Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

  Morse code translates the alphabet into these dots and dashes, which you can send as long and short sounds or flashes of light. Henry and I used to tap it on our desks to each other, before the teacher moved us.

  It was only 10:10. I was waiting for the hand to jump to 10:12 or 10:13 (sometimes it jumps two minutes, sometimes three) when she told me again to get to work, so I did.

  Finally it was lunchtime. We had to walk down the stairs, without talking (that’s a rule); as soon as we got outside, we could run. I did — I was BURSTING with energy. I jumped down the steps and ran to the corner. Henry did, too. Then we had to wait for the policeman to cross us.

  “I had an idea,” I said. “We can write letters!”

  I could tell he liked the idea (by the way his eyes changed) even before he said, “And we can use code for things that are really private!”

  “You mean — make one up?” I said, walking backwards. “Or write the Morse code dots and dashes?”

  “I was thinking — make one up.”

  “That would be more private,” I said.

  From across the street, a boy in our class yelled that I had told Miss Jessup on him. (Of course, I hadn’t.) Before I could answer, Henry shouted, really angrily: “She did not! I’ve known her since she was in kindergarten and she doesn’t snitch!”

  Henry always sticks up for me.

  We walked along, first scuffing, then kicking, the leaves up from the sidewalk.

  “When are you leaving?” he said.

  “In two weeks.”

  “Then you can come over on Saturday!”

  “I’ll ask,” I said. “Oh, I hope I can! We could play pioneers!”

  “And finish our fort!” Henry said.

  Above me, the leaves blazed yellow, as though the sun was coming right through them. Then one leaf fell down kind of slowly, twirling in the sun.

  I ran to catch it — and I did catch it. Henry saw me and we both started laughing (it wasn’t funny, we were just happy). Then another leaf twirled down, slowly — it was yellow, too. We both ran for it, and I wished everything could stay just as it was at that moment forever and ever … that it could always be this sunny fall day and Henry and I could always be in it together.

  Chapter Three:

  Two Tea Parties

  But on Saturday I couldn’t go to Henry’s, because an English boy and his mother were coming over for tea. My mother set everything up on the living room table (including the fat silver sugar bowl filled with sugar lumps — you take them out with silver tongs), and reminded us to pass things to the guests first. One good thing about our mother is that she never corrects our manners in front of other people. I wish everyone’s mother would do this. I hate it when parents say things like “What do you say?” or scold their children in front of you.

  When the guests came, the mothers introduced themselves and said ladylike things like, “Please call me Sally.”

  Then Mrs. Grant said, “And this is my son Neil.”

  “And this is my oldest daughter, Libby.” My mother squeezed my shoulders and I knew she wanted me to say hello politely, so I did. Emmy did, too; Willy and Bubby just stood behind my mother, but they did stop giggling. Then we all sat down and the mothers talked.

  We looked at Neil and he looked at us. Everything about him was light. His hair was yellow-white — more white than yellow — and his skin was pink and white, even more than ours, and his eyes were light blue and the whites were very white. He had bangs, which most boys don’t. Most boys I know have crew cuts.

  Neil ate slowly and carefully, wiping his mouth after every bite. He sat up very straight — even his clothes were very straight — and he didn’t spill anything, not even his tea. He seemed like a real goody-goody. You probably have already figured out that I’m not. But I haven’t said what I look like yet, so I’ll describe myself now, too. I’m short for my age — everyone in my class is taller than I am. But I’m strong. I can beat Kenny at wrestling and most of the boys in my class, too.

  My hair is as straight as hair can be, and it’s cut in a straight line across my forehead and straight along the sides. In pictures, my eyes look straight at the camera; they’re blue. I am not the kind of child grown-ups ever call “cute” or “just darling.”

  Emmy can be that kind of child. She has curly blonde hair and she likes to be cuddled and to sit on grown-ups’ laps.

  The mothers talked — it was pretty boring, except when Mrs. Grant said, “What is peanut butter?” I’d never met a mother who didn’t know that.

  The cookies were gone, so I asked if I could be excused, and she said Emmy and I could take Neil upstairs. That really meant that we could only go if we brought him with us.

  Neil was taller than I was, too; but I bet I was stronger. On the way up, I said, “It’s lucky that you or your mother didn’t pour the tea.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re English and we’re American. If you’d given me a cup of tea, I’d have had to dump it out — in honor of the Boston Tea Party.”

  I was about to tell him what the Boston Tea Party was when he said, “Rubbish.”

  I was too surprised to say anything. Then he said, “My mother has given tea to lots of Americans before and THEY never poured it on the floor.”

  “Well, maybe other people don’t do it, but it’s what I would do if an English person offered ME tea,” I said.

  Pouring the tea on the floor WOULD be like the Boston Tea Party. In case you haven’t heard of it: In Boston, at the beginning of the Revolution, a crowd of grown-ups disguised as Indians sneaked onto English ships and dumped all the tea into the harbor. I think it’s neat that our country had such a fun start — grown-ups dressing up like Indians and throwing things overboard! And I like the name Boston Tea Party, too. I didn’t say any of that to Neil, though.

  We brought him into our room and he stood in the middle of it, with his back very straight, turning his chin around and looking at everything quite coolly.

  I was looking out the window at the rain when the front doorbell rang. I ran down, and it was Henry!

  “My mother said I could only come in if your mother said it was okay with her,” he said. “And she said to give your mother this note when you asked.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I ran in. The two mothers were still just sitting there, talking — that’s all my mother ever does when her friends come over: talk.

  “It’s Henry. Can he come in?”

  I gave her the note.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Mrs. Grant.

  She read it quickly, and then the two mothers looked at each other — I don’t know if they used the secret code or whatever it is ladies use to tell each other things privately. I know they have one. (Once I called my mother and asked her to come get me at a friend’s house. I told her NOT to tell them why. When she came, I listened to every word my mother said, and she didn’t say anything about the reason; but at the end, the other mother said, looking relieved, “So THAT’s what it was!” So I knew my mother told her, but I’d heard every word she said and I don’t know how she told her.)

  My mother said Henry was “a nice boy” and Mrs. Grant said Neil wasn’t shy and then she laughed and said something I didn’t quite understand.

  “All right,” my mother said (to me). “As long as all four of you play together, and ask before you go outside.”

  I ran back.

  “She said yes!”

  We ran upstairs. Neil was talking to Emmy, looking a little nicer than he had before. And when Henry and I were listing things we could do and trying to choose, he looked really interested, and after a while he said, “In England on rainy days people go down the stairs on trays. It’s called indoor tobogganing.”

  That sounded fun to me.

  “Let’s try it!” I said. “We don’t have any big trays — except the one my mother is using — but what about a box? There are plenty of those lying around!”

  “A box going d
own stairs with people in it would be hard to control,” Henry said. “And dangerous, too.”

  He looked at Neil kind of disapprovingly.

  “I haven’t actually done it,” Neil said.

  I still wanted to try it, but no one else did, and Henry kept saying more and more reasons against it. Finally I said, “Oh, all right! What about Sardines?”

  “What’s that?” Neil said eagerly, as though he thought it was going to be something exciting.

  “Someone hides … when you find him, you get into the hiding place, too — IF you can do it without anyone else seeing you,” I said, looking at Emmy. Once, when Peg was It, Emmy held out her arms and shouted “Peggy!” as soon as she saw her — right in front of all of us, even though no one else had seen Peggy! It was kind of funny, but still.

  “That was when I was only five,” Emmy said.

  When it was my turn to hide, I ran, quietly, to the big barrel filled with crumpled-up paper I’d seen in the dining room. I boosted myself up with my arms (the way I do when I jump onto the kitchen counter), and then it was easy to lower my legs in quietly, so the paper wouldn’t rustle.

  I curled up like a cat; all I could see was the ceiling and the sides of the barrel. I could hear the others tramping around, and laughing and yelling. Something fell over with a loud crash.

  Then I heard quick footsteps in the dining room. I looked up — and saw my mother staring down at me.

  “Honestly, Libby!” she said. “No! No! Don’t move!”

  She grabbed me by one shoulder and one knee so hard that it hurt, and swung me out of the barrel and up into the air. Then she let go of me, fast — my feet banged the floor.

  “You are the limit,” she said. “Can’t you ever be careful of anything?”

  “But — what did I do?”

  She just looked at me.

  “Was there something in the barrel besides paper?” I said.

  “The wildflower breakfast set.”

  From the wildflower breakfast set.

  I knew the one she meant. She put her hand in the barrel and took out a big ball of paper and held it in both hands. Without looking at me, she said, “This china was my grandmother’s. I’ve never broken even one teacup handle.”

  Henry, Neil, and Emmy ran in. They stopped when they saw our mother and stood in the doorway staring at her with their mouths hanging open. Henry and Emmy know that our mother doesn’t yell and doesn’t hit and doesn’t get mad. She wasn’t yelling but she really was mad, everyone could see that.

  “If ONE THING in that china barrel is broken —” She stopped; I waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “What?” I said. “What will happen?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “IS anything broken?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well can’t you look?” I said — I hate waiting for punishments, I’d rather just get it over with.

  She didn’t answer me; she just looked at the ball of paper in her hands — it was probably one of the china pieces.

  “If anything is broken there’s nothing I can do about it now,” she said finally. She put the china piece (whatever it was) back in the barrel, very gently, without looking at me at all.

  “But then when will I find out what my punishment is going to be?”

  “You’ll just have to wait until we come back from England and I unpack this barrel,” she said, and went back to the living room.

  Her grandmother gave her the breakfast set because she liked it so much, and she always washes it by hand, not in the dishwasher. Each piece has flowers painted on it, and she says they’re realistic — that’s one reason she liked them so much when she was a child. She liked flowers and china and dolls and things like that when she was a little girl. She wasn’t a tomboy like me.

  Slowly, I walked to the living room door to tell my mother I was sorry — she had looked so sad, and it was a pretty stupid thing to have done. But my mother’s back was to the door, and when Mrs. Grant saw me, she looked almost as if she was scared. I didn’t want to apologize in front of her.

  So I went back to the dining room. Neil and Emmy were talking — he seemed shocked and she looked worried. Henry was peering curiously into the china barrel.

  I looked into it, too.

  “Maybe nothing’s broken,” Henry said. “It looks like there’s a lot of padding in there, and you’re pretty light.”

  That was nice of him; but I wondered what my father would do. My mother hardly ever punishes us. (Henry always says he wishes she could be our teacher, “because she’d always be saying ‘I’ll give you one more chance.’ ”) My father does.

  Chapter Four:

  “Bon Voyage!”

  The first thing my father asked my mother about at dinner (we were having a family “Bon Voyage!” party for my father, with poppers from Chinatown as party favors) was the tea party, and she said, “I think it was interesting for everyone.”

  If that was some kind of code, my father didn’t get it. No one said anything else about the tea party or the china barrel.

  When we came downstairs the next morning, our parents were both up and dressed! (Usually on weekend mornings we get up way before they do.) My father was in his work clothes, and a suitcase was standing next to his briefcase. He looked really excited — he was leaping around my mother, laughing and trying to pick her up. She was shaking her head and kind of pushing him away but kind of not.

  Party favors from Chinatown: When you pull the string, they explode with a loud noise and smell of gunpowder.

  “Come and give me a kiss, kids,” he said. “The next time you see me will be in England!”

  “In London?” I said — I was excited, too, about going on the boat and everything.

  “No, I’ll meet you where the boat docks and we’ll all take a train together to London.”

  That sounded fun, too — I was about to ask if we would walk down a gangplank and he would be standing at the bottom of it, waving to us — when Emmy started to cry. My father stood still and looked sad for a second.

  “Aw, Em, don’t cry,” he said, picking her up. “It’s not very long until November tenth.”

  “I bet that’s the day the boat — the Liberty! — docks!” I said.

  “Why can’t we all go together?” Emmy said.

  “I have to find a place for us to live, and a school for you and Libby, and your mother has to pack and get your passports and rent the house,” he said, and looked at my mother eagerly. “Right, Sall?”

  My mother nodded; she didn’t look excited at all.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get it done, there’s time,” he said, putting Emmy down. Then he gave her a big hug and said it was time to leave. “So long, shorty! Be good!” he said to me, and he bent down for us all to kiss him.

  After my father left, we didn’t have dining room dinners anymore — we ate in the kitchen and our mother let us talk as much as we wanted. We got to miss school for our passport picture. People came to look at the house, and my mother’s friends came over a lot to help — they brought their children, and we played with them, and she let The Gang play inside, too.

  But one day, she said NO ONE ELSE COULD COME OVER UNTIL WE WERE DONE PACKING. We couldn’t even go outside and play! She said, “Have you decided yet which three books or toys you’re going to take?”

  “Not quite,” I said. I HAD been thinking about it, though. “Peter Pan (because it was my first favorite book) and Little Women (because it’s my favorite book now), but I’m not sure about the third thing.”

  I was hesitating between my six-shooter and its holster (which I hoped would count as one thing) or a perfume bottle my grandmother had given me that had once belonged to a real princess. I liked it because of that, and because of its color (dark green glass with a few tiny white leaves and real gold top) and shape. I was also thinking of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, because it was the longest, thickest book I had, and I like fairy tales — especia
lly “Rumpelstiltskin” and “One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes” (that little table that spreads itself with a white cloth and food!). It was a hard choice.

  A picture from the fairy tale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.”

  “I’ve ALMOST decided on Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” I said. Privately, I was also planning to bring my little metal horse: It was so small that I could put it in a pocket, or around my wrist with its chain bridle.

  “Well, you can be thinking about it while you sort and pack your papers,” my mother said, opening the big drawer where we keep our old drawings and stories.

  “You need to throw out —,” she hesitated, then took out two big piles, “about that many papers each.”

  She gave one pile to Emmy and one to me.

  “I’ll come back to check on you in fifteen minutes.”

  We sat down with our piles: When I found something of Emmy’s, I handed it to her; when she found something of mine, she handed it to me, as usual. But usually our mother looks at the things with us. We all — including our mother — talk about what we find and other things, too; it’s fun. But that day, she didn’t look at anything, even after she said she would “supervise” (usually, that means she does most of whatever it is, but when we sort, she just watches).

  She did sit down on the bed. But she kept jumping up to go pack things, and then running back in to hurry us along, instead of admiring our drawings and stories with us as usual.

  She did look at one of Emmy’s old drawings and listen to me read one of my silly witch stories out loud, though. Then I found an old paper-doll book.

  “Annie Oakley! I’ve been wondering where this was!” I said. “Remember, I got it for my birthday and I never cut out ONE outfit: look, they’re all still in here. Even Annie Oakley is still here — where are the scissors?”

  PART OF THE SILLY WITCH STORY I READ: