The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish

by Claudia Mills

“Sometimes my voice comes out high,” I said, making it low again.

  We crossed the river over to Virginia on a ferry. The closer we got to the hospital, the more my heart filled with hope. Maybe I’d see Jeb today. He’d be lying in the hospital bed, a bandage on his forehead and his arm in a sling. “Hi, Polly,” he’d say. “I knew you’d come.”

  I lay on the alfalfa watching the clouds go by, white puffy clouds like balls of cotton. I thought about the slaves picking cotton on a hot day like this one, with no break for water or goober peas. Why didn’t jeb see that the South was wrong to have slavery? Slaves were just as smart as the people who owned them, maybe smarter. If they weren’t slaves, they could be great scientists, or math teachers, or violinists.

  The hospital didn’t look like a hospital at all to me. It was a cluster of ragged, dirty tents at the edge of a battlefield. I don’t know which battlefield. Maybe it was Bull Run. It looked different without the armies shooting and screaming and bleeding and dying. But if I closed my eyes, I could still see the smoke from the cannons and hear the neighs of frightened horses trying to gallop away.

  There was a main tent and some other smaller tents. We went inside the main tent. I hoped there would be someone I could ask about Jeb. But there was no one sitting by the door to answer questions.

  “What do we do now?” I asked Mr. Porter.

  “I guess we look,” he said.

  We walked up one row of beds and down another, looking at each soldier to see if he was Jeb. Some of them were missing legs. Some of them were missing arms. The worst one was missing part of his face, but his hair was black, not red, so I knew it couldn’t be Jeb.

  At one bed, the nurse was covering the soldier with a sheet. I knew what it meant when she drew the sheet up over his face. He was dead. I had to check to make sure it wasn’t Jeb.

  I prayed as hard as I could. Then she pulled the sheet back so I could see. It wasn’t Jeb. It was some other girl’s brother. I couldn’t even feel glad.

  Without thinking, I pulled off my cap and placed it over my heart.

  “We’d best go now—Paul,” Mr. Porter said gently.

  I followed him back to the wagon, my cap hanging from my hand. Then, too late, I remembered my hair, falling down over my shaking shoulders.

  10

  Amanda’s father had moved out almost three weeks ago, and the house still felt empty without him. Amanda caught herself listening for signs of him, the way her tongue would keep poking into the hole in her mouth where a loose tooth used to be. But her tongue would accept the lost tooth after a day or two, even after a few hours. It was harder to let go of a father.

  Steffi didn’t seem to miss him. At least, she didn’t say she did. Of course, Amanda didn’t say that she did, either. She was afraid to say anything about him to Steffi. Ever since the rainy-day visit to their dad’s apartment, her sister had been distant and unfriendly. Amanda couldn’t believe Steffi was still cross because Amanda and their father had walked in the rain without her. But it took so little to make Steffi turn sulky these days.

  Their mother seemed to miss him more than Steffi did. Maybe she just missed the things he used to do in the house. When the paper in the printer in her basement office jammed, she tried for half an hour to pry the stuck piece of paper from the rollers, but couldn’t do it. Steffi and Amanda were summoned to help, but Amanda’s tugs were no more effective than her mother’s, and Steffi refused even to try.

  “It’s not going to come out, Mom,” she said.

  “I thought kids today were supposed to be technological whizzes. All my friends’ children are upgrading the software on their parents’ computers and teaching their parents how to design their own Web pages.”

  “Not us,” said Steffi.

  In the end, their mother had a friend from work stop by one evening to do it, a male friend.

  Their father would have had the printer unjammed in two minutes.

  Then, on Saturday morning, Amanda woke up to hear a muffled scream from the kitchen. She ran downstairs. Steffi didn’t. Either she was still sleeping—Steffi was the soundest sleeper in the family—or she didn’t think it was especially important to see what their mother could be screaming about.

  Amanda’s mother was sitting in a kitchen chair, crying. “I can’t do it,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  She pointed to the open pantry door. Uneasy, Amanda started toward it.

  “Don’t. Don’t go in there.”

  For a fleeting second, Amanda expected to see a body lying on the pantry floor. Maybe it was an intruder, an armed burglar, who had broken into the house to prey on a woman alone with two helpless daughters, but had somehow gotten himself killed instead. Or it could be her dad, felled by a heart attack brought on by fighting with her mother.

  At first Amanda didn’t notice anything. Then she saw it: a dead mouse.

  She forced back a scream of her own. It’s just a mouse, she tried to tell herself. But the deadness of it, lying there …

  Amanda thought she might be sick. Swallowing hard, she dropped into the chair next to her mother’s.

  Steffi appeared in the doorway. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Amanda wasn’t going to let Steffi have the shock of finding it herself.

  “It’s a … dead mouse,” she whispered.

  Steffi screamed louder than their mother had before. Up she jumped onto a chair, as if the mouse were going to come back to life and dart across her bare, unprotected feet.

  Suddenly their mother started laughing. After a startled pause, Amanda and Steffi joined in. It was too ridiculous, all of them cowering before the small corpse of a poor, perfectly harmless mouse. Amanda even liked mice, in stories at least. The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. The mice who turned into Cinderella’s horses. Stuart Little!

  When they had finished laughing, there was a long moment of silence.

  “Should I call your dad?” their mother asked. “He’s heading out on a business trip to Atlanta, but I don’t think he’s left yet.”

  Yes! Call him and tell him you want him to move home again.

  “No,” Steffi said, sounding annoyed. “What about the guy who fixed the printer?”

  “Tom? I’m not going to call him every time I have some little problem.”

  Was a dead mouse a little problem or a big problem? It would be a little problem for Polly Mason. Living on a farm, Polly probably got rid of dead mice all the time, dead rats even. She’d pick them up and carry them outside and fling them away like the shells of so many cracked goober peas.

  “I’ll do it,” Amanda said in a brave voice.

  Steffi stared, looking impressed.

  “Oh, honey, do you think you could?” their mother asked.

  Amanda nodded.

  “Use a plastic bag. One of the bags from the newspaper.”

  Polly would have done it without a plastic bag. But the plastic bag was a good idea. Like a dog walker cleaning up after her puppy, Amanda slipped the bag over her hand to form a plastic glove. Then she walked into the pantry, picked up the mouse, and quickly turned the plastic bag inside out over him, to create a small see-through shroud. Ta-da!

  “Where should I put him?”

  “Just put him outside in the trash can. It gets picked up on Monday.”

  That was all the funeral the mouse received. If Amanda hadn’t borrowed Polly’s bravery, their mom might have called their dad, despite Steffi’s sneers, and they might have made up, and Amanda might have had two parents living in the same house again. But she still felt good about what she had done. It always felt good to do something you never dreamed you’d be able to make yourself do.

  Amanda’s mother was out all afternoon showing houses to clients. Tanya was over, watching TV in the family room with Steffi. Amanda could hear snippets of their conversation as she fixed herself a snack in the kitchen. Apparently Mike Weil liked another girl now, Sydney somebody. Tanya was asking Steffi for advice on how to get hi
m back.

  “Don’t chase him,” Steffi said. “The more you chase after a boy, the faster he runs away. It’s like animal instinct or something, predator and prey. And whatever you do, don’t let him see you cry. Boys can’t stand being around girls who cry.”

  Amanda couldn’t quite catch what Steffi said next, but the basic idea seemed to be to create elaborate strategies for Tanya to show Mike how little she cared.

  Amanda half wanted to call Beth, but Beth was probably spending the afternoon with Meghan. Amanda wasn’t going to chase after Beth any more than Tanya was going to chase after Mike Weil.

  She thought about writing more Polly, but she didn’t know what should happen next. It seemed boring to have Polly and Mr. Porter keep going to a bunch of hospitals and not finding Jeb. And if they did find him, the main story of the diary would be over. So instead Amanda read a Betsy-Tacy book. It was comforting to have the company of a family as loving and happy as Betsy’s. Amanda loved how Mr. Ray invited all Betsy’s friends to their house on Sunday nights for his famous onion sandwiches.

  At six o’clock, Amanda’s mother came home. Tanya’s stepdad had picked her up half an hour earlier.

  “What do you girls want to do for dinner?”

  “Pizza,” Steffi said.

  “We could have onion sandwiches,” Amanda suggested.

  “Onion sandwiches?” Steffi and their mother asked together. It was plain that they had never read the Betsy-Tacy books.

  “You slice the onions really thin, and put on salt and pepper.”

  The sandwiches sounded so good in the books, but Amanda had to admit they didn’t sound all that appealing in real life. They wouldn’t taste the same without the Ray family gathered around the piano, linking arms and singing.

  Dinner ended up being soup from a can, with a thrown-together salad. “Pizza isn’t cheap,” their mother said, “now that we have to pay the bills for two households.”

  Amanda wondered what their dad was having. He had never done any cooking. Maybe he was heating up his own can of soup in one of the shiny, new-looking pans that came with his furnished apartment. Unless he had already left on his trip.

  As she was ladling the soup, their mother said, “I’ve been thinking that we should consider getting a cat.”

  Amanda’s eyes met Steffi’s. She knew Steffi wanted a cat as much as she did. If their father hadn’t been allergic, they would have had a cat long ago.

  “It would take care of the mice problem,” their mother went on.

  Amanda didn’t know what to say. Nothing could be sweeter than curling up to write a Polly diary entry with a purring cat for company. Except for writing a Polly diary entry while hearing a dad downstairs whistling in the kitchen.

  “Let’s get a kitten,” Steffi urged. “Can we pick one out at the Humane Society tomorrow? We don’t have to visit Dad because he’s away on that business thing.”

  “Kittens are too much work,” said their mother. “But we can go there tomorrow to see what they have. It’s good to make a couple of visits, so we can be sure of what we want.”

  “Can I bring Tanya?”

  “Sure. Amanda, do you want to ask Beth?”

  Amanda shook her head. It was all happening too fast.

  After dinner, she and Steffi loaded the dishwasher while their mom checked her e-mail.

  Amanda carried the three soup bowls over from the table. Three soup bowls, not four. Carefully she set each bowl on the top rack. With only one person gone, there should have been almost as many dishes as before, but the dishwasher was practically empty. Her father must have used more dishes than the rest of the family put together.

  “Dad can’t come back if we get a cat,” Amanda said, as if Steffi didn’t know that as well as she did.

  “I don’t think Dad’s coming back.”

  Someone had finally said it.

  “The chain on the door? You heard what he told us, that he was sick from the crab sandwich. There wasn’t any lady there, after all.”

  “Amanda.” Steffi put so much tenderness in the name that the tears welled up in Amanda’s eyes.

  “That’s what Dad said!”

  “Yes.” Steffi looked away. “That’s what Dad said.”

  July 29, 1861

  Dear Diary,

  Well, when Mr. Porter saw my hair, he knew I wasn’t a boy.

  “Your name isn’t really Paul, is it?” he asked then.

  “No, sir. It’s Polly, Polly Mason.”

  “A big city in wartime is no place for a girl,” he said.

  I put my cap back on and stuffed my hair underneath it. “That’s why I’m a boy.”

  I waited a minute. Mr. Porter looked like he didn’t know what to do. Then he laughed. “Let’s go, Paul,” he told me.

  We went outside, and I climbed up onto the wagon.

  “Let’s head back to Washington,” Mr. Porter said. “We can check at the hospital there.”

  I lay on the alfalfa and stared at the sky some more. Now the clouds looked less like cotton balls and more like cats. One white cloud looked a lot like Whitie. A dark cloud looked sort of like Blackie. Do you think Whitie and Blackie miss me?

  Diary, this is how we got Whitie and Blackie.

  Betsy—my best friend, remember?—had a cat, but we didn’t. Mother said we didn’t need any more animals. We already had one dog, two horses, three cows, four sheep, and five chickens. Thomas said, “If we have all those other animals, why not have one more?” Jeb drew pictures of a cat in the dirt with a stick. Then he drew words coming out of the cat’s mouth: “I want to live in your house,” the words said. Mother pretended not to see the pictures. She walked right over them when she went outside to hang the wash on the clothesline.

  Then I had an idea. At night before I went to bed, I left a little piece of cheese on the kitchen table. In the morning, the cheese was gone, and I saw a mouse running across the floor. Some people are afraid of mice, but not me. I throw away dead mice all the time.

  The next night, I left two little pieces of cheese on the table. That morning, I saw two mice running across the floor.

  When I left out three pieces of cheese, and three mice came, Mother saw them, too. She chased them away with a broom, but they kept coming back day after day.

  Mother went to get the cheese. It was all gone.

  “Who has been eating all this cheese?” Mother asked.

  “Mice like cheese,” I said, as innocent as can be.

  “I guess we need a cat,” Mother said.

  “Hooray!” Thomas, Jeb, and I all shouted.

  Betsy’s cat had just had kittens. Mother sent us to Betsy’s house to pick out a kitten for us to keep. They were so cute, dear Diary. One was black one was white, one was gray, one was orange, and one was all different colors mixed together.

  It was hard to pick. We wanted all five, but Mother had said one.

  Jeb liked Whitie the best. Thomas liked Blackie the best.

  “Which one do you like best?” they asked me.

  I looked at Thomas holding Blackie and Jeb holding Whitie. If I said Blackie, Jeb would be sad. If I said Whitie, Thomas would be sad. If I picked a different cat, they both would be sad.

  “Let’s take both,” I said.

  So we did. At first Mother was angry, but she couldn’t stay angry for long because Blackie and Whitie were so adorable, and after that no more cheese was eaten by the mice.

  I know, Diary. Thomas got Blackie, and Jeb got Whitie, and I didn’t get any cat for myself. But then my brothers left, and I have both cats now, Blackie and Whitie.

  I love our cats, dear Diary. But I would much rather have my brothers.

  11

  “If we get a cat, you girls are responsible for cleaning the litter box,” their mother said as they drove on Sunday afternoon to the Humane Society.

  “At Tanya’s house, her mother pays her to do it, a dollar a day,” Steffi pointed out. Tanya hadn’t ended up coming, after all; she had plans with an
other friend.

  “Does Tanya pay her mother for cleaning the house, cooking the meals, doing the laundry, and driving her to school?” their mother asked.

  “It’s not the same thing. Tanya’s mother likes to clean and cook and do laundry.”

  Their mother laughed.

  Steffi didn’t look amused. “She does! And kids don’t want to go to school. It’s the parents who want us to. So they should drive us there.”

  Amanda wanted to go to school. Last summer she had made a chart at the start of August, crossing off the days until school would begin, something she hadn’t admitted to Beth and would never admit to Steffi. She had a feeling that James liked school, too.

  They pulled into the parking lot at the shelter. Inside, a teenaged boy was sitting at the front desk. With a friendly smile, he looked up from his computer monitor.

  “What can I do for the three of you?” The boy was looking straight at Steffi.

  “We want to see your cats,” her mother said. “Remember, girls, we’re not getting a cat today. We’re just seeing what’s available.”

  “Right.” Steffi grinned at Amanda. The boy grinned, too.

  “The cat room is straight ahead,” the boy told them. “Take your time, wander around. If you see a cat you’re interested in, let me know, and I’ll bring him to you in our family meeting room at the end of the hall. And if you have any questions, just holler. I’m Ben.”

  Amanda was ready to go, but Steffi held back.

  “Do you have any favorites?” she asked Ben.

  “They’re all my favorites. Though I’m really a dog person.”

  “Do you have a dog? At home?”

  Who cared whether this boy had a dog or not? The real question was whether Amanda and Steffi were going to get a cat. Then Amanda recognized the look on Steffi’s face. Steffi looked the way Tanya did when she talked about Mike Weil. And Ben seemed in no hurry to get back to whatever he had been doing on the computer.

  “I have two,” he said. “A black Lab and a golden retriever.”

  “Can we look at dogs, too?” Steffi asked her mother.

  “You can look at whatever you want. But we’re not even going to think about getting anything but a cat.”