by D. Anne Love
“That’s not a bad idea,” Aunt Julia mused. “You could dress up like a country singer, Garnet. I’ll lend you my hoop earrings and a scarf. Patsy Cline always wears a scarf.”
Maybe I should have seen disaster coming, but I was tired of being an outsider. For just one day I wanted to feel like I belonged, even if it meant dressing up like a fool. I grabbed on to Aunt Julia’s idea like a drowning person to a rope, and the next morning I set off for the bus wearing my black skirt, Aunt Julia’s scarf and earrings, and my purple shirt.
“Well, look at you!” Sunday Larson said when she opened the bus door for me. “Don’t you take the rag right off the bush! Where’d you get that shirt?”
“My mother sent it from Nashville.”
“Turn around, let me see the back.”
The bus idled in the road while Sunday admired my costume. Opal flopped down on a seat at the back of the bus with Cheryl and pretended she’d never seen me before in her life. Sunday finished admiring my shirt, and we took off.
When we stopped at the Bartons’ place, two of the girls got on and took a seat across the aisle from me. Darlene, the one who sat behind me in homeroom, wasn’t there. The oldest one, Polly, was in high school like Opal, so she wore her regular clothes, a man’s plaid shirt over a brown print dress. The younger one wore faded black tights and a bumblebee body cut from paper sacks and colored with crayons. She leaned across the aisle and said, “Your shirt is pretty.”
“Thanks. Your bee costume is pretty too.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s dumb. I wanted a princess costume with a real tiara, but my mama said we couldn’t afford—”
“Hush, Annalee,” Polly hissed. “Stop telling people our business.”
Near the end of our route, with the bus almost full, we rounded the curve down by Aunt Julia’s church, and the Underwood girls, who usually rode with their daddy to school, were standing in the road waving us down.
Sunday stopped the bus and hollered out the window, “Need a ride, girls?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Faith said. “My daddy left early this morning to preach a funeral in Lawton. A good friend of his went fishing, stood up in his boat to reel in a bass, and just keeled over dead. My daddy says that proves people need to be ready for Heaven whenever God decides he’s ready for you.”
Sunday cranked open the door and the girls climbed on. “That’s more sermon than I needed at this hour,” Sunday said. “But I will allow, Miss Faith, you got your daddy’s silver tongue.”
Faith and Hope sat down behind me. Since her mission of mercy had ended on the first day of school, Faith had kept her distance from me, but this morning she leaned forward as we started on down the road. “That’s some shirt, Garnet.”
Hope nodded. “Who are you supposed to be? The purple people eater?”
Annalee Barton turned around in her seat and said to Faith, “How come you ain’t wearing a costume? Don’t you know it’s Halloween?”
“We don’t believe in Halloween,” said Hope. “Halloween is for heathens.”
“What’s a heathen?” asked Annalee.
“Never mind,” Hope said.
But Faith couldn’t resist the opportunity to preach to a captive congregation.
“A heathen,” she announced, “is a person who isn’t religious. Heathens dress up like ghosts and ghouls and poke fun at death because they’re scared of where they’re going when they die. But once you’re baptized, you become a whole new person inside and you aren’t afraid of the fires of hell anymore.”
Annalee jumped into my lap and burst into tears. “I don’t want to die in a fire!”
“Now look what you’ve done!” I glared at Faith.
Sunday said, “Faith, honey, maybe you’d better save your sermons for church.”
“Jesus preached to everyone, whenever he had the chance.” Faith checked to make sure Sunday wasn’t watching, then stuck her tongue out at me.
That was the last straw. I nudged Annalee off my lap and whipped around in my seat. “You aren’t Jesus!” I told Faith. “And you’re scaring the daylights out of a little kid.”
“Mind your own business, heathen.”
“What did you call me?” I was on my feet, leaning over Faith’s seat, trying to keep my balance as the bus swayed around a curve and headed up the long driveway to the schoolhouse.
Sunday pulled into the parking area and killed the engine. Inside the bus a strange kind of excitement was building, the kind that comes just before a fight breaks out, when everything stops and everybody waits to see who will throw the first punch. But then Sunday cranked open the door and hollered, “Everybody out!”
She got out first and stood by the steps as the bus emptied. When I reached the bottom step, she pulled me aside. “I appreciate that you were defending Annalee, but it won’t do any good to argue religion with people. Especially with preachers’ kids.” She jerked her thumb toward the schoolhouse. “Go on now, and watch that mouth of yours.”
I headed inside to my locker and nearly collided with Cooley. He was dressed all in black, a red cape over his shoulders. He was wearing long fake teeth and had drawn a bolt across his neck with a black eyebrow pencil. Obviously he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be Frankenstein’s monster or a bloodthirsty vampire. “Hey,” he cackled. “What’s buzzin’, cuzzin?”
“I’m not your cousin.” I was still mad at him for pointing out the truth about garnets, but he looked so ridiculous I couldn’t help smiling.
“Eureka!” he shouted to Nathan Brown, who was looking cuter than ever in an old-fashioned baseball uniform stuffed with padding. “The precious gem smiles at last!” Then he fell all over himself laughing. Nathan shook his head and grinned at me and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Before I could work up the nerve to say something brilliant, the bell rang and we headed to English class, where all the trouble started.
First off, everybody except Faith Underwood was dressed as a character from literature or history. A couple of boys were dressed as Abe Lincoln. One was dressed all in white, like Mark Twain. Cindy Lawless, who sat two seats behind me, wore a spider costume with the words “Some Pig” pinned to it. Then Starch and Vinegar decided it would be a good idea for everybody to model their costumes, like show-and-tell from when we were in kindergarten. It was a dumb idea, but she wouldn’t change her mind.
Cooley volunteered to go first. He gave an exciting summary of Mary Shelley’s book about Frankenstein, acting out the part of the German student who figures out how to infuse life into ordinary matter, only to be destroyed by his own creation. He said Frankenstein was one of the most interesting books he’d ever read.
“If you’re supposed to be Frankenstein’s monster, then what’s with the vampire teeth?” Cindy asked, smoothing her spider costume. “The monster wasn’t a vampire, too, was he?”
“No,” Cooley said. “but after I finished reading Frankenstein, I read Dracula by Bram Stoker, and I realized both the stories are about how man struggles against the evil impulses hidden deep down inside everybody, no matter how good they try to be.”
I just stared at him, dumbstruck. It was hard to believe that behind the constant teasing and all-around goofiness, there was an intelligent boy who thought deeply about things.
Miss Sparrow seemed surprised too. She smiled and nodded to Cooley and made a mark in her grade book. I figured that Cooley had just aced his English grade for the whole semester.
Cooley took his seat, looking way too pleased with himself, and then Nathan stood up, modeled his baseball uniform, and said Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player in the universe, and that he, Nathan, had a genuine autographed Babe Ruth baseball that his grandfather had given him. “But my mother wouldn’t let me bring it to school. It’s too valuable to risk losing it.”
“Thank you, Nathan,” Miss Sparrow said. “Who’ll be next?”
Margie Carter, dressed in long earrings and a gold taffeta prom dress at least three sizes too big for her, gave a
ten-minute lecture on Cleopatra. “She’s my hero because she didn’t let guys push her around.”
She rustled back to her seat. Miss Sparrow’s gaze swept over the room. I kept my head down, hoping she’d forget about me, the stupid new kid who got everything all wrong. So of course she said, “Garnet? Your costume looks interesting. Come on up here and tell us about it.”
A sound like a swarm of mad bees started inside my head. I tried to think of somebody important who had run around in oversize earrings and a tacky sequined shirt, but my mind was a blank. “I didn’t know we were supposed to dress up as a character,” I muttered.
“What?” Miss Sparrow said. “Speak up, please.”
“I didn’t know!” I yelled. “I’m not dressed up as anybody! My mother sent me this stupid shirt.”
I pushed open the door and ran down the hall.
“Garnet!” Miss Sparrow called me back, but I turned left at the end of the hall and ran to my locker. Right there in the middle of the deserted hallway, I stripped off the purple shirt and pulled on the sweat-stained T-shirt I’d worn for our physical fitness test the week before. I wadded up the purple shirt and went out the back door to the garbage cans behind the cafeteria. I stuffed it into the garbage and watched it disappear under a blob of green beans, congealed gravy, and sour milk. Then I headed home.
I cut across the school yard and started up the road. A cold wind whipped through the trees and dried the tears on my face. How had my once-normal life turned into such a train wreck? Why couldn’t I do anything right?
A car came up the road behind me, and I ducked into the trees. The car slowed as it made the curve, then stopped. Charlie Twelvetrees got out and stood in the road, his head cocked to one side, listening. Ordinarily I’d have been happy to see him, because he told the most interesting stories of anybody I knew, but right then I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I squatted behind a thick stand of bushes just beginning to shed their leaves.
“Garnet Hubbard,” Charlie said into the quiet. Like he could see right through the thicket to my hiding place. He crossed the road and started toward me like a hunter tracking game.
I stepped out of the shadows. “Hey, Charlie.”
“You’re not in school.”
“I quit.” I shivered in my thin shirt.
“What happened?” Charlie took off his sweater and handed it to me. I burrowed into it, into the river smells and the smells of wood shavings and smoke. We sat on the brown stubbled grass and I told him everything. About going on welfare, about losing my chance to work on the scenery for the play, and about how everybody hated me because I was stupid and a heathen to boot.
“Too many problems for one girl.” Charlie rose in a graceful motion that made him seem a whole lot younger than Sunday said he was. “Wait here.”
The wind stirred the red dust on the road. A flock of blackbirds circled overhead with a quiet, shimmering sound. Charlie opened the trunk of his car, took out a leather pouch, and came back to where I sat. He squatted in front of me and dumped three tiny carved wooden dolls and a hollowed-out wooden egg into my hand.
“Worry dolls,” he said. “They’re magic.”
Okay, I was twelve years old and I’d been around the block a few times. I didn’t believe in magic any more than I believed in Santa Claus or Charlie’s wooden bird carving, or Mama’s Madame Fortuna card game. But I wanted to. “How do they work?”
“At night before you sleep, think of your three biggest worries. Tell one worry to each of the dolls and put them under your pillow. While you dream your spirit dreams, the dolls will try to solve your problems.”
“Spirit dreams?”
Charlie nodded. “There are ordinary dreams, like dreaming you’re riding a roller coaster or taking a trip somewhere. And there are spirit dreams that reveal the longings of our souls. In spirit dreams our problems are solved.”
It made me want to cry the way Charlie trusted that a total disaster could somehow work out okay if you only believed. A raven fluttered in and settled on a branch just above our heads. Charlie studied it for a long time.
“A good sign,” he said at last.
I got up and dusted off my skirt. “I’d better go home before somebody from school tells Aunt Julia I’m missing.”
“You wouldn’t want to worry her,” Charlie agreed, getting to his feet. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”
When we got to Aunt Julia’s, she was standing in the yard with Sunday Larson. Me and Charlie got out of the car.
“There you are, Patsy Cline!” Sunday said. “Where’s that pretty purple shirt of yours?”
Before I could answer, Aunt Julia said to me, “Ida Wink called the store and said you’d run off. What in the world made you do a thing like that?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I gave Charlie his sweater back.
He folded it and said to Aunt Julia, “Garnet Hubbard has many worries. A day away from school will be good medicine.”
Aunt Julia sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Garnet?”
“I’ll call the school and let them know she’s safe,” Sunday said. She jumped into her truck and roared off.
Charlie said to Aunt Julia, “Election Day’s coming up on Tuesday. Will you need a ride to the polls?”
“I’d be obliged to you, Charlie.”
“It’s no trouble. I’ll be by around ten.” Charlie looked down at me. “When you’re young, life seems long, but when you’re as old as I am, you’ll realize it’s all too brief. Don’t waste it yearning for what you can’t have.”
“Thank you for the worry dolls,” I said.
Charlie’s eyes were suddenly so watery I thought he was crying. But I don’t know. Maybe it was allergies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When I went back to class the following Monday, nobody, not even Cooley, said a word about what had happened. Now that my anger had cooled, I was sorry I’d thrown away my only present from Mama, but there is no use crying over spilled milk.
Miss Sparrow handed out new reading assignments and gave a pop quiz on conjunctions and prepositions. Cooley complained that it was no fair giving a test right after a major holiday, especially since we were still keyed up from a whole weekend of eating too much candy. Faith piped up and said Halloween was not a real holiday. Old Starch and Vinegar shushed them both with the threat of more homework, and after that the room went quiet until the bell rang and we were dismissed.
“Garnet?” Miss Sparrow said as everybody headed out the door. “Will you wait a moment, please?”
“Uh-oh,” Cooley said, pushing his Coke-bottle glasses back onto his nose. “You’re in trouble now.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
Miss Sparrow said, “Go along, Cooley. I can do without any more comments from you today.”
When the room was empty, Miss Sparrow shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweater and perched on the edge of her desk. “I owe you an apology.”
“Ma’am?”
“I should have told you to come dressed as a character from literature or history. It’s been our seventh-grade tradition for almost forty years, and everyone looks forward to it. I forgot you’re new here and wouldn’t know.”
“You shouldn’t have called on me to talk about my costume.”
“Right,” Miss Sparrow said. “I didn’t intend to embarrass you, but I did, and I am truly sorry.”
I was still mad, but what can you say when an adult apologizes to you? Especially if that adult is an English teacher armed with a red marking pen and a grade book. “It’s okay.”
She smiled. “Good. I’m glad we’ve put this behind us.” She scribbled a late pass for me, all business again. “See you tomorrow. Don’t forget your homework.”
• • •
Election Day came and Senator Kennedy barely beat Mr. Nixon for the job of president of the USA. Then, as if we didn’t already have enough to do getting our history projects done, Miss Browning assi
gned a research report about our new president. On Saturday I begged a ride to the library with Sunday Larson, hoping that this time she’d steer clear of the chicken sale.
The library occupied a dingy room in the basement of the Willow County Courthouse. Metal shelves full of dog-eared novels, a few biographies, and a bunch of theology books lined the walls. In the corner sat a wooden table with people’s initials carved into the top, and a couple of chairs. The librarian turned out to be Celestial’s mother.
“You must be the Hubbard girl,” she said, when I asked her if she had any books about Mr. Kennedy suitable for a seventh-grade history report.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I hope you like school here,” Mrs. Jones said, getting up from behind her desk. “Celestial just loves it.”
She pointed to a desk covered with newspapers from Oklahoma City and Dallas and New York City, all filled with stories about the election and pictures of our new president.
“We don’t have any books yet,” Mrs. Jones said, “but these papers should give you all you need for your report.” She glanced at her watch. “I work half days on Saturdays, so I’m afraid I must go, but feel free to stay as long as you want. If you decide to check out books, just fill out the cards and leave them in that box over there. We operate on the honor system when no one is around.”
I pored over the newspapers and copied down some facts about Mr. Kennedy: that he saved his Navy crew-mates when his PT boat was destroyed, and he wrote a bestselling book about courage that won an important prize. That he had a wife who liked to ride horses, and he had one kid and another one due any minute. When I figured I had enough facts to satisfy Miss Browning, I poked around the library. I checked out a couple of Nancy Drew mysteries, then walked over to the drugstore to meet Sunday.
She was sitting in the truck reading a romance comic book. I opened the truck door, relieved to see that the cab was still a chicken-free zone. Sunday marked her place with her finger. “All finished?”