Authors: Diane Munier
Darnay Road
D
ARNAY
R
OAD
Diane Munier
The characters and events
portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living
or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2015 Diane
Munier
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Diane Munier
Cover design by BookStylings
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…best friends.
Part
1: 1963
Darnay
Road 1
We
live in the biggest house this side of Darnay Road. Every time after the
two-fifteen chugs through town the Mr. Softie truck comes and I get one quarter
and a dime out of the penny jar. I know it’s dumb to call it a penny jar when
it holds all kinds of silver money but that’s what we call it, the penny jar,
cause my granma is the one who started it in the depression. If you don’t know
what that is, it’s this long time ago when people didn’t have any money and
they were poor and put cardboard in their shoes. If they had shoes probably.
So
I run to the corner and wait for the truck and it always pulls up there and I
get a cherry bomb pop or a chocolate swirl cone. Abigail gets a banana pop or a
vanilla cone and we sit on my porch steps and lick, lick, lick. She always
talks too much and whatever she gets it melts onto her hand and one time it got
on her dress and she couldn’t play flashlight tag that night and I had to hide
without her and I got so scared when Disbro Peak found me hiding in our
favorite place, behind the washtubs by the back shed, I peed my underwears a
little and I took them off on the back porch and stuck them in between the pop
bottles so Granma wouldn’t know but then I forgot and she found them and said
Miss Georgia we do not take our undies off on the back porch mercy me.
I
go to the Catholic school and we’re almost out for summer vacation. Every day
when I get home I lay my schoolwork in a fan-shape on the kitchen table cause
every paper has a star and they are all colors. I like purple best until I see
the red. I like the gold ones too but mostly red is my favorite color and
cherry. I like cherry anything at all.
My
best friend Abigail likes yellow and banana. Every year her aunt makes her a
banana cake for her birthday but I always get cherry with cherry cream cheese
icing and my name in chopped up cherries. My name is Georgia and my initials
are GCG and that’s good because G is my favorite letter. My whole name is
Georgia Christine but Granma says there aren’t enough cherries at Moe’s store
to spell all that so she just puts Georgia. My last name is Green so don’t even
think about it.
We
are nearly out of school but we still have the parade and the school picnic and
it will be the best picnic there ever was. I am going to walk with Abigail May
and we are working on our banners. Each of us makes a banner to hold out of
cardboard and broom handles and crepe paper that always fades on our hands.
Mine is red and white and on it is a big picture of a cowboy roping a cow that
Granma let me cut out of Look magazine. And I cut out words Granma traced that
say, “Yipee-ki-yay School’s Out.”
Abigail
May’s is yellow and white and she has pictures of flowers on hers and it says,
“Have a Blooming Good Summer.”
I
have five whole dollars saved for the picnic. I’ve been saving all year.
Abigail May has three dollars and seventy-two cents so we are going to put that
money together and divide it right down the middle. Right down it. We are going
to ride the tilt-a-whirl twice, the wild pussycat once, and go through the
haunted house which is really the top dusty floor of our school and the old
stage made to look frightful by the eighth graders who’d as soon scare your
liver out of your throat as look at you.
Abigail
says it really is haunted up there because she has looked up during recess and
seen the face of Sister Mary Sponza our second grade nun who died during the
school year when we were just seven years old, right there in the window.
Sister Sponza came to school without her habit, just a veil she clutched under
her chin. After that we didn’t have her again, and then she died.
Now
she haunts that top floor and Abigail May sees her sometimes still clutching
that veil that barely covers her bald head. Abigail May also sees her Granma
Ninny or Nettie, she calls her both. She says Granma comes at night and sits on
her bed and smiles at her. That scared me so bad I slept with my Granma for a
week until she said I couldn’t no more cause I kick her all night.
I
was going to be a nun but now I’m going to be a movie star or a folk singer. I
haven’t decided. But Abigail May and I have many songs we’ve learned and she
sings soprano and I sing alto. She says I sing like a boy but Granma says I do
not sound like a boy at all I sound like a girl who is nearly ten who has a
nice full voice and then she says I kind of sound like Patti Page, but Abigail
says Ricky Nelson.
Abigail
May slapped me once, so I pulled her hair. But we were way younger then. But
sometimes she makes me mad and Granma says we must take a break. I watch her
from my window then. She lives across the street in big gray. We call my house
big white.
When Abigail plays by herself without me it
makes me sad.
Our
favorite games are paper dolls, the Lennon Sisters are best. We divide those
two each. And our Barbie dolls. Abigail May got black-haired Barbie and I got
blonde-hair Barbie. She has three outfits for hers and I have two. Hers is
Barbie and mine is Barbra. That way we can tell them apart. I wanted Barbie,
too, and I called it first but that’s what she slapped me about and she was
sorry so I said okay I’d be Barbra cause Barbra Stanwyck is okay and blonde.
I
hate, hate, hate boys. They are stinky and dumb. I was in love with Timothy
Bart last year but this year I think he has cooties. But he won’t leave me
alone he always tries to walk home with me. So me and Abigail run.
Darnay
Road 2
I
was the only ‘only child’ in my fourth grade class last year. A lot of them are
from big Catholic families so they have lots of babies—Catholics do. Granma
says me being the only child is the best thing ever cause if there were two of
me she would have to hop that train behind Abigail’s house and ride it to
Siberia.
Siberia
is not in America just so you know. I’m pretty sure Nikita Kruschev loves
Siberia. He is a big fat Russian man. Russians hate Americans. They may be
dropping a bomb on us sometime. If they do I’m going in our cellar with Granma
and Abigail and her Aunt May which is why Abigail is Abigail May, but not her
brother Ricky. He hangs out with the worst boys I know and they smoke
cigarettes so Abigail says he will probably go with them and live in the stinky
sewers. That’s pretty bad cause we think our poop goes there when we flush but
those boys probably wouldn’t even mind.
Abigail
says my Granma’s cellar is as good as a bomb-shelter anyway because it has the
best doors but I still wish we had the real thing. Sometimes at night I think
of everything I’d put in my bomb-shelter and I could live for years and years
and Kruschev could never find me. Abigail says if you come up first the
Russians may shoot you or you will turn to ashes. And even if something looks
good like grass and water if you don’t wait twenty years it will kill you.
But
Abigail and I fixed up Granma’s cellar with many great things we’ll need for
survival. Granma and her Aunt May have no idea, but we have all kinds of things
down there like cans of Franco American spaghetti, Abigail’s favorite, and one
can opener and Kass potato chips, my favorite. Two bags each. We have canteens,
her brother Ricky’s old Davy Crocket one and his old Boy Scout one. And four
blankets, one for each and candles and one flashlight we still need to get
batteries for and Ricky’s old radio, and a diary so we can keep track of our
captivity like Anne Frank. If you don’t know who she was she was a Jewish girl
who was in hiding with her family in World War II. She got killed right when
she fell in love.
Abigail
doesn’t like James Darren. She says all boys are stupid but that’s because of
Ricky. She likes Bud on Father Knows Best. So she wants to marry him and I want
to marry James Darren someday, or Elvis maybe. I don’t know.
Darnay
Road 3
It’s
got to stop. Abigail gets Kookie off of our favorite TV show
Seventy-Seven
Sunset Strip,
and I love Kookie. “Kookie lend me your comb,” she says over
and over.
I
get Efrem Zimbalist Jr. He’s the older detective. I always get the older ones.
She gets Little Joe and I get Adam. She wanted Moondoggie and Kahuna made my
stomach feel funny but he had a hairy chest so I put my foot down and she got
Kahuna, so finally.
Abigail
says boys have these hot dogs down there. Weiners. I remember the first time we
got Ken and we ripped his shorts off to see but it wasn’t anything, just kind
of a bump. “That’s it?” she said.
I
was relying on her to know something but Ricky was older so she didn’t know
anything about ‘the bump.’ And Ken wasn’t helping.
I’m
so tired of it. Not about the bump, but about Abigail May wanting all the good
ones. I try to tell Granma but she says to get her the Bufferin I’ve given her
the headache again.
We
have a club. We call ourselves the Bobbsey Twins. We read those books when we
were younger, Abigail and me is who I mean. Then we read all the Nancy Drews
only I read each one first because if I didn’t Abigail would tell me how it
ended and I was so, so, a hundred million so’s in so mad.
But
this year since we’re ten I think we should change the name to Darnay Spies.
Abigail says Darnay Sisters. I say The Darnay Sister Spies. Then we decide to
just say Darnay Spies like I said if she’d ever listen.
She
gives me the headache sometimes. She won’t wear a skirt that doesn’t have twirl
and then all day at school and on the walk home she twirls and twirls and I
swear you can almost see her underwears but she says unt-uh. But fourth grade
is over for summer so she wears sun-suits and they don’t twirl usually, and I
wear short sets. I have three, light pink, shocking pink, and red. Abigail has
about a hundred sun-suits and they tie at the shoulders and when I get mad I
grab one of the ties and pull and she grabs at it and screams like I ain’t seen
those polka dots on her chest about a million times.
We
both have brown hair and brown eyes, hers in a pixie cut and mine long and
mostly I wear two braids. Abigail’s Aunt May says Abigail looks like Hayley
Mills but she doesn’t have blonde hair. My Granma says I look like Natalie
Wood, and Abigail went home mad when I told her.
But
back to what I was saying about mysteries. We are spies. Me and Abigail. We spy
all the time. All the time. Abigail May never ever stops spying and I almost
never do.
We
solved two already since third grade summer when we started the club. Our first
mystery was the case of the little dog that got trapped under crazy Miss
Little’s front porch. Now going up to that porch took some courage. Miss Little
wears red, red lipstick and some of it goes around her mouth instead of on her
lips and she walks outside in her full slip, up and down the sidewalk and she
calls to cars that pass. And one day we were walking to Moe’s market and she
just appeared behind Abigail May. We didn’t even hear her or anything and
Abigail May was talking about us putting on a carnival and we could have bingo,
fish pond, ring toss and next we knew there was Miss Little talking about her
dead husband John killed in the war and she wears that slip and the red lips
and long red hair some in curlers, some not, and Abigail screamed and I froze
and Abigail had to grab me and we ran off screaming.
So
going for that little dog and then going door to door and finding its owner was
the bravest thing we’ve ever, ever done.
We’ve
got about six mysteries that we work on all the time. Day and night we never
stop.
Our
biggest case is about the Hardy Boys. They live on the other side of the
railroad tracks behind Abigail May’s house.
They
don’t really live on Darnay, they live on Scutter Road but their backyards face
the tracks and then the backyards on Abigail May’s side of the street. But me
and Abigail don’t recognize Scutter Road except by its backyards cause Granma
won’t even let me sell chance tickets or anything on Scutter, I can only play
on Darnay or one block over the other way when we skate in front of Moe’s
market. And of course I can walk to school, but that’s in the opposite
direction from Scutter Road too. Granma calls Scutter the slums.
But
the Hardy Boys come in the night. They stop outside Ricky’s window and do frog
calls and Ricky climbs out and goes with them…to the slums.
Ricky
thinks Abigail don’t know, but he doesn’t even think about us being spies. I
watch in my window and signal to Abigail with Granma’s big silver flashlight
she can never find, and Abigail signals back with Ricky’s Boy Scout flashlight
cause he quit scouts and Abigail pretty much took everything for the bomb
shelter and our spy ring.
Oh
yeah, the other mystery we solved was the mystery of the altar at our church
The Lady of the Bloody Heart. Not really, it’s Our Lady of the Sacred Heart but
we love, love Bloody Heart best.
So
the story was there are the bones of dead nuns and priests in the big altar.
And being girls we can’t go in any of the backrooms like the boys get to, Ricky
even, cause they are altar boys and we are not.
So
it was Abigail’s idea that we needed to look into that altar and settle it once
and for all cause we couldn’t even pray during morning mass we were so busy
always wondering if the dead bones were in there.
So
after the last old lady finally leaves we breathe a big sigh of relief and
Abigail leads the way and we get in the aisle and genuflect, make the sign of
the cross, and I put my rosary in the velvet pouch, and she does too, and we put
those in our purses, mine red with sharp brass trim, and hers straw for summer
with daisies on it. We put our missals in there too though mine won’t hardly
close now, and then we keep our heads covered cause we’re still in church what
do you think.
We
have never been inside the gate that surrounds the altar and keeps people out
unless they are wearing vestments and are boys or old men. So I don’t even know
if girls can go in here or ever have.
But
Abigail says nuns have to go in cause someone has to clean it and put in the
communion so even though we’re not nuns we are Catholic and Abigail says that’s
probably enough.
So
my heart is pounding so hard. I hope God’s not mad about this. But we go up to
the fence and Abigail goes over. I almost die. Seeing her put her butt on that
marble fence top and lift her legs and flash her underwears and then be on the
other side, I can’t believe it. We’re going to get burned at the stake for
this.
But
I go right over after. Lord Almighty I nearly faint. We are standing in here
and it’s so different. “It’s too holy,” I say and I say it so loud my words
echo.
But
Abigail is already moving up the marble steps closer to the altar. I can’t
believe her nerve but I follow her skinny white legs and her ankle socks and
her Mary Janes.
She
goes up the second set of steps and my knees are weak and I have to pee. That
altar is so, so tall I can’t even look up at all the saints crouching in the
little spaces because I know they would give me teacher looks and I would have
to faint.
She
is at the altar now and I’m biting a knuckle.
“C’mon
Georgia,” she says and I wish she wouldn’t have told all the saints my name.
So
I get next to her and she goes around the side and there’s a door cut into all
that gold and she unlatches it and pulls it open and gasps at what she sees.
I
look over her shoulder cause I am a spy at heart and great balls of fire. Mops
and buckets.
She
closes the door and sets the latch and I am already going over the fence. She
calls for me to wait but I don’t stop. I see that confessional and I know I’m
going to be in there once school starts in the fall and I’m going to have to
come up with something to tell Father Anthony but for now we’ve solved our
second mystery and it feels…great.