Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

One day the Witch said, “I will fool those little kids, I’m hurrying.”

  And then she hurried down to the store. “Um,” she said.

  “What do you want?” said the ghost, for it was the ghost store.

  “I want to buy some apples.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “Yes I need them!” she shouted.

  So he gave her a bag of rotten apples.

  “For Pete’s sake!” said the Witch. “Of all the crazy things …”

  “I thought you didn’t like paper dolls,” our mother said. She does; sometimes she cuts them out with us. It’s true that usually I don’t: If you make a mistake cutting out their faces, they look funny; and the little tabs that hold on the clothes (and the clothes themselves) rip and fall off so easily.

  “I like Annie Oakley,” I said. The cover showed Annie riding a galloping horse with her elbows sticking out. Inside were cowboy boots and buckskin jackets and cowgirl skirts and gun holsters, not the usual paper-doll things. “Where are the scissors?”

  “No!” our mother said. She hardly ever says no like that. “Tomorrow the movers are coming while you’re in school and the next day we’re leaving. You need to do this now.”

  “Is tomorrow our last day of school?” I said, and she said it was.

  The real Annie Oakley, who was the best shot in the West. She met her husband when she beat him in a shooting contest.

  Chapter Five:

  “Will You Miss Me?”

  It was our last whole day and the very last day of school, Miss Jessup said anyone who wanted to could make a card for me. While she was passing out the paper, Henry said, “What will Libby do?”

  “She can draw or write whatever she wants.”

  I decided to make a goodbye card for the class. I wondered how many people would make cards for me.

  An ocean liner a boy drew.

  I could tell that they were all coloring by the way their arms were moving. But even though I could see some of the drawings, I didn’t know if they were cards for me. Even when they were done, I didn’t know, because Miss Jessup collected them all.

  “I’ll give them to you at the end of the day, Libby,” she said.

  So I had to wait until we had put our chairs up and were standing on line, waiting for the bell. And then, finally, when we were walking out, she gave me a stack of cards — a thick stack.

  It felt like most people had made me one! I flipped through them: I could tell right away that lots of the girls had. There were little pictures, all colored in. They had put their addresses on the back (Miss Jessup told them to do that) and “Love,” after the messages and before their names. I was surprised that the girls liked me so much! Or maybe that’s just how girls write?

  I counted the cards: twenty. But there were twenty kids in the class. Could she have put my card in the pile by mistake? Or had I made a mistake counting?

  I looked through more carefully and saw that even Miss Jessup had made a card! Hers didn’t have a picture, just the school’s address in small, neat handwriting. Inside, she had written:

  Dear Libby,

  Your English school will be different, and perhaps difficult. You have a good mind and many abilities: use them. Try your best, even in those subjects that do not appeal to you. And remember that while you are in a foreign land, you are a representative of America. You may, perhaps, be the only American your teachers and schoolmates will ever meet. Make your behavior embody the ideals that have made Americans throughout history proud of themselves and of our country.

  With best wishes,

  Minerva Jessup

  That was nice of her!

  Henry had drawn a picture of a boat with LIBERTY in big letters on the side. Inside, he’d written:

  Libby

  I will see you in six months. Write to me as soon as you get there and I will write back.

  Your friend,

  Henry Hart

  Well, no BOY would sign a card “Love.” I wouldn’t either!

  I counted the cards again. This time, too, it came out to twenty — so everyone had made one. I was reading them all in order when Henry came running up.

  “Look.”

  He held out a fortune-catcher — but I couldn’t choose anything, because the four squares at the top were blank. Then he opened it and inside I read:

  He closed it (fortune-catchers always look like little mouths closing and opening to me), and when he opened it the other way it said:

  “Yes,” I said out loud. “I’ll miss you a lot.”

  We just looked at each other without saying anything, and then he ran across the street. After he crossed he turned around and waved and I waved back as hard as I could. I really, really like Henry. I would miss him — but it was good that he would miss me, too.

  I looked at his card again, and decided to put it, and the fortune-catcher, inside Grimm’s Fairy Tales, so they wouldn’t get ripped on the voyage.

  Chapter Six:

  The Liberté

  We were on our way: Everything was packed, our house was clean and locked, and the Liberté was moving slowly out of New York Harbor with us on the deck. My mother took Emmy’s hand and told me to hold Willy’s. She was already carrying Bubby.

  “Really, Libby,” she said, in a serious voice. “I don’t want any of you out of my sight.”

  So we stood right next to her. We watched New York (all the skyscrapers) spread out in a line and little baby waves moving and sparkling below us.

  And then above us — high above us — I saw the Statue of Liberty. I’d never realized before how HUGE it is. One arm was bigger than a tall building.

  “Look, Willy, look!” I said. “The Statue of Liberty!”

  Liberty! I raised my free arm up to the sky, the way she was holding hers, and held it there.

  The Liberté sailing out of New York Harbor. The big shape between the ship and the shore is the Statue of Liberty.

  “She was put there to welcome all the people from other lands who came to America,” I said.

  I thought of my grandparents coming from Finland, and my great-great somethings coming from England and Scotland and Norway, and of all the other people who came to America: thousands and thousands of them, all brave and adventurous and full of hope. And they were all welcomed. I felt very proud of them and of our country, proud to be an American.

  Willy tugged at my hand and I looked down: He was saluting, too, with his free hand. He smiled proudly at me and I squeezed his hand and smiled back. Liberty!

  By dinner, we were, I thought, out of America, and on the Atlantic Ocean — and even if where we were didn’t count as a new country (my mother said we were “in international waters”), it felt like we were in one.

  The Dining Salon was very fancy. Everyone had assigned tables, and a huge man — taller and bigger than my father and a little bit fat (but on him it didn’t look bad to be fat because he was so big) — sat with us at ours.

  He had a dark, proud, serious face. He sat very straight and square, like a king with his arms on his throne. But what was really fascinating was that he wore a huge feathered headdress — not like an Indian’s: his was a kind of turban with big feathers of all different colors around it. He wore wonderful pale green robes that went down to the ground (I bent down under the tablecloth and looked).

  I was wondering if he was a king, or at least a prince or chieftain, when my mother shook her head at me, just a little bit, but I knew that she meant, “It’s rude to stare.”

  She had given us a little talk about manners before we left our cabin for the Dining Salon, and I knew that she really wanted us to be polite. It was hard, but I looked around the room and tried not to look back at him too often.

  All the tables were round and covered with long, white tablecloths that seemed very thick. I asked the waiter questions whenever I could; the most interesting answer was: “When it gets rough, we pour water on the tablecloths to keep the dishes from sliding off the tables.”


  “When will that happen?” I said. He said it probably wouldn’t; most crossings were calm. Still, I thought, it might happen on ours. I hoped it would.

  After dinner, we went to our cabins. Emmy and I had a cabin to ourselves, which was very exciting.

  “Be sure to keep the door locked,” my mother said again when she kissed us good-night, “and don’t unlock it for anyone but me.” Her cabin — which Willy and Bubby were in, too — was right next door to ours. Still, it was pretty cool to have our own.

  It was cozy, with just room for a little table and chair and a mirror (all screwed in), and another chair in a tiny alcove under the porthole. You could stand on the chair to look out the porthole — only it was shut with a round metal shutter, painted the same creamy white as the walls, and locked.

  “Let’s get in bed,” I said. We had already decided to take turns sleeping in the top bunk, and the first night, it was mine. I climbed up into it: It had a lamp above the pillow so you could read in bed. I hung my little metal horse on the lamp by its bridle.

  The sheets were thick and kind of scratchy: They didn’t feel like our sheets at home at all. They were tucked in VERY tightly and I had to wriggle around for a long time before I felt comfortable.

  “What are you doing?” Emmy said from the bottom bunk.

  I hung my head over the side of the top bunk and looked down at her with my head upside down.

  “Getting settled in.”

  I made a face and she made one back.

  “What will we do tomorrow?” she said.

  “Explore the ship.”

  “Don’t you want to go in the playroom?”

  The playroom had a baby-sitter in a white uniform and the kinds of toys that girlie-girls and very little children like. It was perfect for Willy: lots of blocks.

  “You can — I’d rather explore.”

  As soon as breakfast was over, we did.

  First, we ran up to the deck (our cabin and the Dining Salon were below the deck). It was narrow and crowded with grown-ups lying in deck chairs, or walking slowly, or playing a really boring game kind of like hopscotch, or just standing around, leaning their elbows on the wall that circled the deck — this was painted a creamy white, like everything else on the ship. They were looking out — at what? What could they see? All I could see was sky and water. I jumped up, to see more, but there was nothing out there but sky and water.

  Stewards bustled around, bringing blankets and snacks to the grown-ups and watching us suspiciously. Once, in a place where there was a little space, I skipped a few skips, and one shouted at me.

  So, the deck was pretty boring. We decided to explore the rest of the ship. I ran down the first empty staircase we came to. No one stopped me. I ran back up, then ran down my favorite way. I grabbed the banister three steps below me tightly with one hand, then jumped SIX steps at once. I sort of run and jump and leap all at the same time — it’s almost like flying, with a short pause in between jumps to grab the banister again. Before the very bottom, you let go and bend your knees to land on the ground with a huge thud.

  I ran back to the top and did it again: “Emmy, try running and jumping down more than one step at a time! Just grab the banister tightly and jump!” I said. “It’s really fun — like this, watch!”

  She did; it WAS really fun and we both laughed a lot.

  When we got sick of that, we explored. The ship was so big that there were lots of empty places — there just weren’t any on the deck itself. But BELOW the deck, there were stairs and ladders to climb up and down, and lots and lots of halls: wide ones (main halls) and narrower ones (side halls) and all of them had shiny, slippery floors, perfect for running and sliding and chasing each other. Here is a letter about it that I wrote to my class but never mailed:

  I never found out where the man at our dining table was from, or whether he was a king or what. My mother said that it wouldn’t be polite to bring a map into the dining room so he could point to his country, and that it would be very rude to try to talk to him with sign language. But I DID learn why iron ships don’t sink — one of the bellboys told me. They’re not solid metal: they have huge spaces filled with air built into them — so much air that the ship becomes light enough to float on water, just as a big balloon attached to a basket full of people is light enough to float in the air. And even though I never found out anything about the king (or chieftain or prince), it was neat that people like that lived in the world and I had met one.

  Chapter Seven:

  In London

  When I woke up I didn’t know where I was at first. Then, I remembered: I was in London.

  I looked around. My bed was in the corner, under the window. Emmy’s, Bubby’s, and Willy’s beds were in a row on the opposite wall.

  The window was high on the wall, with black iron bars on it, and behind the bars a black iron fence with spaces between each pointed rod. There were no splotches of sun on the wall or the floor, just steady gray light and what little I could see of the sky (the room was in a basement) was gray, too.

  “Emmy? Willy? Bubby?” I whispered.

  The window and its view, as they looked from my bed.

  They didn’t answer: still asleep, probably. They had all been asleep when we’d arrived, too: a grown-up named Jill who was going to be living with us had opened the door and helped carry them and our suitcases down to this room.

  The suitcases were still on the floor, with their baggage tags on.

  We’d carried them down the gangplank — even Willy carried one in the hand that wasn’t holding mine. The gangplank was exactly the same as the New York gangplank: just a short metal bridge with solid metal walls, painted the same creamy color as the deck walls.

  But I could see right away that we were in a foreign country. The light was different — darker. It wasn’t just that it was a cloudy afternoon: The sky seemed heavier and closer to the ground than it did in America. I wasn’t sure I liked it. It was exciting, though, and it made me curious. As I said, “If even the SKY is different, just think what London will be like!”

  I looked up again at the window in our bedroom: Outside, it looked like the day hadn’t even really started yet, it was so dark. The air felt damp, too, the way it does very early in the morning, before the sun comes up.

  I got up and opened my suitcase, and then I decided to wake Emmy up. After all, it was our first day! She’d want to get ready for school early, too.

  Chapter Eight:

  St. Vincent’s School

  Jill, not my mother, took Emmy and Willy and me to school; Bubby stayed at home with my mother. (My mother had said we could stay home, too, but my father laughed and said there was no jet lag when you went on an ocean liner, and that he’d told the school we’d be there that morning.)

  We didn’t walk: we went in a taxi — it was black, and square, and very old-fashioned.

  I pressed my face to the window. London seemed old-fashioned, too. The sky was still dark gray, and most of the buildings, even the stores, looked like houses, not skyscrapers. Most were dirty-white — sometimes so dirty they were almost black — stone. There were lots of little parks; they looked wet and dark, too — dark green grass, bare dark trees.

  The only colors were on the advertisements and buses. The buses were a bright, cheerful red, twice as tall as American buses. We’d seen them the night before, too (with both rows of windows glowing yellow), and my father said they were called “double-deckers.” I looked eagerly for more: I liked their color (bright red) and their shape, too. They were VERY cheerful.

  The school looked just like the narrow, dirty-white houses on either side of it, except for a small metal sign that said: ST. VINCENT’S SCHOOL.

  We went into a little hallway; two women were already standing there, smiling at us.

  “I’m Mrs. Reed, the headmistress,” the older one said, still smiling. “And you’re the three little Americans. Who’s the eldest?”

  I didn’t like her smile (too many tee
th) or the way she talked (“little Americans”), but I answered.

  “I am.”

  “Come with me, dearie,” she said. “Miss Reed will sort out the others.”

  None of us said a word. Emmy and I made a quick face at each other (she didn’t like the Reeds, either, I could tell). Willy stared after me with wide-open eyes: he looked horrified. I ran back and gave him a quick hug, and then I followed Mrs. Reed upstairs.

  She opened a door and said to a roomful of children, “She’s new — from America.”

  She left, and the children and I looked at each other.

  They all wore white shirts and gray sweaters and navy-blue ties — even the girls had ties — and over the sweaters they had navy-blue jackets. The boys wore gray wool shorts and the girls wore skirts, and they all wore knee socks. The sweaters and skirts and shorts weren’t exactly the same, just the same colors; but all the jackets were exactly alike.

  I was wearing a green plaid jumper.

  “Do you live on a huge ranch?” a girl said eagerly.

  “No.”

  “Do you have your own gun?” a boy said. I could tell that he meant a real gun, not a toy. My six-shooter was in America, anyway, packed up in some box, because I’d brought Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  “No,” I said.

  “Your own horse?”

  “No.”

  “Rum!” someone said.

  I guessed that meant “weird” and I was right — I asked Jill about it later. I thought it was weird that they all acted as though America was like the Wild West on TV. Then an older boy with a thin face and blue-silver eyes (I guess they were mainly pale blue, with glints of silver) said, “What’s your name?”

  “Libby. What’s yours?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he laughed. One of the girls said Libby was “an odd sort of name.”

  “Libby drink Libby’s!” the boy with the glinting eyes said, and laughed again.