Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

  That day, while everyone was coming in and getting settled, I said eagerly, “Who’s going to be the star of the play?”

  Miss Davenport gave me a scornful look.

  “This isn’t a Hollywood production, Libby,” she said. “There is no star.”

  Then she told us what chapter to read. The first lesson each day was Scripture. We always read the chapter, then closed our Bibles and wrote down everything we could remember; she corrected our Scripture while we did our arithmetic.

  Next, we had Composition, and that day she told us to write about something interesting that had happened over the holidays. I know that you’re not supposed to complain and that no one in England does — I hadn’t the night before about the spaghetti — but sometimes I just can’t help it. I HATE writing about stupid subjects and I said so.

  After a while, Miss Davenport said, “That will do, Libby,” and told us to begin.

  Everyone else started writing and I just sat there, glaring out the window. Miss Davenport ignored me. Finally, when there were only a few minutes left, I thought of the train trip to the school. I’d spent part of it standing outside the compartment, looking out the window until a man started talking to me. I decided to write about our conversation.

  When she’d read all the compositions, Miss Davenport said mine was “hilarious — I laughed and laughed” (she had, I’d seen her), and then she said she would read it out loud to everyone else.

  “Libby, you may stand outside while I read it.”

  I would have liked to stay and see what everyone thought (I’d be able to tell by their faces), but English people never act proud of what they’ve done; they always look embarrassed when people praise them. So I went outside.

  Later, when we were playing by ourselves (we were allowed to play outside after lessons, and the two of us had climbed a tree), I asked Brioney what she thought of my composition. She said, “I didn’t see what was so funny about it, except when you called the corridor ‘the hall.’ ”

  I hadn’t meant it to be funny, so that was kind of a relief. Then we started talking about something else, and Clare and Mo climbed into the tree with us and we were all talking and playing when some seniors came by and somehow — I forget whose idea it was — we decided to have a competition to see who could hang from a branch the longest.

  Clare, Mo, Brioney, and I were the competitors; Retina (Brioney’s older sister) and Carol (Clare’s older sister) and some other seniors were the audience. The rules were simple: Hang from the branch with just your hands. The branch was higher than any of us could reach from the ground, so we climbed out to it; the seniors (who were a lot taller than we were — they all always seemed huge to me) said they would lift us down when we were tired.

  “Just say,” Carol said, “and one of us will lift you down.”

  We grasped the branch with our hands (I clasped my fingers together; I couldn’t see how the others were doing it) and dropped. It was a funny feeling, to be hanging from a branch with your feet high above the ground.

  The seniors leaned against the fence to watch; Catherine Marshall was there and I think she wanted me to win. I wanted to win, too, of course; in fact, I REALLY wanted to. I thought I probably would: I was still very strong, probably stronger than any of them.

  But after a while, my hands got a little sweaty and they started to slide apart. Clare and Brioney had already been lifted down: It was just Mo and me. I thought I could hang on if I just gripped tighter: My muscles weren’t tired at all. Suddenly — before I could say anything at all — my hands slid completely apart and I fell.

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Mo, Brioney, and Tuppence

  I landed right on my face. My tooth went through the skin just under my lip — I could feel the tooth do that, and blood trickling down, but the worst part was that I couldn’t breathe at first. It’s a sickening feeling: Has it ever happened to you? You can’t breathe — it’s as though there isn’t any air in your lungs.

  “Brioney, get Matron,” Retina said.

  As soon as I could talk, I said, “I’m okay,” and sat up.

  “Better not move until Matron has a look at you,” Catherine Marshall said, but just as she said that, Matron came running up.

  “I’m okay,” I said again.

  When we were walking back to the house by ourselves, I told her about not being able to breathe and how much it had scared me.

  “You had the wind knocked out of you, that’s all,” she said in a definite, very reassuring voice. “Still, I think you’d better have the doctor about that lip.”

  The doctor came and stitched it up (he said I would have a little scar but because it was just under the lip it wouldn’t show much), and to stay in bed for two days.

  Being sick at Sibton Park was kind of fun: Matron put a big jug of lemonade next to my bed, so I could have a drink whenever I wanted to, and whenever she had time, she came in and read to me or told me stories. Sometimes she asked me to read her my stories, and I did. Sometimes she brought her sewing in and we just talked, and I liked that best of all.

  While I was in bed by myself, I thought about the children at Sibton Park. I thought that they all looked very English and that I didn’t, because of my slanted eyes — their eyes were so round. A lot of them had turned-up noses, and I wished I did, too.

  Mo looked different from everyone else, too. It wasn’t just that he was the only boy: He came from Persia. He always wore gray shorts, gray socks, a white shirt with a tie, and a gray pullover with a V-neck. He had a serious little face with a big, big nose and round dark eyes that often had a worried expression. He was the shortest boarder and I was the second shortest. The only people who ever played with him were Brioney and I.

  He spoke English perfectly, with a perfect English accent, though he had a SLIGHT lisp (that means he couldn’t quite say his s’s), but some English children did, too — one senior said her r’s like w’s even though she was much older. We called him Mo, but his real name was Mohammed.

  While I was sick, and she was sewing by my bed, I asked Matron why Mo was at Sibton Park, and she said, “The boys’ schools won’t take them until they’re seven.”

  Mo was six. He had been at Sibton Park since he was four.

  On my first day out of bed Mo and I went into the cow pasture together. First, we stood at the fence around the cricket field and watched the men playing. That wasn’t very interesting.

  Then we just walked around, talking — it was a perfect summer day with rich, clean English light and a few solid, puffy clouds making shadows on the grass. We had to watch the grass carefully because of the cow pats they’re completely flat and when they dry, they get hard. But I didn’t want to step on a wet one.

  “I wish I had a turned-up nose,” I said.

  I had practiced what this would look like in the looking glass (it’s bad English to say “mirror”) while I was in bed, and I showed him. I put one finger on the skin between my nostrils and pushed so my nose turned up.

  “Like this.”

  He looked at me, seriously, obviously thinking about it.

  “I think you look really ugly like that,” he said.

  I was surprised, but pleased, too. The way he said it sounded like I didn’t look ugly when I didn’t do it. I could tell he really meant it.

  There was a cow lying down near us — a big fat one, white with brown splotches. We stood next to her and she didn’t move — she just let us stare at her.

  “Have you ever ridden a cow?” Mo said.

  “No, have you?”

  “Watch.”

  He walked even closer to the cow and I followed: Her back wasn’t flat like a horse’s. It had a big bone sticking out in a tall ridge that sloped down to her fat sides. He put his hands on her backbone and stretched one leg up, but when he tried to put it over the cow, she stood up and walked away. We followed her: As soon as she lay down, he tried to get on again, but she always stood up before he could do it.

 
“Let’s try to ride one of the horses,” I said.

  So we climbed the fence into the horse meadow. We were trying to sneak up on a Shetland pony named Frisky when Brioney came running out. She’s a pretty good rider (I watched the riding lessons but couldn’t ride because my riding clothes weren’t ready yet).

  Brioney said that Tuppence would be the best horse for us. “Miss Monkman always puts beginners on him.”

  I thought Frisky or one of the other Shetland ponies would be better, because they were smaller, but she said no, Tuppence was more “trusty.” Mo didn’t really want to ride a horse (he didn’t take riding lessons), and I really did, so we decided that Brioney would hold Tuppence while Mo helped me get on. It wasn’t hard to catch Tuppence: He didn’t even stop eating grass when Brioney took hold of his halter.

  I tried to grab his mane and swing myself up onto his back, the way cowboys do. But I couldn’t.

  “Give her a leg up, Mo,” Brioney said. I held the mane tightly in my left hand while Mo held his hands together under my knee and I tried to swing my other leg over, but Tuppence kept stepping aside.

  Then I held the mane with both hands and pulled up while Brioney and Mo both pushed and boosted until my stomach was on Tuppence’s back! I was on a horse!

  I slithered around until my whole body was sprawled on his back, but before I could sit all the way up, he flung his back into the air. (Horses do this by kicking both their back legs up at the same time so high that their back goes up. This is called bucking.) I hung onto the mane; my body bounced up and down.

  “Hang on! Get your leg over him!” Brioney shouted.

  I tried — I held the mane tightly with both hands and tried to pull myself up, but before I could Tuppence bucked again — I bounced up into the air and his mane jerked out of my hands and then the ground hit my stomach, hard. (I know that really I fell, but it seemed that the ground flew up at me and hit my stomach. I’ve fallen off plenty of horses since then, and that’s always how it feels; it was just more surprising the first time.)

  Brioney and Mo bent over me. Mo’s little round face looked even more worried than usual.

  “I’m okay,” I said when I could talk. “I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

  I sat up: I wasn’t bleeding anyplace. Brioney said, “We’ll help you get back on.”

  “Get back on? Are you mad?” said Mo.

  “But Miss Monkman says you should always get right back on after you fall off, she always makes us.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  All I could think while they argued (Mo won by just saying “NO” in a very firm voice) was: Finally, I’d ridden a real horse — not for very long, but I had ridden. And soon my riding clothes would come and I’d ride every day.

  Mo slept in a room by himself. Brioney and I sometimes used to sneak in to talk to him after we’d all been put to bed. Once when we went in, he was crying: We couldn’t see his face, but we could hear him and see his back shaking under the covers.

  Brioney and Tuppence: I took this picture, but not on the day in this chapter. It is in the same meadow, though.

  We stood in the doorway, waited a bit, and then I whispered, “Mo?”

  “Leave me alone!” I didn’t know what to do. “Go away!”

  I thought that probably he didn’t want us to see him crying. At Sibton Park (and in the school stories, too), people called crying “blubbing.” No one did it much.

  Brioney and I looked at each other again and then, without talking, went back to the Night Nursery and got in bed. I didn’t blame Mo at all for crying. He was only six years old! He was the only boy! He had to sleep in a room all by himself; we had each other.

  I wondered if other people were ever homesick. Sometimes when we were getting into our pajamas Brioney sat on her bed sobbing and shouting, “Ret! I want Ret!” and one of us would run upstairs and find her. Retina would put Brioney on her lap and cuddle her until she stopped crying. But she never said what she was crying about. Brioney was only seven: I didn’t blame her, either.

  But no one else “blubbed” — or if they did, they did it very privately. I never heard anyone use the word “homesick.” It was one of the things you weren’t supposed to talk about or even feel, maybe. No one talked about missing her family, either — in fact, I was the only person in the whole school who ever talked about her family at all.

  Chapter Nineteen:

  Bubby and Bubbité

  That started in French, which we had in a small, sunny room with a big round table.

  We sat around that with Mademoiselle: She was tiny, the tiniest grown-up I’d ever known, with huge, round green-gray eyes, freckles, and lots of dark hair on top of her head in a big, but neat, knot. She wore her skirts very long: Whether this was because she was so small she couldn’t find any that fit her properly, or whether she just liked them that way I don’t know.

  Maybe it was because she was so tiny, maybe it was because of her age (she was, we knew, only eighteen), but she didn’t seem grown up to me. Matron was only sixteen, and she DID seem grown up but then, she was big, very big.

  Everyone always obeyed Matron; hardly anyone obeyed Mademoiselle — once, when people were being very naughty (we were all actually running around the table, laughing), she started to cry.

  Then we sat down; I felt sorry. Mademoiselle was so little! Even her voice was little — little and high — and she didn’t speak English very well.

  I had French with Mo and the youngest children from IA: They were all-day girls and one of them was only FOUR! It was not very interesting, just lots of memorizing, until one day Mademoiselle (we pronounced it “Mamzelle”) said she thought we were ready to read a storybook. We were very excited; at least, I was.

  She brought out six books — one for each of us and one for her. They were all pale green with hard covers, not very thick, and called Les Lapins.

  “Who knows what is Lapin?” Mademoiselle said. I opened the book: There were pictures of rabbits — a mother, a father, and two children, all wearing human clothes.

  “The rabbits!” I said excitedly, and this was right.

  She told us all to open our books, and then she read the first page of the story out loud — in French, of course — and we listened and followed along in our books.

  The rabbits in the family were Monsieur Lapin, Madame Lapin, and their two children, Pierre and Bubbite (this was pronounced Boo-bee-tay).

  Then, she asked who could translate the first sentence into English, and we all looked at the words — and the pictures.

  “This is Mr. Lapin,” I said. “And this is Mrs. Lapin.”

  Mamzelle said, “Bon, Libby! But what is Lapin?”

  “Rabbit,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit.”

  (I knew that, but I thought it sounded better in French — less babyish. But I wanted to get to the next page in the story, so I didn’t argue.)

  “Bon. Mo, the next sentence, please?”

  Mo said, “They have two children, Pierre and Bubbité — Peter and … how shall I translate Bubbité?”

  Mamzelle seemed to be thinking.

  “Bubby!” I said.

  Mamzelle looked at me, puzzled.

  “My youngest sister’s name is Bubby! Can we translate it into Bubby?”

  One of the little girls said Bubby was a funny name, and Mo said, “I like the name Bubby.”

  I said, “It’s not her real name. We call her Bubby because when she was a baby she had really chubby cheeks, and we my sister Emmy and my brother Willy and I — used to put our fingers on her mouth —,” I put my fingers at the corners of my mouth, “— and push them together, like this. While we did it we used to say ‘Chub-a-bub-bub!’ So we just started calling her Bubby.”

  (This was the kind of conversation Miss Davenport would never have allowed, but with Mamzelle, we could do pretty much whatever we wanted.)

  Mamzelle — and everyone else — laughed; Mamzelle said in her excited French way, “Yes, yes, l
et’s call her Bubby!”

  We turned the page: It showed Madame Lapin cooking something, The Lapin family seemed to be very excitable — they were not at all English. Almost all of their conversation ended in exclamation points, no matter what they were talking about:

  “But what is this? The saucepan is missing! Pierre! Pierre!Where is the saucepan?” cries Madame Lapin.“I do not know, Maman!”“Monsieur Lapin! Where is the saucepan?”

  French was better once we started reading this book; and it was fun to translate Bubbité as Bubby. At home, I never really THOUGHT very much about Willy and Bubby — they were just kind of there, round, chubby things who were always giggling — but at Sibton Park, I did. It was odd to think that now Bubby was three and I hadn’t been there on her birthday, and of a family birthday party without me.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Sunday

  I knew they’d had a party because my mother told me about it in one of her letters. She wrote to me about twice a week, and I wrote to her every Sunday. After church, we all had to go to our form rooms and write letters to our parents; but I sometimes wrote letters at other times, too.

  Everything about Sunday was different from all the other days. We had sausages instead of bacon for breakfast: one big fat English sausage each on a piece of fried bread (fried bread sounds awful, but it’s delicious, especially with marmalade). Then we washed and put on our straw hats with the red ribbon, white gloves, and, if it was chilly, the gray wool uniform coats. We were already wearing our Sunday dresses.

  We gathered in a big square hall with a stone floor, as usual. But this Sunday, the seniors stood on one side and the juniors stood at the other, so the seniors could pick their partners for church.

  We had this new rule because the juniors fidgeted and whispered and giggled so much in church that Marza had decided that we (the juniors) had to be separated from each other.