Emily's Runaway Imagination

by Beverly Cleary

  Now Emily had another problem to take her mind off her custard pies and what to say to the minister. That was chicken. At every single Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, family reunion, church dinner, or lodge supper someone always served Emily, and said, as if offering a great treat, “And here is a drumstick for Emily.” Emily did not like drumsticks. She longed for white meat, the piece with the wishbone in it, but always it was drumsticks, drumsticks, drumsticks.

  Today, however, turned out to be different. A platter of chicken was passed to June, who helped herself to two drumsticks before she passed the heavy platter to Emily, who had to rest it on the table.

  “May I help you, Emily?” asked Mr. Bonnett.

  “No, thank you, I can manage,” said Emily hastily, because there were still drumsticks left. She helped herself to the wishbone piece, with a feeling of triumph. She would take it home to dry in the warming oven and when it was brittle she would use it to make a wish. She would wish for Black Beauty, because that was a little, selfish wish. Faith was for big, unselfish things like a library for the whole town.

  After that things were better. Mr. Bonnett did most of the talking, so Emily did not have to worry about what to say to him. He talked about the splendid work the Ladies’ Aid was doing for the church. He talked about the need for more partitions in the Sunday-school room. He praised the cooking of the ladies of Pitchfork. When Emily finished her chicken, she wiped the wishbone on her napkin and slipped it inside her bloomer leg. Emily found bloomer legs handy for carrying all sorts of things—rubber balls, jacks, even a jumping rope.

  With Mr. Bonnett talking so much and everyone having to stop eating to listen politely, naturally Emily’s table was the last to finish. Emily looked out of the corner of her eye at the table of desserts. There was nothing left but two pies, Emily’s custard pies. Naturally they were left to the last—they were such peculiar-looking pies. One of the ladies was cutting them now. How perfectly dreadful! Emily wanted to crawl under the table she was so embarrassed.

  Of course one of the ladies served the minister first. “I’m not quite sure what kind of pie this is,” she said apologetically. “It looks like custard, but the crust is on top.”

  “Is that the pie you baked?” June asked Emily.

  Emily nodded.

  “Well, well,” said Mr. Bonnett, in a voice that reached the multitudes in the church basement. “So this little lady baked the pie!”

  Emily squirmed on the hard bench. Everyone turned to look at the little lady who baked the pies. The minister looked around at the people at his table. Then he looked at the pies. “Wait a minute,” he said. “There are twelve pieces of pie and twenty people at the table. There isn’t enough to go around.” He picked up a knife and cut each piece of pie into two pieces. “There now, that is more like it,” he said. “Enough to go around and second helpings for some. Like the loaves and fishes, eh, Emily?” He laughed heartily at his own joke.

  Feeding the multitudes her custard pie was the last thing Emily wanted to do. Since she had baked it, she felt duty-bound to take a piece, too, even though she did not care much for anything as slippery-feeling as custard pie. What would people think if she was not willing to eat her own pie?

  “It’s awfully funny custard pie,” remarked June.

  Then Emily had an inspiration. “It is called upside-down pie,” she said. Upside-down cake—why not upside-down pie? Let people think the crust was supposed to be on top.

  The minister ate a mouthful of pie. “Delicious,” he pronounced it. “The crust is light and flaky.”

  Everyone at the table murmured in agreement. Emily’s pie crust was light and flaky. They said exactly what Emily had planned they should say, before her crust had risen through the custard.

  “You know,” remarked one of the ladies thoughtfully, “having the crust on top is an excellent idea for custard pie. So often the crust on the bottom becomes soggy. Tell me, Emily, what is the secret of such a light, flaky crust?”

  Emily smiled modestly. “I add a generous pinch of baking powder,” she said.

  8

  The Hard-Times Party

  Mama was heartsick, just heartsick, when Daddy told her how little money he would get for his crops that year. The barn was full, the sheep grew long thick wool, the hogs were fat, and what happened? The price of everything went way down and all Daddy’s hard work earned scarcely enough money to see the Bartletts through the next year. To Emily this meant half-soled shoes, dresses that would have to be let down a second time, practical Christmas presents. That would be the worst part—practical Christmas presents.

  “Mama, what will we do?” Emily asked anxiously.

  “We’ll manage somehow,” Mama answered with a sad smile. “We always do. Just remember your pioneer ancestors. Their first winter in Oregon was so hard some of them had to make clothes out of the tops of their covered wagons.”

  Emily felt better. Twice-let-down dresses were better than clothes made out of covered-wagon tops, which must have been stiff and scratchy.

  Times were hard for Grandpa, too. Farmers, who had charged their shoes and overalls and sugar and spices, often could not pay all their bills when their crops were sold. Yes, everybody in Pitchfork had to scrimp and pinch, and Emily knew there would be little money to give to the library that winter. What she did not expect, however, was that in a year when people had no money for the picture show or for gasoline to go riding around in their automobiles, they came to the library. During that hard winter there often were not enough books to go around. The state library sent three crates at a time instead of one, but still no Black Beauty. Mama checked books in and checked them right out again. One raw rainy afternoon Emily was so afraid there would not be any books left for the boy with the white flour sack that she selected a book for him and one for his little sister and hid them until he arrived, cold and wet from his long walk down the railroad track.

  And what did the ladies of Pitchfork do about the library? They decided to have a party, a hard-times party, in the Masonic Hall. They would charge twenty-five cents admission, proceeds to go to the library.

  “Aren’t hard times a funny thing to have a party about?” Emily asked. Parties were for birthdays and Valentines and Halloween. Happy occasions.

  Mama smiled. “Perhaps it is, but I think it is a nice idea. It is better to have some fun out of life as we go along than to feel sorry for ourselves.”

  Emily wanted to have some fun out of life as she went along, too, and she wanted a chance to wear her best winter dress, the red taffeta with the gathered skirt that Grandma made for her last year. “Mama, could I go to the party this once?” she asked.

  Usually when Mama and Daddy went out in the evening, Emily spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa in their rooms upstairs over the store. She loved Saturday night in Grandpa’s store, because that was the night the loggers came to town. The store was crowded with big noisy men in Mackinaws. The counters were piled high with groceries that night. Beans and coffee and great slabs of bacon and cheese—cartons and cartons of food were carried off to the logging camps on Saturday night. And when Emily’s bedtime came, Grandma sent her upstairs, where she did not have to go straight to bed the way she did at home. She sat in Grandpa’s Morris chair and read the dictionary with its limp leather cover and its colored illustrations of different breeds of cattle and all the flags in the world.

  Emily was willing to miss Saturday night at the store if she could go to the hard-times party and Mama finally said she could, just this once. Emily listened with great interest when the ladies who came to the library talked about the party. They agreed to gather up all the red-and-white checked tablecloths in town for the tables, and they would serve baked beans, brown bread, and coleslaw. Just for fun they would serve coffee from tin cans. This seemed appropriate to hard times and the ladies on the clean-up committee would not have to wash coffeepots. They could throw the cans away.

  It all sounded like fun to Emily until Mama
began to wonder what to wear.

  “Your gray silk,” said Emily. What else would Mama wear to a party but her best dress?

  “But this is a hard-times party,” said Mama. “We are supposed to wear hard-times costumes. I thought you knew that.”

  Emily had not known. “What are hard-times costumes?”

  “Our oldest and most ragged clothes,” Mama explained. “Any old thing we can find.”

  Emily was aghast. “What for?” she demanded.

  “For fun,” said Mama.

  Fun! This was not Emily’s idea of fun. Her idea of fun was dressing up in her best dress so that the ladies of Pitchfork would say, “Look at Emily Bartlett. Doesn’t she look nice in her party dress?”

  No, Emily made up her mind that she was not going to wear any old ragged dress to the party. Never. And so one evening when Mama got out Daddy’s oldest overalls and began to sew patches on them, Emily was most disapproving. Mama did not sew on blue denim patches cut from another pair of old overalls. She sewed on pink and yellow and green flowery patches from the gayest scraps in the scrap bag, and she did not even sew them over holes. She sewed them any old place.

  Suddenly Mama put down her sewing and burst out laughing. “Emily, I’ve had the most wonderful idea! I’m going to wash some gunny sacks and cut armholes and a neckhole in one for a blouse and make a skirt out of two more. And I’ll make a belt out of—let’s see—your father’s socks pinned together with safety pins. And for a necklace—what shall I use for a necklace?”

  Emily was too horrified to answer. Mama going to a party in gunny sacks! What a perfectly terrible idea.

  “I know!” Mama was delighted with her inspiration. “I’ll save squash seeds and string them for a necklace. And I’ll braid my hair in two pigtails and tie them with bows of the twine your father uses for sewing gunny sacks.”

  This was getting worse and worse. Mama’s beautiful black hair tied with gunny-sack twine! This time it was Mama’s imagination that was running away with her.

  “And Emily,” Mama went on, not even noticing Emily’s disapproval, “do you know what I think would be terribly funny?”

  Emily was afraid to guess what Mama might think was terribly funny.

  “I think it would be funny if you dressed up in a gunny sack, too.” Mama was delighted with her idea. “I have a feeling we would be the belles of the ball.”

  A terrible feeling of rebellion rose up within Emily. She did not want to be funny. She did not want Mama to be funny. It was not dignified and grown-ups should always be dignified. And as for being the belles of the ball—to Emily being the belle of the ball meant the time she had heard Mama tell about. It was when she first came out West to teach school and before she met Daddy. Mama had gone to a dance with the people she boarded with in the little town where she was teaching. She was a new girl in town and what a whirl she had! All the young men wanted to dance with Mama, but there was one, tall and handsome and a real gentleman, who danced with her most of all. Mama had a wonderful time that evening, but a few days later it turned out that the tall, handsome gentleman was a horse thief who had to go to jail. Mama was very sorry to learn this, but she certainly had a story to write to her city cousins back East who had never danced with horse thieves. All this never would have happened if Mama had worn a gunny sack.

  “We’ll find some gunny sacks tomorrow,” Mama went on, as if Emily had agreed, “and you can wear one of my old stockings for a belt.”

  “I won’t,” said Emily flatly.

  “Won’t what?” asked Mama, surprised.

  “Won’t wear any old gunny sack to the party,” said Emily, “and I won’t wear any old stocking for a belt either.”

  “But Emily—” Mama began.

  “Well, I won’t,” said Emily. “I just won’t.”

  “But Emily,” protested Mama, “it would be so funny if we both appeared wearing gunny sacks.”

  Emily did not want to cross Mama, but she would not wear a gunny sack to the party. Mama was not the only one in the family who had spunk.

  “Emily,” said Mama, “if a bee came along right now it would sting your lip.”

  No bee was going to come along in the Bartlett sitting room on a winter evening, but Emily pulled in her lip anyway.

  “But why, Emily?” asked Mama.

  It was impossible to explain to Mama about what it meant to be the belle of the ball, and that parties were for dressing up and looking beautiful. “Because,” answered Emily, and had to remember not to let her lip stick out.

  Then Daddy spoke from the table where he had been going over the bills. “Emily, you will wear what your mother tells you to wear or you will spend the night with your grandparents.” When Daddy said something he meant it.

  Mama looked thoughtfully at Emily. “If she is going to the party she should have a good time. What do you want to wear, Emily?”

  “My red party dress,” said Emily promptly.

  “All right,” agreed Mama. “You bring it here and I’ll baste some patches on it.”

  Mama still did not understand. “But Mama,” said Emily, “I don’t want patches on it. I want to wear it just the way it is. I want to dress up to go to the party.” She wanted to be admired, not laughed at.

  “All right,” said Mama with a sigh. “Have it your way.”

  Then Emily felt terrible. She wished she could please Mama by wanting to wear a gunny sack to the party, but she could not.

  The day of the party Emily helped Mama by tying bits of green thread around the handles of the silverware they were going to take, so they could tell their knives and forks and spoons from those of everyone else. Nothing was said about costumes until after supper, when Mama took down her long black hair and braided it into two pigtails which she tied with twine.

  “Oh, Emily,” said Mama with a laugh. “Don’t look so disapproving. Run along and put on your party dress.”

  So Emily took her best winter party dress out of the wardrobe in the downstairs bedroom and put it on. It was a little tighter across the chest than she remembered, but she turned and twirled in front of the mirror in Mama’s bird’s-eye maple dresser and was pleased with herself as far down as she could see. Then she took her Mary Janes out of the wardrobe, but when she squeezed her feet into them they turned out to be so short she could not even wiggle her toes. Emily did not know what to do. People had been telling her she was growing like a weed and it was pleasant to know she was this much closer to being grown-up, but it was most uncomfortable to have it happen on this particular night.

  Then Mama, wearing her gunny sacks, came gaily into the bedroom where she, too, turned and twirled in front of the mirror, just as if she were dressed in the latest fashion right out of a Butterick pattern book. Daddy, looking like a walking ragbag, came in and grinned at himself in the mirror. He put his hands on Mama’s waist and lifted her off the floor. “You don’t weigh enough to fill up even one gunny sack,” he told her.

  “Do I look nice?” Emily asked.

  Mama and Daddy exchanged a quick glance that Emily did not understand. “Very nice,” answered Mama.

  Emily did not like to mention her shoes, especially when times were so hard and there was no money for more Mary Janes, but they were pinching unbearably. “Mama…I think my shoes are too small.”

  Mama knelt and felt Emily’s toes. “Why, they are way too short,” she agreed. “Your toes are pushing right against the end. I’m afraid you will have to wear your everyday shoes.”

  “Oh Mama…” Emily felt she could not wear scuffed brown Oxfords with a party dress, but there was nothing else to do. She had no other shoes.

  “Emily,” said Mama suddenly, “how would you like to wear a pair of my old shoes? You could wear your Oxfords until we got there and then change.”

  Would Emily like to wear a pair of high-heeled shoes to the party? Would she? Of course the shoes would not fit, even though Mama’s feet were small and Emily’s were rather large, but even so, she wou
ld be the envy of all the girls there. “Oh, Mama, could I really?” Emily asked eagerly. Sometimes Mama let her try on the high-heeled shoes, but to get to wear them, actually wear them…It would help make up for Mama’s going out in public in a gunny-sack dress.

  And so the Bartletts set out for the Masonic Hall with an extra pair of Mama’s old shoes in one paper bag and their silverware marked with green thread in another. As soon as they arrived Emily took off her own shoes and slipped into Mama’s.

  To Emily’s relief, Mama hurried upstairs to help the ladies set the tables, without taking off her coat. Emily sat down on a folding chair at the side of the hall to look around her. Other boys and girls were running and sliding on the dance floor or jumping off the stage, but Emily, in Mama’s high-heeled shoes, felt too grown-up for such childishness. June was there, running and sliding with the others. She was wearing an old middy, the skirt she tore one time when she tried to climb a barbed-wire fence, and a pair of mismated shoes, one a high brown shoe that laced and the other a Mary Jane so old the patent leather was cracked. She looked ragged and untidy, but, knowing June, Emily decided she probably did not care.

  Emily looked around at the other costumes. The things that had been pulled out of trunks and ragbags! Moths certainly had been busy in Pitchfork. Old-fashioned trousers, hobble skirts that had gone out of style, patched and faded overalls and house dresses, skirts made out of flour sacks. One lady wore a man’s straw hat trimmed with weeds. Another had used bread flour to powder her nose. Everyone gasped when the barber arrived with his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, but it turned out the bandages were part of his costume. Then Mr. Archer, the banker, arrived with a tomato-soup can tied on top of his head like Happy Hooligan in the funny papers, and Emily could not help laughing, he looked so funny.

  Nobody in the whole crowd looked nice except Arlene Twitchell, the prettiest girl in town, who had a few pink patches basted to her best dress. She did look pretty, but in contrast to all the funny costumes, she also looked just plain stuck-up.