The Wonder of Charlie Anne (16 page)

“None?”

“Not a one.”

“What dopes.”

“Yes,” whispered Phoebe. “A whole bunch of little colored children came, but not a single white one. And then things started happening.”

I am wide awake again. “Like what?”

“Like someone threw a dead chicken in the schoolyard one day when I was helping Mama wash windows. And someone started nailing notes on the door telling us to move out of town, that no white child would ever get taught by a colored teacher. They called Rosalyn all
kinds of dirty bad names for being friends with my mama.”

Tears start down Phoebe’s face. I pull her close and tell her she doesn’t have to tell me any more if she doesn’t want to. We can still be friends without telling each other all the bad places that need sweeping out.

I feel her collarbone poking into me. Her little braids are digging into my neck.

“We found out some of the men who owned stores in town started threatening the colored mamas and papas and telling them that if they sent their children to that school, we would all see it go up in flames.

“Mama got really mad because her grandmother had been born a slave in Kentucky and had seen it all. She said we weren’t going back to any of that, no way, no how. She would rather die first.” She wipes her eyes, and keeps going.

“My mama and Rosalyn were like sisters, they loved each other so. One day we all walked to the library in our city, but my mama and I couldn’t go to the shelves where Rosalyn went because they wouldn’t let us read the books set aside for white people. Rosalyn checked out the books, and we read them together outside under a big sycamore tree.”

“What books?”

Phoebe smiles for a tiny bit. “One was
David Copperfield.”

“Good book,” I say.

“Yes. Well, anyway, there were water fountains in town, one for whites to drink and one for colored people. When no one was looking, I drank from the one for whites.”

“Did it taste different?”

“No, you silly. Water is water.”

Phoebe stops to scratch Big Pumpkin Face some more.

“We kept opening the school every day, and I had the job of ringing the bell, but I was ringing it to no one but the trees. Then we’d shut the door, and Mama and Rosalyn would read to me and I would read to them. That’s how I got to be such a good reader. They paid all their attention to me.

“One day, when we were walking home, a big cart comes flying up the road, and a man is yelling for Mama to get out of the way of his horses, that no one wants her teaching in this town, but she doesn’t get out of the way, she doesn’t budge, and Rosalyn pushes me out of the way just in time, and that was the last time I saw my mama alive.”

Phoebe starts shaking and I hold her and she cries for a long time and my head is hurting from the whole painful story.

“Now that we’ve told each other our sad stories, we’re best-friend sisters,” I tell Phoebe as we start putting the hay bales back to hide Big Pumpkin Face.

“I know another way,” Phoebe says, standing up. “We can be real blood sisters. We just have to prick our fingers.”

I give her my what-are-you-talking-about look. I have never heard of such a thing.

“My mama and Rosalyn did it when they were our age. Come here, I’ll show you.” She walks over to the window so she can see better. She pulls a pin off the waistband around her trousers. “Here, like this.”

I watch as Phoebe gives her finger a tiny prick and see a little drop of blood coming up.

“Now you do it.”

She hands the pin to me.

The thought of being sisters with Phoebe is pretty nice, especially when I have a sister as bad as Ivy. But I’m not so sure about pricking myself.

“Come on, it doesn’t hurt.” She holds the pin closer.

I look at it. I look at the drop of blood sitting on her finger and I think about how much pricking yourself hurts. I feel myself getting woozy and take a step back.

Phoebe is starting to laugh. “Are you mousey?” She pushes the pin closer to my finger.

“What does that mean, are you mousey?”

“What, you don’t say that up here?”

“No, we don’t. We are nice to people who are about to bleed to death.”

Phoebe is laughing now. “Mousey means scaredy-cat,” she says.

“Oh,” I say, and I look at the pin and how it is coming closer to my finger and I think about the blood sitting on her finger and how pretty soon there will be blood sitting on my finger and how everything is getting all dark and I start falling backward and I can’t tell if she’s pricking my finger or not.

When I wake up, Phoebe is looking all worried, then she hits me. “What are you doing, scaring me like that?”

I am feeling very confused. “Why are you hitting me?”

“You fainted!” Then Phoebe starts laughing again. “I never saw anyone faint before over a drop of blood. You sure are mousey.”

“I am not,” I say, standing up and giving her my most terrible mad look, the one I give only to Anna May when she kicks over the milk bucket, and to Papa when he is about to leave for a long, long time.

“I am not mousey. And I don’t like to be laughed at. That’s rule number one, if we’re going to be best-friend sisters.” I am glaring at her. She stops laughing.

“Blood sisters,” she says, holding up her finger. “We’re blood sisters.”

*    *    *

Phoebe goes home after that and I go down by Anna May and Belle and suck on my finger and while I am down there Mama is whispering how she told me things would be better after my nap, now didn’t she.

Phoebe starts lighting a candle in her window every night. I light one right back to say yes, yes, I will meet you tomorrow as soon as I can get away from Mirabel, and I blow it out quick because I hear Ivy coming up the stairs.

Mirabel doesn’t have time to check up on me much because after the ragman came with his wagon filled with hand-me-downs, screaming, “Rags! Rags!” she is getting clothes ready for us for the winter. She is knitting hats and mittens and socks after unwinding someone’s old sweaters and she’s making over a new dress for each of us. This means she pulls apart some old lady’s dress and cuts it smaller and sews the whole thing up again.

I like trousers better, I tell her when she makes me try on a dress, and she is so mad she spits the pins in her mouth out on the floor.

She makes Ivy sit right beside her and take out all the seams and hem everything, and Birdie is clipping the threads. “You two are really good at sewing,” she tells them. I give Ivy my smirking look. She throws the pincushion at me.

“They’re better homemakers,” Mirabel tells me,
shooing me to take out the compost and milk Anna May and collect the eggs.

Thank God, I think.

“Just be sure to stay away from that colored girl.”

I keep my secret to myself, that we are already blood sisters, and nothing can keep us apart.

Nothing? asks Belle when I get down by the butternut tree.

Nothing, says Anna May.

“You’ve got that right.” I kiss Belle and Anna May on the nose. “Nothing can keep blood sisters apart.” They look at me all warmhearted, and then Anna May licks my cheek with her sandpaper tongue. “How can Mirabel know so little when you know so much?” I look into Anna May’s eyes and press my face deep into her neck, smelling her sweet warm cow smell. Belle takes time to scratch her head slowly on the big rock beside us. That’s the thing about cows. They know when it’s time to relax.

It is only a quick hop and a quick jump over the stone wall and across the road. I don’t have to knock anymore, Rosalyn tells me, so I don’t, and when I open the door, there is Phoebe sitting on the kitchen table with her feet swinging over the side. Old Mr. Jolly is standing right beside her, combing out her hair, and Rosalyn is holding all sorts of creams and lotions and new ribbons
made from the red pepper red cloth. They are fussing over Phoebe the way mamas and papas like to do.

“I taught them how,” Phoebe says, holding up a mirror to make sure they don’t make any mistakes.

I sit sipping sweet raspberry tea and watching Old Mr. Jolly comb one teeny bit of hair at a time. Mama keeps whispering that she misses me, and I sigh for a minute, just watching Phoebe getting loved like that, and forgetting all my troubles, but then I remember how Peter is gone and I tell Mama to go away.

Old Mr. Jolly tugs too hard and Phoebe cries out and then Old Mr. Jolly asks Rosalyn to sing something tender so he will be gentle with the combing.

Rosalyn, in that soft buttercup voice of hers, starts off:

Mmmmmm, I think as I watch Rosalyn divide Phoebe’s hair and then twist it into braids that aren’t quite so every which way as before. In fact, they are better than mine.

When they are done, Phoebe looks in the mirror for a long time. Then she grins and I can tell her heart is doing hallelujahs, over and over again.

Rosalyn hasn’t given up on our church, even though Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich, Birdie and I are the only ones who ever eat from her sharing plate.

“Some of them might not have the sense that God gave geese, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get new feathers. God’s good that way,” Rosalyn says as she finishes up a batch of raspberry heart sugar cookies.

Mirabel tells Ivy she can go and sit in the back balcony of the church with Becky Ellis. Even I know this is a very bad idea. Ivy tells me with her eyes that I better not say anything or I’ll be sorry, and I wonder why Mirabel can’t see what is right in front of her nose—a disaster waiting to happen.

The door opens and I stop paying attention to Ivy because Rosalyn, Phoebe and Old Mr. Jolly walk in. There is whispering (mostly from Mrs. Ellis), and some warm friendly smiles (mostly from me and Birdie and Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich). Then the preacher comes in and looks down at us over his thick glasses and then he begins another sermon on sinning and this time he is waving his arms quite a bit and saying that only the
righteous are going to get seats at the heavenly banquet and I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to go, not if Becky and Mrs. Ellis get seats.

I look out the window and wonder where the mockingbird is and if she’s heard one sermon too many and knows to stay away on Sunday mornings. Just as the preacher starts winding down, a pumpkin seed hits me on the back of the neck, and when I turn around, Ivy and Becky are trying to keep from falling off the balcony, they are laughing so hard.

The organ starts getting us ready for “Amazing Grace,” and I am so happy to be done hearing about the pit for the wicked that I sing really loud to get myself in a better mood and maybe to make Phoebe giggle, and then Mirabel takes my arm and pulls me to her and whispers in my ear that young ladies do not need to be so noisy.

Then it is announcement time. The preacher starts things off by saying the church will be having its annual fall cleanup and that everyone must come and help rake the yard and cover the roses and wash the windows and paint the things that need painting.

Then Becky stands up in the balcony. “Tryouts will begin after church next Sunday for our Christmas play. Anyone who wants a part has to come.”

We’ll just see about that. We do the same play every year, and every year I tell them how I want to be the
angel, but since Becky is the only one who actually owns a pair of gossamer wings, she gets the part. Last year they made me be the donkey.

Becky sits down, and I am glad when Mrs. Aldrich raises her hand next.

“Mrs. Morrell has been sick with the influenza for a week. Perhaps we could take turns helping. I’m afraid those girls will run out of food if we don’t do something.”

Mrs. Aldrich says Mrs. Thatcher has been sick with the influenza, too, and that maybe we could help them out as well, and I am halfway standing up to say that we should not, we should not be helping those Thatchers, but Mirabel grabs hold of my arm and pulls me back down.

Then Rosalyn stands up. “Perhaps getting the children of some of these families into school would be a good thing to do while the mothers are recuperating.”