Freaky Fast Frankie Joe (6 page)

“Why did you say . . . ‘back here'?”

I shuffle into the kitchen behind Miss Peachcott—if you can call the room where I'm standing a kitchen. It's more like a mad scientist's laboratory. Beakers and funnels and test tubes take the place of mixing bowls and measuring spoons and baking pans. Jars and bottles of different-color powders and liquids clutter the countertops. Stacks of boxes in all the corners have pink labels marked
NOVA
stuck on their sides.

“Help yourself to a cookie,” she says, putting tubes
and jars into a pink sack. “I have to make deliveries after I finish up these orders. This one's for the widow, Mrs. Brown.”

She stops working to look at me. “There's one for the books. Woman was skinny as a beanpole before her husband died. Now he's passed over, she's fattened up like a pig.” She rolls the top down on the bag and picks up another one.

I open cupboard doors, looking for cookies. More Nova stuff.

She begins to put things into the second bag. “This order's for
Miz
Bloom, that divorcee that's tryin' to look half her age. Can always tell a divorcee because she refers to herself as
Miz
. Not even I can help that one—and I have helped many a woman look half her age.”

I open the refrigerator. No cookies.

“And this order's for that newlywed, Mrs. Barnes—pregnant already.”

Oven. I take a chance.

Woo-hoo
. I pull out a package of Oreos and help myself to two. Because the table and chairs are stacked with boxes, I stand in the middle of the floor.

“You said something before,” Miss Peachcott says, turning to look at me. “Did you ask a question?”

I swallow the last of the cookie in a gulp. “ ‘Back here,' ” I say, spewing crumbs across the room. “Outside there, you said something about me being ‘back here.' ”

“Oh, yes. You're supposed to tell me what you're doing back here again.”

“Well,” I say slowly, “I didn't know I was here before.”

Miss Peachcott's eyes go round. “You don't know that you were born here?”

“I was born in Clearview?” I feel
my
eyes go round.

In a blink, Miss Peachcott leaves off sacking up cosmetics and clears a space at the table.

“My goodness, child, I can't believe she never told you where you were born. Why, your daddy worried about you something awful after you left. Of course, I've known him since he was knee high to a grasshopper. His mama was one of my first customers—encouraged me to go into business on my own.” She pauses. “Maybe that's why FJ confided things like that to me. I was kind of a second mother to him.”

She pushes her glasses up on her nose and motions me to sit down. “Well, you see, it was this way. . . .”

“I suppose Martha Jane came by her jackrabbit ways natural enough,” Miss Peachcott says.

Martha Jane is Mom's name, only it's not what she wants to be called. “Marti doesn't sound so old-fashioned,” she once told me. “Know what I mean, kiddo?”

“And Mom was born here, too—like me?”

“Born and reared right here. Martha Jane Elliott.”
Miss Peachcott shoves the sack of cookies toward me. “Your grandparents worked at a dairy—did the milking, cleaned the milk house. Martha Jane had to help, too. Hard life. Have to milk twice a day, you know. Morning and night.” She hesitates. “And then both your grandparents got killed in an accident, right out there on the road into town. Hit by a grain truck. But I guess she told you that.”

I shake my head no. Mom never told me that. She never told me much of anything.

“Anyway, Martha Jane went to live with the only family she had left. Your aunt Geraldine—only she preferred to be called Gerry.”

Miss Peachcott goes
humph
.

I go
hmmm
, thinking about the way Mom changed her name to Marti.

“Geraldine was a wild sort,” Miss Peachcott continues. “Lived downtown in one of the upstairs apartments that looked out over the town square.” Her eyes twinkle. “Back then Clearview wasn't such a one-horse town. Fresh-air movies on the square in the summer. Even had a bowling alley and a baseball team! You like baseball?”

I hear the question, but my mind is on something else. “What do you mean, ‘wild sort'?”

“Irresponsible! Liked to go out partying. Dance and live it up. She worked odd jobs—waitressed here and there, barhopped at some of the taverns. Clearview
wasn't big enough for her; she was always chasing rainbows.” She pushes her glasses up on her nose and eyes me. “You know what that means? Chasing rainbows?”

“She, uh, she wanted to make it big?”

“Exactly. Well anyway, Geraldine took off with a man passing through town.” She shakes her head. “Never heard from her again.”

“She took off! But what about Mom?”

“Well,” she says, pausing. “Of course, Martha Jane was the impressionable sort. What high school girl isn't? She liked living with her aunt Geraldine, that's for sure. And she was just as eager to rid herself of this one-horse town. Anyway, after she was left high and dry, she was taken in by a widow lady. Good soul, but strict. The two didn't hit it off.”

She pauses again. “Then
you
happened. Don't know why Frank and Martha Jane didn't marry up, but I figure it was Martha Jane's idea to leave town. When she turned eighteen, she came into a little money—insurance settlement from her folks' accident. Said she was going to use it for a stake somewhere else.” She looks at me. “Don't know what she did with the money or where she ended up.”

“Mom bought us a house in Laredo . . . but she had to sell it.”

“In Texas? My, my. Well, all I know is, we never heard from her again.”

“Like Aunt Geraldine.”

“Just so.”

I don't know whether I feel better or worse.

Miss Peachcott straightens her back. “Now what are you doing back here, Frankie Joe Huckaby? And what's that jackrabbit mother of yours been up to all these years?”

I chew a cookie slowly, wondering what I should do. I like this little woman; she reminds me of my friends at the trailer park. But she cautioned me to keep my business close to my chest—and all she's done is talk about other people.

I think about the kids in the after-school program calling me “the big slow kid.” If word got out about Mom, would they call her names, too?

I can't let that happen.

“I'm just here temporarily,” I say, picking up my backpack. “Only a few months.”

“Stop right there, buster.” Miss Peachcott grabs me by the sleeve. “What's the rest of it? Now you look me in the eye and tell me what your mother's been up to down there in Texas all this time.”

I turn away from the woman who can look into a person's eyes and tell when he's lying. “Stuff,” I say as I push through the screen door. “Just . . . stuff.”

That's what my mouth says. But in my mind, I hear a voice say, “Chasing rainbows; she's been chasing rainbows.”

“How did your first day at school go, Frankie Joe?” Lizzie dishes me up a big plate of mashed potatoes and corned beef and cabbage.

“All right,” I say, ignoring the sputtering giggles coming from Matt. Following in his footsteps, Mark, Luke, and Little Johnny start giggling, too.

He's told them how dumb I am.

“So . . . you have any problems?” FJ looks at me, then eyes the other boys. They lower their heads and chow down like a herd of wild, dark-eyed pigs called
javelina
that live in the Chihuahua Desert.

I hate them all. Every last one of them.

“No sir,” I say, biting my tongue. “No problems.”

More sputtering from Matt.

“I got lots of homework,” I say as soon as supper is over. I get up from chair and head for the stairs.”

“Hold up,” FJ says, stopping me. “We have some unfinished business. Remember?”

I don't.

“Follow me,” he says. In the living room, he pulls a dictionary from the bookshelf. “Look up the word
responsibility
.”

I remember. In the principal's office that morning, FJ swore he would personally teach me about responsibility. I thumb through the dictionary as my mutant ninja posse troops into the room.

“Here it is,” I say, hoping he doesn't ask me to read it aloud.

“Good,” he says, checking the dictionary entry. “Now write it down.” He points me to his desk and fishes a pencil and index card out of a drawer. Huckabys numbers two, three, four, and five sit down on the sofa to watch.

What is this?

“Don't you boys have homework to do?” FJ asks, seeming to read my mind. In unison they shake their heads no. “Then go to your rooms and play games.”

“We got all our homework done,” Matt says, appointing himself spokesperson for the group. “We've earned the right to watch TV.”

“Later.” FJ points at the stairs. “Frankie Joe and I need some time alone. You'll have to find other things to do.”

Matt glares at me. The other Huckaby boys whine, but they go upstairs.

I write the definition down as FJ watches.

re-spon-si-bil-i-ty
\
noun
:
1:
the quality or state of being responsible: as
a:
moral, legal, or mental accountability
b:
RELIABILITY, TRUSTWORTHINESS
2:
something for which one is responsible:
BURDEN

Burden. You can say that again! I hand the completed card to FJ.

“Your penmanship could use some work, too,” he says, reading the definition. “I'll have Lizzie talk to Mrs. Bixby.”

Swell
.

“I want you to put this on the wall above your desk,” he says, handing me the index card, “and read it every day.”

Taking the card, I head for the stairs.

“I'm not finished,” FJ says. “I also expect a report every Sunday showing what you've done to satisfy that definition.”

“A report?”

“Homework counts . . . and your chores.” He takes a paper from his pocket. “On my lunch hour, I made out this chore schedule. Five boys, five days worth of chores. In addition to taking care of your own room and hauling down your laundry, there's helping with meals and cleaning up afterward. On weekends you'll be expected to help with outside work.” He hands me the list and nods toward the stairs. “Now get to that homework. Lights out at ten—house rule.”

Another rule. As I head upstairs with my definition and chore list, FJ stops me again.

What now—more rules?

“When you're done with your homework,” he says, “come on down and watch TV with the others.”

“Thanks, but I got a ton of it.” I can't think of anything I'd rather
not
do than spend the evening with the
legitimate Huckabys. I take the steps two at a time, for the first time in my life glad for homework.

Taping the definition and chore list to the wall above my desk, I spend the rest of the evening on English and Math, History and Science. I try to push the echo of the half brothers' sputtering giggles out of my head, but it stays there in the background.

At ten o'clock when I finally close the books and crawl into the squeaky old bed, I'm thinking just one thing.

Soon as I can, I'm gonna rid myself of this one-horse town . . . just like Mom did.

Lizzie walks into the kitchen as I'm getting ready to take out the trash—one of my chores today. Tonight I have to hand in my first Responsibility Report.

Since I know how to multiply by four, I figure how many reports I have to do in the ten months I'll be there. Four weeks in a month times ten months—

Forty reports!

I look over the list of chores and homework. One more chore will fill out a full page of notebook paper. I'm determined to fill in that last line, and this chore will do it.

“My, aren't you the busy one,” Lizzie says, smiling her big smile. She's barely hung up her jacket when there's a knock on the door.

I'm slow recognizing the munchkin in the Girl Scout uniform that she invites inside. Mandy. A miserable-looking Mandy.

“
Puh-leeze
, Mrs. Huckaby,” she says. “
Puh-leeze
buy
a box of cookies from me. I'll do anything for you if you do.” She looks around the kitchen. “I'll sweep the floor . . . or wash the dishes or”—she jerks the trash bag out of my hand—“I'll take out the trash.”

“No way!” I take the trash bag away from Mandy. She's not about to cheat me out of a full page.

When she reaches for it again, I hold it over her head. She jumps for it like she's on a trampoline.

“Stop it, you two.” Lizzie places her hands on her hips, frowning, and then turns to Mandy. “Of course, I'll buy a box, Mandy. Now why the long face?”

Mandy collapses onto a kitchen chair. “Oh thank you thank you, Mrs. Huckaby.” She hands Lizzie the order form for cookies. “What's wrong is I wasn't born an only child. Do you know how hard it is to sell cookies when you have two older sisters who are Girl Scouts, too? My sisters have regular customers who buy from them every year. The youngest kid in the family doesn't stand a chance!”

Lizzie hands me the cookie list. “Pick out something, Frankie Joe.
Two
somethings.”

All right
. A list to look at that doesn't involve work. I sit down at the table next to Mandy.

Lizzie pulls some sodas out of the refrigerator and sits down at the table across from us. “You're preaching to the choir, Mandy.” She pushes the sodas toward Mandy and me. “I was the youngest child in my family—and it was a family of seven!”