The Wonder of Charlie Anne (8 page)

“What’s the matter with it?” Old Mr. Jolly is saying when we are standing up on his porch, just about to knock.

“It’s a little, well, plain. Wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s suited me fine all these years, Rosalyn.”

“Well, I think just a little paint would brighten it up. Maybe some yellow.”

“I don’t have money for paint, Rosalyn.”

“You know I have a little.”

Old Mr. Jolly lets out a long sigh, which we can hear clear as cowbells. “I’m a proud man, Rosalyn. I don’t want to be using your money.”

“Pride isn’t going to get me new paint, now, is it?”

We hear grumbling and Old Mr. Jolly’s low voice: “Do what you want, Rosalyn.” Then the porch door flies open and nearly hits us. He frowns when he sees us, and he hurries straight to the barn. I wonder if he has a think-about-it chair out there, right beside Phoebe’s beautiful new swing.

“Yoo-hoo,” says Mirabel. “Yoo-hoo.”

This brings Rosalyn and Phoebe right out. “Charlie Anne, I was just wondering about all those cuts of yours,” Rosalyn says. “How are you?”

“She’s fine, just fine,” says Mirabel, looking at Rosalyn’s trousers, which are yellow as sunflowers, and then at Phoebe’s, which are lavender. Phoebe smiles, but Mirabel ignores her and turns to Rosalyn.

“Charlie Anne told me we had a new neighbor and I wanted to have a proper introduction,” she says. “I’m Mirabel, the cousin of this child’s mother, rest her soul.” She holds the pie out to Rosalyn.

“Why, it’s beautiful, such a stunning pie!” Rosalyn takes it and puts it on the table and we all go over and look at it for a minute, even Phoebe. I am wondering if Mirabel will tell Rosalyn that I am the one who made the pie, but she does not.

I wonder if Phoebe will let me ride on the swing when we are done looking at the pie. I give myself a little extra sniff to be sure I still smell okay. I think maybe
Phoebe notices. I tell my face it better not turn all red. Then I move closer to Mirabel.

“Yes,” she is saying, looking at the pie. “I came right after the funeral. It was just about a year ago now. I took one look at the condition of those children, and that was that. I’ve been here ever since. My cousin Sylvie was just the sweetest thing, but she left the children not knowing much about the way the world works. Especially this one here.”

Rosalyn has already raised an eyebrow. I am backing away from Mirabel. Rosalyn looks at me and smiles. “She looks quite fine to me.”

“Yes, it’s manners and acting like a proper young lady and all those things that country children who don’t go to school have so much trouble with. And chores. They all have a great deal of trouble getting anything done.”

Rosalyn is raising her other eyebrow. “Did you say no school?”

“Yes, ever since that teacher left for California, we’ve been without. And she wasn’t here for a year, and there were years between this one and the last. We’ve had trouble finding teachers who are willing to come this far out.”

“Is that so?” Rosalyn is looking over at Phoebe and smiling just the tiniest bit.

Mirabel nods toward Phoebe and looks back at
Rosalyn. “Nice you brought a maid and all.” Mirabel is looking at Phoebe’s trousers. “None of us can afford help up here. Times are too tough. We do what we can, though.”

Phoebe looks at Rosalyn, and then I see Phoebe stiffen up like she has an old ironing board down the back of her shirt. A big long shadow passes over Rosalyn’s face.

Rosalyn must have brought a whole shipload of books, because there are stacks of them everywhere. Old Mr. Jolly should get busy right away building bookshelves, just as soon as he does something about that brier patch. I am counting all the books while I wait for Rosalyn’s shadow to pass.

Mirabel is looking around for a place to sit, but Rosalyn does not tell her to please sit and take a weight off your feet the way folks usually do around here. So we just stand feeling all uncomfortable. This gets Mirabel’s mouth running again.

“The Ellis family had colored help once a while back,” Mirabel is telling Rosalyn. “They didn’t last, though. Soon as times started getting hard, the help up and left, off to Ohio so I hear, and no one has heard a stitch from them since.” Mirabel does not even take a breath. My ears start burning, they are feeling so uncomfortable being here with Mirabel.

“Phoebe is not my maid,” Rosalyn says finally.

Mirabel looks all confused. “No?”

“No,” says Rosalyn, putting her arm around Phoebe.

Mirabel is turning red. “Well, what is she, then? She’s colored.”

“Aah,” says Rosalyn, glancing down at Phoebe and squeezing her again. “I hadn’t noticed.” Then she walks over to the table, picks up the pie, carries it back and puts it in Mirabel’s hands.

Mirabel marches me home so fast I can hear her leather shoes snapping.

“I don’t want you over there again,” she says from about five steps ahead. “I certainly don’t want you near that colored girl.”

She stomps up the porch steps and puts the pie on the kitchen table and tells all of us that she is going to sit right down right now and write another letter to Eleanor and how if any of us know what is good for us, we will get out and hoe all those potatoes before she counts ten. “Here, take this pie with you.”

“We do not need Aunt Eleanor,” I tell her, taking the pie, and she does not even bother to look up because she is already sitting down writing. “YOU ARE NOT RAISING US,” I tell her.

That gets Mirabel to look at me. “Charlie Anne, it’s like you don’t listen to a thing I’ve been trying to teach you.”

Birdie comes over and takes my hand and tries to pull me away. She does not like yelling. But I have some things to say.

“We do not need you,” I tell Mirabel.

I decide I need to drop the pie all over her clean floor and that is what I do. While she’s screaming her head off, I grab Birdie’s hand and shoo everyone out the door.

“You’ve really done it this time, Charlie Anne,” says Ivy.

When we are out hoeing, Becky Ellis walks up by the edge of our fence. I tell her to come and help rather than just standing there looking all stupid at us.

“Charlie Anne, you are rotten to the core.” Then she throws the apple she is eating and it lands at my feet.

“Charlie Anne, we are getting the electric as soon as those wires go up, and you’re not!” she yells. “That’s right, Charlie Anne. My mother says only some families are getting lights, and you are not one of them. You and the Morrells are too poor to have electric. You’ll be using kerosene your whole life.”

Papa used to say that the Morrell family had it worse than anyone else in town. That is why Mr. Morrell was the first to sign up to go build roads up north. That is also why he took three of his boys with him. That left their mama with only three little girls to feed. I see the Morrell girls at church, and they have not had new shoes for even longer than me. Becky Ellis says they do not even have underpants under their dresses.

I pick up the apple core Becky just threw at me and fling it back at her. “You better get off your high-and-mighty!”

“Stop,” says Ivy, who is rushing toward me. “Will you just shut up, Charlie Anne?”

“What are you talking about, Ivy? Did you hear what she just said?”

Ivy rolls her eyes at me and throws down her hoe. She hurries toward Becky.

“You never used to be like this!” I yell after her. “Before Mama died, you would never try and be friends with someone like BECKY ELLIS.”

It is sickening. Becky might let Ivy shine her sweet pretty shoes, and Ivy will be stupid enough to do it. I watch Ivy walk up to Becky. They deserve each other.

The rest of us hoe for a few minutes, and I tell them if Ivy is not helping, then we’re not working, either. Maybe we could take a break and play some hide-and-seek in the cornfield until she comes back.

Mirabel does not want us in the cornfield because we might break the corn. I tell Birdie and Peter to be very careful and that I will count first. “Now scat.”

They run into the corn and I start counting and then I say ready or not and when I look up, Phoebe is looking at me.

We are both quiet for a minute, me looking at
Phoebe, and Phoebe looking at me. I wonder what she is thinking. I look down at my bare feet. Ever so slightly I try and sniff at myself.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” I say. “I heard you swinging.”

“Joseph fixed it so it will go even higher.”

“Joseph?” I say, looking up to the field on the other side of the barn, where all of a sudden Anna May starts bellowing her head off.

“My new father,” she explains.

“Old Mr. Jolly is your new father? I thought you were just there helping them.” I look at Phoebe and I am a little confused and she is looking at me the way I look at my chickens when they forget who belongs to the eggs and who does not.

“I am not the maid,” says Phoebe softly.

“I knew that,” I say, looking back to see what is bothering Anna May. “It was Mirabel who thought that.”

Phoebe just stands there watching me until Anna May starts bellowing again, and I drop the hoe and run to see what the dickens is wrong with my cow.

I can hardly believe it. There is Old Mr. Jolly putting a rope around Belle’s neck and trying to take her back to his field.

Belle is standing in the field right up next to Anna May and she has her legs stiff as a board and her feet are deep in the mud from where it rained last night.

“What are you doing?” I say, reaching him in about two seconds. “You leave her alone.” As soon as Belle hears me, she starts mooing and hollering, and Old Mr. Jolly starts looking all kinds of furious.

“What have you done with my cow, Charlie Anne?” he asks, softening his voice as soon as he sees Phoebe standing right beside me.

“What do you mean, what have I done with your cow? I have not done a single cotton thing to your cow.”

“It’s like you’ve got her brainwashed or something.” Old Mr. Jolly is pulling on Belle, and when she does nothing but look all sorry-like over at Anna May, Old Mr. Jolly goes around to her backside and gives her a push.

“That doesn’t work,” I tell him.

Old Mr. Jolly gives her another shove.

“She likes it better here. That’s why she stays. What do you mean by going off and leaving her and everything without anyone watching over her so she could get all caught up in those briers, anyway?”

“He went to get me,” says Phoebe. “And Rosalyn.”

Old Mr. Jolly stops pushing and turns to both of us. “The Thatcher boy was supposed to be taking care of her, Charlie Anne.”

“Well, you should have asked me. That Thatcher boy doesn’t know how to care about anything.”

I go around and whisper in Belle’s ear that she better get herself out of the mud pretty soon or she’ll be stuck so deep I won’t be able to help her, and then before I can say milk cow, she is out of the mud and running over to Anna May, and then the two of them turn and head for the butternut tree.

“Maybe that cow needs to be with her mama,” Phoebe says.

“Humph,” says Old Mr. Jolly as we watch my cows go up the hill. He opens his mouth to say something else, but then he closes it again.

“You should have asked me to take care of her,” I say, just before Old Mr. Jolly turns and heads home without another word. “I know how to take care of cows.”

“Thank you for saying that, about Belle needing her mama,” I say, pleased to see my cows munching under the butternut tree, and remembering that Peter and
Birdie are still hiding all this time. “Want to play hide-and-seek with us?”

Phoebe says yes she does want to play with us and I say okay do you want me to count all over again and she says no she can hide pretty fast.

So I turn around and see how Ivy is now up in the tree picking sour apples and throwing them down to Becky. Becky keeps dropping them and letting them stay where they fall and telling Ivy to watch better where she is throwing. Then I turn around and go looking in the corn.

I find Birdie first because she is a terrible hider. She does not understand how you have to do more than just pretend people cannot see you. “I found you, Birdie,” I whisper as soon as I walk up to her, and she laughs. She’s been waiting so long for me that she’s pulled a corn husk and is making it into a doll. Mama taught me how to do that and I showed Birdie and now she makes little corn-husk girls all the time.