s all there were.” Birdie starts tugging on my dress as soon as Mirabel says Evangeline’s because she likes the lemon drops so much.

  “Are you sure that’s all there were?” Mirabel is checking my face for lying.

  “I’m not Ivy,” I say. “That’s all there were.”

  I sit down on the chair and look at my feet, no shoes all summer. I don’t want to go to Evangeline’s and ask for credit. “Papa doesn’t do that,” I tell Mirabel.

  “Don’t Papa me,” she says. “We haven’t heard from him in weeks, and we need credit until we hear from Eleanor.”

  I tell Mirabel we do not need Aunt Eleanor. Mirabel tells me I am too big for my britches. I tell her I am not wearing britches, I am wearing a dress. Then I scoot Birdie out the door and tell Peter and Ivy we have to all go to Evangeline’s.

  As we are hurrying down the driveway, Olympia, Minnie and Bea are sunning themselves on the manure pile. I tell them they better stop lazing around and lay some eggs or they will get the what-for as soon as I get home.

  Evangeline is looking like she is not used to people asking her for credit. But I know folks are asking her all the time now that half the men in our town are working on roads for President Roosevelt. It is hard now for everybody.

  She is rubbing her forehead. We are standing beside big bags of flour that nobody bought yet. That can’t be good: to have flour that nobody wants. I look at the lemon drops in the candy case. When you have flour you can’t sell, you can’t be giving away lemon drops, either.

  “I don’t know about credit,” Evangeline says, coming around closer to us. “Where’s Mirabel?”

  “Home,” I tell her. “Home because she hasn’t had a minute off her feet all day. That’s what she told us to say.” Ivy walks off to check where the movie magazines are and Birdie is in her far-off place, looking at the lemon drops.

  “I would like to help you children, really I would, but it’s getting really hard for me now, too.”

  “But we’re really good sweepers,” I tell her. “And our papa promised to send money soon. Mirabel says we’ll pay you as soon as we hear from Papa.”

  While Evangeline goes through her head thinking what she should do, Becky Ellis and her mother walk in, and Birdie takes one look at them and runs over to hide behind me. The Ellis family can do that to a person.

  Becky sticks her nose straight in the air when she sees me and I hope it gets stuck way up there. Then she gives her nose a pinch, like something in the store smells really bad, probably me.

  I look Becky in the face and let all those times Papa told us about kindness and compassion and treating others the way you want to be treated rush right out the window, and I stick my tongue out at her. It feels almost as fine as having a cool sweet lemon drop in my mouth.

  That’s when Evangeline brings up the subject of our credit again, and now I wish she would forget the whole thing.

  “What do you need again?” asks Evangeline.

  “Lemon drops,” whispers Birdie, tugging on my arm.

  “Flour,” I say, my voice all balled up inside of me. “And sugar and maybe some coffee … and a lemon drop for Birdie.”

  Then Evangeline sighs and turns and whispers to Mrs. Ellis that she can’t very well let Sylvie’s children go hungry—poor things—and then she tells me to go get the brooms in the back closet and get to work.

  Mrs. Ellis is looking at our bare feet. Maybe I should not have run through so many mud puddles on the way here. I want to pull Becky’s tie-up shoes and her stockings right off her feet. Then I notice Birdie’s feet. She jumped in every single puddle, and her feet, as tiny and perfect as a sparrow’s, are dirtier than mine. I take her hand and pull her away from those Ellis eyes and go get the brooms.

  Becky’s mama keeps writing letters to very important people telling them we still don’t have a teacher way up here. Times are hard, the very important people keep telling her. “My daughter can’t grow up without a proper education,” she tells us all, and after she says this about a dozen Sundays in a row while standing up in her fancy box pew in front of everybody at church, you can tell people are surely kind of embarrassed and shameful over our situation, but knowing at the same time that most of the men are gone now and how the rest of us need to work together because of how bad things are getting, we tell ourselves that there will be time for school when times are better.

  Our schoolhouse has been all boarded up for more than a year now, ever since Miss Moran told us she was going as far away from our town as she could get. Maybe California, is the last thing she said before she hurried away. I was so happy she left I did cartwheels all the way to the upper field, and Anna May wanted to know why I wasn’t walking on my feet, the way the Lord intended.

  My papa said things are no better in California. It’s bad everywhere. We’re luckier than most, way up here, because we all have a cow in the field and chickens in the coop, and apples on the trees and peas and corn and potatoes in the garden. He stood up in church one Sunday before he left and faced us all. “There’s a colored lady teaching school four towns over, that’s what I’ve heard. If we’re lucky, maybe she can help us find someone who would come out here soon as the hay is in and teach the children through the winter.”

  Mrs. Ellis jumped up so fast you would have thought she was sitting on something. “You are all backwater people without a wit of sense. That’s why no one decent wants to come teach us. And we certainly aren’t going to improve our situation by having a colored teacher in our town. I’m ready to send my girl to Boston, where they know how to educate children properly.” She looked at Becky, with her hair all curled and her shoes all shining, and Becky grinned.

  Papa said under his breath that might not be a bad idea.

  I miss my papa very much.

  I give Peter a broom and tell him to sweep the porch on Evangeline’s store, and I give Ivy a broom and tell her to sweep in the front. She takes one look at it and tells me she isn’t sweeping up this dirty old floor, and she stomps off and goes over by the table where sometimes Evangeline keeps Movie Mirror magazines. But there are none. I see her looking at her dress and at the holes that run through it and then over at Becky, who is wearing a dress so new it still has a pin sparkling near the hem that her mama must have forgot. I hope Becky gets pricked pretty bad. Serves her right when the rest of us are wearing the same handing-me-down-forevers we always get.

  I take Birdie’s hand and we go sweep over by the woodstove that heats the store in winter, and Birdie keeps asking me if I think we’ll get some lemon drops. I tell her sometimes yo
u get things you wish for. You really do. Life is like that sometimes.

  I sweep all along the wooden floor and beneath the shelves that hold flour and laundry soap and bluing rinse. There are kerosene lanterns and dustpans hanging on big hooks, and china dishes stacked on the table beside cups and bowls, and fifty-pound bags of sugar beside a barrel of sauerkraut and a barrel of pickles.

  Mrs. Ellis is looking over dress fabric when Zella Polanski walks in. She lives up the road and must have seen Mrs. Ellis out walking. Then Mrs. Reilly comes. They are just like Minnie and Olympia and Bea. When one comes, they all come running. Now all they need is a manure pile.

  They stand by the fabric, whispering, and pretty soon Evangeline walks over to talk to them all.

  “Have you heard?”

  “What?” asks Mrs. Ellis.

  “They were to be married this morning. He went to the train station to pick her up and then they were to be married, all without barely knowing each other. She’s from Mississippi, you know.”

  “What would anyone want to come way up here for?” says Zella.

  “Especially to marry that man,” says Mrs. Ellis, and I do not even have to hear another word to know who it is they are talking about.

  “Oh, come now, ladies,” says Evangeline. “He’s been without a wife for so many years; surely he deserves a little happiness.”

  “I don’t know who would want him, though,” says Mrs. Reilly. “I bet he hasn’t cut his hair in six months.”

  “Or shaved,” laughs Zella.

  I stand there sweeping, wondering who would want Old Mr. Jolly when he can’t even take care of a cow.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” says Evangeline. She starts packing up our flour and sugar and a little coffee. Birdie is mooning over the lemon drops so bad I think her face is going to fall off.

  Mrs. Ellis pulls a grape pop from the icebox, opens it on the bottle opener that’s nailed to the wall and hands the bottle to Becky. We all just about faint from looking at the fizzing purple as Becky holds the bottle up to the sun. Then she smiles over at us, puts it up to her mouth and takes a huge gulp.