Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

  Emmy and I ran up to Kenny’s, where his mother was gardening. She hugged us and cried, and said, “I always knew you’d come back like this!” And when Peg and Pat and Kenny came home from school, they were as happy to see Emmy and me as we were to see them. We stayed up long after dinner, talking, in the Tampones’ front yard — the summer night sounds were just as I’d remembered them: the little insects, the leaves swishing whenever there was a wind, and, later, a baseball game on TV or the radio. …

  The sky was dark enough to show lots of white stars when Mrs. Tampone said it was bedtime, and when everyone said oh no, not yet, she smiled down at us and said, as though she was really glad, too:

  “Libby and Emmy are home for good now. You’ll see each other tomorrow.”

  And we did: We walked to school together just as usual, except that there was lots more to tell each other.

  And just as usual, we separated as soon as we got to the Big Rock. On the playground people from my class came running over, waving and shouting until almost everyone in the class was crowded around me — everyone but Henry.

  I kept looking around for him, but he wasn’t there.

  All the girls talked at once, telling the news and commenting on my English clothes (I was wearing my Sibton Park white-and-blue-striped summer dress) and my English accent (I tried not to have one but I couldn’t help it, it was just how I talked).

  One of the boys said, looking a little puzzled, “All the girls have been going around telling the teacher: ‘A tomboy’s coming into the class.’ But you seem like a girl now.”

  In the classroom, I looked again for Henry. Could he be absent?

  The room was like the old one: big, with the same kind of desks and blackboards and bookshelves and windows. Even the pencil sharpener was in the same corner, at the edge of the windows!

  And the teacher seemed nice. She said, “So you’re the famous Libby! I’ve heard so much about you!” The way she said that, and smiled, made her seem very warm-hearted. All the grown-ups I’d seen so far seemed warm-hearted, in fact. Kenny’s mother had cried and hugged us! “I’m Mrs. Sullivan.”

  She showed me which desk was mine and then we all put our right hands over our hearts and said the Pledge of Allegiance:

  I pledge allegiance

  to the flag

  of the United States of America.

  And to the Republic

  for which it stands,

  one nation,

  under God,

  indivisible,

  with liberty and justice for all.

  Of course, I remembered the words — all of them. And I believed in them even more than I had before. Then we sang:

  My country ’tis of thee,

  Sweet land of liberty,

  of thee I sing.

  Land where my fathers died,

  Land of the pilgrims’ pride,

  From every mountain side:

  Let freedom ring!

  Freedom! It wasn’t just a word in a song; I really did feel freer here, in America: freer to feel my feelings, freer to say what I was thinking.

  Just as we were pulling out our chairs, I saw Henry standing in the doorway, and he saw me. We didn’t say anything (out loud), but his whole face said how glad to see me he was. I really, really like Henry.

  We did signal whenever he turned around in his seat, which he did quite a lot.

  Mrs. Sullivan shook her head, just a little; but she didn’t tell us not to. Still, I tried to listen to her properly — and after a while, I did.

  She asked who had finished their “reports on transportation.” Hardly anyone raised their hands, only Henry and a few girls, and Mrs. Sullivan said she’d collect them after lunch. So I could do one at lunch and recess! I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. I wanted to do well, especially on my first day, especially at writing.

  When it was time for recess Henry ran over, talking. “I saw you start to stand at attention when Miss Kelly came in. You had to do that in England when a teacher walked into the room, didn’t you?” he said with a big smile. “And you have an English accent!”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s odd. I’m not English, but — I don’t feel all the way American anymore, either.”

  He nodded, and frowned down at the ground, thinking.

  “Maybe you will when you’ve been back for a while.”

  “Maybe,” I said, not really believing it.

  But I was still glad I’d told him.

  “I know!” he said. “We can have an Iroquois re-initiation ceremony!”

  “Like when we became blood brothers! Remember?”

  He just smiled: of course, he remembered.

  “And this will be even better,” he said. “Now I know what they did in the real ceremonies. I even have some real arrowheads.”

  “We could use them in the ceremony — before the oath!” I said. “But let’s make up our own oath.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  We laughed – it wasn’t that funny, we were just happy. We talked until he went out for recess. (Now that we were older, Henry said, we didn’t line up: people just went — or stayed in.) He turned around at the door and I looked up from sharpening my pencil at exactly the same time.

  “Remember that china barrel?” I said. “You were right. Not one thing in it was broken.”

  “That’s good,” Henry said; he knew what a relief that was, I could tell.

  The wildflower breakfast set, not broken.

  I got some paper — nice big American paper — from the pile, and decided to write about riding horses! I’d start with the Romans — they invented saddles with stirrups to use in their wars in England and other places. I could describe what it felt like to canter, too.

  I looked down at the paper on my desk (bright white paper, blue lines) and then around the classroom. The tall windows that went almost up to the ceiling were the same as the ones in our old classroom, but I’d never liked how MUCH sky you could see (it was too blank). Now I did like that blank bright blue sky. It was filled with light and wide open to anything.

  I felt like that, too, and bursting with energy. English or American, both or neither: I was back. I shook the hair out of my face (like a horse shaking its head before it stretches its neck!), stretched my neck, and started to write.

  The End

  Epilogue

  I never saw any of the kids again (I knew I wouldn’t, that was partly why it was so hard to say good-bye); but later, I went back to Sibton Park and saw Marza.

  Her hair was white, not gray; but other than that, she was the same. I thanked her as well as I could for what she and Sibton Park had shown me and taught me and meant to me, and she said (she was always so polite), “You make it all seem worthwhile.”

  Marza as she looked the last time I saw her. I didn’t think to take a picture: the photograph is from the school newspaper.

  I went into the Night Nursery, and our study, and the passage where we lined up for meals. The macs and Wellingtons looked just the same; and so did the floor, where all those feet over the years had worn down the bricks. But the walls were different: they were covered with framed photographs, including one of the whole school my first term there.

  It wasn’t faded or blurry, the images were sharp and clear, the paper glossy white. Maybe it was the pose (everyone so straight), or the composition (exactly centered), or maybe just an old lens or paper or process that produced perfectly focused, fine-grained pictures, with glossy whites and gleaming blacks and grays. But obviously, the photograph was from the past, and as clearly focused as a view through a telescope.

  We were in the Lower Garden, where we had stories in summer, wearing our striped summer dresses. We were in three rows: the littlest children cross-legged on the grass, the middle ones in chairs behind them, the biggest ones standing up behind them. Everyone sat, or stood, very straight, with her hands neatly folded in her lap, smiling politely — everyone except one child in the front row. That child was sprawle
d on the grass, chin up, staring into the camera, not exactly smiling, but not sad, either — confident, even defiant, ready for anything: “Go ahead — just try and make me do it.” She looked as if she’d be glad to fight anyone who tried to make her do anything, but was pretty sure no one would try. I thought she looked spunky and very American. That was me, when I first went to Sibton Park, before I learned to think about other people and care what they thought about me.

  Temper

  “Blow out the light,” they said, they said,

  (She’d got to the very last page);

  “Blow out the light,” they said, they said,

  “It’s dreadfully wicked to read in bed!”

  Her eyes grew black and her face got red

  And she blew in a terrible rage.

  She put out the moon, she did, she did,

  So frightfully hard she blew,

  She put out the moon, she did, she did …

  — Rose Fyleman

  To anyone who has read this book:

  Most grown-ups, especially my friends’ mothers, liked me better after England, when I’d become politer; but it was fun to do the kinds of things my friends and I did before that happened. If you’d like to read more about them, go to my Web site, ifyoulovetoread.com. There are chapters that aren’t in this book, color versions of the pictures that are, my favorite fairy tales, and letters from readers.

  If you would like to make a comment about the book or tell me something about you, please write to me:

  Libby@ifyoulovetoread.com

  I’ll write back — unless I become so famous that I get hundreds of letters a week. But I doubt that I’ll ever be that famous, even if Marza turns out to be right about my becoming a “well-known writer.”

  Thank you for reading my book.

  Your friend,

  Libby Koponen