Moonpie and Ivy

by Barbara O'Connor

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Also by

  Copyright Page

  For my sister, Linda,

  whose Carolina roots are forever

  entwined with mine

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A special thank-you to all who contributed to this book: my editors, Frances Foster and Elizabeth Mikesell, for wisdom and faith; my agent, Barbara Markowitz, for enthusiasm and honesty; Janet Zade, for efficiency and friendship (and always being on time); my writers group, for kindness and support; Nancy the Pool Girl Farrelly, for telling it like it is and making me laugh; Ann Cameron, my mentor—wise, funny, and firm; Debbie and Molly Helton, for the postcards; Willy, Grady, Murphy, Matty, and Charlie, the gang I love and who love me back; and the good people of the South, for their spirit and character that inspire me. I am blessed.

  1

  Pearl wondered exactly when it was that her mama had gone off the deep end. Was it that day she marched into Pearl’s fourth-grade class and gave the teacher what for so bad the police came and took her away? Was it that night she cut her hair off with a Swiss Army knife just to show that so-called boyfriend of hers a thing or two? Or maybe it was just last week, when she told Pearl to pack her things ’cause they were leaving Tallahassee, Florida, never to return.

  Pearl didn’t know. But her Aunt Ivy seemed fairly sure of herself as she stood on the porch behind Pearl and said, “I hate to tell you this, honey, but your mama’s done gone off the deep end.”

  Pearl squinted, staring down the dirt road, thinking maybe if she stared long enough she’d catch a glimpse of Mama’s car coming back. Pearl was sure that any minute now she was going to see clouds of red dust. See Mama’s dented-up old car bouncing up the bumpy road toward them.

  Pearl jumped when Ivy touched the top of her head.

  “Come on in now, sweetheart,” Ivy said. “I’ll fix us some breakfast.”

  Pearl leaned forward and squeezed her eyes tighter.

  “I think there’s a car down there,” she said.

  Ivy shielded her eyes from the early morning sun and stared down the road.

  “Ain’t no car coming, Pearl,” she said, shaking her head. “Come on in now, honey. Let’s eat something.” She nudged Pearl. Her hand felt warm through Pearl’s thin pajamas.

  Pearl didn’t move. Maybe Mama just went down to the 7-Eleven to get cigarettes.

  “She mention anything about going to get cigarettes?” Pearl asked.

  “She was gone when I got up, Pearl.”

  “She say anything last night after I went to bed?”

  Ivy pulled her bathrobe tighter around her and gazed down the road. “It was kind of a surprise, you know, y’all showing up in the middle of the night like that,” Ivy said. “I figured we’d have plenty of time to talk later. Figured Ruby’d explain herself after a good night’s sleep.” Ivy shifted from one foot to the other, making the old wooden porch creak. “I guess I should’ve known better.”

  Ivy sighed. Pearl heard the screen door slam behind her. In the distance, a dog barked. From somewhere nearby, chickens squawked. Pearl wondered if they were Ivy’s chickens. The smell of bacon drifted through the open door, and Pearl realized she hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

  “This’ll tide you over till we get to your Aunt Ivy’s,” Ruby had said, tossing a bag of potato chips into Pearl’s lap. “That Ivy, she sure can cook,” she had said. “You’re just gonna love her, Pearl. You wait and see.”

  Pearl kept her eyes on the road. The dog barked again. Suddenly a chicken ran across the front yard, wings flapping furiously. Pearl jumped up onto the porch and watched the chicken disappear around the side of the house. Pearl wondered if this was a farm. Must be a farm if there’s chickens.

  She went inside. Ivy was taking biscuits out of the oven.

  “This a farm?” Pearl asked.

  Ivy chuckled. “Used to be, long time ago. Not much of one now, though. A coop full of mangy chickens and some dried-up ole peach trees.” She heaped scrambled eggs onto a plate. “I had a couple of goats a while back, but they didn’t do nothing but look sorry. I give ’em to Nate Collins up the road.”

  Pearl’s stomach rumbled. She eyed the steaming eggs.

  “Go on.” Ivy gestured toward the table. “Eat up.”

  Pearl dropped into a chair and grabbed a biscuit in one hand and shoveled eggs into her mouth with the other. The eggs were perfect. Not runny like Ruby’s.

  Ivy sat across from Pearl, sipping coffee.

  “You all drive all the way up here from Florida?”

  Pearl nodded.

  “Whereabouts in Florida?”

  Pearl swallowed a mouthful of biscuit. “Tallahassee.”

  “Tallahassee,” Ivy repeated. “Well, the woman gets around, don’t she?”

  Pearl looked up. “What woman?”

  “Your mama.”

  Pearl shrugged. Yeah, her mama gets around, but she didn’t see where it was any of Ivy’s business.

  “How long you been in Florida?” Ivy asked.

  Pearl sat back and looked at Ivy. “I thought you was her sister.”

  “I am.”

  “Then how come you don’t know nothing?”

  Ivy chuckled again. “Well, I reckon that’s a fair question.” She pushed the plate of biscuits toward Pearl. Pearl took another one.

  “Ruby and I ain’t seen each other in a long time, Pearl.”

  “How come?”

  “Your mama hightailed it out of here as soon as she had the chance and didn’t never look back,” Ivy said. “Sent home a Christmas card a couple of times. Even sent me a picture of you once, when you was a baby”

  Pearl looked up from her plate. “She did?”

  Ivy smiled. Her eyes crinkled up at the corners. Just like Mama’s, Pearl thought.

  “Your granddaddy liked to cried his eyes out at the sight of that picture,” Ivy said.

  “How come?”

  Ivy scraped eggs out of the pan into a bowl on the floor. Two cats appeared from the front room and licked the plate clean.

  “I bet Ruby’ll be back soon,” Ivy said. “Y’all got in so late last night. Maybe she wanted to check out things in town. I expect it’s changed a lot since she was here. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go feed the chickens while we wait.”

  “Mama told me she didn’t have a daddy ’cause he died when she was a baby,” Pearl said. “But I knew she was lying, ’cause she always lies.”

  Ivy’s face dropped. The corners of her mouth twitched as she fixed a smile on her face.

  “Well now, why don’t that surprise me?” Her voice was different now. Pearl squirmed a little and wished she had kept quiet. She pushed her empty plate away from her and tossed a piece of bacon into the cat bowl. In her head, she heard Ruby’s voice: “Well, for heaven’s sake, Pearl, where are your manners? Can you say, ‘Thank you’?” But Pearl didn’t say anything. She smiled, feeling like she had put one over on Ruby.

  She went back to the bedroom and looked at the side of the bed where Ruby had slept. The pillow was still mashed down where her head had been. Pearl leaned down and sniffed. Shalimar cologne. Pearl jammed her fist into the pillow.

  She looked around the room. No shopping bags stuffed with clothes and shoes. No red vinyl purse jammed with makeup. Pearl looked on the dresser. No c
urling iron. No cigarettes. Pearl pulled back the curtain in the corner of the room to reveal a tiny cubicle where a few pieces of clothing hung. Overalls. A raincoat. Pearl squinted into the darkness, examining the floor. A box of Christmas ornaments. A dusty stack of National Geographies.

  Pearl sat on the bed. Okay. So here’s the situation, she said to herself. No sign of Mama. Not one blessed sign in this dern little room but a mashed-in, smelly ole pillow.

  Pearl took a shoebox out of her duffel bag and dumped postcards onto the bed. One hundred and thirty-one of them. She had counted twice. The man at the flea market had let her have all of them for two dollars, including the box and a paper bag full of ballpoint pens.

  Pearl lined up the postcards on the bed. All the mountain scenes together. All the beach scenes together. The animals in one corner. People in the other. Then she chose one. The Blue Ridge Parkway.

  She took out a ballpoint pen and wrote:

  Dear Mama,

  I hate you.

  Love,

  Pearl

  2

  Pearl held her hands over her ears, making Ivy’s voice fade. Only pieces of Ivy’s conversation made their way to Pearl.

  “ … showed up out of nowhere …

  “ … after all these years …

  “ … just takes off during the night …”

  At that, Pearl took her hands away from her ears and heard loud and clear, “ … leaving that poor child.”

  Pearl stared at the wall that separated her from Ivy, imagining Ivy huddled in front of the phone that hung on the greasy kitchen wall. Pearl could tell that Ivy was trying hard to keep her voice low but something about Ruby seemed to stir her up so bad that talking low was impossible.

  Pearl went out on the porch and gazed down the road again. Nothing. Just a long, straight road that looked to Pearl like the road to nowhere. A road not even paved. A road with ditches along both sides. A road with potholes full of muddy water.

  It had been dark when she and Ruby had driven down this road the night before, so Pearl hadn’t seen the clusters of tired old mailboxes leaning against each other or the little houses scattered here and there. Barking dogs and rusty swing sets in the dirt yards. Pearl figured there ought to be some kids around somewhere, seeing as how it was summer, but she didn’t see any Didn’t see much of anybody, for that matter.

  Ruby had made Darwood, Georgia, sound like heaven on earth. Lied again, thought Pearl.

  Ivy came out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron. “There now,” she said. “I made arrangements for Genevieve to take my place at the diner today so I can stay here with you.” She grinned at Pearl.

  “What diner?” Pearl asked.

  “Diner where I work.”

  “What kind of diner?”

  “Oh, just a little ole diner. Ain’t nothing fancy. Open for breakfast and lunch is all. But I sure do enjoy it. I worked in car insurance for fifteen years till my friend Genevieve got the idea to open the diner and asked me to work there. Actually, nagged me dern near to death is more like it.” Ivy laughed. “I decided to just take a walk on the wild side and do it.” Ivy picked brown leaves off the geranium hanging on the porch. “Sure beats the heck out of listening to people gripe about paying for car insurance all day. Besides, nothing I like better than cooking. Might as well get paid for it. Right?”

  Ivy took her apron off and put her arm around Pearl. Pearl moved away Ivy fiddled with the damp wisps of hair that curled around her face.

  “But that’s enough about me,” she said. “What about you, Miss Pearl?”

  “What about me?”

  “Well, I mean, what do you like to do?”

  Pearl started to say, “I don’t like nothing,” but something about Ivy standing there grinning and picking brown leaves made her change her mind.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Don’t know?” Ivy squealed. “Now, how can that be?”

  Pearl looked out at Ivy’s yard. More dirt than grass. No trees. A few scraggly old shrubs. A couple of dried-up marigolds in plastic pots. It looked to Pearl like Georgia was as hot and dry and ugly as Florida.

  Ivy sat in the lawn chair on the porch and held her bare feet straight out in front of her. She wiggled her toes. Like a kid would do, Pearl thought. Like Mama would do.

  “I bet you like boys,” Ivy said.

  Pearl shook her head.

  “Lord, when your mama was your age, she was chasing boys right and left.” Ivy held her hair up and fanned her neck with her other hand.

  “I’m only twelve,” Pearl said.

  “I know.” Ivy winked. Pearl frowned out at the miserable yard.

  “I can stay by myself, you know,” Pearl said.

  “I’m sure you can, sweetheart,” Ivy said. “I bet you’ve had a lot of practice doing that.”

  Pearl felt the heat rise up her neck and into her face. She jumped off the porch and ran around to the back of the house. Chickens scurried in every direction. She walked in circles, kicking at the ground in front of her, sending puffs of red dust and gravel into the air.

  Pearl stopped at the sound of Ivy’s voice behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” Ivy said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Pearl shrugged. She gazed out at the fields behind the house. Bare, stunted peach trees popped up out of the weeds every now and then.

  “I can sure see why Mama was itching to get out of here,” Pearl said.

  Ivy’s face twitched a little and she set her mouth tight. There, thought Pearl. Got you back.

  Pearl looked down at her hands. The lines of her palms were dark with dirt. She wiped them on her shorts and looked again. The dirt was gone but the lines were still there. She stared at the curved line that ran across the middle of each palm. She could almost feel Ruby’s long red fingernail tracing it. “This here’s your head line,” she had said. “If it’s straight, that means you’re all squared away and got nothing to worry about. See here how yours swoops down in a curve like this? That means you’re liable to be crazy.”

  That had scared Pearl to death and she had jerked her hand away. Mama had laughed and grabbed Pearl’s hand again. Then she had held her own palm next to Pearl’s.

  “See?” she’d said. “We’re the same.”

  That night, Pearl had lain awake in the dark, praying that in the light of day that line would be straight, but her prayers hadn’t been answered.

  Pearl was suddenly aware of the silence around her. She looked up. Ivy was gone. Pearl looked out at the dry fields, then to the long stretch of road beyond. Waves of heat rippled in the distance. No cars. No people. No noise. No nothing. Pearl felt all squeezed up inside with loneliness.

  She closed her hand into a tight fist and held it to her heart.

  “Straighten out, head line. Straighten out,” she whispered.

  But when she opened her hand, that line was swooping down the same as ever.

  3

  “Who’s that?” Pearl asked, pointing out the kitchen window.

  Ivy turned from the sink and craned her neck to look. When she saw the boy in the backyard, her face opened up into a grin. She wiped her hands on her apron and joined Pearl at the window.

  “That’s Moonpie,” she said.

  “Moonpie?” Pearl frowned. “What kind of name is that?”

  Ivy chuckled. “Well, most folks call him Moon, but that ain’t his real name.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Why not?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t ever tell nobody,” Ivy said. “Moonpie’s my friend, so I can’t break a promise. I leave the telling up to him. Sometimes he tells and sometimes he don’t.” Ivy put her arm around Pearl and jiggled. She smelled like onions. “I bet he’ll tell you, though.”

  Ivy leaned down and called out the window. “Yoo-hoo!”

  The boy looked toward the house. He grinned and waved.

  “What’s he doing?” Pearl
asked.

  “Moving my brick pile.”

  “How come?”

  “I was thinking of planting me a bigger tomato garden next year. John Dee says I could probably sell my spaghetti sauce down at the diner.”

  “Who’s John Dee?”

  “Oh, just a friend of mine.” Ivy blushed. She ducked her head into the open window again and called, “I got them cookies with the kisses in the middle.”

  The boy threw a brick straight up in the air and let out a whoop. He was inside the back door before Ivy could even put the cookies on the table.

  Pearl’s mouth dropped open when she laid eyes on that Moonpie boy up close. He was one strange-looking boy. Probably the strangest-looking boy she had seen in all her born days. First off, his skin was so pale she could nearly see right through it. Little blue veins running every which way and freckles sprinkled all over like cinnamon on a cake. And pale orange hair. Like cantaloupe, Pearl thought. But the most peculiar thing was his eyes. Such a light blue they were nearly white, with tiny gold eyelashes that sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the back door. But he didn’t seem to know he was peculiar-looking, or else he knew it and just didn’t care, because bold as anything he looked Pearl square in the eye and said, “You ever had Ivy’s cookies with the kisses in the middle?”

  “I never had nothing of Ivy’s,” Pearl said, studying that pale boy through squinted eyes. “Except some biscuits and eggs,” she added under her breath.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Pearl. What’s yours?” She crossed her arms and waited.

  “Eugene.”

  Ivy looked at Pearl and winked. “Told you,” she said. She held the plate of cookies out to Moon. He took two. “Pearl’s my sister Ruby’s daughter,” she said, poking the plate at Moon until he took another cookie.

  Moon just said, “Oh,” and started eating the cookies like they were going to disappear if he didn’t eat them fast enough.

  “You remember me telling you about my sister, Ruby,” Ivy said. Pearl studied Ivy’s face to see if she was trying to give Moon a signal. Some kind of sign that said, “You know, my crazy sister, Ruby?” But if she did, Moon didn’t seem to pick up on it because all he did was nod and mumble, sending cookie crumbs spewing out of his mouth.