Ida B

by Katherine Hannigan

  And most of the time Mama would whisper, “No thank you, honey.” But sometimes she’d just say, “Evan,” with the voice of a love that’s a thousand miles away.

  Mama would have a treatment, and things would be the worst.

  Little by little, though, she’d start to get better, till she was coming close to being my mama again.

  She’d start eating, and working with Daddy a bit, and asking me, “Ida B, if it takes two and one-half cups of flour to bake a pie, and you bake two pies a week for one year except for the week of Christmas when you bake five, how many cups of flour do you need?”

  “Only two a week, Mama?” I’d ask. “Couldn’t it be three?” And she would almost smile, just like before.

  But by then three weeks would be up and it’d be time for another treatment. All of the happiness that thought it might be safe to come back to our house had to turn around and go back to where it came from. Even the glowing that was Mama’s disappeared from her eyes, and I couldn’t find it no matter how long I looked at her.

  Then, when no one was paying any mind, I’d go into my room, close the door, sit on the floor behind my bed, and cry and cry—for Mama and Daddy and me, and for all the love that seemed wasted because it couldn’t fix Mama.

  Chapter 10

  One day in August, the house and my heart got to feeling so gloomy and gray I decided to give talking to that old tree another try. I left Rufus home with Mama, hiked to the top of the mountain, climbed up the trunk, and sat in my usual spot.

  “I don’t mean to complain and I don’t want to whine, but Mama’s not Mama, and Daddy’s not Daddy, and I miss them, and I miss the life we used to have, and I am so lonely,” I told the tree.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head on the warm, smooth branch next to me. I felt tireder than tired, so I was happy to just sit there for quite a while.

  The sun was shining on my back, and the wind brushed my cheek like fingers. Then the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood straight up and tingled, so I knew something was coming.

  And I heard that voice that isn’t an out-loud voice but you can still listen to it, just not with your ears. You have to hear it inside.

  Slow like sleep, quiet like night, it whispered, “It will be all right.”

  And that was all.

  There was a warm ball in my belly, and the warmth spread through me so I was heated from the inside out. Every bit of me got peaceful and warm and sure, and I forgot everything except for that feeling of being so sure.

  Pretty soon, though, the part of me that’s suspicious of things that feel too good too fast remembered all of the trouble and sadness that had been going on in our house. And the warm, cozy feeling disappeared real quick.

  I opened my eyes, sat up straight, and said out loud, “Are you sure about that? Could you tell me what you mean by ‘all right’?”

  But that’s the thing about that old tree: you’re lucky if you get anything; and if you get something, that’s all you get.

  So I sat there and collected myself for a bit. And after a while, I remembered what I’d heard, and how it felt, and I just knew.

  I climbed down, and when I got back to the ground I leaned up against the tree, put my face right into its old, white trunk, and said, “Thank you.”

  Then I walked down the mountain toward home. Not feeling any less lonely, but a bit more hopeful.

  At dinner a couple of nights later Daddy said, with Mama sitting right there, “Ida B, Mama’s going to get some new medicine for her treatments, so she won’t be feeling so bad afterward. Your mama’s going to be doing better soon.”

  “Evan,” Mama said right away, looking hard at Daddy. “Not all of that’s for sure,” she told him, and her face got softer while she was talking. When she finished, she put her hand on his.

  Then she turned to me. “We’re hoping, baby, that it’ll be better. I’m going to start having treatments every week for a while, but the medicine won’t be so strong. I shouldn’t get so sick, and I shouldn’t be so tired. But we’ll just have to see.”

  Well, except for the “hoping” and “have to see” parts, I thought that sounded like big-time-celebrating news. Like having-pie-and-ice-cream news.

  I could feel myself smiling so big that the ends of my mouth were almost up to my eyeballs. But Mama and Daddy just had little smiles, where your mouth curves up in the middle but only halfway. I couldn’t understand why we all weren’t skipping the main course and heading right for dessert.

  “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “It’s good news, Ida B,” Mama said.

  “So what’s the problem? Why aren’t we celebrating?” I asked.

  But I got that same old answer, “Oh, Ida B,” that didn’t tell me anything except I better quit right there, because I wasn’t going to get anything else.

  And I was grateful for a half-happiness in a house that had been so full of sadness, so I let it be.

  The brook, as you know, is much more talkative than the old tree. I would even say it’s chatty.

  The next morning I ran over to the brook, and before it could start gabbing, I told it, “Hey, Mama’s going to get better and pretty soon every-thing’s going to be just the way it was.”

  But the brook didn’t say anything back.

  So I told it again, even louder, “I said, Mama is getting better and good times are just around the corner!”

  Still nothing.

  I took my shoes off and splashed into the middle of the water and kicked around there for a minute to get its attention. “Hey, did you hear me?” I yelled. “Mama’s getting better and it’s going to be back to just about perfect around here real soon!”

  Then I stood still to listen, every part of me cold, wet, and dripping.

  After a minute, when I was just about to give up, I heard the brook reply, sadder and stiller than I’d ever heard it before, “It’s not over yet.”

  And that’s all it said.

  Chapter 11

  Daddy had to sell part of the orchard and some of the farmland to pay Mama’s hospital bills. One day in September he took me out to the barn, sat me down with Rufus beside me, and told me about it. “It’s two lots at the farthest end of the valley, Ida B,” he said.

  I thought about that.

  “But that’s part of the orchard. That’s Alice and Harry and Bernice and Jacques Cousteau,” I told him, in case he didn’t realize who he was talking about.

  “Ida B,” he said, like he was ready for me, “there’s no discussing it. That’s just how it has to be.”

  “What are they going to do with the land?” I asked.

  “I suppose they’ll build houses.”

  “And what will they do with the trees?”

  “I suppose they’ll cut them down.”

  “Oh no, Daddy! No!” In less than a quarter of a second, I was crying and sobbing and yelling all at the same time. “Can’t we sell something else?”

  “No, Ida B.”

  “Can’t we move the trees?”

  “No, Ida B.”

  “Rufus and I will get jobs!”

  “No, Ida B!” Daddy’s voice was getting louder and angrier, too. “And that’s it!”

  Now I have to admit that, at this point, I was not getting any calmer. “And what about the brook, and the mountain, and the rest of the valley? They don’t get to build there, or play there, or anything else, right?”

  “Well,” Daddy said, “the brook and the mountain and the rest of the valley won’t be on their property, but I’d like us to be friendly and share what we have.”

  “No, Daddy! Just no!” I yelled, and I crossed my arms and shook my head back and forth with my eyes closed, my pigtails snapping in the air like whips. I was hoping one of them might give Daddy a good, sharp flick.

  Daddy just let me sit there like that for a while, and I started to feel pretty dizzy, but I wasn’t going to let him see me stop.

  “Ida B, there’s something else,” he sa
id.

  Something else? That stopped the flicking and flapping in no time flat. But what else could there possibly be? I had to give Lulu away? Mama was dying after all? I sat still, with my eyes sticking out a couple of inches beyond the rest of my face, I was trying so hard to see what was going to come out of Daddy’s mouth next.

  “I can’t take care of the farm by myself and teach you. And your mama’s too tired to do much of any of those things right now. So you’re going to have to go back to school. Starting on Monday.

  “I know this is hard, Ida B,” he went on, because I suppose he figured if he kept on talking, he could cut off the screaming and crying that were sure to be coming out of me, “but it’s how it’s got to be. You have to learn, your mama has to rest and get better, and I have to take care of the farm.”

  But this is how shocked I was: I didn’t shout or holler or say a word.

  The insides of my head started spinning, and pretty soon everything around me was tilting and turning. I checked to see that my feet were still setting on the floor, because it felt like I was falling down a hole that had opened up right underneath me. My stomach got queasy and I was sure that my lunch was about to make a repeat appearance, when my brain remembered the one thing that might save me.

  “Mama’s not going to let you do this,” I said, trying to focus on a fuzzy, whirling Daddy.

  “Ida B, your mama agrees with me,” he told me back. “This is what we need to do.”

  And then everything went dark. My body was still sitting there, and my eyes were wide open, but the real me that feels things and talks and makes plans and knows some things for absolute one hundred percent sure had instantaneously shrunken and shriveled up and gone and hid way deep down inside me. I couldn’t see anything except blackness, or hear anything except a kind of ringing, and all I felt was emptiness everywhere around me.

  I don’t know how long I sat there like that, but it felt like years and years of being alone, huddled up and hiding in the darkness.

  I heard Daddy calling my name, sounding like he was miles away. “Ida B!” he was saying over and over, and even though I didn’t want to hear him, I couldn’t help myself. The more I listened, the louder Daddy got, till finally I peeked out from inside me, like I was just waking up. There he was right in front of my face, saying my name and looking sad and scared.

  And then I was crying again, and Daddy standing there saying, “It’s all right, Ida B. It’ll be all right,” was only making things worse instead of better.

  “Daddy,” I finally got out, between one sob and another.

  “Yes, Ida B.”

  “Please don’t send me back to school.”

  “Ida B, you have to go.”

  “But Daddy, I don’t need to go to school,” I pleaded. “I . . . I’ll teach myself. I’ll use the books and I’ll teach myself, I promise. I’ll, I’ll ...” I was willing to memorize every boring fact about Canada or any nation he wanted, in the northern or southern hemispheres.

  “You need to be with other kids, instead of moping around here all day.” Daddy was losing any sign of sadness or sympathy, his voice was getting louder and harder, and he was not budging.

  “I don’t want other kids. I just want you and Mama and to be here. Please, Daddy. Please.”

  Well, I’ll confess to you that at this point I was not just begging with my words. I was on my knees on the floor, with my hands clenched and lifted up to him, the way people look in pictures when they’re pleading for mercy. But this Daddy was merciless.

  “Ida B, that’s enough!” he shouted, and the sound of his voice filled the whole barn. As soon as Daddy started yelling, my voice jumped back down my throat and my whole body froze up. Rufus was so scared he shot up like a bolt of lightning had run right through him. He went tearing out of the barn and was gone before Daddy’s words were done bouncing off the walls.

  Even Daddy looked surprised. His eyes got big, then he closed them tight. He put his hands to his forehead and left them there for a minute, then dragged them across his head till they grabbed each other at the back of it. He let out a big breath, like he’d been holding it in forever, and the barn was still.

  With his eyes closed and his head bent down, Daddy told the floor, “Mama’s sick and I’m busy and you’re going to school on Monday. And that’s how it’s got to be.”

  Then he turned around, walked out of the barn, and went back to the fields like nothing had happened.

  Chapter 12

  After Daddy left, I was hurting something terrible, like every single part of me was cut and torn up. But my heart hurt the most.

  I couldn’t do anything except curl up like a ball on the floor of the barn and lie there, crying. The kind of tears that burn your eyes, and the sort of sobs that make your chest ache so that you’re sure it’s going to bust open. And when the sobs finally ran out, the tears kept coming, so I lay there with my mouth wide open, but I hardly made a sound. Just air going into me, and a heavy wind full of sorrow coming out.

  But as I cried, my heart was being transformed. It was getting smaller and smaller in my chest and hardening up like a rock. The smaller and harder my heart got, the less I cried, until finally I stopped completely.

  By the time I was finished, my heart was a sharp, black stone that was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. It was so hard nobody could break it and so sharp it would hurt anybody who touched it.

  I stayed there, staring ahead at nothing, with just about nothing left inside of me, for quite a bit.

  And then my new heart came up with a resolution. Because when your heart changes, you change, and you have to make new plans. This resolution was for the new me, the new Ida B.

  All right, Daddy, I thought, I’ll do what you say. I’ll go back to Ernest B. Lawson Elementary School. But I won’t like it. I won’t like the people who buy the land, and I won’t like my teacher, or the kids in my class, or the ride on the bus. And I won’t like you or Mama, either.

  I decided I would do whatever I had to, just shy of death and dismemberment, to fight the craziness that had taken over my family and was invading my valley. I’d come up with a plan, and they’d be sorry, every single one of them, that they had to reckon with Ida B.

  I could feel the hardness of my heart spreading into my arms and my legs and my head, and it felt fine. I would win.

  That night I went up the mountain and stood in front of that bare, old white tree. “Thank you so much for your kind words of wisdom the other day,” I said, sticky sweet like corn syrup. “I really took them to heart, I must say.

  “Yep,” I went on, like honey and brown sugar and molasses mixed together, “I have to tell you I was feeling much better after our little chat. I even expected great and wonderful things, thanks to your reassurance.” I stood there smiling for a minute, giving that tree a chance to believe what I was saying.

  Then I yelled, “You stupid old tree!” and I kicked its trunk as hard as I could so my foot ached something fierce, but I didn’t even whimper. I limped back down the mountain and went to bed without saying good night to anyone.

  And that was the end of me listening to anybody or anything, other than myself and my new heart, for a long time.

  Chapter 13

  Things happened pretty fast after that. Sunday night I got my clothes ready for the next morning: black jeans, black T-shirt, black socks. And if I’d had black underwear, I’d have worn that, too. Daddy packed my lunch, and Mama asked me if I wanted ribbons in my hair tomorrow.

  “No, thank you,” I said, without even looking at her, because I would not dress myself up just so I could be dropped, headfirst, into the Sacrificial Pit of Never-Ending Agony. But I didn’t say that part.

  I went to bed and after a couple of minutes Mama knocked on my door and asked, “Can I come in?”

  “Okay,” I told her.

  She sat down on the edge of my bed and just looked at me for a while, but I stared at the ceiling like I was seeing something of the m
ost supreme importance up there. She leaned over, put her hand on my head, and started running her fingers down my hair. I decided I was not going to enjoy that particular feeling at that particular time.

  My heart distracted me by reminding me, over and over again, “She broke her promise. She agreed with Daddy. They’re sending you back.” And that did the trick.

  Pretty soon, I felt a plunk, plunk, plunk on my pajama top, and there was a wet spot in the middle of my chest. I looked at Mama, and she had big tears rolling down her cheeks and onto me.

  “I’m sorry, Ida B,” she said.

  And, in spite of my rock-hard heart and its resolution, I felt a lump of sadness coming up from my chest into my throat. Somehow, a whole flood of tears had snuck back into my head while my new heart was preoccupied, and they were pushing at the back of my eyes.

  I was done crying, though, especially in front of Mama and Daddy. My new heart told the sadness and the tears, “No, you cannot come out! Go back to where you came from!”

  But sadness is a powerful foe, maybe harder to keep down than happiness, and it was a struggle. My throat ached and my eyes felt like they might explode, but I just kept telling it, “NO! NO! NO!” and eventually I could feel it retreating, little by little.

  And I will admit that, even though I’d decided not to like Mama anymore, it was hard seeing her sadness. A part of me wanted to help it. But I knew if I said anything or touched her or moved just a bit, all the sadness in me would take that opportunity to rise right back up again and pour out, and there’d be no stopping it. We’d be lost in it forever.

  So I just looked at her.

  Finally she bent down and kissed me and said, “Good night, baby,” and went away.

  Chapter 14

  “The bus stops at the end of the drive at seven thirty sharp, Ida B,” Daddy said at breakfast the next morning, even though he’d already told me that three times the day before.

  “Hunh,” I said, which sounded more like a growl than agreement, but not so much to get me into trouble.