I do more than give Anna May my most terrible mad look. I give her a you-know-what on the backside.
“They aren’t so bad. I will wear them anyway,” I am telling Mirabel.
“You will not wear soaking wet trousers to school. You can wear your dress.” Mirabel is fixing twice as many biscuits as usual because she’s taking some over to the Thatchers to make sure they have done their chores.
“I don’t want to wear that dress,” I wail. My bright yellow trousers are stuck to my legs and Ivy is laughing. She is eating biscuits, and Birdie is only eating the blackberry jam. Ivy and Birdie are wearing the madeover dresses that Mirabel made, purple as pansies and decorated with ribbon and lace that Mrs. Ellis sent over.
I cross my arms over my chest and just stand there in the middle of the kitchen, dripping, smelling potatoes boil and thinking how mad I am at Anna May.
“Remember what we read last night?” Mirabel says, looking over at me, a frown already on her face. “Remember what you are to do when you are angry?”
I remember.
If you will learn to be silent and
not speak at all when you feel
that your temper is getting or has
gotten the better of you, you will
soon get the better of your
temper.
I do not think this is easy when Ivy is laughing at you and your trousers are sticking to you like butter on bread.
* * *
I believe my trousers want to go to school. They are unhappy that Mirabel is making me hang them on the line. I am very firm with them and say how they mustn’t be mad at me. Blame Anna May, or even better, blame Mirabel. She’s the one making me wear this pea green made-over dress that is so big it reaches down and touches the top of my shoes.
Mama whispers softly that it will be all right. No one will care about what I am wearing, especially not Rosalyn. Mama says wait till I see what Old Mr. Jolly has done with the woodshed.
What? I ask, starting to tremble.
Don’t worry, Charlie Anne. He’s filling it with wood, not children. Hurry, or you’ll be late.
It takes Ivy about a hundred more minutes to get her hair pinned just right. Then I take Birdie’s hand and tell her we are going to wait by the road for Phoebe, and Birdie keeps asking me if we will get lemon drops. She doesn’t understand that school isn’t the place for lemon drops. It’s the place for reading.
When Phoebe comes out of her house with Rosalyn, they are both wearing bright yellow trousers.
“Where are yours?” Phoebe wants to know, and I point to the clothesline and my dripping pair of pants.
“Oh,” says Phoebe, and Rosalyn tells me she thinks I look just wonderful in my pea green dress, and after that I feel much better.
Ivy keeps looking over her shoulder to see if Becky is coming, but I tell her she must be forgetting about how Mrs. Ellis wanted a teacher from Boston.
“She won’t be coming, will she?” I ask Rosalyn, and Rosalyn puts her lips in a straight line, just like Papa.
“No, I don’t think she will. Maybe some other day. People have a way of changing if you wait long enough.”
Rosalyn is carrying a stack of books, and I see David Copperfield on top, and I say to myself, Good, I’ve been wondering how things turn out for poor little David.
She tells us Old Mr. Jolly has gone on ahead to check on the school and to get a fire started in the woodstove. Then she gives me a map of the United States to carry and also an American flag. I am so proud to be going to school with Phoebe. We walk arm in arm.
Rosalyn starts humming a tune I’ve never heard before, and by the time we are out of sight of the house, she puts words to the music:
Bright morning stars are rising
Bright morning stars are rising
Bright morning stars are rising,
Day is a-breaking in my soul.
Then Phoebe starts, her voice flying straight up to heaven:
Oh, where are our dear mothers,
Day is a-breaking in my soul.
They’ve gone to heaven a-shouting,
Day is a-breaking in my soul.
And then I open my mouth and try and sing the chorus without sounding too much like a toad croaking:
Bright morning stars are rising,
Bright morning stars are rising,
Bright morning stars are rising,
Day is a-breaking in my soul.
Then Birdie starts singing, her voice all soft, and I think about how it’s been a long time since I have been so happy as I am now.
CHAPTER
40
When we get around the corner, there are three dead robins lined up in a row across the road. Birdie shrieks and starts wailing and I have to pick her up and my stomach starts balling up. Rosalyn looks quickly all around us and then tells us we better hurry, and I put Birdie down and tell her we all have to run.
I wonder why there is no wood-smoke smell in the air. When we get around the corner, I see why. Old Mr. Jolly hasn’t even gotten inside the school to start the fire. Instead, he is ripping off a bunch of old boards that someone nailed right across the school door.
“Oh, no,” says Rosalyn.
“Whoever did this took a lot of time,” Old Mr. Jolly is saying. “There are a lot of boards here.”
Rosalyn reaches for Phoebe, and together they look at everything blocking our way. Birdie won’t let me go.
“I won’t quit,” Rosalyn keeps telling Old Mr. Jolly.
“Then let’s get the rest of these boards off,” he says, and he gives us all tools from the back of his truck: hammers, screwdrivers, even a crowbar. It takes us a whole hour to get the boards off and broken up, and Old Mr. Jolly tells us we should use them to start the fire for our soup.
When the fire is catching and we are all calming down, I ask Old Mr. Jolly who he thinks did such a thing, and if he thinks it was the oldest Thatcher boy, and he says there’s no way of knowing for sure. “And the dead robins,” says Birdie, starting to howl again.
I lift her up and wipe her tears with my hand and catch Old Mr. Jolly looking into Rosalyn’s face and running his fingers through her hummingbird hair.
“I think I’ll just stay here today, doing some chores outside, while you hold school. And I think you should lock the door.”
She nods and he goes out to the woodshed, and a few minutes later we hear him chopping wood.
“First thing we have to do each morning is get the soup going,” Rosalyn says, and we are soon chopping potatoes and onions and turnips and carrots. Ivy is complaining she doesn’t like turnip.
“It sweetens up once it’s cooked. You’ll be surprised how a thing can change,” Rosalyn says, and Ivy doesn’t look too sure about that, and I notice she has the Movie Mirror magazine tucked into her pocket.
Soon the schoolhouse is warm from the fire and smelling good from the golden harvest soup, and we can hear Old Mr. Jolly outside chopping wood. Rosalyn tells me I can sit near Phoebe—for a little while, until we start reading and she starts needing to be assistant teacher.
Birdie sits beside me on the other side and Ivy sits behind us. Then we wait for the other children to come, and Rosalyn keeps looking at the door.
Ivy is slumped in her seat whispering how she told me so, how nobody is going to come to this stupid school and how she is going straight home to tell Mirabel we should have waited for the teacher from Boston.
“Shut up, Ivy. Will you just shut up?”
“Perhaps we should start reading?” Rosalyn asks.
I say that might be a very good idea, and it comes out all mad because my temper is short from the worry over the robins and the boards on the door and from waiting for more children to show up.
Rosalyn reaches for David Copperfield and asks if I would mind if she started from the beginning since neither Ivy nor Birdie has heard it, and I say that would be okay, since I like the beginning very much.
Old Mr. Jolly comes in and dumps a big loa
d of wood in the wood box and then Rosalyn opens the book.
Whether I shall turn out to be
the hero of my own life, or
whether that station will be held
by anybody else, these pages
must show.
Her voice is soft and the fire is warm, and as I listen to the story, I start to forget about the boards nailed across the door, and I start feeling all wrapped up in Mama’s poppy-colored quilt, and if I weren’t feeling so bad about David Copperfield’s sad life, sadder than even mine, I could fall asleep. After a while, I turn around to make sure Ivy isn’t reading her Movie Mirror, and even her eyes are wet from the sadness of what Mr. Murdstone is doing to little David. Rosalyn is just getting to the part where David gets sent to the tiny wretched bedroom at the top of the stairs when she sets the book down.
“I just want to remind all you teary eyes out there that this is the beginning of the book and things have a way of turning around. That’s just the way books are. You have to keep being hopeful when things are bad. Do you understand that?”
I look at Phoebe. Tears are falling down her face. I reach over and squeeze her hand.
Rosalyn waits to make sure we really do understand, and that we are nodding—yes, yes, we understand—before she picks up where she left off. Then she puts the book down again, and I groan way down deep inside myself because I want her to keep going something awful.
“And sometimes,” she says, “it is a good idea to read about someone who’s having trouble—maybe more trouble than we are—because it helps us find ways through our own troubles.”
Yes, yes, even Birdie is nodding. Then Rosalyn picks up the book again, and just as I begin to think that David is about as sorry a little creature as ever lived, there is a rap at the door.
CHAPTER
41
Well. My seat is telling me to sit right where I am and not move. Phoebe has that ironing board down her back again, and I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking: whoever nailed up all that wood over the door is waiting out there now, ready to do something even worse.
Birdie jumps into my lap. “Shh,” I say, rubbing my hands over her hair. “Where are your lemon drops?”
She holds up her last sliver.
“I told you we should have never come,” Ivy is saying. “What if it’s that Thatcher boy?”
“He has cooties,” says Birdie.
Rosalyn closes the book and looks at us. “Girls, we are not afraid, are we?” She is looking like she’s not fearful of anything, not even bats flying around a schoolhouse. You can hear Old Mr. Jolly chopping wood out back. He must not know anyone is out front. “Charlie Anne,” she says, “would you please answer the door?”
Well. We all just sit there. I feel the hundred knives slashing at my cheek. I shake my head.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Rosalyn says gently. “Stand up, Charlie Anne, walk tall, and open the door so we can greet whoever would like to join us.”
“But the boards …”
“Someone who did something like that won’t come out in the daylight. That sort of thing is done at night. We don’t need to be afraid.”
We hear more raps at the door. “Charlie Anne,” says Rosalyn.
I turn to Phoebe. “Come with me.” Her eyes are moons, filling up her whole face, and she shakes her head.
“We are blood sisters, remember?” I say. Phoebe shakes her head. No.
“That’s a good idea,” says Rosalyn. “Phoebe, go help.”
When I take Phoebe’s hand, her fingers are shaking and cold. I tell Birdie she has to get off my lap, but she won’t let go of my leg, so finally, we walk to the door, Phoebe, me, and me dragging Birdie.
I grab the handle and look back at Rosalyn. She smiles and nods and I open the door.
The first thing I see are the barn boots, three sizes too big, stuffed with rags no doubt, and the flour-sack dresses.
Then I notice that the dresses are clean and pressed and the boots are spotless. It is the Morrell girls: Sarah, Deborah and Mary. Their hair is all washed and brushed, and when Sarah gives me a basketful of biscuits, I see her fingernails are clean. I tell myself to stop it. I am acting just like Mirabel.
“Come in, oh, come in, girls!” says Rosalyn, jumping up, and I am breathing a very large sigh of relief, and I check to see if Phoebe is sighing, too, and she is.
Rosalyn says we are going to have a school like no other, a wonderful school, where we will grow readers, and then she tells the Morrell girls to find seats, and then Rosalyn tells us she has some things she needs to go over.
“First, everyone who can should bring something to put into our soup pot. Even an onion is fine. Each day we’ll make a soup for lunch.” Rosalyn walks over and lifts the cover off the pot and stirs the soup, and the smell spreads all through the school, and I have to tell my belly it has to wait just a little while longer.
“Next,” Rosalyn says, “we’re going to start the day discussing history and geography and the world around us because I think it’s important to know why things are the way they are.
“For example, we could begin by talking about the hard times we are living in right now. Charlie Anne, Ivy, Birdie, I know your father has gone north to build roads to make money to keep the farm. And hasn’t Mr. Morrell done the same thing?”
All three Morrell girls nod.
“And our brothers, too,” says Sarah.
I think about Peter. I wonder if school in Boston is better than this. I look around the cozy little room, with the sun pouring through the shining windows, and I don’t see how it could be.
“Does anyone know what President Roosevelt meant when he said, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself’?”
No one says anything. Birdie puts the last of her lemon drop in her mouth.
“I think he means that if we can’t see the good in life, it will be hard to turn the tough things around. What do you think?”
No one says anything.
“Well, what are you all doing at home to get by?” Rosalyn asks.
“Vinegar pie,” says Ivy, pinching her nose, and I want to smack her.
“Handing-me-down-forevers,” I say.
“Not enough lemon drops,” says Birdie.
“That’s right,” says Rosalyn. “Sometimes, though, doing without makes people bitter. And sometimes, instead of seeing the wonder of another person, all they see are the differences.”
“Like with Phoebe?” asks Birdie.
“Yes,” says Rosalyn. “Like with Phoebe.” She reaches over and takes Phoebe’s hand and then I reach over and take her other hand and we all watch Phoebe’s eyes fill up with tears. We can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it, so we don’t press her with a lot of questions. Sometimes you just have to let somebody be.
Then it is time for reading.
Rosalyn says she’s going to call each of us up and read with us alone. Then the ones who are done will go with Phoebe for some extra reading help if they need it.
She hands out some paper and says that while we are waiting, we can write about how we are getting by during these hard times we are living in, and if our writing is not ready for that, we can draw a picture.
“I will love your work, no matter which you choose,” she says.
I start drawing a vinegar pie. It is my best ever, with a high fluted crust and steam rising out of it, and right beside it I draw all the ingredients: butter, three eggs, vinegar, vanilla and sugar.
All the time I am drawing, I am thinking about the spot under the teacher’s desk and I’m wondering what Old Mr. Jolly has done about the woodshed.
Rosalyn goes oldest to youngest, so Ivy gets called up first. Ivy reads a page from First Reader, then Rosalyn says my goodness, you are ready for Second Reader. I have that sinking feeling as Rosalyn hands it to Ivy. She is like a plow horse, pushing through row after row of words, without ever tiring at all.
You can see Rosalyn getting all excited, and she hands Ivy
Third Reader. “I had no idea you were such a good reader, Ivy.”
Then she tells Ivy to read a poem called “Hiawatha’s Childhood,” and Ivy reads the whole thing, even the funny Indian words I have never heard before.
Rosalyn is smiling like she just got a secret present and she tells Ivy good job and good job again and now she can go back to her seat.
And then Rosalyn says it’s my turn.
I shake my head, because now my hands are sweating and my stomach is flipping upside down. Rosalyn giggles, which is not the response I am expecting at all, and she comes over and puts her hand out. “You have nothing to be afraid of.”
Well. I do so have something to be afraid of. That’s the thing.
Rosalyn takes my hand and leads me up front and hands me First Reader and asks me what the letters are on the first page.
The letters are jumping again like corn popping, just like they did with Miss Moran. I squint my eyes and stumble. I see all the ds and bs and can’t figure out which is which. The blackboard is giving me comforting looks. It is not very helpful, though, and all I can think about is how good of a reader Ivy is.
Rosalyn takes my hand and squeezes it. “It’s okay, Charlie Anne. I’ll show you a trick. Do you know your left from your right?”
“Yes,” I say, thanking heaven that I milk Anna May on her right side, morning and night.
“Good,” says Rosalyn. “Now make a fist with your left hand, like this. Now put your thumb up.”
I do what she says.
“That is a b. See how it has a belly sticking out?”
I nod, feeling a little like a baby, hoping Phoebe can’t see.
“Excellent. Now, do the same thing with your right hand. That is a d. Now, let’s write the word b-e-d. See how it makes a little headboard, mattress and footboard? Bed starts b-b-b with b, so you always know which way the belly points.”
The Wonder of Charlie Anne Page 14