Moonpie and Ivy

by Barbara O'Connor

  Pearl wanted to agree. Wanted to nod and say, “Yeah … me, me, me.” But all she could do was sit there looking at that marble and feeling a lump in her throat so big she could hardly swallow.

  Ivy slapped Pearl’s knee and stood up. “Well, I guess there ain’t much we can do but wait.”

  She sat back down and put her hand on Pearl’s knee again. “I like having you here,” she said.

  Pearl sat up straighter and looked at Ivy. In her head, she said, “You do?” but she didn’t say anything out loud.

  Ivy started into the kitchen. “You like sloppy joes?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Yes, ma’am, I do,” Pearl said. She hoped her voice sounded polite and thankful, like the voice of someone nice to have around.

  Ivy stopped in the doorway. She turned and smiled at Pearl before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Pearl got down on her knees and reached up under the TV for the marble. Then she went back to the bedroom and took out her box of postcards. She dropped the marble inside, then dug through the postcards until she found the one she wanted—the Starlite Motel, Interstate 85, Spartanburg, South Carolina. There was a swimming pool in front, the bright blue water sparkling in the sun. People lounged nearby in lawn chairs, smiling, happy to be relaxing on their vacation. Mama loved motels. She’d run around the room messing everything up and say, “There! Let the maid clean that up.” The next day they’d leave with a new supply of towels and tiny bars of soap.

  Pearl sat on the bed and wrote:

  Dear Mama,

  Please come back—

  but if you can’t come

  right away, that’s okay.

  Love,

  Pearl

  6

  When Pearl saw Moonpie walking up the road toward the house, she called out, “Hey.” He looked up.

  “Hey,” he called back. He kept both hands in his pockets and kicked a soda can along the ground in front of him.

  “Where you going?” Pearl asked.

  “Nowhere.”

  Pearl jumped off the porch and walked beside him.

  “Ivy at work?” he asked.

  Pearl nodded. In the bright sun, Moon’s skin looked whiter than ever. His invisible eyebrows were squeezed together and his spooky blue eyes stared at the ground.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  He sat on the side of the road in the dirt and rocks. Pearl looked down at him. His white scalp showed through his thin cantaloupe hair.

  “Mama Nell’s looking bad today,” he said. He picked up a piece of gravel and tossed it into the ditch. It hit the muddy water. Kerplunk.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Pearl picked up a piece of gravel and tossed it into the ditch, too.

  “Just looks bad,” Moon said.

  A car passed them. Moon looked up and flopped his hand in a halfhearted wave. A boy leaned out the back window and called out, “M-o-o-o-o-npie,” drawing out the “Moooo” part like a cow. Pearl glared after the car.

  Moon stood up and brushed the dirt off the seat of his shorts.

  “See you later,” he said.

  “Where you going?” Pearl called after him.

  He didn’t answer. Pearl watched him walk away. This boy is some kind of strange, she thought.

  He turned the corner just beyond Ivy’s house and headed up the narrow road that curved up the hill behind the old peach orchard. Pearl ran around to the back of the house. She could see Moon trudging up the hill. She ran to the other side of the shed to see if she could get a better view. She caught one more glimpse of him before he disappeared around a corner.

  Pearl pushed through the weeds and briers until she reached the road. She jumped over a gully and landed on her hands and knees. She brushed the dirt off her knees and looked around. It didn’t seem to Pearl like a car had driven here in years. Wasn’t really even a road. Just two rutted tracks with weeds growing up the middle. Pearl walked up the hill a ways, then turned and looked back. She could see Ivy’s house below, chickens strutting around the yard, the freshly dug dirt of the new tomato garden. She looked up in the direction Moon had gone, then back down at Ivy’s house. Then she continued on up the hill.

  The road ended in a clearing at the top. When Pearl saw Moon’s house, she stopped. It looked to Pearl like all that house needed was a gust of wind to send it tumbling down the hill in a heap of splintered wood. Two tiny windows. No screen on one and a screen full of holes on the other. The front porch was a piece of rotten plywood on cinder blocks. Plants in rusty coffee cans lined the edges. The house was a moldy green color, the bottom half stained orange from the red-orange dirt of the yard.

  Pearl stood still and listened. Nothing. Just the buzzing of flies and the muted sound of a radio from somewhere inside.

  Pearl wanted to make herself turn around and go home. Mind her own business for a change. But instead she tiptoed to the house and crouched beneath a window. She heard Moon say something. Heard a gravelly voice say something back. She rose slowly until she could see over the windowsill. It was dark inside. She squinted and pressed her face against the dirty screen.

  The floor of the dark little room was littered with piles of clothes and stacks of newspapers. Dishes, cardboard boxes, and paper bags. Moon sat by a bed piled with blankets. Pearl could tell somebody was in the bed, but all that was showing was a wrinkled-up face and tufts of white hair poking out in every direction.

  A stale, medicine smell hung in the air. Pearl wrinkled her nose and ducked back down. She started to leave, but stopped when she heard Moon’s voice. She sat still, listening. Moon was reading from the Bible. Pearl didn’t know much about churchgoing, but she knew Bible words when she heard them.

  When Moon stopped reading and the room was quiet, Pearl raised up slightly and peered in the window again. Moon was kneeling by the bed, his head on the pillow next to that wrinkled-up old face. His cantaloupe hair flopped down on top of those tufts of white. Pearl tiptoed away from the house, crouching, then took off running down the hill toward Ivy’s.

  When she got to Ivy’s back porch, Pearl sat on the steps to catch her breath. She put her chin on her knees, thinking. She wondered which was worse—your mama not wanting you and you having nobody else, or your mama not wanting you and the only other person you have is a wrinkled-up old lady in the bed.

  Pearl went inside and dialed the number of the diner that Ivy had taped on the wall beside the phone.

  Ivy answered. Pearl could hear dishes clattering in the background.

  “This is Pearl,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Ivy’s voice was squeaky and scared-sounding. Pearl had never called the diner before.

  “Nothing.”

  Pearl heard Ivy let her breath out.

  “Well, okay,” Ivy said. “That’s good.”

  Pearl heard someone holler Ivy’s name.

  “You need something, Pearl?” Ivy said.

  “No.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dishes clattered again. “Maybe I can come get you on my break,” Ivy said. “You can sit here at the counter and talk to me while I work. I’ll fix you a cheeseburger. How about that?”

  Pearl felt the tears coming and was glad Ivy couldn’t see her. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to hear Ivy’s voice.

  “Pearl?” Ivy said.

  Pearl sniffed and cleared her throat. “What?”

  “You okay?”

  Pearl nodded, wiping at the tears. Maybe it was better to have a wrinkled-up old lady in the bed than to have nobody

  “You stay right there. I’m coming home,” Ivy said.

  “No!” Pearl said louder than she meant to. “I was just wondering what time the mail comes, is all. I expect I’ll be hearing from Mama, so I just wanted to know that—about the mail. That’s all.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Ivy said, “Oh.” Someone hollere
d Ivy’s name again. “Well, uh, the mail gets there about noon.”

  “Okay,” Pearl said and hung up.

  Pearl sat at the kitchen table, listening to the whir of the window fan. A cat jumped in her lap and she pushed it off.

  Then she went back to her bedroom and took out the shoebox. She closed her eyes and picked a postcard. The pink flowers of a dogwood tree. “Beautiful Carolina Dogwood,” it said on the back. Pearl flopped on her stomach on the bed and wrote:

  Dear Mama,

  There’s this spooky boy

  named Moonpie. His mama is

  no good like you but at least he

  has somebody else even if it is

  a wrinkled-up old lady in the bed.

  Love,

  Pearl

  7

  “Pearl, this is John Dee. John Dee, this is Pearl,” Ivy said.

  John Dee took his greasy baseball cap off and nodded toward Pearl. “Nice to meet you,” he said. His voice was raspy, like the voice of someone who smokes too much.

  “I told him all about you,” Ivy said.

  Pearl wondered what that meant. Didn’t seem to her like there was much to tell except the bad part. The part about Ruby.

  “John Dee’s going to take us out for pizza tonight.” Ivy smiled up at John Dee. He fiddled with his cap. His arms were thick and hairy. Part of a tattoo showed from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. A snake. Or a dragon, maybe. Pearl couldn’t tell which.

  “Let’s go up and get Moonpie,” he said.

  Ivy’s face lit up. “Well, now that’s a good idea. I got to go up there anyhow and check on Mama Nell.” She turned to Pearl. “You want to ride up there with us?”

  “Okay,” Pearl said.

  “Let me get some of them chicken and dumplings I got in the freezer,” Ivy said. “Y’all go on out and I’ll be right there.”

  Pearl followed John Dee outside. A rusty, dented van with J.D. APPLIANCE REPAIR painted on the side was parked out front.

  “That your van?” Pearl asked.

  “Yep,” he said, opening the door for Pearl.

  There were only two seats, so Pearl climbed in back and sat on a plastic milk crate. John Dee sat in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “What do you think of Darwood?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Pearl watched the back of his head. His hair was greasy and hung in clumps. The back of his neck was sunburned.

  “Ivy tell you about my mama?” Pearl said.

  John Dee kept drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and looking toward the house. “She’s told me a bit about Ruby,” he said, nodding.

  “Like what?”

  He took his baseball cap off, scratched his head, and put his cap back on. “Well now, let me think,” he said. “Told me Ruby’s a lot younger than her. Told me she left Darwood quite a few years ago.” He turned and winked at Pearl. “Told me she had a daughter named Pearl,” he added.

  Pearl leaned forward. “No, I mean, she tell you about her leaving me and all?”

  A look of sheer relief flooded over John Dee’s face when Ivy came out of the house and opened the door of the van.

  “Sorry I took so long,” Ivy said, climbing in. “I was hunting for them bread-and-butter pickles Mama Nell likes so much.” She held a bag in her lap and looked back at Pearl.

  “The doctor tells her not to eat them pickles,” Ivy said, “but I say, pooey Whatever makes her happy, right?”

  The van started with a roar and a puff of black smoke. They turned onto the narrow, rutted road leading up to Moonpie’s house. Tools rattled and slid from one side of the van to the other as they bounced along. Pearl struggled to keep from falling off the milk crate, and Ivy laughed all the way up like something was hysterical.

  When the moldy green house came into view, Pearl saw Moon out front, throwing darts at the side of the house. When he saw the van, he grinned.

  “Hey,” he called, running over to the driver’s side.

  “Hey back at ya,” John Dee said.

  The van door squeaked when he opened it. “I’m going to have to fix that someday,” he said. He and Moon grinned at each other. John Dee jabbed Moon in the side with an elbow. Must be some kind of private joke, Pearl figured. It didn’t seem too funny to her, though.

  “How’s Mama Nell?” Ivy said, gathering up the bag of food.

  “She don’t look too good,” Moon said.

  “She eat anything today?”

  “Some soup.”

  “I’ll go in and check on her.” Ivy started toward the house. Pearl followed her.

  “I’ll come, too,” Pearl said. She was dying to see the inside of that house.

  “Naw, now, you stay out here and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine with the boys.” Ivy disappeared inside, the screen door banging shut behind her. Pearl could hear her singsongy voice inside calling, “Mama Nell? It’s me—Ivy.”

  When Pearl turned back toward the yard, John Dee and Moonpie were throwing rocks into the woods. Every now and then a loud thwack echoed through the trees.

  “How old is she, anyway?” Pearl said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the house.

  “I don’t know,” Moon said, grunting as he hurled a rock into the woods. “Old.”

  “Still got plenty of spit and vinegar. I guarantee you that,” John Dee said. He searched the ground for another rock.

  “Don’t look like it to me,” Pearl said. She didn’t think it was possible, but Moon’s white face actually turned red clear down to his neck.

  “I reckon it’s just the heat is all,” Moon said.

  “I’m glad you said that,” John Dee said, opening the back of the van. “I got a fan for you. Don’t look like much, but it works real good.” He held up a rusty fan with silver duct tape holding the sides together. “I’ll go set this up in there.”

  When the screen door shut, Pearl turned to Moon.

  “So, who’s he?” she said. “Some kind of boyfriend?”

  She had asked that question of Ivy but hadn’t gotten an answer that satisfied her.

  Moon shrugged and wiped the back of his neck. He closed his eyes in one of those long blinks, then looked at Pearl and shrugged.

  Dern, thought Pearl. Don’t nobody want to talk about nothing around here.

  Ivy and John Dee came back outside. Ivy shook a rug off the edge of the rotten little porch.

  “Moonpie, them flowers are drying up,” Ivy said, pointing to a row of drooping sunflowers near the house. “Get that bucket over yonder and let’s water ’em.”

  When the flowers were watered, Ivy put her arm around Moon.

  “There,” she said. “Now let’s go get us some pizza.”

  “What about Mama Nell?” Moon asked.

  “Aw, she’s fat and happy and snoring away,” Ivy said. “Done eat half a jar of them pickles.”

  At the restaurant, Pearl didn’t feel much like eating. Ivy and John Dee kept smiling at each other, and Ivy would giggle and blush and carry on. Then John Dee kept ruffling Moonpie’s hair and they’d be poking each other and cracking jokes that weren’t funny and then falling all over themselves laughing. Pearl just sat there feeling like she’d been plunked down in the middle of something that didn’t have one little thing to do with her.

  Then things got worse when they bounced back up the road to Moonpie’s house. Moon sat on a paint bucket between the seats, holding on to the dashboard. When they stopped in front of the house, Moon said, “I was thinking I ought to talk to y’all about something.”

  Ivy’s face got serious. “What?” she said.

  Moon looked down at his hands and fiddled with his T-shirt.

  “That social worker lady’s supposed to come tomorrow,” Moon said, “and, well, uh, I was thinking …”

  “What social worker lady?” Ivy said.

  “Aw, some lady supposed to come out and check on us.” Moon twisted the bottom of his T-shirt around his finger. “I ain’t exactly sure why.
”

  “I thought she just come out a while back.” Ivy pushed Moon’s hair out of his eyes.

  “She did.”

  “Then why in tarnation is she coming again?”

  Moon lifted his shoulders up to his ears and held them there a minute before letting them drop. “I think she’s thinking Mama Nell can’t take care of me no more,” he said in a tiny little voice. Pearl watched his face. Was he going to cry? It looked like a possibility.

  Then Ivy just exploded. Made everybody in the van jump.

  “Can’t take care of you! Ha! Mama Nell’s got more brains than all them social workers put together.” Ivy sat on the edge of her seat and threw her hands around. “I’d just like to see them come up here and start something. Them social worker types, they all think ’cause they been to college they know it all—know all about who can take care of who. If they want an education, just let ’em come up here and I’ll give ’em one.”

  John Dee reached over and put his big hairy hand on Ivy’s shoulder. “Ain’t nobody starting nothing, Ivy,” he said real soft. “What you getting all riled up for?”

  Ivy crossed her arms and sat back against the seat. “Well, I just don’t want nobody trying to change things up here, that’s all,” she said. Her voice was calmer now. She looked at Moon.

  “Why you think that lady thinks that about Mama Nell?” she asked.

  “Just a feeling, I reckon,” Moon said.

  “Anybody ever say anything to you about that?” John Dee asked.

  “They was all the time saying it after Mama left,” Moon said. “Saying Mama Nell was old and all and how could she take care of me. Stuff like that.”

  “Ha!” Ivy said, throwing her head back. “They don’t know nothing about nothing. Don’t you worry about it, Moon.” She patted his hand.

  “I just thought maybe shouldn’t nobody come out here till Mama Nell gets better,” Moon said.