Ida B

by Katherine Hannigan

  I looked out the window and saw all of that sunshine and air and room to move, and I swear I could hear the brook calling to me, over that distance and through those closed-up windows. “C’mon home and play, Ida B. I’m waitin’ for you. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

  A powerful longing came over me to walk out of that room, go outside, and let that voice lead me home. But I’d promised Mama nine times just that morning I’d be good and follow directions. So I sat in my spot on the circle with my hands in my lap.

  I kept thinking, though, that this was not anything like how Mama and Daddy had told me school was going to be, and I believed that was not a good sign.

  There was a rabbit in a cage in the room, but we couldn’t pet it until it was time. There were books on the shelves, but we couldn’t read them until it was time. There was a big playground with slides and swings and balls, but we couldn’t play on it till it was time. There were lots of kids, but we couldn’t talk till you-know-when.

  “Ms. Myers,” I finally asked, “when is ‘time’?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “When is ‘time’ for all of the fun stuff?”

  “Well, Ida,” she said, “there are different times for different things. I’ll let you know when it’s time for each thing. Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the day.”

  Now, even when I was little, I liked to make plans. I wanted to know what was coming so I could stay away from the bad stuff as much as possible and get ready for the good stuff.

  “Could you tell me now so I can make a schedule?” I asked.

  Well, in one and one-half seconds, Ms. Myers was standing right over me. Her mouth was straight across and her hands were on her hips, and I’ve seen that look on grown-ups before and it has never meant anything good.

  “Ida,” she told me, “trust me. We will talk about a schedule when it’s time.”

  And there were those words again. Right then I was wondering if I got in a class for bad children who needed fixing, and my punishment included losing my name and never being able to make a plan again. But Emma Aaronson was in the class, too, and she was every-minute-of-every-day-very-well-behaved.

  I could feel a wallop of rude and ornery coming up my throat and fighting to get out of my mouth. But I had also promised Mama seven times while we drove to school that I would be polite.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I finally said through my teeth, because they were keeping the rudeness inside my mouth.

  Then I made a schedule for the rest of the day with the only piece of information I knew for sure: what the clock would look like when it was time to go home. I kept staring at the clock over the door, watching the little hand get closer and closer to the three, until the bell rang for dismissal.

  Mama was waiting for me at the edge of the parking lot at the end of the day, wearing a big smile.

  Now, the real Ida B would have been grinning and running down to meet her. Ida B would have jumped in the truck, bounced on the seat five times, told Mama about her plans for the afternoon that would make her too busy to do too many chores, and rode all the way home with her forehead pressed against the window, she’d be looking so forward to getting there.

  But I’d been Ida all day long. Ms. Myers’s Ida, who sat still, stayed in line, kept her hands to herself, and didn’t have a single, tiny drop of fun. I felt stiff and tired and cramped into a too-small body with a too-small name. So I just walked with slow, small steps to Mama.

  When I finally got close, I stopped, looked up at her, and said, “Mama, this will not do.”

  “What will not do, Ida B?” she asked. And when she said my name it was like I was back in myself for the first time that day. I felt my body loosen up and tingle, like it was waking up.

  “Too many rules and not enough time for fun,” I told her.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s get in the truck and you can tell me about it.”

  So I sort of half-leapt into the truck. And on the way home I told Mama about the day: about Ms. Myers’s pretty curls and her sad-happy smile, the invisible-no-kids-allowed-to-know-anything-till-it’s-time schedule, the wonderful things everywhere that you couldn’t touch or take time for, and, mostly, about Miss Myers refusing to use my real name. It took me almost the whole ride home to get it all out.

  When I was done, Mama took a moment to think. Then she said, “Ida B, it sounds like a hard day. But there’s always a lot to be done on the first day, and first days are usually not too much fun. I’m sure tomorrow will be much better.”

  As we came to a stop at the end of the drive, I looked right at Mama and told her, “I highly doubt that.”

  But she looked back at me and said, “Give it another try, baby.”

  And it was so good to be home, with Rufus barking and running around in a circle, slimy stuff spraying out of his mouth every which way so you’d want an umbrella just to walk to the house, and the apples getting ripe so you could smell them in the air, and Mama smiling at me so sure, I said, “Okay, Mama.”

  But this is what I was thinking inside: While I surely hope you’re right, I have a very bad feeling about that place.

  Chapter 7

  Just as I figured, things didn’t get any better. If anything, they were worse. Because not only did we have all of those rules about not talking and not touching, but every day we were supposed to be getting better at following them. And every day I’d be slower and slower coming back to myself after school was finished.

  “How many days to the last day of school?” I’d ask Mama in the truck.

  “I don’t know, Ida B. Why?”

  “I just need to know.”

  “How many days until I’m done with school forever?” was all I could manage to get my mouth to say at dinnertime.

  “Ida B, it can’t be that bad,” Daddy said.

  And this is how low I was feeling: I didn’t say anything back.

  Then every night after dinner I’d go and lie down in the orchard till I got called to come in.

  “What’s the matter, Ida B?” Viola would ask.

  “Nothing,” I’d tell her, because I didn’t have enough of anything in me even to complain.

  “How’s school going, Ida B?” I could hear Paulie T. snickering, because he was a punk way back from the beginning.

  But even Paulie T. couldn’t make things worse than worst.

  Well, I guess I got so droopy and forlorn looking, Mama decided she wanted to see exactly what was going on in Ms. Myers’s classroom. So the third week of school she came with me and visited for a day. And even though it was the same lining up and not touching and not talking and waiting my turn as always, it was better with Mama there.

  School seemed to have the same effect on her as it did on me, though, because at the end of the day we both walked with slow, stiff steps out to the truck and didn’t say a word the whole ride home.

  When we got there, Mama said, “You can find something to do till dinner.”

  And I said, “Okay,” because I knew when something was brewing and it was best to stay pretty still.

  I sat down on the porch and I could see her go find Daddy in the field, and they stood out there talking for some time.

  The next morning we were all sitting down for breakfast and I was about to dig in when Mama said, “Ida B, Daddy and I need to talk to you about school.”

  Just like that, my stomach closed up like a trap. I stared down at all those little raisins that used to seem so happy bobbing around like they were swimming, but now it looked like they were drowning in a sea of milk.

  “Look at me, Ida B,” she said. So I did. “Starting on Monday, you’re going to go to school here, at home, and Daddy and I are going to teach you. Now, we’re going to have to get some information so we do this right. But we figure we’ve taught you just about everything you needed to know up till now, and you’ve been doing fine. So we’re going to give it a try.”

  What did I look like right then? I must have been smiling, but I couldn’t feel my
face or my body. I was just hearing over and over again what Mama said, and I was floating up and up and music was playing and angels were singing, “Ida B is free, Ida B is free. Come fly with me, Ida B.”

  But before I flew off into the ether, I got pulled back down to earth by a heavy thought. This seems too good to be true, said the voice in my head that sees all of those presents on Christmas Day and knows that some of them are socks and underwear wrapped up in pretty boxes.

  “No way, Mama,” is what I told her, wanting to believe but not letting my hopes get carried away just yet.

  “Don’t think it’s going to be easy, Ida B,” she went on. “You’ll have to learn math and reading, just like regular school. There will be tests and lots of work, and you’ll have to do the things Daddy and I tell you. If we don’t keep up and do what we’re supposed to, you’ll have to go back to learning at that school, understand?”

  Mama was looking at me like I was right there in front of her, but I was taking off again. Because I knew as long as I was with Mama and Daddy and I was near the mountain and the orchard and the brook, everything would work out. As long as I could be Ida B, I’d be fine.

  “For real?” I heard myself asking, and I had already floated all the way up to the ceiling.

  “For real, if you do what you’re supposed to,” Mama said.

  “No problem,” I said back. But by then I was soaring in the clouds, so I don’t know if she heard me.

  That’s how it went for four years, and it was finer than fine. I stayed home and I learned and I had more fun than a kitten with twenty balls of yarn and three pretend mice. I even started to believe that I could count on never going back to that particular Place of Slow but Sure Body-Cramping, Mind-Numbing, Fun-Killing Torture again.

  And that, I would say, was a mistake.

  Chapter 8

  In the morning, I’m like a snake in the spring: I need to lie out on a warm rock and let the sun sink into me for a while before I can start wiggling around and get on with the day. But Mama and Daddy aren’t like that at all. They’re like birds: they wake up before it’s light, and they’re singing and fluttering around just as soon as their eyes are open.

  On the morning three days after that unreliable punk Paulie T. had given me his not-tobe-trusted-in-a-million-and-a-half-years warning about trouble heading my way, though, there was none of the usual Mama and Daddy chirping or flitting about.

  That day, some things were just like usual. I was awake, but hardly. The only things moving were my right arm and my mouth. Get the oats, put them in your mouth, chew, chew, chew . . . get the oats, put them in your mouth, chew, chew, chew . . . was the only message my brain was sending out, and even that was on slow speed and low volume.

  But suddenly, I could feel my brain getting up to cruising speed faster than it had ever done at six A. M., and it wasn’t because of anything Mama and Daddy were saying or doing. It was because they were silent and still, and my brain knew that that was unusual and just plain not right. I got a tingle down my spine, a funny taste in my mouth, and in about one and one-half seconds’ time, I was wide awake and watching the two of them across the table from me.

  Mama wasn’t talking and she wasn’t eating. She was just sitting there, playing with her food, which we’re not supposed to do.

  Daddy wasn’t eating, either. He was just staring at his plate.

  Then Daddy said, real low, “So you’re going to call the doctor and make an appointment today?”

  “Yes,” she told him.

  Mama smiled at Daddy too happy, too soon. “It’s probably nothing to worry about, Evan.”

  Daddy, putting his hand over hers, said, “I know.” But he didn’t raise his eyes to Mama’s. He just kept looking at the tips of her fingers sticking out from underneath his big hand.

  There was a quiet in that kitchen I’d never heard before, like the whole world had stopped. And I knew that if I went outside right then, there would be no wind, the plants would have stopped growing, and the sun would be frozen in the sky.

  “What’s going on? What’s nothing?” I almost-hollered, because somebody had to make enough commotion to get things moving and back to all right again.

  Mama and Daddy looked over at me like I was a surprise.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about, honey,” Mama finally said. And Daddy looked out the window.

  “What’s nothing?” I repeated, because that sort of answer usually means there’s more than plenty to worry about, but not too much that can be done. “Why are you sad? What’s going on?”

  But Mama just said, slow and somber like the wind on a rainy day, “Oh, Ida B.”

  Then she got up, cleared her plate, and that was that.

  Here’s the bad thing about being a snake in the spring: sometimes you find what you think is the best place in the world to sunbathe. It’s the biggest rock ever, so long you can’t see where it ends. And this perfect, so-good-you-almost-can’t-believe-it’s-true rock is smooth and dark and toasty warm. You slither out onto its snuggly warm blackness, and pretty soon you get so cozy and content lying there that you fall asleep, stretched out and snoring, even. You are sure you are in snake heaven.

  But, being a snake, you’re so low to the ground you can’t see that this piece of rock paradise you’re lying on is really a road. You’re so cushy-comfy and sleeping so deeply that you don’t hear that big old truck, hauling two tons of tomatoes, getting closer and closer.

  And the next thing you know—split, splat, and a couple of crunches, too—there are tire tracks on either end of you. You’re not sure exactly what happened, but all of a sudden you truly are gone from this world.

  So, I’ve learned that even when you think you’re in heaven, you need to stay alert and have a plan.

  Some things are very hard to plan for, though.

  Chapter 9

  Mama had a lump. The lump had cancer in it.

  That was the nothing that wasn’t nothing, but it didn’t seem like a too-terrible-everything at first. It seemed like a penny-up-your-nose kind of thing: you have to get it out because it doesn’t belong there, and if you kept it there for too long, you’d have an awful hard time with a cold. So you go to the doctor, she takes it out real quick, and pretty soon you forget how it felt to have a sore, stuffed-up, stretched-out nose. That’s how I thought it was going to be with the lump.

  But it wasn’t like that for Mama. First, she went to the doctor. After that, she needed to go to the hospital for an operation. Then, the cancer wasn’t just in the lump, but under her arm, too. And the doctors hoped they’d gotten it all out, but they couldn’t say for sure.

  That cancer was like bugs in a tree: one day you don’t see them at all and the next it seems like they’re everywhere, eating the leaves and the fruit. And it won’t work to find them and squish them one by one. You have to do something drastic.

  So Mama went to the hospital for treatments, and when she’d come home she’d be so tired, she had to work hard just to say, “Hi, baby.”

  Then she’d go in her room and lie down on the bed. If you went away for an hour or so and came back, she’d look exactly the same: on her back, eyes closed, face white like milk, hands holding on tight to the spread.

  I’d go to the side of her bed and stroke her cheek. “Unhhh,” she’d moan when my fingers brushed her skin with a touch lighter than you’d use to pet a baby kitten. So I stopped touching her, but I asked her if she wanted me to read to her.

  “No thanks, honey,” she said, her lips hardly moving.

  Did she want Lulu to come and visit?

  “Maybe later.”

  Did she want to hear me spell “vivacious”?

  “Not now, sweetie.”

  “Mama,” I whispered once, when we’d both been quiet for a long time.

  “Hmm,” she replied, like she was answering me from a dream.

  “Are you going to die?” I asked her so softly I could hardly hear myself.

  Mama opened he
r eyes and turned her head toward me. “Ida B,” she said, looking at me more serious than ever.

  “Yes, Mama,” I said back, but I couldn’t look at her, so I stared at the bumps on the bedspread.

  “I will always be with you,” she told me. “Always.”

  Then she turned her face back to the ceiling, closed her eyes, and said, “Do you understand, baby?”

  And I said, “Yes, Mama,” even though I didn’t.

  Then I just sat by her and watched her breathe, making sure her belly kept going up, then down.

  Mama’s hair started falling out in big tufts on her pillow, and I would go in her room and collect it when she’d get up for a while. I put it in Ida B’s Bag of Assorted Things for Not Yet Determined Plans, but there was nothing in there except Mama’s hair. I kept that bag under my pillow, and if I put my hand in it and closed my eyes, I could pretend I was floating in a cloud of Mama.

  After Mama’s treatments, our house would get as quiet as a library with only grown-ups in it. Like there was a constant “Shhhhhh” hushing us all the time, in every room.

  We walked around not looking directly at each other anymore. Daddy looked down, I looked down, even Rufus looked down. But not Lulu. She glared right at us as if to say, “Whatever is going on, I’d like my food five minutes ago.”

  We placed our dishes so softly in the sink. We pulled our chairs out from the table so carefully. We walked so lightly on the floors. I don’t know if we were trying not to wake Mama or trying not to wake the cancer.

  When there was time, Daddy and I would sit together in the big chair so we were close enough we could whisper and still hear each other, and read stories. And those were just about the only good times in the house then. Afterward Daddy would go and check if Mama would have some soup, or maybe some crackers.

  “Do you want something to eat, Ida?” he’d say at the door to their room, and his voice was soft like rabbit’s fur, light like smoke. It would float over to her and stroke her cheek, then her forehead, but never press too hard.