The Wonder of Charlie Anne

by Kimberly Newton Fusco

  I am so happy to see them sparkling that I think maybe I’m going straight to heaven at this very minute to be with Mama. But I don’t. It is time for the play, and it is time for the heavenly chorus, which is the part we made special, just for Phoebe. Mr. Jolly carries her up front and she leans against him. I nod and smile at her, and then the organ starts and Phoebe opens her mouth, and just like that, heaven comes out:

  Bright morning stars are rising,

  Bright morning stars are rising,

  Bright morning stars are rising,

  Day is a-breaking in my soul.

  I look over at Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich and notice they have tears in their eyes.

  * * *

  The moon is full and the stars are filling up the heavens and I tell Mama as I walk home that the only thing missing from tonight is my family, still all broken apart.

  CHAPTER

  49

  “All right, everyone. Make your manners.”

  This is how Rosalyn starts the day, now that we have opened the little schoolhouse again. I think she sounds a little like Mirabel. But Rosalyn says if we are respectful of each other, things will go better for all of us.

  “Good morning, Charlie Anne.” This is my cue to stand up beside my desk, which I do.

  “Good morning, Rosalyn.”

  “My, those are lovely trousers. They remind me of the violets growing along your stone wall.”

  I am beaming. “Mirabel and I made them out of one of her old dresses.” I turn this way and then that beside my desk, and the rest of the class is wanting a pair, I can tell.

  “How’s your reading coming along, Charlie Anne?”

  “Much better,” I say.

  “Would you show me in a bit?”

  I grin. “I am ready,” I tell her.

  She moves to the next desk.

  “Good morning, Phoebe.”

  “Good morning, Rosalyn.”

  * * *

  It was Mr. Jolly’s idea to get Mrs. Thatcher to send her oldest boy up north to build roads. “He needs to get out and see how the world works,” he told her, and she went along with the idea, as long as Mr. Jolly promised to help her other boys with the heavy work. He’s got those boys fixing the porch and chopping wood and getting the barn ready for a cow in the spring. “Charlie Anne will help you pick one,” he told Mrs. Thatcher, winking at me. “She’s very good with cows, you know.”

  The rest of the Thatcher boys seem to be taking to school pretty well. They all have runny noses. Perhaps the golden harvest soup that is bubbling on the woodstove by Rosalyn’s desk will take care of that.

  Looking at the Thatcher boys makes me miss Peter and feel all the broken Peter-places still in my heart.

  Rosalyn calls me up to her desk. She places First Reader in my hands.

  “Let’s try some of these words.”

  I look at the list, at all the bs and all the ds, and I think about Miss Moran and the awful place under her desk.

  “Come on, Charlie Anne,” says Rosalyn all softlike. “It’s just like I Spy. Don’t quit.”

  I notice her brown eyes. They are almost as nice as Anna May’s. I look at the first word. I hold up my left hand and make a fist. “B … a … ll, d … o … ll, d … e … ll.”

  “My heavens, you’re a wonderful reader,” says Rosalyn. Then she picks up Second Reader and places it in my hands. “I think you’re ready for this.”

  I am? Me? Charlie Anne?

  Yes, Mama whispers. You are.

  I look at the words, and they jumble up. But I take a deep breath and tell them to stop, and wouldn’t you know it, they start minding their manners.

  I hold up my left hand again and make another fist. Then I take a breath. “A … b-i-rd … b-u-i-lt … its … n-e-st,” I read. I peek over the top of the book because I can’t help myself. I want to see Rosalyn’s face.

  She is leaning forward, holding her breath.

  “In the n-e-st were f-our wh-ite e-ggs, with …” I stop again to see if it’s a b or a d. “Br-ow-n sp-ecks.”

  “Yes,” Rosalyn says softly, “that’s it, Charlie Anne. I knew you could. Now, keep going.”

  And then I am all fired up. “O-u-t of th-ese f-our eggs ca-me four wee b-i-rds. Their sk-in was b-a-re, and they could not fly; b-u-t the old birds ke-pt them wa-rm.”

  And then I peek over the top of my book and see what I have never seen before. Rosalyn is sitting there with big tears falling down her face. And they are for me.

  “I knew you could, Charlie Anne.”

  CHAPTER

  50

  Mirabel tells me I have to go get the clothes off the line. More snow’s coming, she tells me, and I tell her, “Well, why the dickens didn’t you think about this when I was out there hanging it all up?” Even Belle and Anna May want to know.

  She puts her hands on her hips and asks me if I need to start reading that book again. I tell her no. “No, I do not.”

  Then she says that when I am out by the clothesline, maybe I could walk down by the garden and see if there might be room for an extra two rows of peas in front of where we plant the corn. She wants me to measure it out with my feet. She is reading a book called American Husbandry and she wants me to read it, too. It is filled with ideas on how to run a farm even better, which pretty much means more chores for everybody. I tell her we don’t need to be thinking about planting peas. We will be lucky to just get through all this snow.

  She tells me not to worry about a little snow. She says I am strong as an ox.

  Humph, I tell her. My boots are warming beside the cookstove. Mirabel says I should keep them there now because I have so many outside chores. I cut new pieces of cardboard because the holes in my boots are bigger than ever. I hunt through the rag basket for some extra wool to wrap around my feet, and I see that Mirabel has cut up Peter’s old jacket and is making it smaller so Birdie can wear it.

  Then I go outside. The snow is so cold it crunches under my feet like soda crackers. I start pulling the laundry off the line. What is Mirabel thinking? These blankets are wet and heavy and stiff as a barn door. I can hardly move under the weight of all the wool.

  It is then that I hear a motor and I look at Belle and Anna May out by the butternut tree and they look up, wondering what all the noise is on this still day. Then a big black automobile comes driving up on our yard and hanging out the window is Peter and before the car even comes to a stop he is opening up the door and jumping out and running out to where I am running to him.

  I drop the blankets and I don’t care because there is Peter rushing toward me with his arms stretched out and then he is jumping up in my arms and I am falling down and hugging him and laughing, right there in the snow, and then Birdie is running out of the house and climbing on top of us and then wouldn’t you know it, there is Ivy saying, “Peter, you’re getting that fancy coat all wet,” and sounding just like Mirabel.

  Only, Mirabel isn’t saying that. She is rushing off the porch toward us. She pulls Peter up off the ground, and then she holds his little face in her hands and smiles, and then she hugs him. She whispers to him, and I can’t hear what she says, but I can imagine because when she stops squeezing him, she has tears in her eyes.

  “I’m staying,” he says, turning to the rest of us. “I’m staying home.”

  It isn’t until a few minutes later, when we all head back to the house, that I overhear Aunt Eleanor telling Mirabel, “You should have told me he wet the bed like that. I’ve never seen anything like it. Poor Betty can’t keep up with all the washing. And he cries every single night of the week. There’s no stopping him.”

  I look across to Anna May and Belle. Their eyes are filled with cow-joy. It is a beautiful thing.

  CHAPTER

  51

  “This is how you milk a cow,” I am telling Phoebe. “You have to stay away from her kicking foot, though.”

  We do this every morning together, now that March has come and the sun is trying to turn everything to spring
. Phoebe is just terrible at milking Anna May. She can never get the milk started. When she gets a little trickle, she squirts in all the wrong directions, and now Little Peach Fuzz knows to come running and wait for all of Phoebe’s mistakes.

  “Well, will you look at that cow!” It’s that voice—that deep, deep voice—that I haven’t heard for a long, long time, and I don’t need to turn around to know who it is.

  “Papa!” I screech, and then I am flying up into his arms, and there is my brother Thomas, rubbing his chin, asking for something to eat.

  “Any of that vinegar pie left around here?” Papa wants to know, and then he asks me other things, like who is my new friend, and I say, “Papa, this is Phoebe,” and “Phoebe, this is Papa.” Then I hug him some more and I bury my face in his neck and smell the soap he uses for shaving, and after a very long time, he pulls out a whole bag of lemon drops, and we hurry to the house because he wants to see Peter and everybody else. As we are all hugging and Birdie is jumping up in his arms, we make room for Phoebe, and then I am laughing out loud.

  I have thought about this moment for a very long time, and I am glad it is just the way I wanted it to be.

  Papa has a talk with Mr. Jolly. They decide we can keep Belle in our fields as long as I milk her twice a day and give Mr. Jolly half the milk.

  “She’s his cow, Charlie Anne.”

  “But we don’t even milk her yet,” I say, my cheeks puffed out with vinegar pie.

  “Well, we’re going to have to turn her into a milk cow, get her to give us a calf. I never heard of anyone waiting this long.”

  Another baby calf! My heart splits right there at the table, just like an old melon. But two seconds later I am thinking about new babies and mamas going straight to heaven and I am shaking my head.

  “She’ll be fine, Charlie Anne. She’s fit as a fiddle. You’ve been taking fine care of her.”

  I send a little prayer to the angels, just to be sure. I tell them thank you for watching over us even when we are mad about things. Prayers are powerful things.

  CHAPTER

  52

  I feel a little terrible that I haven’t been spending as much time with Mama. I have been reading so much and being with Phoebe and working on a new play for next Christmas, and I haven’t been going up to see her. So one day when the sun is out, I put on my new coat and new boots that Papa brought home and go up and find a warm spot where the sun is beating down, and it feels almost like spring.

  Papa’s home, I tell her.

  Mama smiles her warm happy smile that spreads all over me. I know, Charlie Anne. He’s been out to see me.

  I missed him so much.

  I know, she tells me, pulling me close.

  I don’t want him to go away again.

  Did you tell him that?

  Yes. But he keeps saying there’s more than one way to keep a family together, and if it gets bad again, he may have to go, but he’ll try not to.

  I lean back. Papa says Mirabel can stay, too, because we need her. I told him I don’t want her to be our new mama, and he said he doesn’t like her like that anyway.

  This makes Mama laugh. Then she notices my boots.

  I wiggle them out in front of me. I don’t have to put rags in to make them fit, I tell her.

  I see, says Mama.

  After a while, I am so happy and warm being close to Mama and with the sun beating down that I start feeling a little sleepy. I’ve been reading, I tell her as I start closing my eyes.

  Mmmmmm, says Mama. I’ve been listening.

  Sometimes you really do get what you hope for, don’t you?

  Mmmmmm, says Mama, pulling me closer. Sometimes you do.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With sincere gratitude, I thank my readers for their insight and encouragement: my parents, the Still River Writers, elementary and special-needs teacher (and fellow writer) Laurie Smith Murphy, and folk musicians Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, who also contributed their knowledge of traditional music and song.

  Thank you also to my research help: retired elementary school teacher Beverly Pettine for introducing me to the Hornbine one-room schoolhouse, a living-history museum in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, where she teaches, for sharing primers used during the Great Depression, for reading the manuscript, and for also introducing me to Evelyn Rose Bois and Frances Magan Jones, who attended the school during the 1920s and 1930s. I thank these women for their humor and keen memories, and for sharing the trash-bucket, under-the-desk, and woodshed punishments (which went to the boys, not to them).

  Thank you to Elizabeth Stevens Brown, 1879–1941, an African American woman and daughter of a coachman, who began teaching in a Swansea, Massachusetts, wooden schoolhouse in 1901 and who became a beloved principal in that town in 1932. Her students remember her writing the “Whatever you are, be noble” poem on her blackboard each morning.

  I am indebted to Janette Huling, 4-H Dairy Club leader in Exeter, Rhode Island, for introducing me to her Holstein and Brown Swiss dairy cows and for answering all my questions. Although I spent many hours as a child around cows on family farms in Maine, I needed a refresher course.

  I am thankful for Helen Ekin Starrett’s The Charm of Fine Manners, published in 1907. There is much in the book that Charlie Anne rebels against, but there is much that still shines. As Charlie Anne learns to read, she becomes able to evaluate information and ideas and can decide for herself what parts of a book to accept and believe and what parts to ignore.

  I thank my agent, Elizabeth Harding, vice president of Curtis Brown Ltd., for her encouragement, and my editor, Michelle Frey, executive editor of Knopf Books for Young Readers, for her talent and for believing in me and in this novel.

  Finally, I thank my husband for his encouragement and assistance throughout the many months of writing, and for reading The Wonder of Charlie Anne over and over again.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Kimberly Newton Fusco

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fusco, Kimberly Newton.

  The wonder of Charlie Anne / Kimberly Newton Fusco. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In a 1930s Massachusetts town torn by the Depression and other hardships, as

  well as racial tension, Charlie Anne and Phoebe, the black girl who moves next

  to the farm next door, form a friendship that begins to transform their community.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89555-5

  [1. Race relations—Fiction. 2. Farm life—Massachusetts—Fiction. 3. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction. 6. Family life—

  Massachusetts—Fiction. 7. Massachusetts—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F96666Won 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009038831

  Random House Children’s Books supports the

  First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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