Someplace to Call Home

by Sandra Dallas

“That’s a dollar and twenty-five a day. You can work on your own automobile here when we’re not busy.”

  Tom had gulped. That was better pay than farmwork. Besides, he’d rather fix motors than plow and weed. He grinned at Mr. Ulman. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he said.

  Now Tom had been employed at the garage for a month. Mr. Ulman had told him he was a worker. That was high praise.

  This day Hallie wasn’t going to town to see Tom. She had washed Benny in the creek, soaped his hair, too, and dressed him in clean clothes. He had put on his new shoes, the ones Tom had bought him. With money coming in, the Turners had replaced their worn-out clothing and bought a few things for the cabin. They were eating better, too.

  “Where are we going, Hallie?” Benny asked.

  “To the school.”

  “I want to go to school.”

  “Do you remember your letters?”

  “‘A’ is for ‘apple,’” he said.

  “What else?”

  “‘B’ for ‘baby.’”

  “What’s next?”

  “‘D’ is ‘dog.’”

  “You forgot ‘C.’”

  “‘Cat.’”

  “And ‘E’?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “‘Elephant.’”

  “I can’t say ‘l-font.’”

  “That’s good enough.” She took Benny’s hand and led him into the school, which was near the center of town. They found the principal’s office.

  A woman was sitting at a desk. She looked up and smiled. “How can I help you?”

  Hallie was nervous. All the way into town, she had practiced in her mind what she would say. Now, however, the words escaped her.

  “Yes?” the woman said, a questioning look on her face.

  “Are you in charge?” Hallie asked. She stood up as straight as she could so that she would look older and more confident.

  The woman nodded. “Yes. I am the principal.”

  “I’m Hallie. That is, I’m Hazel Rose Turner. I want to sign up for eighth grade.”

  The principal wrote down Hallie’s name on a list of students. “School will be starting soon. Your teacher will be Mrs. Powell. Her room is down the hall, the last door on the left. You’re all set.”

  Hallie sighed in relief. Maybe registering for school is easier than I thought. She said, “This is my brother Benny. He needs to go to school, too. First grade. He’s six.”

  “Hi, I’m Benny,” Benny said.

  When Hallie glanced at her brother, she saw with horror that Benny was sitting on the floor, taking off his shoes. “Benny!” she said.

  Benny looked up and smiled. “I have shoes.”

  Hallie turned back to the principal and explained, “They’re new. They hurt his feet.” When the woman didn’t reply, Hallie said anxiously, “Benny already knows his letters. What’s ‘A’ for, Benny?”

  “‘Baby,’” Benny replied.

  “You know it’s for ‘apple.’ What’s ‘C’?”

  Benny looked confused. “I don’t know, Hallie.”

  “It’s ‘cat,’ Benny.”

  “I saw Bob,” Benny told the principal.

  The woman shifted in her chair. “Do you live around here?”

  “We live on the Carlson place,” Hallie told her.

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard about you. In the hired man’s cabin, isn’t it?”

  “We’re not squatters. They told us we could live there.”

  “You’re the children who live by themselves, aren’t you?”

  “My brother Tom’s sixteen.”

  “I see.”

  “Benny’s six. He wants to go to first grade.”

  The woman sighed and said not unkindly, “I’m afraid we can’t allow that.”

  “But he has to,” Hallie said. “He wants to learn. How can he learn to read if he doesn’t go to school?” Then she said something that had been weighing on her mind. “I have it all planned out. I want to finish the eighth grade. I can’t do that if Benny’s not in school, too. You see, there’s nobody to take care of him.” She knew she sounded desperate, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t allow children such as your brother here in the school. He will be disruptive. We have to think of the other pupils. Besides, you people will be moving on soon.”

  Hallie flinched at the words “you people.” The woman might as well have said outright, “You squatters.”

  “We’re not moving on. We’re staying.”

  The principal stood. “As I said, I am sorry about your brother, but we have rules. I must abide by them. You’ll have to find something suitable for the boy.”

  “He’s not ‘the boy.’ His name is Benny,” Hallie flared.

  “Good luck to you.” The principal glanced down at her desk and moved some papers around. Hallie knew she had been dismissed.

  “Come on, Benny. We know when we’re not good enough.”

  “I didn’t say that—”

  Hallie didn’t reply. She picked up Benny’s shoes. She took his hand and led him out of the room. There wouldn’t be any school for Benny. There wouldn’t be any school for her, either. She’d counted on finishing the eighth grade, but that wasn’t going to happen. She should have told the principal to take her name off the list.

  “I go to school, Hallie?” Benny said as they went down the steps.

  “Not this year, Benny.”

  “Why?”

  She wanted to reply that the school was unfair, that it didn’t care about children who were different. Benny wouldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to attend school. He didn’t know some children learned slower than others. He didn’t know he was not like the other students. Instead, Hallie said, “No room.”

  “I want to.”

  “I want you to, too, but I can’t do anything about it.”

  “Okay,” Benny said. “‘G’ for ‘goat.’”

  “I’m so sorry, but I’m not surprised,” Mrs. Carlson said when Hallie told her what had happened at the school. The two sat in the shade of a trumpet vine on the Carlsons’ porch with their quilt scraps. Mrs. Carlson was showing Hallie how to make a nine-patch square. It was made up of nine two-inch squares stitched together in rows of three. Hallie had cut the pieces a little larger than two inches to allow for seams. When the pieces were sewn together, they would make a six-inch square block. Hallie used a piece of cardboard as a pattern. “Try this green material. It will be pretty with your yellow,” Mrs. Carlson said, reaching into her ragbag.

  She continued. “I should have warned you. I tried to enroll Tessie last year. The school wouldn’t take her. Mr. Carlson even talked to members of the school board. They wouldn’t budge. Benny knows his letters, so I thought maybe he’d be accepted.”

  Hallie shook her head.

  Mrs. Carlson stitched on her own quilt pieces for a moment, thinking. She glanced over at Hallie’s sewing and told her to make the seams larger so that the squares wouldn’t pull out. Then she asked, “Did you sign up for school yourself?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know why. I won’t be able to go.”

  “Because of Benny?”

  Hallie nodded. “Tom and I talked about it. He could watch Benny on the days he doesn’t work. But he spends two days at the garage, and then he’ll be helping Mr. Carlson with the harvest.” She realized what she’d said and added quickly, “I mean we’re really grateful he has the work. We couldn’t make it if he didn’t. We’re awful glad Mr. Carlson gave him the job.” She feared Mrs. Carlson might repeat what she’d said to her husband, and he would cut back on Tom’s days. That would be disastrous.

  “Could you get your schoolwork done if you go just a couple of days a week? Maybe one of your schoolmates would help you.” Mrs. Carlson stared at Hallie, whose eyes were on her sewing. “Have you met any other girls your age here?”

  Hallie didn’t look up but shook her head.

  “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.” Mrs. Carlson put down he
r piecing and put her hand on Hallie’s arm. “You are just a young girl and an orphan. Yet you have the responsibilities of a woman. It must be so hard. You don’t have any friends, do you?”

  “I have you.”

  Mrs. Carlson put her hand to her eye and wiped away a tear. “Life is difficult for all of us but especially for you.”

  “There’s Tom. And Benny.”

  “Do you ever resent your little brother?”

  Hallie looked up. “No.”

  “I shouldn’t say this, but I will tell you that I did at first, with Tessie. But now I can’t imagine my life without her. She is such a dear little girl. I feel blessed. I wouldn’t have her any other way.” She glanced up at Benny and Tessie, who were playing with Tessie’s Lincoln Logs. They were trying to build a house with them. They laughed when the walls fell down.

  Tessie began chewing on one of the logs. Mrs. Carlson got up to take it away from her, but Benny said, “Don’t eat that. It’s dirty.” Tessie put it down.

  “I believe she’s learned something from him in the short time she’s known him,” Mrs. Carlson said. “Her speech has improved.”

  The children had put aside the logs and were now scratching in the dirt with sticks. “I’m glad Benny has a friend,” Hallie said. “He would be sad if he didn’t.”

  The two sat in the porch shade stitching for a long time. Every now and then, Mrs. Carlson examined Hallie’s work and made suggestions. “I have a feed sack with just the right flowers to go with the yellow and green. Don’t let me forget it,” Mrs. Carlson said. Hallie knew that manufacturers of bulk items such as chicken feed packaged the contents in fabric bags with colorful designs on them. Women picked the designs they liked best and then cut up the bags after they were empty. They made dresses and shirts and even underwear from them. They used the scraps for quilts. Hallie’s two dresses, in fact, had been made from feed sacks back in Oklahoma. Hallie had seen Mrs. Carlson’s stash of feed sacks with flowers and animals and Persian pickles on them.

  Mrs. Carlson put her sewing aside, saying she was going to fetch iced tea for the two of them. Hallie hadn’t had iced tea for a long time. She hadn’t had ice for a long time, either.

  Mrs. Carlson called Tessie and Benny to her. “Would you like iced tea?” she asked.

  “Yay!” Tessie said.

  Benny looked at Hallie. He’d never had the drink. “It’s cold tea. You’ll like it,” Hallie told him.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” Hallie told him.

  “Okay.”

  Tessie had begun scratching in the dirt of the flower bed with her stick, and Mrs. Carlson was about to tell the girl to dig elsewhere, when she narrowed her eyes. “What’s that you’re drawing, Tessie?” she asked.

  “‘A’ for ‘apple,’” Tessie said proudly.

  Mrs. Carlson leaned over and studied the ground. She looked up at Hallie. “That does indeed look like an ‘A.’ ” She turned to Tessie. “Where did you learn that?”

  “‘A’ for apple,’” Tessie said again. “‘C’ for ‘cat.’ Benny told me.”

  “Does Benny know all the alphabet?” Mrs. Carlson asked Hallie.

  “Some of it.”

  “I showed Tessie,” Benny said.

  Mrs. Carlson sat down on the porch steps. “For the past year, I’ve tried to teach Tessie her letters, but she just won’t learn them. Do you think Benny actually taught them to her?”

  Hallie shrugged. “Maybe. I think they learn from each other. The other day he told me that ice is frozen water.”

  “Tessie must have taught him that. I explained it to her after a piece of ice melted.” Mrs. Carlson looked up at Hallie. “It seems like they teach each other. I wonder if they learn better if they’re together.”

  Mrs. Carlson stood up and went into the house then. In a few moments, she returned with a tray carrying four glasses of iced tea. She called Tessie and Benny and gave them the tea. They drank it quickly. Tessie put a piece of ice down Benny’s shirt. The two of them laughed and ran off. Mrs. Carlson sat down and picked up her sewing, but she didn’t take a stitch. “Something occurred to me just now,” she said.

  Hallie looked at a seam she had made. Her stitches were big and sloppy. She took them out, saving the thread to be reused.

  “If Tessie and Benny learn better together, why don’t we set up our own school with just the two of them?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  Hallie was threading her needle and stopped with the end of the thread in her mouth.

  “I will take them two days a week. Perhaps you could take them from time to time when you’re free,” Mrs. Carlson continued. “That way, you will have two more days to attend school. Do you think that might work?”

  Hallie removed the thread from her mouth and looked up at Mrs. Carlson. Her throat felt tight. All she could do was nod and mutter, “I think so.”

  Hallie and Benny sang “Happy Days” as they walked along the dirt road back to the cabin. Benny was barefoot. Hallie was saving his shoes for winter. Every now and then, he curled his toes and flicked the road dust out in front of him. He kicked a rock and said, “Ouch!” when the rock didn’t move. “Happy days,” he said, and Hallie thought he was right. Thanks to the Carlsons, there were happy days to look forward to. Hallie could start eighth grade again, and Benny and Tessie would have their own lessons.

  “You’re going to go to school, Benny,” Hallie told him.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a very special school, and only you and Tessie can attend.”

  “What’s attend?”

  “It means you and Tessie are the only ones in the whole school.”

  Benny looked confused. “That school?”

  “No, it’s a school at Tessie’s house, and sometimes Tessie will come to our place.”

  “Tessie’s my friend. I taught her ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ ‘E,’ ‘A’ . . .” He listed a dozen letters of the alphabet. Then he asked, “Are you coming to my school, Hallie?”

  “I can’t. It’s only for you and Tessie.”

  “Too bad.” He grinned up at his sister. She took his hand, thinking how well things had turned out. Tom had a job, they had a place to live, and now both Hallie and Benny could attend school. Of course, it might not be for long. Maybe the depression would get worse, and there wouldn’t be any work at all. Or the Carlsons’ harvest might be a dud. The garage could close. They might have to go on to California after all. There was plenty for her to worry about. But for now, she was happier than she had been since leaving Oklahoma. Both she and Benny were going to school.

  She took Benny’s hand when she heard a fast automobile behind them. She had to be sure Benny didn’t dash out in front of the car. Now she looked to see who was coming. She recognized Harold’s Terraplane. “Oh darn,” she muttered to herself. She thought he would go on by, but instead, he pulled over to her side of the road. Dan sat in the car beside him. Both of them were smoking cigarettes. Hallie wondered why anybody would waste money on ready-made cigarettes. The two boys must indeed be rich.

  “You still squatting around here?” Harold asked.

  “We’re not squatters.”

  “So you say. What do you say, Dan?”

  Dan looked uncomfortable and shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “I got no place to go. Do you?”

  “Leave her alone, Harold.”

  “Your brother took my job,” Harold said.

  “You were going to work for Mr. Carlson?” Hallie asked. She couldn’t imagine Harold getting his nice clothes dirty doing farm chores.

  “Funny, isn’t she?” Harold asked Dan. He turned to Hallie. “Your brother took my job at the garage. I was talking to Mr. Ulman about working there when your brother came along. He got hired instead of me. I say hire local boys instead of Okies.”

  “Oh, come on, Harold. How long do you think you’d last pumping gas all day?” Dan asked. “You didn’t even want that job.”

  “Maybe I did. It
was as good as mine until squatter boy there came along.”

  Benny had been staring at the car. He said, “Hi, I’m Benny.”

  “It’s that stupid kid,” Harold said.

  “Don’t say ‘stupid,’” Benny told him.

  “Oh, that’s right. How about ‘dummy,’ then?”

  Benny looked at Hallie. “He said a bad word.”

  Dan tapped Harold’s arm with his fist. “Let up on them.”

  “Yeah, sorry, kid. Your brother isn’t your fault.”

  Hallie remembered what Mr. Carlson had said about Harold. She didn’t want to cause trouble for Tom. “My brother didn’t know that was your job. He wouldn’t take work away from anyone.”

  “Harold wouldn’t have gotten that job anyway. He knows as much about fixing cars as a cat does about Christmas.” Dan leaned over his friend and smiled at Hallie. She thought he was nicer than Harold.

  “What do you know?” Harold said.

  “The way you drive this car, who’d hire you for a mechanic? Look at that taillight. You dinged that up pretty bad.”

  Hallie looked at the back of the car and saw that a taillight was broken. There was a long scratch on the driver’s-side door, too.

  “Shut up or you can walk,” Harold told Dan.

  “Don’t say ‘shut up,’” Benny said.

  “Tell that kid to watch his mouth,” Harold told Hallie. He put in the clutch, shifted into first gear, and shot off, grinding the gears.

  Hallie stared after him.

  Benny said, “Bad boy.”

  chapter five

  School Days

  Hallie and Benny started school on the same day. Tom had bought Benny a red tablet with the picture of an Indian chief on the cover and a yellow pencil. Tom had sharpened the pencil with his pocketknife. The day was warm. Benny could have gone barefoot, but he wanted to wear his new shoes. Tom and Hallie together walked him to the Carlson house. Mrs. Carlson had set pillows on two chairs at the dining room table so the children could sit up high enough to write. A cowbell sat on the table. Mrs. Carlson explained that she would ring the bell when school started and when it was time for recess.

  “Recess means it’s time to play,” Hallie whispered.