“NO!” She laughed. “These signs are jokes; they’re supposed to be funny.”
“Oh!” he said, and laughed, too. “Let’s see if we can find some more!”
And they were off, like they were on a treasure hunt going from clue to clue, running and laughing and having the best time. They loved my signs. It was like I’d made a game for them, a Welcome to the Neighborhood Game.
I went from a low boil to a bubbling-over-thetop-the-lid’s-hardly-on-the-pot furious one in about two seconds.
Now, you might think that knowing that this girl was in my class, and remembering that she tried to be nice to me, might slow me down or soften me up a bit. But it did just the opposite. For some reason, knowing that this girl was nice, and had friends, and liked school, and had a mom and dad and brother and they did fun things together, made everything a hundred times worse. Knowing that it was her who was building a new house on my land, and it was her who cut down the trees, and it was her who would be roaming around in my valley ...well, I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand it so much that I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t stay quiet.
Claire and her brother got close to the tree I was sitting in, still giggling and talking, and right then I boiled over, and I couldn’t have held it back if I’d wanted to. I jumped down out of the tree, my hands waving and my mouth yelling, “This is not your property! Get out! NOW!” And I stood there, my arms raised like a barrier, with my teeth bared and a ferocious expression on my face.
They were so surprised they both jumped, their arms went up in the air, and their eyes and their mouths turned into big Os. The little boy started to cry, and for a second a part of me felt a little bit bad.
But then my new heart told me, “NO! They’re the bad ones! They’re the invaders! We are not giving anything else away!” And the part of me that felt bad got shut right down.
Well, it seemed we were standing there like that forever. My hands were fists now, my knees were bent, and I could hear my breathing, hard and heavy like a fearsome beast. I was not going to move unless it was to attack.
Finally, Claire’s face changed: her mouth relaxed, and her eyes got smaller and kind of sad. “Ida?” she asked, like a doe would talk if it could, gentle and soft and a little timid. Like a hand extended, palm turned up.
And there was that part of me again, the part that felt bad before, thinking it might get a word in. “Take it, Ida B,” it said. “Take the hand extended.”
But my hard, cold heart wouldn’t have any of that mush. “NO!” it yelled. “Nobody gets in!”
And my body howled out loud, with my face raised to the sky, the fiercest, scariest yell I didn’t even know I had in me. “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED ON MY LAND! GO AWAY!” I slashed and jabbed the air with my fists, like they were just itching to pound something.
When I opened my eyes and looked at the two of them, the little boy just turned around and ran away. He almost fell right over because he was trying to run faster than his short little legs were able. And I almost laughed out loud, because that’s how foul I was feeling.
But she was still standing there, staring at me.
I looked back at her, eyes like slits and my mouth in a sneer, and yelled, “What are you waiting for? Didn’t you hear me? YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE!”
She looked right into my eyes with those doe eyes, crying now, not leaving like she was supposed to. I started to think that I would have to do something drastic soon, because I couldn’t stand there looking fierce and breathing heavy forever.
But before I got too worked up again, she said, right to my eyes and my insides, “You’re mean.”
And she turned around and walked away.
I stood there, fists tight, still breathing like a bear, ready to holler all sorts of things at her like, “Too bad!” or “That’s right! Remember that, big baby!”
But right in the middle of my chest, where her doe-eyed look ended up, there was a heaviness that slowed me down and stopped me up. “I’m not mean. Really. Come back,” that soft, sappy part of me wanted to say.
My rock-hard heart wouldn’t have any of that, though. “Stop it!” it yelled, and there was no more weakness or sad, sorry feelings allowed. I was the Protector of the Valley, and there was no use for mushiness.
When I walked back to my house, through the woods and around the mountain, every step I took was heavy and horrible, stomping the ground. Every time my left foot came down, I said, “I.” And every time my right foot hit the earth, I’d say, “won.”
So all the way home my steps were beating the rhythm to those words. “I ...won ... I ... won ... I ...won.”
Chapter 23
I went to dinner that night all set for a tussle. I was feeling pretty confident after my victory that morning, and I was thinking I was ready to take on my most formidable foes: Mama and, especially, Daddy.
Maybe there was no going back to the way things were before Mama was sick. For sure, there was no bringing back those trees that had been cut down. But that didn’t mean there was no use in those two people feeling miserable about the sadness and destruction they and their completely-unacceptable-and-breaking-their-word-in-one-hundred-places decisions had brought into the valley and to me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t show them that there was somebody in that valley and in that house who remembered what was right and good, and her name was Ida B. Applewood.
My cold, hard heart was in top form, and it was not taking prisoners, including sick ones, tired ones, or overburdened ones, in particular. It was only going to accept complete surrender, which included a promise, signed by all parties, that would be valid for eternity and beyond, that things were going to change around here right that very minute.
I had written the whole thing out that afternoon and had the document in my back pocket.
“We, the undersigned,” it began, because I had looked that sort of thing up in the encyclopedia, “solemnly promise that there will be NO MORE:
selling of land,
cutting of trees,
killing of things,
or sending children to school against their will,
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.”
There was space for our signatures, and the seal of Ida B’s Completely Just and Forever Binding Legal Services in the lower righthand corner.
I’d planned a speech for Mama and Daddy, too, and I had it all memorized. It started with, “I’m going to tell you two something right now, so you better listen up ...”
Once I had their full and undivided attention, I’d keep going with questions like, “Don’t you people care that everything has changed around here, and it’s gone from just about righter than right to a million miles beyond wrong?” “Don’t you care that those trees got cut down and they’re gone forever?” and “Does it matter to you one-half molecule that I am just plain miserable?”
I was going to finish with a squinty-eyed skewer, aimed directly at Daddy. “You said that we were the earth’s caretakers,” I’d say. “You said we were supposed to leave things better than we found them. I don’t think those trees that got cut down would say you’d taken very good care of them, do you?”
Then, when the tears were flowing and apologies were coming at me from both sides, and Mama and Daddy were saying to me, “What should we do, Ida B? What do you think we should do now to try to make things right?” I would pull that document out of my back pocket.
We would all sign it with my red pen to signify blood, but not for real. And we could start talking about a plan to get things back to normal around here.
I was still hearing that “I ...won ...”in my head as I stomped into the kitchen, sat down, and served myself like always.
When we were all done passing and pouring, I cleared my throat to get it ready for an army of words to pass through it. I put my hands on the table, looked at those two people sitting across from me, and opened my mouth wide so the words could come out big and fierce.
And Mama cut me off.
“Ida B
, your Daddy and I have something we want to talk to you about.”
My mouth was still wide open, but now it was hanging there out of surprise and a little dismay, because I hadn’t figured on an interruption.
“Ida B,” Daddy said, “we’ve been thinking about the south field that’s been lying fallow for a while and that it might be a good place to plant some more apple trees.”
“We were thinking that we could clear and plant it, the three of us, maybe this spring when I’m feeling better,” Mama said. “And that maybe you’d like it to be your orchard, baby. Just for you. It would be your land, your trees, your apples. What do you think, Ida B?”
Now, first of all, when you get as worked up as I was, it doesn’t go away just because somebody else starts talking. And second of all, I could see the plan those two had cooked up together, and I wasn’t going to eat a bite of it.
I wasn’t going to pretend that planting new trees would replace the ones that got cut down. I wouldn’t believe that Ida B’s Brand-Spanking-New Orchard was ever going to make me forget about Bernice or Winston or Jacques. And their giving me a piece of land and some trees that I didn’t even know yet was not going to erase the Months of Death and Demolition and Not Enough Love to Fill a Teacup that I’d been through.
In about one and one-third seconds, my brain turned that big long speech I’d spent all afternoon putting together into one sentence that came out of my mouth, loud and strong.
“There is no making up for the terrible things that happened this year,” I said.
And I thought that would be all, but it felt so good saying it, I kept going.
“You can’t bring back Winston or Bernice or buy me off with a new orchard,” I said, my voice getting louder with every word. “And you can’t make everything that’s wrong right with a patch of land and some new trees.” Now my hands were pointing and waving, and I got my eyes into the meanest slits I could manage.
Then I thought of the hardest thing I could say to them. “And how would I know you wouldn’t sell the land anyway?” I yelled. “How do I know you wouldn’t let those new trees get cut down, too? You already broke your word in about ten million ways when you sold the land and sent me back to school. So why should I trust you?”
And just like earlier in the day, I was breathing heavy and looking fierce, people were staring at me, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do next.
But Daddy remedied that dilemma for me.
He slammed his fork down so the table shook and the milk glasses jittered and I jumped in my seat. His hands were clenched in fists, his face was red, and you could just about see the blood running, fast, through the big veins sticking out on his arms and the sides of his head.
Without thinking about it, I was sitting up straight with my hands holding on to the side of my chair, just in case he decided that my presence was no longer needed in that particular room and he was going to help me to remove myself.
“Ida B,” he said through his teeth without moving his lips, looking like he was talking to his plate but he was talking to me.
Well, when somebody’s talking and his lips are not moving, it is not a good sign. I pushed my chair back and pointed my feet toward the door, in case they needed to start running in that particular direction.
Daddy took a deep breath. You could hear it go in through his nose, and he pushed it out through his teeth so it sounded like a hiss. Then he took another breath, and this one wasn’t so loud. His color went from deep purple to medium magenta. He kept going with the breathing till his face got to light red, then bright pink, and he looked at me.
“Ida B,” he said again, with his palms flat on the table now. “Since your mama got sick, sometimes I’ve been so angry, I thought I could yell so loud and for so long that the mountain would turn into a pile of little rocks. And sometimes I’ve been so sad, I thought if I started crying I might never stop.”
Daddy paused, but it was just to get some more of those cleansing breaths. “None of us likes what’s happened around here, Ida B, but we’re trying to make the best of it,” he went on. “If we stayed angry or sad all of the time, things would still be hard, but we’d be miserable on top of it.” He looked down at his plate again, and Mama put her hand on his arm and started rubbing it.
I’d hardly moved an inch since Daddy had slammed down his fork. I was still sitting there like a marble statue of Distressa, Patron Saint of Dread and Dumbfoundedness: mouth and eyes wide open, arms and legs sticking out, and everything as stiff as a board.
Finally Mama broke the silence.
“We know it’s been hard, honey,” she said, looking at me but holding on to Daddy. “We probably should have talked about it more. I guess we all got caught up in our own troubles and worries, and figured talking about it wouldn’t help you at all.”
She smiled and put her palm on my cheek, like a cradle for my face. “I’m sorry there have been so many hard changes, Ida B. We did what we thought was best, given the circumstances.”
Now, a part of me knew that those people who were my mama and daddy were trying their hardest to make things right. A part of me knew that they were telling me that they cared—about those trees, about the land, and about me. That same part of me knew that there was something called love sitting just across the table from me, a hug if I wanted it, and talking and trying and warm feelings in the next moment if I’d just say, “All right.” Even if I only whispered it.
That part of me was too small now, though. And my heart had made it go live behind my left knee, so it didn’t get much say.
But my cold, hard heart did. It told me, loud and clear. “Do not let those people in again.”
So I looked straight at Mama and Daddy, pushed back my chair, and put a thousand miles between us.
Without asking if I could be excused, I stood up, turned around, went to my room, and shut the door tight.
“Good job,” my heart told me. “You won again.”
But I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible ache coming from behind my left knee. And it stayed with me for the rest of the weekend.
Chapter 24
Even if you win a battle, as long as the enemy’s got a heart that’s beating and a brain that’s working, you’d better be prepared for a counterattack.
So, for the rest of the weekend and the whole bus ride to school on Monday, I was getting ready for Claire and retribution. Claire was smart, she had friends, and she was going to find some way, I knew, to get back at me for scaring her and her brother.
Now, I don’t need to explain what happens when a popular and persuasive young woman, like Claire, decides she’s going to go after a solitary, no-friends-to-speak-of, somewhat rude young woman, like myself, at a place like Ernest B. Lawson Elementary School. Depending on how clever and cruel Claire was, and how much pain she thought I deserved, I was looking at a period of misery and mortification that might last a week or, maybe, the rest of my life.
I tried to think of every possible thing Claire might do, especially the worst, most excruciating ones, and figure out how I could either avoid total pain and humiliation or, at least, convince myself that it wasn’t really that bad.
“She might call you a name,” I warned myself.
Then I imagined her saying things to me like, “Smells like Ida brought the country to school with her. Do you feed the pigs, or do you roll around with them, too, Ida?” in front of about twenty other kids.
I practiced saying to myself, “I don’t care. I don’t care if Claire says I stink in front of twenty kids. I don’t care if they all laugh at me and make up bad names for me.”
And in my head I just turned around and told her, over my shoulder, “We don’t have pigs, Claire.”
I imagined Claire accidentally-on-purpose tripping me as we lined up to go inside from the playground, so all of the classes going in and all of the classes going out saw me lying on the ground, flat on my face, with my arms and legs sticking out like a four-legged star
fish, blood pouring out of my knees and elbows and a bump the size of a melon coming out of my forehead.
“I don’t care if everybody thinks I’m clumsy,” I assured myself. Then I pictured myself being very careful and looking out for extended body parts wherever I went.
I imagined about two hundred seventy-six different things Claire might do to me and how I might protect myself from utter and complete degradation in all two hundred seventy-six cases.
Nobody, I thought, outplans me.
When I walked into the classroom on Monday, I kept my head straight ahead like nothing was going on. But I scanned the room from the corners of my eyes, back and forth like a minesweeper, for Claire the Vengeful.
I spotted her at her desk, and just at that moment the sides of both of our eyes met, locked, registered that the enemy was now within striking distance, and then looked away. I walked over to my desk. I discreetly checked my seat for sharp metal objects, then the inside of my desk for chewed bubble gum, worms, or rotting vegetables. Nothing.
I sat down and gave one eye and one half of my brain to Ms. W. and devoted the other eye and the stronger and more calculating half of my brain to the study of Claire.
But the first part of the morning went by without incident or even a hint of retaliation.
Claire didn’t make faces at me, or whisper to her friends and point at me. The only thing that was different was she never looked directly at me. Her face was always turned away from me, like I was the scene of a gruesome accident she couldn’t bring herself to even glance at.
By ten thirty I decided that she was saving her wallop for recess, where there’s the least adult supervision, the ability to quickly assemble a mob, and many tools for injury. I used the rest of the morning to draw a map of the playground and plan multiple escape routes.
The safest spot was still my perch on the steps. If I sat a little closer to the ground, I could go forward, jump off to either side, or, if I had time to get them open, disappear behind the big doors.
Ms. W. did her usual check-in and I almost didn’t hear or see her, I was watching Claire so carefully using my peripheral vision.
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