by Diane Munier
I try to peel Abigail May off me, but she makes a whimper and clings tighter and I have to get her off my cast some. Plus, I have those kittens to search for.
Now Aunt May comes over and tries to pry Abigail off, but she mustn’t know how no one can cling like Abigail. Even Ricky can’t throw her off when she’s determined.
Father finishes his tea and stands while Aunt May looks about mortified and nearly ready to slap Abigail though she hardly can with Father looking on I don’t think.
“Well I am just ashamed of this display,” Aunt May says red-faced to Abigail, but Abigail don’t care, I can tell you that for a fact.
And Aunt May, she gets thrown by children. She never married. Granma says that very thing sometimes when Aunt May is working out in the yard in her curlers and bandana and long skirt and blouse and with her saddle shoes on and her black socks. Granma will be sitting on the porch and she’ll look over at Aunt May and out of the clear blue she’ll say, “May never did marry. I don’t know as she ever had a beau.”
And then I’ll look too and we’ll just be quiet and look like that.
But she’s red-faced now and it’s not unusual to see that, I get that way too, but it’s not as scary I don’t think. And I try not to look at her Adam’s apple cause Abigail May always makes me laugh when she talks about it, how it bobs when Aunt May is excited. It sticks out more than anyone’s and bobs like a fish is nibbling, that’s what Abigail says, and her Mama too so she tells.
“Can Abigail May come over to my house for a little bit?” I ask. “She’s awfully upset.”
“Well…I am not rewarding such disrespectful behavior,” Aunt May says, mostly to Father Anthony.
But Father gestures with his two fingers, those holy ones that bless over the communion chalice, those same two he waggles toward my house.
Aunt May shifts her feet a little and plucks at her skirt. “I suppose for one hour. Not to play. But to calm down. Hear me Abigail May? You will calm down.”
Abigail May doesn’t even look at her aunt but she stands and holds her hand out for mine and I stand and say to Father and Aunt May, “Thank you kindly,” and I do not even have the ‘ly’ out of my mouth and Abigail May is yanking me out of the room and out the door.
“You have got to see,” I’m saying as I am now pulling her across the street.
She is speaking a mile a minute, saying that they can’t make her leave Darnay Road, and I pull her through my gate to the side of the porch and tell her quickly about the kittens.
“No,” she gasps. “It’s Disbro Peak. We have to tell Cap and Easy. They’ll get them back.” She slams a fist into her palm.
“But I don’t know,” I say frantically. “They’re the only ones who knew I put the kittens there. Cap did anyway. So what if they took them? To find them homes or something? We have to find out.”
“Well I can’t ask Ricky. He’s so mad he says he’s never running with them again.”
“Well…this is the worst mystery we ever, ever had!” I say. “You know what we….”
Lord I cut it off just in time cause here come the shoes. She’s on that porch with plenty to say to me for running off. She declares I was nearly run over by a car when I crossed the street, but I didn’t see any car at all, not even that big black one parked outside of Abigail May’s that Father Anthony drives.
Abigail May is taking over, the first one to run up on the porch and appeal to Granma. She gets this off of Perry Mason. She says Perry would never ever break her on the stand not even with those eyes ringed in black that don’t blink. And I pretty much believe it. She says having an older brother who has tortured her for years has made her very strong. So now she’s making her case to Granma about living with her so she doesn’t have to go to Florida.
Granma sits in her chair on the porch. She is rubbing her hands together while Abigail May goes on. My guess is Granma’s wishing she had her green glass full to the brim about now, but it’s too early and Abigail doesn’t hardly take a breath.
Granma has her hands on Abigail’s arms. “There now settle down. Settle down.”
She waits until Abigail calms down a little.
“Wait and see,” she says to Abigail.
Abigail quiets down a little more and I have four fingers crossed behind my back cause I know what’s coming, I know.
And there she goes. Granma thinks she’s Doris Day sometimes. She loves to sing “Ka Sera Sera,” for everything. And that’s what she is doing now, and Abigail looks at me, her face so happy and her nose so wrinkled.
And Granma sings on.
And then he goes by--Easy, an old baseball glove hanging from his handlebars. Cap is behind with a bat under his arm. They are pedaling furiously, like usual. Other boys are behind, one after another they go whizzing past to the ball fields.
I don’t know when Granma stops singing but there I am all the way to the steps looking after that herd of boys.
Well I don’t know. I’m just looking. He couldn’t have taken those kitties, he’s so busy all the time. But somebody did all right and he’d want to know.
Granma starts to speak slowly. “How about I call Aunt May and the two of you can have a sleep-over? We’ll pop corn and watch Roy and Dale and The Lennon Sisters.”
I look back at her and smile. She’ll never make it to Lawrence Welk. She’ll be snoring away by then.
And we’ve got a mystery to solve.
Darnay Road 15
Abigail May and I have combed the neighborhood looking for those kittens.
Now we’ve walked to the ball fields and the boys are playing a big game here. It’s about all they do. For hours and hours they live here, even Disbro and Mike and Bobby. Truth be told even those horrid three don’t look like cat thieves presently, they just look like disgusting boys chattering, ‘We want a pitcher and not a belly-itcher,’ while they spit and scratch.
We watch from afar from behind the broken wooden fence. We can see the Hardy Boys currently known as Cap and Easy, and they play ball very devotedly which does not surprise me at all. Ricky is that way too, but he isn’t playing now.
“Ricky says we can’t talk to the Caghans again,” Abigail May says.
“He can’t boss me,” I say because he’s not my brother.
“He says he’ll tell if we do it again,” she says. “And I told him we’d tell on him then. And I have lots of things I can tell Aunt May.”
Abigail fights Ricky sometimes, well practically all the time, but he doesn’t hardly notice it seems. He just thinks she’s funny little Abigail, like she’s a buzzing fly.
“Well I think Easy is the kindest boy in the world. Way nicer than Ricky sometimes,” I say, but I hope I don’t hurt Abigail May’s feelings because she flips one way then another on Ricky.
“Well he sure wouldn’t miss a game like this if he wasn’t mad.”
“He mad at your Mom?”
“He’s mad at everybody for everything in the world. He’s mad at Kruschev and he’s mad at Santa Claus.”
We start laughing at that, but not too loudly cause we’ve no wish to get caught spying on the boys.
“Is Cap your boyfriend?” I ask Abigail.
“Yes,” she answers with a big grin. “Easy is your boyfriend.”
“I don’t know. I can’t have a boyfriend and anyway, he didn’t say it.”
“Well boys don’t know. You have to tell them,” Abigail says. She is the one who knows cause she has Ricky.
“But I don’t even love him,” I insist. But secretly I do. He is not sickening at all like some boys are, well almost all of them.
“Don’t say love,” she’s giggling and I feel so stupid. I didn’t mean it.
“I don’t,” I say, but I did say it. Then I leave that fence and run a little. Granma is home by herself watching the back of her eyelids instead of Roy and Dale. Once Roy walks Trigger on his hind-legs there is nothing more Abigail and I want to see. We’d gone out to the hydrant like we were waiting for ki
ds to finish supper and come out and play.
But we’re not really playing at all. That’s our cover. While Paul Tucker is covering his eyes and counting for hide and seek, Abigail and I run for the ball fields, see. That’s how we end up here.
Granma won’t know. If she wakes up she just listens for Abigail May. She says Abigail is louder than all the other children and if she hears her she knows I’m nearby. But this time of evening, she just knows I’m around.
So we’re leaving the fields and walking home.
“They were so cute,” I sigh.
“The Caghans?” Abigail May says. She’s laughing.
“No. No. The kittens. They were so little and we bought them a bag of food. I surely don’t want them to be hurt.” I sniff.
Abigail is quiet, then I see she’s crying too.
“Are you crying?” I say.
“No,” she cries. “Are you?”
“No,” I say.
“Well I just don’t want to go to Florida and now the poor kittens. We can’t even find them.” Then she just bawls and I have to hold her again.
“Who do we have for suspects?” I sniff again.
Abigail pulls away then. She’s pretty easy to distract. Granma does it to her all the time.
So Abigail gets out her small notebook with the pencil stuck in the spiral at the top and she turns a few pages and says, “Disbro Peak.”
He’s top of the list, of course.
“Bobby and Mike, though they can’t do anything without their leader.”
I agree with that.
“Then we have Ricky, but he wouldn’t,” Abigail says. “Then Cap and Easy because they knew the kittens were under there but they probably wouldn’t,” she says. “Then Granma.”
“My Granma?”
“Yes.”
“Well I never said to put down my Granma.”
“Well you know a suspect can be right before your eyes but if you’re blinded with love they can get clean away with it. Like the bad seed?”
“My Granma is not like the bad seed!” I declare. The Bad Seed is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It’s about a little girl who is the very age I will be on July Fourth and Abigail May will be on August Sixteenth. This little girl, played miraculously by Patty McCormack, is a cold-blooded killer. I mean she’s killing everybody. And her mother is just blind about it. She can never imagine that her little dear daughter is a murdering maniac. But my Granma is nothing like that.
“I have to put her on the list of suspects because she knew about the kittens.” Abigail May licks the pencil lead like she’s Lois Lane.
“Then put yourself on there,” I say pretty mad.
“I will but I’m putting you too.”
“Go on. I have nothing to hide. You think I got rid of my own kittens?”
Abigail is writing furiously, and she writes my name bigger than all the rest.
I try to grab that notebook away, but she won’t let me, then she runs off. So of course I chase her. She is the most exasperating girl I ever knew.
I can’t run as fast as usual with my broken arm, and no one can catch her anyway. But she stops running and I catch her pretty quickly. She has her purse and she swings it at me and I duck just in time. “Abigail May!” I yell cause she just doesn’t think sometimes. “You could have hit my arm!”
“I don’t even care,” she shouts, then she takes off again.
“You’re not spending the night at my house,” I yell after.
She stops and throws her purse at me and it lands near my feet. I am wearing my white patents with the small bows off to the side and anklets. I am also wearing a full skirt and a white eyelet blouse with no sleeves. I have my hair in a ponytail and my pink headband skimming back my hair. I am kind of dressed up and Granma doesn’t know. Abigail is also dressed up, wearing my clothes which are a tiny bit big as a rule, but my white crop top and my pink pleated skirt fits her pretty fine.
I pick up her purse and take it to her. She is still holding the notebook. She takes the purse and puts the handles on her skinny arm. She is wearing my pearl pop-bead necklace and bracelet. The necklace has popped open so it’s hanging around her neck in a broken loop. I go ahead and fix it by snapping the beads back together. “There,” I say.
“Thank-you,” she says feeling the beads to make sure they’re back to normal.
“Sorry,” I say. I’m about to add, ‘But you shouldn’t throw your purse.’
“Sorry,” she says, so I don’t have to.
So we’re walking home and the crickets are singing like they do, just the boy ones who are looking for lovers, Granma says. So they’re singing away and I’m wondering how we can interview all of these suspects and get to the truth, and here they come, all those boys.
They go by and they are so stupid mostly, Bobby riding along and singing, “Come on Baby take a chance. I left my underpants at my aunt’s.” And other boys are laughing, and Abigail May yells for them to get away because they’re so disgusting.
So those boys go on by and bringing up the back is Cap and Easy.
Well Cap is first. “What he say?” Cap asks Abigail.
“He’s so stupid,” Abigail May says about Bobby.
I see Easy riding by the curb and that old glove is swinging on his handlebar like earlier. Well here are two of the suspects. I look at Abigail and she’s twirling her purse while she walks along and Cap’s feet are off his pedals and he’s walking his bike along with that bat under his arm.
Easy says, “You go to a party?”
He means my outfit. I laugh at that. “No,” I say like, ‘No!’
I can hold his eyes a little longer, even though they make me feel so funny. But I have to be able to cross his name off the list of suspects so here I go. “I can’t find the kittens.”
He just looks at me. He pedals a couple of times to right his bike, then one foot goes down and he moves it like his bike is a scooter. He has the most beat up tennis shoes, those kind boys wear for basketball, Converse, just beat up, but I know he’s so hard on them. He likes shirts with short sleeves or no sleeves. His hair is longer than ever. It just grew overnight.
I hear Abigail squeal and there she goes on those handlebars of Cap’s, purse and skirt and oh my. Cap is riding her in a big circle. Seeing her foolishness makes me more determined than ever to stay on the case.
“You didn’t see those kittens or something?” I say.
“No,” he says like I’m pretty crazy to think he had.
“What about Cap?”
“No,” he says.
I just stare at the ground. We are not moving now.
“Why you along here?”
“Just walking,” I say.
He looks away, but he has that little smile like he’s got a joke or something. Boys are too difficult.
“I best get home,” I say. I call out to Abigail May and she acts like she can’t hear me, but Cap does. He tells her she better answer.
“I’m coming,” she says and Cap rides over to the curb and Abigail hops off. Then she twirls in her skirt but it just bells out some. I can’t believe it. There is no telling what Abigail May will do next.
So she comes by me and we start walking but those boys are behind us. “What should we do?” Abigail says clinging to my good arm and walking with me.
“Nothing,” I say horrified. We should get out of here is all I can think. “They don’t know about the kittens,” I say. But I wish they’d offer to help us find them. Mostly I wish they’d ask Disbro Peak, but he wouldn’t admit he’d taken them, would he?
“We have to find if Disbro has them,” I say.
“Let’s ask them to help,” Abigail says excitedly.
“No,” I say. If Easy wanted to help he’d of said it.
But here they come on their bikes. Easy is beside us riding along the curb and Cap comes up on the sidewalk behind Abigail.
“Beep, beep,” Cap says.
Abigail squeals and la
ughs.
“Hey Georgia,” Easy says, “you want to go to the Quick Shop?”
The Quick Shop is near our house. We never go there because the prices are higher than Moe’s or Mac’s and it’s just a hangout for bigger kids. And they sell magazines behind the counter with bare ladies who show their bottoms and tops. Granma says it’s a terrible place that will bring down the neighborhood. They sell slushies there, red and blue. Abigail May says Ricky goes there and gets one all the time and he says they are better than snowcones. Aunt May doesn’t know.
“I’m not allowed,” I say. I look at Abigail May and I know she wishes I’d said okay. But we are not at all going there. “We have to find the kittens,” I say.
I take Abigail’s hand then. I pull her along. She looks back at Cap, but she doesn’t fight me right off. Then she breaks away and runs back to Cap. “Hey,” she says, “will you ask Disbro if he has the kittens?”
I am waiting. I know Easy is beside me again, but I don’t look at him. I wanted him to say he’d look for the kittens, and he didn’t. So now I just feel so embarrassed about it, and about going to the Quick Shop. He’s too old, and he smokes and he goes there and there are other girls, older girls there he probably knows. And I can’t find the kittens, and Abigail May might have to move. Sometimes it’s really unfair, and just so hard.
“Hey Georgia,” Easy says, and I look at him. I might have tears in my eyes, but I might not. “Can I sign your cast?”
Well I don’t know. All we have is Abigail May’s pencil stuck in our sleuthing notebook. Here she is, sticking that pencil in my face, and I snatch it from her cause gee-willckers. So I take a couple of steps toward Easy. I hand him the pencil and my fingers touch his a little. Then I lift my cast a little closer to him and he’s really almost pretty is what I think. He has eyes that just make me silly. So I’m smiling a little cause you can’t look at him and not smile.
But I know he knows it. I just know he does. So I nod and he lifts my cast with one hand, and his hands are so much bigger than mine or Granma’s. I think he bites his nails too. But he lifts that cast slowly and a little higher and I think, what’s he doing, and he looks under my cast and he finds a spot and he pencils in there pretty quickly, but not too quickly, and then he lowers my arm again and he smiles at me. His eyelashes are the longest I’ve ever seen, and his smile is wide and his teeth are just a little crooked. He is purely a boy, but not like any other I’ve seen, and I don’t even know what to do with all this big feeling in me.