For the first time in a long time, I thought of Mother and Father, how worried they must be, about Jeb, about Thomas, and now about me. The world was so full of terrible things to worry about.
From the wagon I could see a woman standing in a doorway, reading a telegram. The Western Union man stood there while she opened the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper. Then she began to scream, “No! No! My Robert dead? No! No!”
She fell to her knees, sobbing and beating the ground with her bare fists.
One little piece of paper had changed her life forever.
Mr. Porter’s horses kept walking. They didn’t even turn their heads to see why some woman was screaming by the side of the road. But Mr. Porter turned back to look at me, and I saw that his eyes were full of tears. He didn’t stop the wagon, though. There was nothing he could do for the woman. There was nothing anyone could do.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget hearing her cry, “No! No!”
When we reached Aunt Sally’s house, Mr. Porter lifted me down from the wagon and waited while I knocked on the front door.
Jessie Mae, Aunt Sally’s cook, opened it. At first she didn’t recognize me. Then I pulled off my cap.
“Why, Miss Polly! What are you doing here so far from home?”
She looked at Mr. Porter as if he would explain everything, but he said, “I’ll let Polly tell you her story. I’d best be going now.”
I gave him a big hug, and he hugged me back. “Oh, Mr. Porter! Thank you, thank you!”
Then he left and drove away. I didn’t even have his address so that I could write to him. He had been by my side on the most important journey of my life, and now he was gone.
Aunt Sally showed up in the doorway then.
“Polly! Oh, praise God, you’re safe!”
“I went to look for Jeb.”
Then she was crying, and I was crying, and Jessie Mae was crying, too.
We sent a telegram home that night:
POLLY SAFE STOP JEB LOST ARM STOP THOMAS HURT BAD STOP KEEP PRAYING
15
Amanda couldn’t sleep that night. She had always been good at sleeping. Next to writing, it was her best talent: as soon as she laid her head down on the pillow, she was swept off into a deep, dreamless slumber; if she ever tried to read for a while in bed, the book would fall out of her hand after a page or two, and the next thing she’d know, it was morning. One of her parents would have come in during the night to turn off her light. Probably her mother.
Yes, it had to have been her mother who always crept up to the bed while she was sleeping, and closed her book, and tucked the covers in around her. Of that she was suddenly sure. Not her father. Not her father, ever.
How could she have been so blind? Steffi had known before she did. That was why Steffi hadn’t believed his lie about the crab sandwich. “That’s what Dad said”: Steffi had practically accused him of lying right then. But the crab sandwich story had sounded so real when he said it; he had even added extra details to make it more convincing. Amanda couldn’t believe that he could lie so smoothly to his own daughter, knowing that she would believe him simply because she wanted to so desperately.
Over and over again, the scene replayed itself in Amanda’s mind—waiting in the lobby, then seeing him there, then his kiss, not on her cheek, full on her lips. And the way his face looked when he saw her. His face never looked like that when he saw Amanda. For Mandy he wouldn’t even take the chain off the motel door …
Amanda must have fallen asleep, because her mother came in to wake her at seven.
“Time to get up, honey,” her mother said. “It’s not like you to oversleep. That scare on your bike must have taken a lot out of you.”
What scare? Oh, her lie. The lie she had told about her bike so she wouldn’t have to tell the truth about her father.
“Mom?”
“What is it, honey?”
“I love you.”
Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I love you, too, Amanda. These last few weeks—”
Amanda shook her head. She didn’t want her mother to say anything more. So her mother touched her cheek gently and left her alone to get dressed for school.
At breakfast, Steffi was silent and sullen. Amanda knew Steffi was embarrassed about the night before, about the things she had said to their mother, about letting them see her cry. If she was extra nice to Steffi, it would only make things worse. Instead, Amanda brushed Peanut, who lay on the floor, stretching herself out in rapture at every stroke of the brush.
“Poor little Peanut,” Amanda crooned. “You were lost, but we found you.”
“She wasn’t lost!” Steffi snapped. “She was there all along, probably ten feet away from us. We made a big fuss yesterday over nothing.”
She glared at Amanda, as if daring her to offer any contradiction. Amanda didn’t.
“Bring your diaries to the gathering place,” Mr. Abrams said once the Pledge of Allegiance and morning announcements were over.
Amanda retrieved hers from her desk, but she wasn’t going to read it to the class, even if they all got down on their knees and begged her. Except for James, the others didn’t deserve to hear about Polly. They wouldn’t understand about losing a brother. In their whole lives, they had probably never lost anything.
Well, Lance’s parents were divorced, Amanda remembered. But he was the last person in the world to whom she would read her Polly entry, after what he had done to James. She wouldn’t read it to Beth, either, who had made as much fun of her poor grieving widow as Lance had made of his poor ignorant slave boy.
For the first time, the diary project seemed stupid—worse than stupid, wrong. All these fifth graders with their easy, comfortable lives pretending to be long-ago people who had suffered the unspeakable tragedies of a terrible war. And then sitting in a circle reading aloud to one another and giggling.
“I think it’s time to hear from our heads of state,” Mr. Abrams said. He called on a boy named Scott, who was doing Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy.
Jefferson Davis was having a bad time. He had counted on England to come to the aid of the Confederacy, because English aristocrats had a lot in common with Southern plantation owners, and England didn’t like equality any more than the South did. But England wasn’t helping the South. Queen Victoria had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and cried at what happened to the slaves in the story.
“I can’t believe one made-up story could make such a big difference,” Scott had Jefferson Davis say.
Amanda could believe it. She knew that Abraham Lincoln had told Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “So this is the little lady who wrote the book that made this great war.”
Ricky, as President Lincoln, read next.
“‘Today I freed the slaves. I wrote something called the Emancipation Proclamation. I don’t know why I called it that. But even if it has a confusing name, it freed all the slaves in the South. They should have been free a long time ago. But I’m glad they’re free now. This is the best thing I’ve done as President.’”
The class clapped at the end of Ricky’s journal. Amanda knew they weren’t clapping for Ricky as much as for President Lincoln. But maybe they were clapping for Ricky, as well. Amanda had gotten a strange little thrill when Ricky read the last line of his diary. For some reason it made her like Ricky more than she had before.
“Who wants to read next?” Mr. Abrams asked. As usual, Lance waved his hand in the air. Before calling on him, Mr. Abrams ran his eyes around the circle as if to see if there was anyone else he could call on instead. Amanda almost raised her hand, just so that she wouldn’t have to hear Lance read, but she didn’t.
“Okay, Lance.” If Mr. Abrams was disappointed at having to hear yet another Jonah entry, he didn’t show it.
“Mine is about the Emancipation Proclamation, too,” Lance said. “‘Dear Diary’—d-e-r-e Diary—”
“You can let us imagine the spelling
,” Mr. Abrams suggested.
“‘Today I’s heard that Massah Lincoln—he’s de President—he make sumpin’ called de—Eman—Eman—Eman—I’s can’t say such a big word. But it means I’s free. ’Cept my missus, she don’t listen to Massah Lincoln. She says I’s not free. I’s not sure I want to be free. My massah and missus whip me, but dey feed me, too. How’s I feed myself if I free? I can’t eat cotton. Mebbe dis Eman—Eman—Eman is not such a good idea.’ The end.”
“Comments for Lance?” Mr. Abrams asked in his usual level voice.
No one said anything. Even Ricky didn’t say he liked everything about it. How could he, after he had been the one to free the slaves?
Suddenly Amanda heard herself speaking.
“Is it supposed to be funny that he can’t say the words Emancipation Proclamation? Are we supposed to be laughing? Jonah is a slave. He’s never been to school. He picks cotton all day long and gets whipped for not picking it faster. How is he supposed to be able to say the words Emancipation Proclamation?”
“Amanda, our rule is to start with something positive,” Mr. Abrams reminded her gently.
“Positive? Positive? There’s nothing positive! All Lance has done in every single journal entry is make fun of Jonah. That’s all he’s done. And now—he says Jonah doesn’t want to be free? Jonah wants to stay a slave? If Lance had thought about Jonah’s feelings for even one second, he’d know that’s not true. Nobody could want to be a slave. If Lance doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know anything!”
Amanda couldn’t stay in the room another minute, or she’d grab Lance’s diary out of his hands and rip it into little pieces and hurl them in his smug, smiling face. She leaped to her feet and ran out of the room and stood in the hallway, her heart racing and her shoulders shaking.
Mr. Abrams found her there a moment later, his kindly face creased with lines of concern. “Amanda, what’s all this about? I know Lance’s diary hasn’t been as sensitively written as it could have been, but you’re so upset, and I think you’ve hurt Lance’s feelings, and hurt them badly.”
“He hurt James’s feelings!”
Mr. Abrams seemed surprised. “Are you sure that’s true? James seems to me to be a very grounded and secure young man. I doubt he’s taking Lance’s diary personally.”
“Yesterday? After the audition results were posted? James got picked, and Lance didn’t, and Lance called James”—she forced out the word—“Jonah.”
Mr. Abrams covered his eyes. Then he put his hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “That explains a lot.”
Amanda felt relieved that Mr. Abrams knew. “What are you going to do?”
“Talk to Lance. Talk to James. I knew there was a risk, with this kind of assignment. But there’s a greater risk if we don’t at least try to understand someone else’s experience from the inside. And sometimes—sometimes the results are pretty wonderful. Your Polly diary, for example. When you read aloud, I almost feel you are Polly.”
“I almost feel I’m Polly, too.”
Mr. Abrams patted Amanda’s shoulder. “Let’s go do some math,” he said.
Amanda followed him back to the room. A few kids shot curious looks in her direction, but most had their heads bent over their math worksheets. Right then, Amanda was grateful for the existence of fractions and decimals. Right then, they seemed less complicated than dealing with human beings in the Civil War, and human beings in the here and now.
August 1, 1861
Dear Diary,
Mother and Father arrived at Aunt Sally’s today. I was afraid to see them. I knew they had to be very angry. But Mother just hugged me, and Father hugged me, too, though he is not one for showing his feelings.
Later Mother did say, “What if your Mr. Porter hadn’t been an honorable man?”
And Father said, “Didn’t you think your mother and I had enough to worry about with both boys off to war?”
Then I cried, and Mother cried, and Father didn’t cry, but he blew his nose on his checkered handkerchief extra hard.
Now we are going in Aunt Sally’s buggy to the hospital to see Thomas.
If Thomas is still here. “I don’t think I’m going to make it, Polly.” Those were his last words to me.
We’re at the hospital, dear Diary. I brought you with me so I can write to you while Mother and Father go inside and find out. They told me to wait here. They don’t think an army hospital is a proper place for a young lady. I told them I’d been to two hospitals already. Still, they left me here, sitting underneath this tree.
I’ll know by their faces when they come out. Well, I’ll know the news is bad if Father is crying. Mother will cry either way. Every time someone comes out of the hospital, I look up, thinking it’s them. But it never is.
I’m starting to hope. Would they be taking so long if Thomas were dead?
Unless they had to arrange for what to do with his body and get the flag, all folded in a special way, that would cover his coffin. If they give out flags like that during a war.
Maybe there aren’t enough flags in the world to cover all the coffins of all the boys killed in all the wars.
Wait. It’s them. They’re coming.
16
It had been two days since Amanda had talked to her dad during his nightly phone call. She had made sure to be in the shower at eight o’clock the night that Peanut was lost and found; Friday night she was at the library reading more about the Civil War.
On Saturday, Steffi and Tanya went to Ben’s game. Amanda kept looking at her watch while Steffi was gone, wondering if the game was almost over, wondering if Ben would really come back to their house afterward to see Peanut. She caught her mother checking the clock a few times, too.
At one-thirty, she heard Steffi’s voice in the kitchen, and then a boy’s voice responding. She didn’t hear Tanya’s voice; Tanya must have obligingly disappeared after the game.
Should she stay in her room or go downstairs to say hi to Ben herself? Well, Peanut was on her bed, so if Ben was going to see Peanut, she’d have to carry her down for his inspection.
“There she is!” Ben said as Amanda shyly came into the kitchen with Peanut in her arms. In his soccer uniform, Ben looked even cuter, and Steffi looked even more smitten.
Ben took Peanut from Amanda. The cat let him pet her, instead of struggling to jump down.
“She looks great!” Ben said. “I think she’s gained a little weight. That’s good—she was pretty skinny—but you probably don’t want her to gain any more. How much are you feeding her?”
Their mother appeared in the kitchen; Amanda could tell she was trying to make it look as if she had just felt the need for another cup of coffee.
“Ben!” She tried to act surprised to see him. “How nice of you to stop by.”
“Well, I wanted to see Peanut,” Ben said. “And Steffi,” he added, blushing as he said it. Amanda had never seen a boy blush before, or maybe she had just never noticed.
Amanda and her mother exchanged a quick glance. Amanda knew her mother had never been more grateful to have been wrong about something.
“Would you like a snack?” their mother asked. “We have plenty of fixings for sandwiches.”
“That’d be great.”
“I can make him a sandwich,” Steffi said. It was clearly the signal to go. Steffi flashed her mother and sister a joyous smile as they went.
Then it was Sunday, and Amanda and Steffi were supposed to go visit their dad at Georgetown Meadows.
“I don’t want to go,” Amanda told Steffi.
“Like what we want matters?”
“He’s going to know that we know.”
“So? We were bound to find out sometime. Maybe he’ll sit us down and tell us about her, and we can act surprised. Or maybe he’ll want us to meet her, and she’ll be desperate for us to like her, and she’ll buy us all kinds of stuff that Mom won’t let us have.”
When their dad came right on time to collec
t them, both sisters walked silently to the car. It was a perfect sunny afternoon. The maple leaves were an intense scarlet against the dazzling blueness of the October sky.
Like blood, Amanda thought. That’s what they would look like to Polly—leaves drenched with blood freshly shed by her wounded brothers.
“Pretty day,” their father remarked.
Neither girl replied.
Their dad’s apartment looked lived in now, with a heap of newspapers strewn on the coffee table, and his laptop and printer set up on the dining room table with a bunch of cords trailing down to the floor. Their mother’s printer had jammed again the other night, and she had actually found the owner’s manual that came with it and unjammed it herself.
On the couch lay his saxophone. Steffi nudged Amanda and angled her chin toward it. Amanda couldn’t believe he would leave it there in full view for them to see. Quickly she averted her eyes.
He had already seen their reaction to it.
“I’ve been taking sax lessons,” he said. As if to prove it, he picked up the sax and played a couple of scales.
“Your mother never liked the sound of the sax. Or, I should say, the sound of my playing on the sax. Not that I could blame her. I’ve heard dying cats that sounded better. But I figured—now that—”
Breaking off the sentence, he shrugged apologetically.
I know you’re taking sax lessons. I saw you at the Arts Center on Thursday.
“Okay!” he said cheerfully, laying the sax back down on the couch. “What do you girls want to do this afternoon? I thought of some ideas. Let’s not just spend our time together watching TV.”
Steffi had already clicked the remote to the Food Network. “What’s wrong with TV?”
He produced a piece of paper from his pocket. “Idea number one, go to the crafts festival at the county fairgrounds, right outside of town. Idea number two, go for a short hike to see the autumn foliage. Idea number three, go to a free folk music concert at the public library.”
The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish Page 12