Maniac Monkeys on Magnolia Street & When Mules Flew on Magnolia Street

by Angela Johnson

  “It's magic. They aren't really anywhere. They're in Magicland.”

  Me and Billy looked at him and smiled. Lump's eyes were shining like they had never shined before.

  “I've always wanted to be a magician,” he said.

  “You'd make a good magician, Lump. I've seen you make a lot of things disappear. It was mostly food, but I was pretty amazed how it was there, then all of a sudden it wasn't.”

  Billy and Lump laughed and ate more crab apples. I ate the crab apples, too, but I was still hungry. I wasn't going to leave, though, until the two girls appeared again.

  We waited.

  Their dad carried more boxes into the house. It looked like it might take hours to unpack the moving truck. After a while he started helping the movers with furniture.

  My stomach started to growl.

  The crab apple cores started to pile up beside Lump and Billy, and bees started to buzz around the cores.

  I figured my mom had probably been looking for me to eat dinner. It was time to give up waiting for the disappeared girls. I turned to leave.

  “I have to go home now,” I said.

  As soon as Lump and Billy started complaining that the girls were bound to reappear any minute, the dad came out again. This time he had on a black cape. He nodded to us, then whirled his cape around.

  And then one, two, three…the girls were there.

  What a great trick! We clapped and stomped our feet. The girls and their father bowed, waved, then went inside the house.

  I skipped home fast, yelling good-bye to Lump and Billy as I ran up our front steps and through the door.

  Mom was just setting the table. Sid was complaining about not getting more allowance. Dad was stirring chili on the stove.

  “I just saw two girls disappear into thin air,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” Sid asked.

  “Yeah, and then a while later their dad made them magically reappear.”

  Sid said, “Why didn't you ask if you could go with them?”

  “Funny, Sid. I'd rather ask them to make you disappear, then forget how to get you back.”

  Dad laughed. “Maybe I should go talk to the man and find out how he does that trick.”

  Mom laughed, too, real hard. In a minute she and Dad were giggling so much that Mom had to stop putting out the napkins and Dad had to step away from the stove. Me and Sid, for once, agreed that the joke wasn't fiinny.

  Dad wiped his eyes with his sleeve and finally stopped laughing. Mom giggled a little more and winked at him.

  “Sounds like we have a family of magicians in the neighborhood.”

  We all sat down to eat. I love my dad's chili. He always uses our garden tomatoes.

  I ate two bowls and I think Sid ate about a gallon.

  I asked Mom, “Do you think I could learn magic?”

  “Sure, Charlie. Magic is a matter of practice, practice, and more practice.”

  “I can practice,” I said.

  Everybody knows I can. I just started playing the trumpet. It took me a long time to pick out the instrument I wanted to play. Mrs. Walker, my music teacher, helped me make my decision. She was great and told me that if I practice a lot, I could be a great trumpet player.

  That's all it took.

  I've been practicing ever since summer vacation began.

  I practice early in the morning before anyone gets up. I practice in the living room while everybody is there. I want them to hear how good I'm getting. Mostly, though, I practice alone in the garden.

  Mom says she thinks the plants will enjoy the music so much more than the walls in the house will. She says music will help them grow. She even set out a comfortable chair for me to sit in. She seems real happy about me sharing my music with the vegetable garden. She even brings my snacks outdoors.

  So everybody knows I can practice.

  I thought about magic all through dinner and way past the time I was supposed to be in bed sleeping.

  I looked out the window toward the magician's house, imagining the wonderful kinds of magic that were going on there.

  Maybe they were making elephants and many different kinds of wild animals appear and disappear. You never know what kind of magic is out there.

  Lump was in our front yard early the next morning. He had one of his aunt's tablecloths slung around his shoulders like a cape.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “You look good,” I said.

  “I'm ready for magic,” he said.

  So we walked to the old Carter house and camped out on the front lawn underneath the crab apple tree again.

  What would happen next?

  Well, something happened sooner than we thought. One of the Magic girls walked out of the house and waved us over. She was wearing a ballet tutu and a baseball cap.

  “Hi, I'm Chris. Were you two here yesterday?”

  “That was us,” I said. “I'm Charlie, and the guy in the cape is Lump.”

  “Hi,” Lump said.

  “Hi,” Chris giggled. “I like your cape.”

  “That was pretty cool the way you and your sister went away in a cloud of smoke,” Lump said.

  “Do you guys want to come in?” Chris asked.

  Lump almost swallowed his gum. I think he had a hard time not running up to the house. I was excited about going into the Magic house, too. Maybe I'd see some wild animals left over from a few magic tricks.

  We walked into the front hall and saw a huge banner that read

  THE GREAT VICTORIO

  “That's my dad. He's been The Great Victorio ever since I've known him. He's been doing magic all his life, he says.”

  Past the Great Victorio sign to the left was a room with nothing but trunks and boxes that looked like they were used in magic acts. There was even a long wood box that was cut in half.

  Chris said, “My dad can put someone in there and saw them in two.”

  “Wow,” Lump said.

  He went over to the box and looked under and around it. He knocked on the sides and crawled alongside it. Then he started looking at everything else in the room. I did, too.

  I saw magic wands and hats, and empty boxes that Chris said would not be so empty during the tricks. There were stuffed animals and masks. There was an upright box that looked like a closet with a curtain across it (probably for making people disappear).

  We didn't want to leave the magic room. Even Chris was excited, and she lives with magic all the time.

  “Want to see a trick?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah!” Lump and I yelled at the same time.

  “This is the first trick my dad taught me.”

  Lump and I sat down on the crowded floor and watched. I thought I could actually hear Lump's heart beating. What could Chris do?

  What would appear or disappear?

  Would there be wild animals? Fireworks?

  Chris bowed.

  “Thank you all for coming to the show. Now you will witness the most incredible feat of conjuring the world has ever seen.”

  Lump whispered, “What's conjuring?”

  “Magic,” I whispered back.

  Chris took off her baseball cap and put on a top hat. She did some turns and clapped her hands. She walked slowly over to the box with the curtain across it.

  “As you both can see, this closet is empty.” She opened the curtains, then turned the box around and tapped hard at the back.

  “Ma'am,” she said, meaning me, “would you like to make certain this box is empty?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I walked over to the closet. I checked for trapdoors or anything like that.

  “Yes, it's empty.” There was no way anybody could get past us in the room.

  I sat back down beside Lump, who was so excited that he hadn't blown a bubble since we'd come into the house. It was a shame Billy was missing this. We should have gone by his house to get him. Suddenly I felt pretty bad about his not being there.

  I knew how excited he'd
been the night before.

  Chris circled the closet, then turned it around toward us. She bent to pick up a wand beside it and bowed again and pointed the wand at the closet.

  “ABRACADABRA, ABRACABOO!”

  There was a puff of blue smoke, then a sneeze.

  Someone was in the closet now!

  “It's somebody with hay fever,” Lump whispered.

  Chris walked over and threw the curtain back. Out stepped a person in a mask and a hat, and covered in a big cape.

  Me and Lump clapped and yelled for a long time.

  Chris and the masked person bowed to us and stepped back into the closet. Suddenly there was another puff of blue smoke, a big one. Then we heard Chris's voice.

  “Please open the curtain.”

  We did, and there was no one there. Then another puff, and there were Chris and the masked person.

  They both bowed again.

  It was a fantastic trick!

  Chris said, “Please come again to our show.”

  “That was great,” Lump said as we walked down the sidewalk toward my house.

  “Yeah, it was. Only, I'm sorry Billy missed it.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  Lump and I walked quietly down Magnolia Street, dreaming of magic.

  Billy was waiting for us when we got back to my house.

  “You missed it, Billy,” I said.

  “Wow, did you miss it,” Lump said. “We went to the magic house, and Chris, one of the girls from yesterday, did a great disappearing act for us.”

  Billy looked upset.

  “Why didn't you guys come and get me? I would have loved to see the magic up close.”

  Then we really felt bad. We didn't know how we would make it up to Billy. That is, we felt really bad until Billy started to sneeze.

  Lump looked at me. Then I looked at Billy.

  Billy laughed and took off running.

  We chased him, but all of a sudden he seemed to just disappear behind a hedge.

  He'd beaten us to the magic on Magnolia Street.

  agnolia Street has been looking different these days. Even though Lump and Billy went to camp, I've been having fun. I guess sometimes people have to go away for you to know that you can be okay without them.

  That's not to say that I don't miss my friends.

  When I found all those baby raccoons living in my mom's garden shed, I really wanted to see what Lump and Billy would say about them. With the black around their eyes, they looked like little bandits. I've named all of them, and I'm hoping that their mom will come back, or I'm going to have to get them help. They sure can eat a lot, though.

  Also, I've been taking long walks all over the neighborhood. Sometimes when you're with your friends, you don't notice or think about certain things.

  Like, did the lady who lives eight houses away always have that metal elephant in her front yard? Or, just how many cats did the Perkinses have this summer? And, if I hung around Mr. Church's front porch long enough, would he give me a ride in his Model T?

  I love living on Magnolia Street, even when Lump and Billy aren't around. So I was pretty happy just feeding the raccoons and visiting Miss Marcia, my neighbor who's a sculptor, when she appeared.

  It had been raining for days and days without the sun peeking outside the clouds even one time; and my brother, Sid, was being even more obnoxious than he usually was, and that's being a real big pest.

  So maybe I was missing Lump and Billy a little. I'd think of them when I was running around eating ice cream and dodging in and out of Miss Marcia's sprinklers when she wasn't looking.

  I never thought they'd leave Magnolia Street at the same time to go away to camp (only separately, because Billy's mom and Lump's aunt and uncle said they liked the camp counselors too much to send Lump and Billy together). Billy said he didn't get it, and Lump snickered and put more gum in his mouth.

  I always laugh when I think of the way Lump can barely talk with that big wad of gum but can blow bubbles as big as his head. And how Billy is always hiding my shoes and calling me the Barefoot Sneaker 'cause I can go anywhere and get into anything without my shoes and never make a sound.

  Once I even found my shoes in the refrigerator. Mom didn't think that was too funny and told us that if we didn't have anything better to do, we could go pull up all the weeds in the garden.

  I thought about Lump and Billy as I sailed on through the time they were gone. I was having fun on my own on Magnolia Street. So it was a surprise when the hat girl appeared. Maybe there was going to be more fun on Magnolia Street.

  You can always smell peanuts on Magnolia Street. It's a wonderful smell. Sometimes I just sit at my bedroom window and sniff.…

  But last night, just before the sun went down, when I raised my window to really smell the peanuts from the peanut butter factory, I saw something run through our backyard. A huge moving hat.

  What was a huge straw hat doing rushing through our backyard?

  People shouldn't be running around backyards; at least people who aren't Lump or Billy or me shouldn't be running around backyards. They should be inside pretending they're taking a bath (while really just running the water and reading a comic book or eating the last of the cookies they took out of their brother's room). If you ask me, there aren't enough hours in the day to waste one on a bath.

  So I called to the hat, “Hey, hat, what are you doing down there?”

  The hat didn't answer.

  I thought it might be a good idea to climb down the vines that run up to my window. Mom would never see me. I could probably catch the hat.

  Unfortunately, just then Sid opened the door and squirted me with his water pistol. He ran out of the room so fast I couldn't throw something at him. I'd have to get him back later.

  But as I was thinking some more about the hat, Sid sneaked in and hit me with a water balloon. I had to scream like he'd broken my arm to make sure Mom and Dad would come. When they got to me, Sid was gone, and when I tried to tell them what happened, they just shook their heads and talked about how they really should have sent us to camp.

  When I finally got into dry pajamas, the moon was shining through my window. The hat was gone.

  I dreamed of water balloons and hats all night long.

  The next morning Mom let me eat breakfast on the porch. I love eating outside. Food always tastes so much better, I think.

  I was sitting on the porch swing munching on apples and enjoying the smell of the honeysuckle vines. Just as I was about to finish an apple off, core and all, the hat came back—going down the sidewalk.

  I crawled off the porch swing and looked between the honeysuckle vines.

  A girl about my size with lots of braids smiled up at me. She was pushing a wheelbarrow.

  Well, all I have to say is that Sid didn't string up enough rope as a trellis for the honeysuckle, because it's obvious now that it isn't the best thing to hide behind when spying on someone. My face must have stuck out, 'cause the hat girl with the wheelbarrow waved to me. I smiled back at her and then remembered that my face was poking out of the honeysuckle. I must have looked pretty funny with honeysuckle hair.

  There were all kinds of flowers and a shovel in the wheelbarrow. The hat girl stopped for only a few seconds, then kept on pushing the wheelbarrow down the sidewalk.

  She looked at the flowers and trees in people's front yards as she walked.

  Sometimes she even stopped and smelled flowers and touched bushes and trees. She smiled a lot and looked like she was having so much fun.

  Mom came out on the porch and pulled me out of the honeysuckle.

  “She's something, huh?”

  “Who?” I said. I didn't want Mom to think I was spying.

  “The girl with the wheelbarrow that you were watching.”

  Mom ate one of the apples on my plate and started the porch swing swaying.

  I said, “So what do you think she does with the stuff in the wheelbarrow?”

  Mom laughed. “Wh
at do you think?”

  Suddenly Sid was out on the porch putting in his two cents.

  “I think she eats all those flowers. She probably thought you were a plant with your head sticking out of those vines. She probably had never seen such a goofy-looking vine before and was going to come over and pull you up.”

  Just as I was about to pinch Sid, Mom coughed. Real loud and kind of fake, which usually means she's about to give that enough-is-enough look to me and Sid.

  I couldn't wait to meet the hat girl, but I suddenly remembered that I owed Sid a little surprise. So I just smiled at him and went into the house.

  I'd have the surprise for him later.

  Early the next morning I found a pot of flowers on our front porch with a note beside it that said

  THERE ARE SOME FLOWERS THAT

  BLOOM ONLY IN THE MOONSHINE.

  They were from the hat girl. I decided to plant them by the honeysuckle vines. It was the first thing I had ever planted. I usually run when Mom starts putting in the garden. I guess the planting part is never as good as the eating part to me. I was really proud of how that moon flower looked. And just when I was feeling so proud I was about to float up into the sky, the hat girl appeared.

  She was still wearing her hat but didn't have the wheelbarrow. She stood on the front walk watching me.

  “Thanks for the moon flower.”

  “You're welcome. Ashley.”

  “No, my name is Charlie,” I said.

  The hat girl almost fell over laughing, holding her stomach. Then I started laughing. Soon we were both on the ground laughing. Sid went by on his bike and just shook his head.

  “My name is Ashley, but you can call me Ashe.”

  “Like I said, I'm Charlie.”

  Ashe and I sat there and talked for a long time. She told me everything about herself, and I told her everything about myself.

  Ashe loves chocolate and can eat it anytime, day or night. She's spending the summer with her grandmother (who gardens, too) around the corner on Pine Street. She lives in Chicago but really loves it here on Magnolia Street.

  She loves music. I love music.

  Ashe loves animals, and so do I.

  “But most of all, Charlie, I love to garden and save plants.”