“You could do that, but ultimately you need a place to stay, Penny. A safe place. Maybe you and Parker will be separated for a while,” Sarah said. “I can’t promise it will be easy. I always had to take care of myself.” She shrugged. “Maybe if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had the gumption to create my business. But you can’t stay here. Not like this.”
Sarah turned to Booker T. Washington. “And I need to thank you, sir. I read your autobiography, Up from Slavery. It encouraged me to lift myself up, just like you preached.” They shook hands and shared a smile. Then Sarah looked back at me. “And now we’re here to do that for you, Penny. You need to lift yourself up, Penny Parker, and leave this basement. You deserve more. You deserve what it is you want.”
“What do you want, Penny?” Ida B. Wells asked.
I looked in her eyes and quietly said, “Mama told me not to ask for anything from the world. So I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
“But you do want something,” Ida said.
I glanced away and rubbed one thumb over the other while turning the idea ’round in my mind. “A family. But that’s not going to happen.”
Booker T. Washington rubbed his chin. “Not squatting down here, it won’t.”
“You’re the descendant of explorers and leaders and inventors and great people,” George Washington Carver said. “We all had to reach down deep to find the courage and determination to achieve our dreams. You can do that, too.”
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll always be here for you, Penny,” said Harriet Tubman.
“Is Wren here?” I asked.
“Yes, we saw his picture in the other room,” came Parker’s voice from behind me.
I spun around to see him rubbing his eyes. Then I turned back to look at the rest of my family, but they were gone.
Parker was still yawning and stretching. Since he didn’t say anything about all the people in the basement, I decided not to mention it. Knowing what I had to do, I sighed. “Parker, you’re right. We’ve got to leave this place.” I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t do a good job looking after Parker, like you asked me to.
“We’re leaving?” He raised his arms in the air. “Yahoo!”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if we’ll be split up. But I was wrong thinking this was the best solution.”
Parker scooted over on his butt and wrapped his arms around me. “Thanks, Penny.” He froze for a moment, then hopped up and went over to the side of the basement that was filled with old equipment and boxes.
“What are you doing? Let’s get packed.”
“Wait,” he hollered. “Something that’s missing is over here.”
What could possibly be down here in the basement that someone was missing?
He came back holding a dusty shoebox. “I think this is Wren’s.”
I jumped to my feet. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” Parker sat next to me and handed me a small photograph from the top of the box. It was a school photograph of a boy with shiny, black hair and a million freckles, just like mine. He looked younger than he had in the painting.
Parker held out his hand, so I gave the picture back. “He looks a lot like you, Penny, but we’ve got the same hair.” Parker set down the picture and pulled a manila folder from the box. He flipped it open. “Just a bunch of paperwork.” He set it down.
“Let me see that.” I opened the folder and saw a form. It was from the orphanage, and I read the information out loud for Parker. “Baby Boy Doe. Seven pounds, four ounces. 20.5 inches long. Mother—unknown. Father—unknown. Found abandoned on the doorstep of North Carolina General Hospital.”
“His parents just left him there?” Parker asked.
“That’s what abandoned means,” I told him. The box also had a few report cards—he got mostly Cs and Bs. There were some pencils and a drawing pad with a few pages of drawings. Mostly animals. There wasn’t much else in the box, but we’d take it with us. Seemed wrong to leave Wren’s belongings down here in a dusty basement. That would be like abandoning him again.
I wanted to say goodbye to him before we left. “Start getting our stuff together. I’ll be right back,” I told Parker. I went back to the room with all the paintings and stared at his face once more, looking for anything I might have missed. His picture didn’t give me any idea who his people might be. Could be black or Hispanic or American Indian. He was a mix, like me. A mystery. Magnificent, like Mama once said. Still, it felt like a thousand questions suddenly stopped spinning, the answers settling in the hollows of my bones.
But now other questions were popping up. Like where would me and Parker go now?
CHAPTER 26
We gathered our things, adding Wren’s box to our wagon. My watch said it was just after nine a.m. It was Sunday, so the town hall would be closed. “We’ll head to the diner and see who’s there to help us, then come back for our stuff.”
Parker took my hand and we climbed the stairs together up out of the basement of New Hope’s Finest.
No one was inside the Finest as we walked outside, but a few strangers were milling around the yard, looking at the tire sculptures and sitting in the chairs. We walked down the driveway to Main Street and saw a big group of folks circled together in front of the diner. I thought for a moment they were all tourists, but on second look, it was all people from town: Joe, Carly’s mom, Chase’s parents, the Carlsons, and others, too. I widened my eyes, surprised. Some two dozen people gathered in front of the diner on a Sunday morning wasn’t a normal thing.
Then Joe turned and looked our way. “There they are!”
Everyone else looked our way, too.
I looked behind me and Parker, wondering who was following us, but no one was there.
As I did so, everyone rushed over to us, Mr. and Mrs. Carlson at the front of the pack. “Where have you two been?” Mrs. Carlson cried as she ran up to us and set one hand on my shoulder and one on Parker’s, like she was checking to make sure we were really there.
“You kids all right?” Mr. Carlson asked.
“We were worried sick!” the mayor said, placing her hand on her chest.
I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth, so I just nodded yes.
“We thought something horrible had happened to you!” Joe said.
“We’ve been living in the basement of the Finest so we wouldn’t get split up,” Parker said. He turned to the Carlsons. “We’re awful hungry. Any pie at your place?”
I nudged him with my elbow. “Mind your manners.” I turned back to the crowd. “We’re sorry. We wanted to leave before we got shipped off to separate foster homes. We were meaning to live in the mountains, but Parker pointed out that we belonged in the orphanage, and I decided the basement was a better bet than the wild.”
“It wasn’t,” Parker said. “We’re out of food, and it’s boring down there.”
“We’ve had search parties out looking for you children,” Mr. Smith said, sounding angry. “We were just getting set to head out again.”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to worry anyone,” I said. “We didn’t think anyone would miss us.”
“You seriously think no one in this town would care that Penny and Parker Porter just up and disappeared?” Carly’s mom said.
“After losing all those kids from the orphanage, we couldn’t lose you, too,” Mr. Gaiser said.
Mrs. Carlson raised an eyebrow and looked at Mr. Carlson. He nodded. She knelt beside me and rubbed my back. “Everything is going to be all right. You and Parker can stay with us for a while until we figure this out.”
I nodded. For a while. Not forever. “We have to get our stuff from the basement. And from Grauntie’s.”
“She’s been worried, too,” Mrs. Carlson said.
“I’ll take you to Grauntie’s, then over to the Carlsons,” Joe said.
“Excellent,” Mrs. Carlson said. “We’ll go get ready for you.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think to look
in the basement,” Joe said as we drove toward Grauntie’s.
“Turns out it wasn’t such a good idea,” I said.
“I almost starved to death,” Parker said.
Joe chuckled.
The grass looked so green along the roadside. I suppose locking yourself away for a few days makes the world look different. So does learning what I did while we were down there. I looked at my arms; the color was coming back. “We found a room filled with paintings on the walls. What is that room?”
Joe smiled. “The color-outside-the-box room.”
“Why did kids paint down there?” I asked, my throat tight. “They didn’t get locked in it, did they?”
“No, never. That was a place to go to when we were feeling sad, or feeling too rambunctious for the world. A place where we could sing at the top of our lungs, or dance past midnight, or paint without wondering who would see it. A place to let our dreams loose. To let our creativity flow.”
I nodded. “I saw a painting of our mother down there. One of those paintings you told me Wren could paint that looks like a picture.”
He smiled. “He loved her. I know that. Said his life had changed forever when he met her.”
“So they had a happy time together, for a while,” I said. That was something to be glad about.
“Hello, children,” Grauntie said when we walked in. “I have a chore sheet around here somewhere.”
Lonnie rushed over and hugged us. “We didn’t know what to do when we found you were missing! Your Grauntie was so worried, weren’t you?”
Grauntie blinked a few times. “But they’re right here.”
“We’re fine. And we’re sorry.” I hung my head. “But we’re not going to be in your hair anymore. They’re finding us a new home. So, thanks for taking care of us. We’re going to get our things.”
“Can you look for my pocketbook?” she asked.
It was on the kitchen table, so I handed it to her. “You should just keep this right on your lap all the time so you don’t lose it.”
She tapped her head. “Good idea, Darlene.”
There was no denying it: Grauntie was getting worse. It’s sad to see someone’s memory unspool like that. I heaved a sigh and admitted to myself that it was a good thing she’d be going to a home where someone could take care of her. Where she’d be safe. Parker and I certainly couldn’t take care of her and the house and ourselves. I leaned over and gave her a kiss—something I’d never done before. Then I gathered my last things and walked away.
Parker was all smiles when we got to the Carlsons. “Can we play music before dinner again? Can we have Thanksgiving in summer again? And pie? Please, please, please can we have pie?”
I glared at him, but he just ignored me.
“Don’t you worry. We’ll have a good time,” Mr. Carlson said.
“We’re just staying for a while,” I whispered to him. Don’t get too excited, I reminded myself.
Parker curled up on the couch with a bowl of grapes and permission to watch whatever he wanted on the television.
I grabbed my book from Mr. Hanes to read, but my eyes couldn’t settle on the words to make sense of anything. I didn’t yet know all these stories by heart, seeing as how the book was so new I’d only read it through once. Still, it felt nice to have a solid thing in my hands, like I was doing something besides fretting. Even if Mrs. Carlson was being honest about keeping us here until we found a home that would take us both, it still meant we were going away. A new town, where we might start having the same old problems as the other places. New Hope just felt like home, especially now that I knew Mama had met Daddy here. That Daddy was still here, if we wanted to visit his grave.
I looked around the Carlsons’ living room, out the big, open window that showed off the flowers in their garden. Soft blankets covered the chairs. Beautiful paintings hung on the walls. It was so bright and airy. Seemed like bits of conversation and laughter hung in the air. I got up off the couch and sat in a hard, wooden chair so I wouldn’t get too cozy. I could not let myself get used to staying at the Carlsons’.
All day long, folks stopped by to make sure we were all right. Some brought food. Everyone hugged us. Never knew so many people cared. I was exhausted by the time I crawled into bed.
I flicked on the light and pulled out my family tree. I could picture exactly where I’d put the Carlsons if I could: right at the top of it. “I wish they wanted us,” I whispered.
“Maybe you should tell them that.”
My head snapped up and I saw a woman standing at the end of my bed, with long black hair and an animal skin dress. “Sacagawea?” I whispered. I couldn’t believe this was happening again.
She smiled and nodded. “You’re brave like me, Penny. Tell the Carlsons what you want.”
“I’m not dreaming, am I?” I said.
“No.”
“And I wasn’t dreaming in the basement?”
“We were all there, too,” she said.
My mouth hung open, and I gripped the edge of my comforter—
“If there’s something you want, you just have to keep trying until you get it right. That’s what I did,” said a man’s voice beside me. “I tried about a thousand different times until I got the light bulb right. A thousand.”
I turned, and there was Thomas Edison.
I pressed my hands against my eyes then opened them, but there were even more people in my room: Frida Kahlo, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks. Booker T. Washington was back, too.
“Why does this keep happening? Am I going crazy?” I whispered. The Carlsons wouldn’t want a crazy girl who talked to dead people and saw folks in shades of colors. And they wouldn’t want a girl whose father killed their daughter. “You guys aren’t real.”
“Excuse me, I’m very real,” Thomas Edison said. “I’m in hundreds of textbooks. Probably thousands.”
“But you’re dead.”
“We’re very much alive in your imagination,” Sacagawea said.
“So I’m imagining you’re here right now?”
Frida Kahlo, the painter, walked over. “There’s a lot of creative energy in this place. In this town, especially recently. A person’s creations hold power. The things they do, too, become a force that lasts over time. And you, Penny. Your imagination comes to life in ways other people’s don’t. Look at what you created down the road at that old building. That’s there today because of you and your creativity. There’s nothing wrong with you, Penny.”
I nodded slowly. “Most folks don’t like when people are different like that. The Carlsons probably wouldn’t. Plus, they already said they didn’t want us.”
“But you haven’t told them that you want them,” Sacagawea said. “You have to ask.”
I shook my head so hard it hurt. “No. I won’t. Mama told me not to ask for help.”
“I think your mama meant well, but, believe me, you need to ask for help,” Ida said. “I needed help from family and friends raising my brothers and sisters.”
“But a family should just want you, no asking required,” I said.
“Sometimes people don’t know what they want, what they need,” Frida said. “And maybe they don’t know how important it is to you. How much you’d like to be with them. How can they make a proper decision without knowing that?”
I couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. Tell the Carlsons we wanted to stay here. Ask to be part of a family? That’s not how it worked. “What if they say no?” I asked.
“Then you’ll know. And you can move on and find a new solution. You won’t be stuck forever wondering what if …” said Ida B. Wells.
I thought about that for a moment. “I guess asking for a place to stay isn’t that hard.” I curled up on my side in bed. “I’ll think about it. Am I going to see you guys again?”
“If you need to. We’re always here,” Martin Luther King, Jr. said.
A peaceful feeling washed over me, and I lay down again. “I wish you all really were on
my family tree.”
“Excuse me?” Daniel Boone said. “I am right there next to Gandhi. Didn’t my trading inspire you? I know all about your cart.”
“Of course it did,” I said.
“I saw the many different ways you used those plastic bottles. I know I played a part there,” George Washington Carver said.
Clara Barton said, “There are many different kinds of families, Penny. We’re happy to be part of yours.”
“And I’d say you’ve built another wonderful family right here with all the townsfolk in New Hope,” Ida added. “Those people care about you. Look at everyone who showed up today. And you changed their lives for the better with that project. You belong here.”
I wanted to talk more, but my eyelids were so, so heavy.
“So, you’re going to ask the Carlsons if they’ll have you as their own?” Sacagawea asked.
I nodded, my eyes still closed. “I have to.”
CHAPTER 27
Parker was up before me, sitting at the kitchen table with a fork in his hand. “French toast and sausages for breakfast, Penny!”
“Yum,” I said, but my stomach was uneasy. It may seem like an easy thing to ask someone if they want you. It’s just a few words to spit out, after all. A sentence, maybe two. But I was more scared than I’d ever been. Wobbly-legged-I-might-throw-up scared.
I slid into a chair next to Parker.
“You okay, sweetie?” Mrs. Carlson asked.
I nodded, wondering when would be the right time to have our discussion. The words just weren’t coming to me.
I shut my eyes, and I could see my family tree and all the wonderful people standing around it. Rosa Parks smiled in my mind. “Things don’t change on their own, Penny. You need to let your voice be heard. Sometimes you do that with your actions, and sometimes you do that with your words. Use your words, Penny.”
“You can do it,” said Dr. King.
Nodding, I opened my eyes. I had to take a chance. I cleared my throat and gripped my chair. “Mrs. Carlson?”
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