“I liked everything!” Ricky said.
Amanda knew he said it because it was easier to say you liked the whole thing than to think hard enough to pick out one specific feature that worked especially well. Still, it was pleasant to get such an enthusiastic comment.
James raised his hand.
“James, what did you like?” Mr. Abrams asked.
Oh, no. James was the only African American kid in the class. Suddenly Amanda wasn’t sure she should have made Polly say that Jeb thought slaves weren’t smart enough to take care of themselves without a master. Maybe James would think she thought that black people weren’t as smart as white people. She hoped he knew that she, Amanda, didn’t think all the same things that Jeb, or even Polly, did.
“I liked the way she made her favorite brother have the bad views on slavery, and the other brother have the good views. You’d expect the opposite, so that made it interesting.”
“Yes! That’s a great comment, James. When we read about history, we tend to assume that all the good people thought exactly the way we do today, and only the bad people held views we now find repugnant. But that’s not true, is it? And Amanda showed us that in her diary. Good for you, Amanda, and good for you, James, for noticing.”
Amanda smiled at James, and he smiled back.
“Who else would like to read?” Mr. Abrams asked.
Now lots of hands were in the air. Mr. Abrams called on Meghan, a perky blond girl who took Irish dancing lessons with Beth. Meghan’s Civil War character was a Northern girl Polly’s age who helped slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. Meghan’s entry was well written, though her Martha character somehow didn’t feel as real as Amanda’s Polly. But maybe to Meghan, Polly didn’t feel as real as Martha.
Beth gave the compliment this time. “I liked how you described all the smells in the barn where the slaves were going to be hiding.”
Amanda agreed. She’d have to make sure that Polly described a lot of smells.
The next reading was by Patrick, who was supposed to be a thirteen-year-old who ran away to join the Union army as a drummer boy.
“I am Johnny … Johnny …” Patrick squinted at his handwriting. “I can’t read my last name. Johnny … What’s my last name?” he asked Mr. Abrams.
“McTaggart,” Mr. Abrams said.
“And I live in …” Patrick studied his scribbled sheet of paper again. “It starts with M.”
“Massachusetts.” Mr. Abrams helped him again.
Ricky started to laugh, but a look from Mr. Abrams stopped him.
Amanda tried to listen, but every time Patrick paused to decipher another word, she was back at home reliving the weekend. Things hadn’t gotten any better after the Friday night Monopoly game. Well, Saturday had been better, but only because her mother was gone all day showing houses to her real estate clients. Her father was out most of the afternoon, too, taking a jazz improvisation class he had won in a silent auction at Steffi’s school. But then he went out for drinks with some of the people in his class, and came home late, and missed dinner. Amanda’s mother threw the leftovers down the disposal instead of just putting them in a plastic container in the fridge.
Sunday they had all been home, but her parents weren’t speaking. Once, Amanda had gone with Beth’s family to a Quaker church service, where people sat together in silence for a whole entire hour, and the silence there was hopeful and holy. The silence at Amanda’s house was horrible. Never before had Amanda realized that there were so many different kinds of silence.
Patrick finished reading. The class clapped politely.
“What did you like about Patrick’s diary entry?” Mr. Abrams asked.
What could anyone possibly say? “I liked the places where you could read your own handwriting.” But no one would want to say something mean in Mr. Abrams’s class.
Beth raised her hand again, as Amanda had guessed she would. Beth was always willing to be kind. “You gave us lots of details about everyone in your family.”
Too many, Amanda thought. The reader didn’t need to know every single person’s height, weight, birthday, and favorite color.
“I liked everything!” Ricky said, and the class laughed, but in a friendly way.
Lance read his next. “I’m supposed to be black,” he explained. “I’m a slave boy in South Carolina. So that means I can’t read and write so good. Okay, here’s my diary. ‘Deer Diary’—I misspelled dear to make it d-e-e-r. ‘I am a slav boy’—I left the e off slave. ‘I picks cotton all day long. I gets tired of pickin’ it. My massah, he beats me sometimes coz I don’t pick it fast enough. I sho hate bein’ a slave. The end.’”
Amanda didn’t know if she should clap or not. Was Lance making fun of the slave boy for his poor grammar and spelling? How well would Lance be able to spell if he had been a slave, picking cotton all day long? Slaves weren’t even allowed to learn how to read or write.
She could hardly bear to look at James, but when she did, she saw that he was clapping with the others. And when Mr. Abrams asked what people liked about Lance’s diary, James was the first to raise his hand.
“I liked how Lance tried to show what a slave boy back then would really sound like. He didn’t make him sound like people sound today.”
The tense knot inside Amanda’s stomach relaxed. At least, one tense knot did. Maybe Lance’s diary wasn’t racist, after all, if James liked it.
“Good observation, James,” Mr. Abrams said. Amanda couldn’t tell if he was relieved, too.
And she still wondered what James, deep down, was really thinking.
Amanda walked home alone from school; Beth had a dentist’s appointment. Maybe Amanda’s mother would be home; maybe she would be out showing houses. Her father would be at his architect’s office until almost seven. Steffi would be over at Tanya’s house.
If Beth hadn’t had a dentist’s appointment, or Irish dancing class with Meghan, Amanda would have been at Beth’s house. Silence was never scary at Beth’s, where Beth’s mother would be baking bread from her own hand-ground flour, while her father wrote his books on how to live an environmentally sustainable lifestyle. Beth’s family didn’t even play Monopoly. Beth’s father said he didn’t see why it was fun to ruin and bankrupt everyone you knew while becoming a filthy-rich real estate tycoon and developer.
The front door was unlocked. Amanda’s mother must be at home. Amanda hoped that was okay. But as soon as she came into the kitchen and saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table, she knew it wasn’t okay. Her mother was crying. Her eyes were red and streaming, and a pile of balled-up, soggy-looking tissues was on the table in front of her.
“Oh, honey, I thought you were going to be at Beth’s. I didn’t mean for you to see me this way.”
As if to pull herself together, her mother stood up and faced the window. Amanda didn’t want to ask, “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” She was afraid to hear the answer.
Then her mother turned toward her again. “I was going to wait until Steffi was here, too, and tell both of you together. But now that—I guess there’s no point in waiting. Amanda, your father left.”
“Left?” Amanda repeated stupidly.
“He’s moved out.”
Amanda couldn’t believe it. How could her gentle, good-natured dad get mad enough over anything to pack up and leave, walk out, abandon her and Steffi? It was impossible. She could have imagined her mother leaving, making a scene, stalking off in a rage, but not her father. For a second she thought of him driving away in the little Monopoly car, toot-tooting merrily in farewell. None of it made any sense.
“Why?” she made herself ask.
Amanda’s mother lifted her chin. “Because I told him to.”
Amanda just stared at her mother, too stunned to speak. If that was true, she didn’t think she could forgive her mother, ever.
April 23, 1861
Dear Diary,
Something terrible has happened. The Rebels fired on Fort Sumter, a Union
fort in South Carolina. Now the North is going to war with the South. War! Soldiers from the North and soldiers from the South will be fighting each other, shooting each other with rifles and cannons, trying to kill each other.
Thomas has already enlisted for the North. He saddled up our horse this morning and rode off into town and then rode home to tell us. Mother threw her apron over her face and started crying. Father turned very pale, but he strode across the room and shook Thomas’s hand, and I knew that Father approved. I couldn’t cry or shake his hand or anything. I’m too angry at Thomas for doing this. He’s the one who’s always telling me not to be rash and impulsive. “Think first, Polly!” “Count ten before you speak!” “Look before you leap!” But he didn’t think first, or count ten, this time. I don’t think you can un-enlist, go back to the generals and tell them that you’ve changed your mind, that you just remembered that it’s only April and your father needs you to help with the farm. And your little sister needs you, too. Just because she does.
I know you’re wondering how Jeb took the news. Jeb wasn’t there when Thomas told us. He’s off in town, but he walked there, six miles each way, because Thomas had Nell, the horse. I’m glad he’s too young to enlist. Fifteen has to be too young. I know some boys even younger than that are going as drummer boys. But Jeb wouldn’t want to be a drummer boy. He’d want to fight for the South, not bang a drum for it.
Wait. From my window I see him walking up the road.
Diary, he did it. When I ran down the road to meet him, he said, “Give me a hug, Polly. I’m a soldier now.” His eyes were extra bright when he said it, mostly with excitement, I guess, but maybe with some fear, also,
“You’re too young,” I told him.
Jeb laughed. “I look eighteen, don’t I?”
I shook my head. He looks lots younger than Thomas, even if he’s taller now. He’s so skinny, and his hair sticks up like a little boy’s hair, and his teeth still look too big for the rest of his face. The tears I hadn’t cried over Thomas started to run down my cheeks.
“Aw, come on, Polly! The war’s going to be over after the first battle, everybody says. The South is going to whup the North so bad they’ll be sorry they ever messed with us.”
Us? Since when was Jeb a Southerner? Maryland was still part of the Union, even if lots of folks here thought the same way Jeb did.
“Polly, if I don’t go now, it’ll be over before I get there, and I’ll miss all the fun.”
That was too much. “War isn’t fun!” I shouted. He may be fifteen while I’m only ten, but it’s plain I know more about war than he does.
“Thomas has enlisted,” I blurted out. I didn’t need to tell him for which side.
His face darkened. “I figured he would.”
“Are you going to say goodbye to him?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
But the next morning, before dawn, when Thomas was preparing to leave, and Mother and Father and I were all hugging him, and crying, Father crying, too, I heard Jeb stirring in his room upstairs. And when Thomas started down the road alone, on foot this time, nobody but me saw Jeb slip out the back door and race down the road after him, and they grabbed each other in one long, hard hug.
Oh, Diary, I’m weeping now for my poor brothers, fighting each other.
But even more, dear Diary, I’m weeping for myself.
3
Amanda didn’t want to go downstairs for dinner. She wanted to stay in her room being Polly Mason whose parents were still living together in the same log cabin instead of Amanda MacLeish whose parents were—separated, she guessed. That’s what it was called when one parent moved out. Separated, not divorced. Did most separated people get divorced? Or did most separated people get unseparated? Like a broken plate with the two halves glued back together again, so that you could barely see where the plate had cracked.
Amanda heard a knock on her door, and then Steffi pushed it open. “Mom told you?” Steffi asked from the doorway.
Amanda nodded. Steffi plopped herself down on Amanda’s bed. Amanda swiveled around in her desk chair to face her. Steffi didn’t look upset, but it was often hard for Amanda to know what Steffi was thinking; her sister could be kind and caring one minute, and then sarcastic and almost nasty the next.
“You saw it coming, didn’t you?” Steffi asked.
Had Amanda seen it coming? “Maybe. I mean, I knew they were fighting. But lots of people fight.”
Beth’s parents didn’t fight.
“Lots of people get divorced, too,” Steffi said. “Half of all marriages end in divorce.”
“Not in my class at school,” Amanda pointed out. “Hardly any of the kids at school have divorced parents.” just Lance, and two or three other kids.
“Maybe some of those marriages are second marriages. The parents already had their divorce, with somebody else.” Steffi sounded so matter-of-fact, the way she said “had their divorce,” as if everyone was going to get one, and it was just a question of when. But even if half of all marriages ended in divorce, that still meant that half of all marriages didn’t.
“Do most people who separate end up getting divorced?” Amanda asked, since Steffi seemed to know so much about divorce.
“Uh-huh. Like movie stars. First you hear that they had a press conference announcing they’re getting separated from some other movie star. Then you hear that they’re dating some new movie star they met while filming their next movie on location somewhere. Then you hear that they’re divorced from the first movie star and married to the second one.”
“You never hear that they’ve gotten back together with the first movie star?”
Steffi thought for a moment. “Well, sometimes they do. But they usually get married to other people in between.”
Amanda was tempted to say that movie stars might not be the best example of typical married people, but she didn’t want to make Steffi mad. What she really wanted was to ask Steffi whether she thought their parents would get back together, but she was afraid Steffi would say, “Oh, they’re probably going to get their divorce over with now,” in that bright, careless, know-it-all tone, as if it didn’t matter all that much whether the MacLeishes were in the half that stayed together or the half that fell apart.
“Did Tanya’s parents get separated first before they got divorced?” Amanda asked instead.
Tanya’s parents had gotten divorced a long time ago. They had both remarried, so Tanya lived with her mother and stepfather and half sister here in Maryland, while her father lived with his new wife and Tanya’s two half brothers in California.
“Probably. Tanya likes going to see her dad in California. She says the boys in California are cuter. Or she used to say that until she started liking Mike Weil.”
“There’s always some boy that Tanya likes.”
“Yeah, but Mike Weil likes her back. He’s okay, I guess, for an eighth-grade boy. You know how one dog year is equal to seven human years? Well, thirteen years for a boy is equal to ten years for a girl. I’m not kidding. Half the boys in my class even look like they’re ten.”
Amanda didn’t want to talk about the maturity levels of eighth-grade boys versus eighth-grade girls. “Doesn’t Tanya miss her dad the rest of the time?”
Steffi shrugged. “She deals with it.”
Maybe once your parents had their divorce, that was all you could do: deal with it.
Dinner was surprisingly normal—the food at least: chicken with lemon and basil, wild rice, a green salad. Often their father worked late, so Amanda, Steffi, and their mother ate without him. Now his empty chair looked emptier, deserted, forlorn, as if it knew it was going to be empty forever.
No! Amanda wasn’t going to start crying, she wasn’t.
“How was school?” her mother asked after her first few bites of chicken.
“Mom!” Steffi snapped. “We’re not exactly sitting here thinking about school.”
So Steffi hadn’t shrugged off the news as if it were ju
st one more movie star’s predivorce press conference.
Emboldened by Steffi’s comment, Amanda made herself ask, in a small voice, “Where did Daddy go? Where is he now?”
“He’s staying at a motel until he can find an apartment.” Their mother’s voice was smooth, calm, revealing nothing.
“Which one?” Amanda asked.
Why couldn’t he just live at home while he was looking for an apartment? Why did he have to look for an apartment at all?
Their mother seemed impatient now. “The Best Western north of town.”
Amanda tried to remember if she had ever seen it. She had never thought to check out the locations of the various local motels in case her father might someday be living in one.
“With the heated pool out front?” Steffi asked. She sounded ready to go swimming, to pack up her swimsuit and goggles and sunscreen and head over to Dad’s for a mellow late-summer dip.
Their mother nodded.
“Can we see him?” Amanda asked.
Lance spent every other weekend with his dad. It had been Lance’s favorite excuse, last year in fourth grade, for why he didn’t have his homework to turn in: “I left it at my dad’s house.” Fleetingly, Amanda imagined herself lying on a chaise longue by the Best Western pool, writing in her Civil War diary.
“Nobody’s stopping you,” her mother said. Then, apparently regretting her flippant tone, she laid down her fork.
“Girls, I know this isn’t the way parents are supposed to do it. We’re supposed to sit down with you together and explain everything. That we both love you, that this isn’t your fault, that we’re going to try to make the transition as painless as we can for you. And we do love you, and it isn’t your fault. But your father and I can’t have that big talk with you right now. I don’t know how any parents can do that. If you can get along well enough to have that kind of conversation, you probably don’t need to have the conversation in the first place.”
The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish Page 2