by Delia Ray
She had seen them. The rolled-up pieces of paper I had lodged into the cracks near my pillow. Miss Vest sat up and reached for the lamp beside the bed. She held it up, letting the light slide across the boards. I hadn’t realized until then how many slips of paper I had curled and stuffed into every nook and cranny. There were lots of them. A whole summer’s worth.
“Those are my wish lists,” I said softly.
She turned to look at me. “You mean you really made them?” she asked. “Can I see?”
I could feel myself blushing as I leaned across her and pulled the closest roll of paper from the wall. I gave it to her, and she set the lamp at her feet and smoothed out the strip of paper on her knee.
“April,” she whispered, “you did this on your own? Look. ‘Fur Collar. Cuffs. Cast-Iron Range. Christmas Tree Tinsel.’ . . . Can you really read these?”
“Uh-huh. I worked on them every day this summer, and this fall, too.” I reached for another list and unrolled it on the bed. “Here’s one I made with prices.” I followed the words with my finger and slowly said them out loud, “Jewel Box . . . one dollar ninety-eight cents. . . . Lace Drapes . . . three dollars. . . . All-Silk Umbrella . . . five dollars ninety-five cents.”
Miss Vest listened with her mouth open, and I wanted to burst with how proud I felt each time she pulled down a new list from the wall. There were all kinds of lists—some with only B things like “Bungalow” and “Butterfly Book” and “Baby Buggy” and others with just K or L words. Some were dream lists for Aunt Birdy and some for Daddy. On one list I had written down “Rain Bonnet,” then changed my mind and erased “Bonnet,” thinking how nice it would be just to have the Rain. I waited for Miss Vest to get tired of hearing me read, but she just kept pulling the lists down until we had a whole pile of curly papers in the middle of the bed.
There were only a few lists left in the cracks when she handed me one that I didn’t want her to see. But before I could sneak it into the pile, she leaned over to find out what had made me turn quiet.
“You only wrote one word on that one,” Miss Vest said, peering over my shoulder. “Phonograph. But why’d you cross it out? Did you decide you don’t want a phonograph after all?”
“I don’t know why I wrote that,” I mumbled. “Anyhow, we used to have one.”
Miss Vest looked surprised. “You had a phonograph?”
I nodded. “A Victrola. I reckon I saw the picture in the catalog and it got me thinking. . . . But I wouldn’t want another one.”
“Why not? What happened to it?”
I stared down at the smudged letters on the scrap of paper in my lap. “We sold it to the Jessups,” I said finally. “When Riley died. He was crazy about that Victrola and seeing it sit there quiet day after day just reminded Mama too much. So Daddy sold it.”
Miss Vest reached over and took my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. We sat for a while without saying anything, and I didn’t take my hand away. Then Miss Vest smiled and started to push herself up from the bed. “We’d better get down to the party.”
“It was playing when it happened,” I whispered.
Miss Vest turned around. “What’d you say, April?”
I swallowed hard. “You know that song ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’?”
Miss Vest sat down again. “Yes.”
“That was the one playing.”
My heart fluttered up in my chest. I hadn’t meant to tell. I had never told anyone before. But somehow before I could stop myself, Miss Vest was nodding and holding my hand again and I was saying more. “That was our favorite song. Riley and me used to play it over and over again when Mama and Daddy weren’t home. We were trying to learn how to waltz, like they had showed us once. We wanted to surprise Mama. But that night, the night it happened, Riley was tired and wanted to stop, but I didn’t want to, not until we got it perfect. So I just kept cranking up the Victrola and pulling him around the room.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, everything was blurry with tears like I was looking at Miss Vest through a piece of thick glass. “Riley started whining a little and it made me mad. I remember saying, ‘Don’t you want to surprise Mama? You’re her favorite, aren’t you? Aren’t you her favorite?’” I swiped the tears out of my eyes. “Wasn’t that an awful thing to say to a little boy, Miss Vest?”
“April, we all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.”
I closed my eyes again and shook my head back and forth. “I was dancing him around so fast, I didn’t even see it happen. . . . But we must have moved too close to the fire and his nightshirt caught—”
I heard Miss Vest suck in her breath. She squeezed my hand tighter.
“And all of a sudden, it was on fire. And I just froze. . . . I just stood there. . . . I was too scared to run for water or push him out in the snow, and he was tearing around the room. . . .”
“Oh, April,” Miss Vest whispered. For a minute I sank against her, letting the tears drip down. She rocked me back and forth a little and said, “Shh, shh.” Finally, I reached up to wipe my nose with the back of my hand and all at once, I remembered Little Elton’s washrag and all the people downstairs.
I jerked up straight. “Miss Vest,” I said in a panic, “you can’t ever tell Mama. She and Daddy don’t know. I told them Riley got burned when I was out fetching wood . . . and—and all this time, they believed me. They figure Riley was playing in the fire or something, but that’s not true. He never would have done that. . . . Never. He knew better. But I can’t tell Mama it was all my fault, I can’t—”
But Miss Vest wasn’t even looking at me. She was looking over my shoulder. Then I heard the creak. When I turned around, Mama was standing on the ladder, staring at us, with just her head and shoulders poking through the opening to the loft. She climbed another step, rising up just like the genie from the bottle in Miss Vest’s book of fairy tales.
Then she stopped. Even in the shadows, I could see the hurt burning in her eyes. “You don’t need to tell me nothing, either one of you. I heard it all.”
Her voice was shaking. I could see it took all her strength just to hang on to the ladder and keep from screaming at us.
Miss Vest tried to push herself up from my bed. “Mrs. Sloane—”
But as soon as Miss Vest spoke, Mama let go. “All this time, April, you been lying to me!” she shrieked, dragging herself up into the loft. “If it weren’t for you, he’d still be here!”
Miss Vest stepped in front of Mama, blocking her from bearing down on me. “Mrs. Sloane!” she cried. “It was an accident, a terrible accident, but April—”
Mama turned on her, her face twisting with fury. “Get away from me! You think you know everything there is to know about April, don’t you? All this time you been wanting her back at school so bad. Well, go ahead, then! You got what you came for, didn’t you? Take her with you when you go. I can’t stand the sight of her anymore.”
Then without giving me another look, Mama disappeared down the ladder, leaving her words splitting through the air.
I stayed huddled up on my bed while Miss Vest hurried down to try and make things right again. I could hear the front door squeaking open and closed, then all the guests saying their goodbyes. Later I could hear Miss Vest’s gentle voice humming on and on, then Daddy’s and Aunt Birdy’s voices, all coaxing and pleading with Mama to please, please come to her senses. I leaned forward, listening hard for Mama’s answer, but there wasn’t one word from her, not one.
I could picture her sitting at the table in the kitchen with her hands locked in a fist in her lap and her face full of bitterness. She was probably staring across at the fireplace in the front room, going over in her head what I had done to Riley.
After a while, I couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. I packed my clothes and my wish lists into a bundle and climbed down the ladder. Aunt Birdy and Daddy and Miss Vest were standing around Mama, who was leaning into the sideboard scrubbing at the wood with a rag even though i
t was probably already clean. They all stopped when they saw me, and Mama turned. But I let my eyes brush past her hard stare. Then I walked outside and headed toward the fire pit where we had roasted the chestnuts.
It didn’t take more than a minute for my wish lists to catch on the coals and burn down to ash. By the time Aunt Birdy came scurrying outside to find me, they were gone. I pretended to be warming my hands over the fire.
She stood beside me for a little bit, staring into the coals. “Why didn’t you tell me, Apry?” she finally asked. “Why’d you keep such a thing locked up inside all this time?”
“It was all my fault. I didn’t think you could forgive me if you knew the truth.”
Aunt Birdy put her arm around my shoulders. “There’s no forgiving to it, honey. It was an accident, plain and simple. You never meant for such an awful thing to happen. We all know how much you loved Riley.”
I turned and buried my head in her old wool sweater. She wrapped her little arms around me and held on tight.
“Apry, honey, why don’t you come stay with me till your mama’s thinking clearer?”
I shook my head against her shoulder, trying not to start crying again. “Miss Vest says I can stay with her for a while.”
“But you should be with your kin right now, Apry.”
I sighed and pulled away. “She’d hold it against you if you take me in, Aunt Birdy. I’ll just stay with Miss Vest for now till Mama . . . till she changes her mind.”
Daddy couldn’t make things right, either. “It won’t be long, April,” he said after joining me by the fire. “I bet your mama’s gonna wake up tomorrow and be ready to talk this out. . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. All I could think of was his lady’s-slipper story, about the little Indian girl lost forever in the snow. Daddy’s eyes looked so sad. Would I be his Indian girl?
In the end, there was nothing for him to do but hitch up the wagon and drive me and Miss Vest to the schoolhouse in the dark. He helped me carry my things to the yellow room at the top of the stairs. I sat down on the bed, feeling numb all over. Then Daddy kissed me on the top of the head and told me he and Mama would come back for me soon.
Fifteen
One Sunday, not long after my fourteenth birthday, we had a flag-raising ceremony at the schoolhouse. Mr. Jessup had put in a new flagpole out front overlooking the valley, and for weeks Wit had been helping our class learn the national anthem and some other patriotic songs to sing for the congregation once we raised the flag.
Everybody’s parents were there but mine. A year before, I might have searched the crowd, praying to see Mama or Daddy somewhere in the wall of faces. “Today’s the day,” I told myself at every school function. “Today’s the day they’ll come to take me home.” But I had given up hoping months ago—after the first Christmas passed without a word, then my thirteenth birthday, then the second Christmas.
Miss Vest and Aunt Birdy were my family now. Aunt Birdy never missed a chance to come to the schoolhouse. For the flag raising, she was wearing a little blue straw hat that I had never seen before. Even though it was old and had a sprig of tired silk daisies drooping off one side, the color brought out the blue in her eyes.
“So you’re gonna be the one to raise the flag, Apry?” she asked me as we stood waiting for the ceremony to start. “How come you get to do it?”
“The kids in the class voted and picked me,” I told her, trying not to smile too wide.
“They did?” She gasped. “All of ’em voted for you? Even you know who?”
She looked over her shoulder for Ida and Luella. I had told her how much they despised me for living in the schoolhouse with Miss Vest. Then, as if that wasn’t enough to make them jealous, Miss Vest had cut my hair in a bob like hers and started making me dresses on her sewing machine.
“Shh,” I said. “I know they didn’t vote for me. It was the little kids, mainly.” Now that I could read and write without stumbling over words, Miss Vest sometimes asked me to work with the younger ones on their lessons. Whenever they were having trouble, I pulled out the Sears, Roebuck and helped them start on their own wish lists, until pretty soon they were begging for more time with me and the catalog.
“What about Dewey? Who’d he vote for?”
I laughed. “Himself, probably.” The truth was Dewey and I had been getting along fine ever since I had wandered into the schoolroom one night and found Miss Vest giving Preacher Jessup reading lessons. I couldn’t believe it. Preacher Jessup sitting at a desk three sizes too small and struggling over a story about Henny Penny and Clucky Lucky. When Dewey came to fetch his pa and found me listening at the doorway to the classroom, I could tell we had a bargain just from the look in his eyes. If I didn’t tell anybody about his daddy, Dewey would leave me alone.
Aunt Birdy broke into a sad little smile. I had grown a couple inches over the last year, and she had to tilt her head back to look at me. “You’re getting so big, Apry. Your mama wouldn’t even recognize you now if she passed you on the road.”
I didn’t answer. Aunt Birdy knew I didn’t like her reminding me, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself.
“She’d be so proud of you today,” she went on, gazing down on the valley. “You know she named you for the month of April not just ’cause that’s when you were born. April was always your mother’s favorite time—”
“Please, Aunt Birdy,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. I didn’t want to hear it. Wit was hurrying toward me with the new flag folded in its neat triangle, and all the kids were lining up around Miss Vest.
Aunt Birdy perked up when she saw Wit. He kissed her on the cheek, then handed me the flag. “You about ready?” he asked.
I nodded and followed him to the front of the crowd. Soon Miss Vest was calling for quiet, and we all bowed our heads while she led us in a prayer.
“We’ve come today,” Miss Vest said, “to ask for God’s help in guiding our country through these times of hardship. We ask you, Lord, to give our president strength in the face of this Depression, with its many challenges. . . .”
I still didn’t really understand what Miss Vest meant by the word “Depression.” Most families I knew seemed to be doing better than ever. The drought had ended the spring before, and a lot of men had found good-paying jobs building the new highway that was supposed to run along the crest of the mountains all the way from Thornton to Swift Run Gap. Aunt Birdy had heard that Daddy got a job on the road crew. And even though I pretended not to listen when she told me, I couldn’t help thinking of him whenever I heard the rumble of trucks and bulldozers off in the distance. Daddy. He never came like he promised, and there was only one explanation: he couldn’t forgive me, either.
“April?” Miss Vest called.
I jumped. Everybody was watching me. I hurried to my spot, and Miss Vest helped me unfold the flag the way we had practiced. Then I hooked it on the metal clips and reached for the rope. I felt the old pain in my arm as soon as I started to pull the flag up toward the bright blue sky. It didn’t surprise me anymore. I had gotten used to feeling an ache whenever I swept the kitchen floor or carried a bucket of water. The last thing I wanted to do was complain to Miss Vest, especially after all that she was doing—feeding and clothing me, letting me stay in the beautiful spare bedroom so long that she didn’t call it the guest quarters anymore. It was “April’s room” now.
Still, I wished Mr. Jessup had oiled the pulleys a little better. It seemed to take forever to yank the flag to the top. But finally I was done, and everyone clapped as the flag caught the breeze. Then we put our hands on our hearts and sang the first three verses of “America the Beautiful.”
After the ceremony, when everybody was heading back to the schoolhouse for cupcakes and punch, Wit came up to me with a sly look on his face. “So, Miss April,” he said, “I thought you’d be happy about being elected the Queen of Flag Raising.”
“’Course I’m happy,” I said.
Wit leaned t
oward me as he walked. “Then why’d you look like you were chewing tacks the whole time you were pulling on that rope?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to turn my face away.
“You know what I mean, April,” Wit said, putting his hand on my shoulder to stop me as I tried to scoot up the schoolhouse steps behind the other kids. “How long has your arm been hurting?”
I glared at him. I loved Wit, with his long arms and legs and his funny stories and lively songs. Whenever he showed up at the schoolhouse to give us a music lesson, all the kids cheered. But he had been dropping by too much lately, showing up after school hours and calling Miss Vest by her first name—Christine. Most of the time Wit invited me to come along on their strolls through the woods or their picnics at Big Meadows. But once in a while he didn’t, and I couldn’t help feeling pangs of meanness cut through me, like hot knives in butter.
Miss Vest breezed up beside us. “You did a wonderful job, April.” Then she looked at me closer. “What’s wrong?”
“I think the Flag Queen isn’t telling us something,” Wit said. He held up one hand with his big palm facing out. “Here, April, push against me with your left hand, as hard as you can.”
“Why?” I asked, starting to turn red. Aunt Birdy had come hurrying over, too, to see what all the fuss was about.
“Just push,” Wit said again.
I put my palm up to his and gave a little shove.
“You can do better than that.”
I let out a long sigh and pushed at him harder, feeling my blood start to boil. Why did he always have to be butting in, nosing around in my business?
Wit pushed back, making me even madder, so mad that I winced before I could stop myself.
“Ow!” I yelped, rubbing at the sore spot on my arm.
Miss Vest stepped toward me. “April, isn’t that the arm you broke? You mean to tell me it’s been hurting you all this time?”
“Maybe just a little,” I murmured, looking at the ground.