The Hundred Dresses (3 page)

ON Saturday Maddie spent the afternoon with Peggy. They were writing a letter to Wanda Petronski. It was just a friendly letter telling about the contest and telling Wanda she had won. They told her how pretty her drawings were, and that now they were studying about Winfield Scott m school. And they asked her if she liked where she was living now and if she liked her new teacher. They had meant to say they were sorry, but it ended up with their just writing a friendly letter, the kind they would have written to any good friend, and they signed it with lots of X’s for love.

They mailed the letter to Boggins Heights, writing “Please Forward” on the envelope. The teacher had not known where Wanda had moved to, so their only hope was that the post office knew. The minute they dropped the letter m the mail box they both felt happier and more carefree.

Days passed and there was no answer, but the letter did not come back so maybe Wanda had received it. Perhaps she was so hurt and angry she was not going to answer. You could not blame her. And Maddie remembered the way she hitched her left shoulder up as she walked off to school alone, and how the girls always said, “Why does her dress always hang funny like that, and why does she wear those queer, high, laced shoes?”

They knew she didn’t have any mother, hut they hadn’t thought about it. They hadn’t thought she had to do her own washing and ironing. She only had one dress and she must have had to wash and iron it overnight. Maybe sometimes it wasn’t dry when it was time to put it on in the morning. But it was always clean. Several weeks went by and still Wanda did not answer. Peggy had begun to forget the whole business, and Maddie put herself to sleep at night making speeches about Wanda, defending her from great crowds of girls who were trying to tease her with, How many dresses have you got?” Before Wanda could press her lips together in a tight line the way she did before answering, Maddie would cry out, “Stop! This girl is just a girl just like you are . . .” And then everybody would feel ashamed the way she used to feel. Sometimes she rescued Wanda from a sinking ship or the hoofs of a runaway horse. “Oh, that’s all right,” she’d say when Wanda thanked her with dull pained eyes. Now it was Christmas time and there was snow on the ground. Christmas bells and a small tree decorated the classroom. And on one narrow blackboard Jack Beggles had drawn a jolly fat Santa Claus in red and white chalk. On the last day of school before the holidays, the children in Peggy’s and Maddie’s class had a Christmas party. The teacher’s desk was rolled back and a piano rolled in. First the children had acted the story or Tiny Tim. Then they had sung songs and Cecile had done some dances in different costumes. The dance called the “Passing of Autumn” in which she whirled and spun like a red and golden autumn leaf was the favorite. After the party the teacher said she had a surprise, and she showed the class a letter she had received that-morning.

“Guess who this is from,” she said. “You remember Wanda Petronski? The bright little artist who won the drawing contest? Well, she has written me and I am glad to know where she lives because now I can send her medal. And I hope it gets there for Christmas. I want to read her letter to you.”

The class sat up with a sudden interest, and listened intently to Miss Mason as she read the letter.

“Dear Miss Mason: How are you and Room 13? Please tell the girls they can keep those hundred dresses because in my new house I have a hundred new ones all lined up in my closet. I’d like that girl Peggy to have the drawing of the green dress with the red trimming and her friend Maddie to have the blue one. For Christmas. I miss that school and my new teacher does not equalize with you. Merry Christmas to you and everybody. Yours truly, Wanda Petronski.”

The teacher passed the letter around the room for everybody to see. It was pretty, decorated with a picture of a Christmas tree lighted up in the night in a park surrounded by high buildings. On the way home from school Maddie and Peggy held their drawings very carefully. They had stayed late to help straighten up after the play and it was getting dark. The houses looked warm and inviting with wreaths and holly and lighted trees in their windows. Outside the grocery store hundreds of Christmas trees were stacked, and in the window candy peppermint canes and cornucopias of shiny bright transparent paper were strung. The air smelled like Christmas and bright lights everywhere reflected different colors on the snow.

“The colors are like the colors in Wanda’s hundred dresses,” said Maddie.

“Yes,” said Peggy, holding her drawing out to look at k under the street lamp. “And boy! This shows she really liked us. It shows she got our letter and this is her way of saying that everything’s all right. And that’s that,” she said with finality.

Peggy felt happy and relieved. It was Christmas and everything was fine.

“I hope so,” said Maddie sadly. She felt sad because she knew she would never see the little tight-lipped Polish girl again and couldn’t ever really make things right between them.

She went home and she pinned her drawing over a torn place in the pink-flowered wall-paper in the bedroom. The shabby room came alive from the brilliancy of the colors. Maddie sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at the drawing. She had stood by and said nothing, but Wanda had been nice to her anyway. Tears blurred her eyes and she gazed for a long time at the picture. Then hastily she rubbed her eyes and studied it intently. The colors in the dress were so vivid she had scarcely noticed the face and head of the drawing. But it looked like her, Maddie! It really did. The same short blonde hair, blue eyes, and wide straight mouth. Why, it really looked like her own self! Wanda had really drawn this for her. Wanda had drawn her! In excitement she ran over to Peggy’s.

“Peg!” she said. Let me see your picture.

“What s the matter?” asked Peggy as they clattered up the stairs to her room, where Wanda’s drawing was lying face down on the bed. Maddie carefully lifted it up.

“Look! She drew you. That’s you!” she exclaimed. And the head and face of this picture did look like the auburnhaired Peggy.

“What did I say!” said Peggy. “She must have really liked us anyway.”

“Yes, she must have,” agreed Maddie, and she blinked away the tears that came every time she thought of Wanda standing alone in that sunny spot in the school yard close to the wall, looking stolidly over at the group of laughing girls after she had walked off, after she had said, “Sure, a hundred of them—all lined up . . .”

Wanda Petronski wore the same faded-blue dress to school every day. It was always clean, but it looked as though it had never been ironed properly. One day when a classmate showed up wearing a bright new dress that was much admired, Wanda said suddenly, “I have a hundred dresses at home.” That had started the teasing game of dresses, which Peggy and Maddie played with Wanda. It was fun to stop Wanda on the way to school and ask, “How many dresses did you say you had?” Wanda did have the hundred dresses, and this is the story of how Peggy and Maddie came to understand about them and what the game meant to Wanda.

END