The Wonder of Charlie Anne Read online

  “The electric is coming,” Becky tells me after she drinks half her pop. “We are the only family on our road that’s getting the electric and the telephone at the same time.”

  Then she takes another gulp, and if I still prayed to the angels, I would pray for something very bad to happen to her.

  Evangeline notices, too, and then she pulls a small bag of lemon drops out of the basket and drops it in my hand, and I pass the candies out and I think about how life is like that sometimes. Sometimes you do get what you hope for.

  CHAPTER

  9

  This is how I make sure I am the first to see Old Mr. Jolly’s new wife.

  I run to my swing as many times a day as I can get away from Mirabel and her chores and her manners book. I start pumping my legs and look over at Belle and Anna May, who are resting under the butternut tree. I ask them if they are sick of hearing all about how a young lady must avoid a loud tone of voice, and also avoid laughing too much and too easily. They tell me they are.

  I get to pumping and swinging high enough to look straight into our loft and watch Big Pumpkin Face soak up the sun on a pile of hay, and when I get up just a little higher, I can poke my head out and see clear up our road, almost all the way to Evangeline’s store.

  And then wouldn’t you know it: late in the day when Mirabel is napping and Ivy is supposed to be picking string beans, I see Old Mr. Jolly’s truck coming down the road.

  I am so excited about seeing somebody new I can hardly breathe. Spending all day, every day, with only Ivy and Peter and Birdie and especially, especially Mirabel is like eating the same plate of peas, every day, all day, morning, noon and night.

  I try and keep my legs pumping high so I can get a good look at Old Mr. Jolly’s wife. Higher, higher, higher I push my legs. Higher, higher, higher my swing goes. At the split second Old Mr. Jolly’s truck is close enough for me to almost see in the front window (are there three people in there?) my swing starts going down. So quick as I can, I push my legs and then I am up, up, up again, looking past our barn, and I see Old Mr. Jolly pull into the driveway and get out and go around to open the door on the other side of the truck, and, hey, wait a minute, who’s that sitting in the middle?

  Then I am going down again, and I give my legs a good talking to and get myself back up again. A lady climbs out of the truck and she is wearing trousers, and they are red pepper red. I never saw a lady wearing trousers before, except maybe overalls sometimes for chores. I wonder if where she comes from in Mississippi all the ladies wear trousers.

  Of course, just as these thoughts are filling up my head, my swing is going down again, so I kick my feet as hard as I believe possible because I want to see who else is in the truck, and that is a mistake because just as I am getting myself higher than I’ve ever been before, I hear something crack and I feel something snap and I go sailing in the direction of Old Mr. Jolly’s new wife.

  * * *

  My knees grind into the gravel and little bits of stone cut the skin on my shoulder and my cheek as I roll over and over on the road, and finally when I come to a stop, I am lying with my arm underneath me.

  Old Mr. Jolly’s new wife is screaming, as if maybe she isn’t too used to seeing girls go flying off their swings and landing in the middle of the road.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Old Mr. Jolly is saying.

  I am all knocked out and I want to cry but I don’t know how. I also cannot tell them that I am not dead.

  Pretty soon after that, Old Mr. Jolly reaches under and picks me up and carries me into his house and sets me on the couch. I notice he has cut his hair and trimmed his beard. He is wearing a suit, which is surely something I’ve never seen him in before. The new Mrs. Jolly tucks a pillow under my head.

  Then there is a lot of hurrying around on the new Mrs. Jolly’s part and a lot of movement of my arm, and it does hurt something awful, and it seems I am still knocked out because I can’t quite remember how to talk. So I don’t.

  “At least it’s not broke,” I hear Old Mr. Jolly say.

  “You better go get her mother,” the new Mrs. Jolly says, and then I hear Old Mr. Jolly tell her to shush because there isn’t any mother, not anymore, and I am fading out while I am trying to tell him, yes, yes there is. She lives up on the hill by the river now.

  “Her father is building roads.”

  “Then who does she live with?”

  I hear Old Mr. Jolly groan, and I think in my half-asleep knocked-out way that I didn’t know anyone else thought Mirabel was as bad as I did. I hear the new Mrs. Jolly talking again, and I think her voice is as soft as the buttercups sound when they wake each other in the morning.

  Soon the new Mrs. Jolly is mopping my face and washing my arm and my knees with warm soapy water, and that’s when I start opening my eyes, just a little teeny sliver at a time. Then Old Mr. Jolly is propping me up and the new Mrs. Jolly is trying to get me to drink some water, and that’s when I see there is someone else in the room.

  CHAPTER

  10

  I open and shut my eyes a whole bunch of times because I never saw a colored girl up close before.

  She is washing my arm, the one that was stuck under me when I fell on top of it, and it is hurting something awful now, and I jump quite a bit when I see who it is who is washing me. I wonder if she is the maid.

  “Stop moving,” she tells me, sounding a little bossy.

  I try and move my arm, but it wants to stay put. I tell it that if maybe it moves a little, it will not hurt so bad, and if it wants to get back to swinging, it better start moving when I tell it. It pretends it cannot hear me.

  While I am talking to my arm, the girl is watching me. She looks about my age, and she has little braids that stick out every which way all over her head, and I am wondering how she gets them to do that. She is wearing the same red pepper red trousers as the new Mrs. Jolly, and there is not a single patch or rip in them and not even a stain from picking strawberries or hunting for Minnie, Olympia, and Bea. I remember the chore dress I am wearing and I tell my arm to move a little so I can cover up the new rips from the brier patch. My arm doesn’t listen and I have to watch the girl notice all the holes.

  When she catches me looking at her, she looks right back at me without even a blink. I make a face when she gets to my elbow because it is hurting so bad, and she asks me what I am crying for.

  “I am not crying,” I say, moving a little, and I knock the dishpan of bloody water over on the floor. Old Mr. Jolly gets towels and mops everything up, and the new Mrs. Jolly asks him to go get more water from the well, and he comes back with another pailful so we can start all over.

  “I am Rosalyn,” says the new Mrs. Jolly. “This is Phoebe.”

  The girl doesn’t look up. She keeps wiping my arm, and it hurts so bad I have to clamp my teeth together so I don’t cry.

  Becky Ellis had a maid once. Her father brought a colored man and his wife up from South Carolina to help on the farm, but they left before the first snow and Mrs. Ellis told us all at church that our town is too backwater for even a colored family.

  While I am thinking on this, the new Mrs. Jolly starts in on my feet. I jump, but she is ready for me this time and is holding the dishpan tight. I want her to stop. My face is burning red that she is washing my feet, because I have not washed them in three days. I don’t want the colored girl to look at them, either. I try and move them out of the way, but the new Mrs. Jolly is holding on.

  I wish I had Becky Ellis’s white-as-china feet right about now, I am thinking, and my eyes start filling up when I remember Mama telling me I should not be wanting what other people have. I better quit my bellyaching over what I don’t have and be proud of who I am.

  Now I squeeze my eyes real tight because I don’t want the colored girl to see me crying, and I try and be proud of my feet. I am thinking about my feet so hard that when I hear singing, I think it is my mama trying to make me feel better.

  It is not. It is the new Mrs. Jolly. S
he is singing so soft I am sure now it is the same sound I hear the buttercups use to wake each other up in the morning.

  Then the girl opens her mouth and sings:

  Farther along

  We’ll know all about it,

  Farther along

  We’ll understand why.

  Cheer up, my sister,

  Live in the sunshine,

  We’ll understand it

  All by and by.

  I never did hear an angel sing before but now I do. The girl sings higher than the new Mrs. Jolly and brighter and it’s like a bell ringing and she goes on and on, louder and louder, and before I know it my heart is flying up, up, up where Mama is and my soul splits in two and I do not know if I can get myself back together again. I would like to pinch myself to see if I have died and gone straight to be with Mama, but I cannot move my arm. Even Mr. Jolly is amazed. He has to sit down, it is so beautiful.

  I can’t stop looking at the girl. I watch her hard to see if she is real or not. Then she sings some more and she rubs my arm at the same time and she forgets what she is doing and rubs too hard and it hurts and I make up my mind that she is no angel. She only sings like one.

  The new Mrs. Jolly dips the cloth in the water again and then uses it to get the little stones out of the cracks that the road left in my cheek. It hurts something awful and I can’t help but yell out.

  “What are you doing, flying in your swing so high like that?”

  “I wanted to see what you looked like,” I whisper. I don’t tell her that I wanted to see her first, even before Ivy and Peter and Birdie.

  “You were hoping to get a peek at me, were you?” She laughs and looks over at Old Mr. Jolly. “Was I what you expected?”

  I look at her face. Her hair is the color of oak leaves in the fall, and it is not all pinned up like the other ladies wear or bobbed short like Becky Ellis cut her hair to look like in the movie magazines. It goes all over the place in more curls than you could ever count, and I believe a hummingbird would summersault, it would be so happy to get inside there.

  “Maybe if you were wearing trousers, your knees wouldn’t look like shredded cheese,” the new Mrs. Jolly whispers.

  I never thought about a girl wearing trousers before, and then the girl says that maybe I should have a red pair to match all my cuts, and she giggles. Then she asks me if I know that Old Mr. Jolly is going to build her a rope swing that will be twenty feet high and it will start in the hayloft and swing out all the way to the road and do I want to come and try it with her and I tell her I am not sure if Mirabel will let me play with a colored girl or not.

  Things get suddenly quiet. I think maybe that was the wrong thing to say and I wish my mama were here telling me what I should do now because the new Mrs. Jolly is reaching for the girl’s shoulder and squeezing it and Old Mr. Jolly is clearing his throat a few times.

  I am not sure if I should say I’m sorry, so I try and think about something different. I wonder about Old Mr. Jolly and about the new Mrs. Jolly and about why she likes him and about how can he possibly take care of a new wife when he can’t even take care of a cow.

  I wonder if she likes this house. I wonder if someone who wears red pepper red trousers would like a plain-as-potatoes house like this. You can tell Old Mr. Jolly scrubbed everything before he went to get her. But no matter how hard you wash, you can’t hide chipped tables and chairs and how even the sofa is all worn out, and you can never get the tired old roses on the wallpaper to bloom again.

  Then Old Mr. Jolly says that since I am sitting up now he is going out to check on the animals, see if the Thatcher boy did a good job or not, and before he gets out the door, I tell him the Thatcher boy did not. He did not do a good job with Belle. And how could he? He is a snake, and once a snake always a snake, and how can Old Mr. Jolly not know that? I tell him how Belle got all tangled up in the brier patch and how Old Mr. Jolly should be keeping better care of her than that. “I told Papa that Belle would come to no good over here.”

  “Well,” says Old Mr. Jolly. His ears are getting all red in front of the new Mrs. Jolly.

  “You better take better care of your new wife than you do of Belle,” I say, looking at the new Mrs. Jolly.

  For some reason, everyone thinks this is pretty funny. First the new Mrs. Jolly bursts out laughing, then Old Mr. Jolly starts in, and finally, Phoebe, which makes me kind of mad to have her laughing at me. Then Old Mr. Jolly says he better go outside and have a look at Belle. I don’t tell him she is back with Anna May.

  The new Mrs. Jolly brings over a plate of doughnuts. I haven’t had any since my mama used to fry them for Sunday breakfast. These are filled with nutmeg and rolled in cinnamon sugar. We haven’t had fancy spices like this in a long time. I eat three.

  Then Old Mr. Jolly comes back in the house and says, “Charlie Anne, why is my cow in your field?”

  I look up at him and tell him that sometimes cows need their mamas, even when they are looking all grown-up. I know he is about to tell me that children should have more sense than to take someone else’s cow home with them, but the new Mrs. Jolly puts her arm on Old Mr. Jolly’s shoulder and whispers that she and Phoebe don’t like milk much anyway and maybe it would be all right for just a little while if the cow stayed with me, and suddenly I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am going to love the new Mrs. Jolly.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Right away, as soon as my belly is full of cinnamon-nutmeg doughnuts and I can move my arm and get my body up off Old Mr. Jolly’s worn-out sofa, I have to go tell Mama all about Rosalyn and Phoebe.

  You would be amazed, I tell her. I sit down carefully, trying not to let any little bits of grass get in my cuts. I ask her if she could hear them singing, and she tells me she could. She asks me how my cuts are and I tell her they are pretty bad.

  Mama and I look out at the river together. It is fast-moving, and every so often we see a fish jump. I lie back and rest next to Mama and I tell her Rosalyn’s voice is soft like the buttercups, and about her trousers. Did you ever see a lady wearing trousers? I ask. Mama tells me no, not like those, but trousers make a lot of sense when you think about it.

  And then I get around to Phoebe. I’m not sure how to say it, but since it is Mama, I can just blurt it out. Phoebe is colored, I say.

  I know, says Mama softly.

  She sings like the angels taught her how to do it, I tell her.

  I know, I heard her, too, says Mama.

  Mama sighs, then I sigh. Mama says, Phoebe lost her mama, too.

  How do you know that?

  I just know. Maybe you can ask her about it when you see her again.

  Maybe. She’s a little bossy, though.

  Mama laughs softly. Sometimes people who’ve lost someone can be a little bossy.

  We are both quiet, watching the river. I miss Papa, I tell her, and she tells me she misses him, too. Then I snuggle closer to Mama. I am so happy just to be with her.

  Then I hear Mama sigh that happy sigh you sigh when the sky is blue and the grass is getting long and the birds are singing and everything is starting to go a little right in the world again and I forget all about how my knees and my arm hurt and then I sigh right along with her.

  Old Mr. Jolly is going to build her a swing, I tell Mama.

  Is that so?

  Mmmmmm, I say, but it better not go over the brier patch, and while he’s at it, I wonder if he’ll fix mine? Then I feel my eyes get a little heavy and my heart feel a little full and I start feeling all soft and snuggled up to Mama, with the sun shining down all over me, and Mama says, You’re a wonder, Charlie Anne, and I smile deep inside. Then I tell myself it would be good to take just a little nap. Mirabel won’t even know.

  Peter is sitting on the think-about-it chair by the wood box on the porch, and when I ask him “How come?” he gives me a mad look, and when I ask him “How come?” again, he says Mirabel made him because he stomped on her hatbox.

  “How come?” I a
sk again, and this time he tells me he stomped on her hatbox because she made him hang out the towels and then go pick beet greens because she couldn’t find me.

  “I was supposed to be fixing the fence. I was measuring new posts,” he says. “Where were you for so long, anyway?”

  I make a mad-as-a-yellow-jacket face at him. Just because there are towels to hang or beet greens to pick, why does it have to be my job? Also, he doesn’t see my cut-up arm or my knees, so I show him, and then I go inside.

  Ivy is sitting at the table with a pile of beet greens she is picking over.

  “That’s not enough for dinner,” I tell her, and she jumps a little when she hears me.

  “Mirabel,” she yells. “Charlie Aaaa-aaaanne is back.”

  Then she laughs and tells me I’m going to get the what-for because I’ve been gone so long.

  Mirabel is rolling biscuits. Her eyes burn the floor under my feet.

  “I’ve been calling you all afternoon, Charlie Anne. Where have you been?” Her face is red and puffy from the heat.

  Mirabel cuts the biscuits with a jelly jar. No one’s said anything about my knees. I sit in the rocking chair and start rocking. Birdie comes over and stands beside me, sticking out her hand.

  “Want a lick?”

  I look at the lemon drop that is now thin enough to see through.

  “No, Birdie. This is not the time for lemon drops.” Then she tries to climb on my lap.

  “Birdie, can’t you see I’m too sore?” I point to my knees.

  “I don’t want to be rocked. I just want to come over. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What happened to you?” asks Mirabel. She reaches for the jug of vinegar and pours some on a cloth and then rubs my knees. “Here, hold it there,” she says, and then I start whimpering from the sting of all that vinegar.