Moonpie and Ivy

by Barbara O'Connor

  Mama Nell laughed her rattly laugh.

  Pearl stomped toward the door.

  “She stole from me one time,” Mama Nell said. “You wanna get your name in my Grudge Book, you steal from me.”

  Pearl stopped. She turned around and looked at Mama Nell. “What’d she steal?”

  “My yellow-bird music box.”

  Pearl walked back to the bed and sat down.

  “She was all the time admiring that thing,” Mama Nell said. “Winding it up and listening to it and then winding it up again. She took it one day. Just up and took it.”

  “How do you know it was her that took it?” Pearl wondered why she bothered to ask that. Of course it was Ruby that took it. That was just like her.

  “She had a rinky-dink little ole fort down in the orchard. I could hear that music box clear as a bell from up here.” Mama Nell leaned forward and said real low, “’Scuse me for saying so, but she wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  Pearl frowned. “What’d you do?”

  “Told her to keep her skinny butt off my property, that’s what.”

  “Did she?”

  “Sure did.” Mama Nell pulled another tissue out of the box on the arm of her chair and wiped her mouth. “But ole Ruby Patterson, she didn’t want nobody thinking they knew her. If she had a notion that you thought she was gonna get up on the right side of the bed, she’d get up on the left side or die trying. That’s the way she was. Five years that music box was gone and then one day there it was right up on that shelf again and I ain’t seen Ruby Patterson since.”

  Pearl followed Mama Nell’s gaze to the shelf on the wall behind the bed. It was cluttered with magazines, empty soda cans, a Bible, a flashlight, a dusty statue of praying hands—and a little yellow bird on a nest of flowers.

  Pearl had to use every ounce of strength she had to keep from jumping up and snatching that bird. She put her hands under her knees and looked out the door at Skeeter twitching in his sleep.

  It was so quiet in the room that Pearl could hear Mama Nell’s raspy breathing. She felt her chin quivering when she said, “I reckon she wasn’t all bad, then.”

  “Bad? Who said she was bad?”

  “You did.”

  “You hear what you wanna hear, girlie.”

  Pearl chewed on her lower lip and stared at that little yellow bird on the shelf. She felt Mama Nell’s hand on her knee.

  “Wasn’t nothing wrong with Ruby that a little of her daddy’s love wouldn’t’ve cured,” Mama Nell said. “But something tells me she’s a hard person to love.”

  Pearl looked at the dirty linoleum floor. She wished Mama Nell would take that scrawny hand off her knee. Wished she wasn’t sitting here in this dark, smelly old house with a sick, mean old lady. But most of all, she wished her mama wasn’t a hard person to love.

  14

  Pearl was watering the marigolds when she saw the flashing red lights. She didn’t move. Just stood there letting the water turn the red dirt into a muddy puddle. She knew right off the bat where those flashing red lights were headed, but she stood there watching anyway, like she needed to know for sure.

  When the red lights turned onto the road to Moonpie’s house, Pearl’s brain got the message. An ambulance. Going to Moonpie’s house. She threw the watering can clear across the yard and took off running, jumping over brier bushes and scrambling up the hill.

  By the time Pearl got to Moon’s house, the ambulance was parked out front. The flashing red lights looked creepy, going round and round, sending rays of red light through the trees and across the front of the house. Pearl stopped at the edge of the porch. Voices drifted out of the screen door.

  Mama Nell’s ratty old chair was out on the porch. Pearl went up and sat in it. It smelled like medicine and stale beer. She listened to the sounds coming from inside the house. Moon’s voice. A man’s voice. Static from a radio. Pearl could hear Skeeter under the porch whining. The sound of gravel crunching under tires made Pearl look up. John Dee’s van pulled into the dirt yard and stopped.

  Moonpie must have heard the van, too, because the screen door burst open and he ran out. By the time he jumped off the porch, John Dee was out of the van. The two of them headed straight for each other, arms out. When they met, they folded their arms around one another. Pearl watched, fascinated. How did they know to do that? What was it that made them both do exactly the same thing? It was almost as if they’d rehearsed the moment, like a play. Pearl was sure that she wouldn’t have known what to do. She probably would have done the wrong thing. But John Dee and Moonpie did it just right, standing there in the yard holding each other like that.

  The scene was interrupted when the screen door opened and two men carried Mama Nell out on a stretcher. Pearl covered her face with her hands. She heard the ambulance door open and looked up just in time to see Mama Nell’s ugly purple feet disappear inside the ambulance. The men said something to John Dee, then the ambulance bounced down the bumpy, rutted road, sending red light through the trees until it disappeared from sight.

  Moonpie stood in the yard, looking so pitiful Pearl covered her face with her hands again. Then he started crying. Loud and mournful. Pearl had never heard a boy cry like that. She didn’t know what to do.

  John Dee knew just what to do. He put his arm around Moon and led him over to the porch. He gently pushed Moon’s shoulders, making him sit on the steps, then sat beside him. Pearl watched the back of them. Moon’s shoulders shaking as he cried. John Dee’s big, hairy hand rubbing Moon’s back. When John Dee finally spoke, Pearl jumped.

  “Ivy’s gonna meet us at the hospital,” he said.

  Moon kept on crying.

  “Okay?” John Dee said, leaning over and looking up into Moon’s face.

  Moon’s crying got softer and he looked up. His face was streaked with dirt, his eyes red and swollen. “Okay,” he said in a tiny, pitiful voice.

  “Why don’t you go on down to the house, Pearl,” John Dee said. “Ain’t no need for you to go to the hospital, okay?”

  Pearl wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. Knew she didn’t belong with them. Moonpie, Ivy, John Dee, Mama Nell. They all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. But she was the extra piece. The one that just didn’t fit with the others no matter which way you turned it. No matter how hard you pushed it.

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  “You want me to call Genevieve to come over and stay with you?” John Dee said.

  Pearl shook her head.

  “You want a ride down the hill?”

  Pearl shook her head again.

  “Well …” John Dee stood up and nudged Moonpie. “We better go, then.”

  Pearl watched the two of them climb into the van.

  “We’ll call you, okay?” John Dee hollered out the window as they headed down the hill.

  Pearl lay on the couch and stared at the television. She had turned the sound off. She watched the silent screen. A cartoon bear held a stick of dynamite. Pearl watched the silent explosion. When the dust settled, the bear blinked out at her, his fur sticking up in black, smoking clumps.

  When the phone rang, Pearl raced to the kitchen. Her heart beat so fast she clutched both hands to her chest and closed her eyes for a moment before picking up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Pearl?” Ivy’s voice sounded all shaky. “This is Ivy.”

  “Hey.”

  “Mama Nell’s passed on,” Ivy said.

  Pearl waited.

  “Pearl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, uh, I don’t … I guess …” Ivy’s voice cracked. Pearl waited. “We’ll be home before dark, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You heat up them pork chops from last night, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Pearl could hear Ivy’s breathing. “Ivy?”

  “What?”

  “You all right?”

/>   There was a brief moment of silence, then Ivy said, “Yes, sweetheart, I’m all right.”

  “That’s good,” Pearl said. “That you’re all right, I mean.”

  Silence.

  “Ivy?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I got to go now, okay?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Click.

  Pearl went out the back door and straight up to Moon’s house. Skeeter was lying out in the dirt yard. His tail thumped a couple of slow thumps on the ground. Pearl stooped to pet him, rubbing her hand down his sides. His ribs showed through his dirty fur. She ran her hand over them. Bump, bump, bump. She put her arms around him, resting her head on his bony side. She could hear his heart beating slow and steady beneath his mangy fur.

  Then she went up on the porch and peered through the screen door. It was dark and spooky-looking inside. Pearl went in. She hurried to the shelf over the bed, took that yellow-bird music box, and ran down the hill to Ivy’s. She went straight back to her room and put the bird inside her shoebox. She snatched a postcard from the box, then sat on the bed and wrote:

  Dear Mama

  But she didn’t know what to say. She stared at the postcard, chewing on the end of her pen. Then she tore the card into tiny pieces and threw them in the shoebox with the yellow bird.

  15

  Hardly anybody came to the funeral. A few old people from town. Genevieve and Jay from the diner. Ivy called down to Macon to try and find Moonpie’s mama, but the phone number she had was no good.

  “I can’t hardly even believe that,” Ivy had said to Pearl real low so Moonpie wouldn’t hear. “The woman just up and moves and don’t tell nobody nothing.”

  Moon’s brother in Lavonia said he was coming, but he didn’t show up.

  “Wouldn’t you think the man would wonder what in this world was going to happen to Moonpie?” Ivy had said.

  Pearl had just nodded.

  “Well, obviously he don’t give a dern,” Ivy said under her breath. “Didn’t even mention the poor child’s name.”

  Pearl had never been to a funeral before. She sat with Moonpie and Ivy and John Dee. Moon cried so much his face was red and he hiccuped through the whole service. Ivy kept her arm around him, telling him how Mama Nell had been an angel on this earth and now she was watching over them from heaven. Pearl looked up at the ceiling. She tried to imagine that grumpy old lady flapping around up in the sky with angel wings and swollen purple feet.

  After the service, Genevieve came by Ivy’s house and everyone sat on the porch not saying much. Ivy kept trying to get people to eat, but it seemed like John Dee was the only one who had any appetite.

  When Genevieve left, Pearl sat on the steps next to Moonpie.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  “Genevieve brought some of them little hot dogs. You want some?”

  “Naw.”

  “You want me to go get Skeeter?” Pearl said.

  “Naw,” Moon said. “I reckon he likes it better up there.” They had tried to get Skeeter to stay down at Ivy’s with Moon, but he kept going back up to the house. Pearl had gone to get him a couple of times and had found him lying on the porch by Mama Nell’s chair, looking about as pitiful as a dog can look.

  “What about your cat?” Pearl said. “You want me to feed it?”

  Moon shook his head, then wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand.

  Pearl looked out at the yard. The few patches of grass were dried up and yellow. A thin layer of red dust coated the walkway.

  “Sure is dry, ain’t it?” Pearl said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Moon?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’m sorry about Mama Nell.”

  Moon’s face crumpled up and the tears rolled down his freckled cheeks.

  Pearl looked away.

  “What’s going to happen to me now?” Moon said real soft and pitiful.

  Pearl looked at him. Then she did something that surprised them both. She put her arm around him.

  “Beats me,” she said. “But I know how you feel.”

  It was over a week before Pearl could get Moonpie to do anything besides sit on the porch. He had been sleeping on the couch at night, hugging his grimy pillow and not even taking his clothes off. He’d get up in the morning, smooth his hair down with his hand, and sit on the porch for most of the day. Pearl had come up with about a million ideas to pass the time—picking tomatoes, walking Skeeter, building a fort—but Moon wasn’t interested in anything but sitting. Finally one day Pearl said, “Let’s ride bikes into town,” and he said, “Okay.”

  She rode ahead of him, struggling to keep Ivy’s beat-up old bike from wobbling into the ditch that ran along the road. Every now and then, she looked over her shoulder to make sure Moon was still there.

  When they got to town, they leaned their bikes against the side of the diner and went in. It smelled like grease and onions. Genevieve looked up from wiping the counter.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” she said. “What y’all doing?”

  “Nothing,” Pearl said.

  “You looking for Ivy?”

  “Naw. Just looking for something to do.”

  “She ain’t here anyways.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Her and John Dee went somewhere, I think.” The bell on the diner door tinkled, and two men in overalls came in. “I got to wait on these folks. You all get yourself a corn muffin,” Genevieve said.

  Pearl lifted the glass dome and took two muffins. She handed one to Moonpie.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Outside, the sun was so bright Pearl could see the blue veins through Moon’s pale skin. He looked a lot younger than eleven, standing there with white, scabby knees, eating that corn muffin. Pearl had an urge to hold his hand, like he was a little kid, but she didn’t.

  “Let’s just walk around, okay?” Pearl said.

  Moon nodded.

  They walked for nearly an hour, stopping from time to time to peer into a store window. Then they bought sodas and sat on a bench. Across the street was a brick building with a peeling, weathered sign. Darwood Town Offices.

  Moon tossed his empty can into a wastebasket. “There’s Ivy and John Dee,” he said, pointing.

  “Where?”

  “Over there.”

  Pearl looked in the direction he pointed. Ivy and John Dee were coming out of the building across the street. They were holding hands. Ivy was laughing. They walked fast, almost skipping. When they got to Ivy’s car, they stopped and hugged. Then they kissed. Right there in front of anybody who wanted to watch.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” Pearl said, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  Moon shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Why would they be in them offices, I wonder.”

  Moon shrugged again.

  Pearl could feel herself getting irritated.

  “Well, what do you think they were doing in there?” she said.

  Moon turned toward her in that slow way of his and blinked a long blink. “I don’t know,” he said.

  By the time Pearl turned to look again, Ivy’s car was disappearing around the corner, puffs of black smoke trailing behind it.

  Pearl had a bad feeling in her stomach. Something was going on. She just knew it. Something that was liable to stir things up for her again. Life had begun to settle down a little bit. It was time for an upset. That’s the way things went for Pearl. She had a feel for upset—like radar—and she felt it coming.

  16

  Pearl’s radar had been right. The upset came that very day.

  By the time she and Moon got home, Ivy and John Dee were there, sitting in lawn chairs in the backyard. Ivy was shelling black-eyed peas into a bowl on her lap. John Dee was drinking a beer and eating a tomato sandwich.

  “Hey, you two,” Ivy called out when Pearl and Moonpie came around the corner of the house, p
ushing their bikes. “Where you been?”

  “In town,” Pearl said. She pushed the bike into the shed and sat on the ground near Ivy. “What’re y’all doing?”

  Ivy looked at John Dee and smiled. “Nothing really. Just sitting here wishing for some rain on that garden out yonder.” She turned to Moonpie. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

  Moon reached for some peas, then sat on the ground next to Ivy and began shelling. “Fine,” he said, tossing peas into the bowl. He looked up at Ivy. “Maybe I’ll go up to the house and check on things,” he said. “You know, Skeeter and all.”

  Ivy put the bowl on the ground and stood up. “I’ll go, too,” she said. “I bet them sunflowers are needing some water.”

  But Moon didn’t move. He just sat there, staring at the peas in his hand. Finally he said, “Ivy?”

  Ivy raised her eyebrows and waited.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he said. “Where am I going to go? Who’ll I live with?”

  Pearl sat up straighter and watched Ivy’s face.

  Ivy sat back down in the lawn chair. She looked at John Dee, then cupped her hands around Moonpie’s face. “Me and John Dee got some news for you, sweetheart,” she said. “I was waiting to make sure everything was going to work out before I told you, but things are looking pretty good now—so here goes.”

  She sat back and took a breath. “Me and John Dee are getting married.”

  Pearl’s heart flopped all the way down to her stomach. Ka-thunk. She stared at Ivy, who sat there grinning. Before that news could sink in, more news came spilling out.

  “And I been talking with the social services people,” Ivy said. “You know, them folks that kept calling you and all? And it looks like you’re going to get to stay with me. Well, me and John Dee. Like a foster home. We filled out all them papers to be foster parents.” She reached over and patted John Dee on the knee. “And soon as they make sure ole John Dee here ain’t a criminal or something—and me, too, of course—it looks like everything’s going to work out. For you, I mean … to live with me and John Dee … after we get married.”