Spelldown (6 page)

“They are swordtails. The one with the long pointed fin is the male. An interesting thing about swordtails is that they all start as females. Some of them develop into males at an early age and remain small and slender. Some go through the full female stage and then turn into males much later. They’re larger and thickset, like this one.” He points to the larger fish with the sword tail. “And see, here’s a female that remained a female.” He points to a fish with a regular tail. “Notice how she doesn’t have the fancy sword.”

I stare at the fishes, thinking about weird fish facts for a while, and then I ask Mr. Harrison, “Well, since they
all
start out as females
without
the sword fin, and only some of them turn into males
with
sword tails, why did they name them sword tails as if they
all
had sword tails?”

“Uh, I don’t know—that’s a very good question.”

“It’s probably because the ichthyologist who named them was a man,” I say.

Mr. Harrison cocks his head and wrinkles up his forehead
like he’s impressed with my vocabulary. “That sounds reasonable to me,” he says, taking a slender box of fish food from the shelf underneath. He hands it to me. “It’s feeding time. Just sprinkle a small amount.”

The aquarium is taller than I am, so I lift my arm and sprinkle a little bit into the tank, then move along slowly, sprinkling as I go, until I reach the other end. All the fish swim to the top and start gulping the shiny gold flakes. I hand the container back to Mr. Harrison. I like him very, very much.

The phone buzzes. “Excuse me for a minute, Karlene.”

I walk over to the tall window that has fancy gold drapes pulled to the side. I stare at the gargantuan mill, wondering how many red bricks it took to build it. I can’t get my bearings straight, but I think Weave Room No. 9 is on the other side of the mill. A vision of Mama’s face flashes in my mind from the day I visited her at work. “Now, where were we?” Mr. Harrison walks up beside me.

“Do you have a minute? I’d like to talk with you about something.”

He looks curious. “Fire away.”

“A couple of months ago, the weavers had to start working six days a week, and it’s causing some difficulties at home.”

“What kind of difficulties?”

“Well, sir, since my mother only has Sundays off, she doesn’t have time to be with me and my little brothers, or shop for groceries, or get her hair done. She barely has time to do any cooking or laundry. The overtime pay helps a lot,
but I was wondering if there’s a way Mama could have every other Saturday off. I worry about her being wound up all the time. The nerve situation in our family has always been kind of shaky.”

He looks at me with a calm, serious expression on his face. “I’m sorry that it’s creating a hardship for your family. I’ll look into it, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison, and please, please don’t mention this to my mother. She would be mortified.”

He reaches for my hands and holds them in his own. His palms feel nice and smooth. “Not a word, I promise.”

Mrs. Harrison waltzes back into the room. “We need to get going, Jelly Bean. Mrs. Cora’s having a fit with the kids.”

Mr. Harrison gives her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be home by seven.”

As we leave, Miss Sweden tells us to have a good weekend. She seems nice and efficient, but I sure wouldn’t want my husband to be around that much temptation every day.

1: of use in the healing of wounds

2: a medicine of this kind

The Harrisons and I are seated around the oval mahogany dining room table finishing up our meal of baked cod, green beans almondine, tossed salad, and homemade yeast rolls that Mrs. Cora prepared before she left. The sound track for
The Sound of Music
flows through the intercom speakers. It takes me back to the beginning of the movie when that wild Maria soars up the mountain, spins round and round, and belts out in her astonishing voice about the hills being
alive
.

When the album gets to the part where Rolfe sings to Liesl in the gazebo, Mr. Harrison stands up, looks lovingly across the table at Mrs. Harrison, and starts singing about how her life is an empty page that men will want to write all over. And then Mrs. Harrison rises, acting like a young Liesl in love. She smiles sweetly and sings that she is sixteen going on seventeen, innocent as a rose. They swirl toward each other, dancing and blushing and sighing like teenagers. Mr. Harrison takes her into his arms and gives her a slow, gentle kiss. The kids, Celia and James, pay them no attention, but I’m tingling like a xylophone that’s been struck a thousand
times. Except on TV and at the movies, I’ve never seen humans kiss close up like that.

“Jiminy Cricket, it’s seven thirty!” Mrs. Harrison says. “My bathtub is calling me.”

“I’ll clear the table.” Mr. Harrison stacks our plates and takes them to the dishwasher.

“The food was delicious,” I say. “Mrs. Cora sure knows how to cook.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Mrs. Harrison says.

“What’s for dessert?” Celia says.

“The ambrosia’s in the fridge, and you two need to help clean up.”

“How can I help?” I ask.

“I forbid you to help,” Mrs. Harrison says. “You need to bask in your victory. Go into the den, put on another record, and relax.” She gives me a little hug. “You got that, Ace?”

When Mrs. Harrison tiptoes back into the den in silk pajamas, the dishwasher is running, ambrosia is in our tummies, and all four of us are playing Chinese checkers. “Okay, you two, it’s time for bed.” She stands beside us with her arms crossed. “Right, honey?” she says to Mr. Harrison.

“Yes, it is.” He stands up and stretches. “Besides, Karlene is way ahead of the rest of us.”

“No, no, no!” The children grab him around the legs and try to pull him to the floor, but he roars and swings his head from side to side until Celia and James squeal and turn him loose.

“All aboard the King of Narnia,” Mr. Harrison says in a deep, gravelly voice. Then he drops to the floor and gets on all fours. Giggling, Celia hikes up her leg and tries to get on her daddy’s back. James helps by pushing on her fanny, then he gets on and sits behind her.

“Good night, Lucy.” Mrs. Harrison kisses Celia on the lips. “And you, too, Peter.” She kisses James on the forehead.

Mr. Harrison roars, as if to say, “What about me?”

“My dear King Aslan, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for taking these knuckleheads to Narnia all by yourself,” she says, caressing his face.

He roars again and carries the children away.

By eleven o’clock, I’m stretched out on a fluffy bed in the Harrisons’ guest room. I even have my own bathroom. The whole evening flew by like a perfect dream. My head is spinning from all the art books and children’s books strewn all over the place, plus all those cool magazines I’ve never read before, like
Harper’s, Vogue
, and the
Atlantic Monthly
. Celia and James are the happiest children I have ever met. I would be too if I lived in a gargantuan ranch house in Catawba Hills with a circular driveway, a two-car garage, wall-to-wall carpet, three bathrooms, volumes of leatherbound books, and a different colored phone in every room. And if my parents danced around the supper table, I’d pee in my pants with joy.

After the children went to sleep, I sat around the coffee
table with my pretend parents and sipped hot cider, then we stretched out on the Oriental rug and rested our heads on giant silky pillows. We talked and read for a while in front of the fire blazing in the stone fireplace. Mr. Harrison asked me intelligent questions about all kinds of things and listened to every word I said. When he asked me about books, I told him about Emerson’s book of essays and how I had just finished studying “Compensation.” He immediately closed his eyes and quoted the first line: “The wings of Time are black and white.” I couldn’t believe that he was a scholar, too. Then we had an uplifting discussion about the Transcendentalists, including Henry David Thoreau, Mr. Harrison’s favorite, and my own personal favorite, Mr. Emerson. Then we listened to
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
. I told them I adored Ringo because he was the funniest Beatle by a mile. Mr. Harrison loves Ringo too, because he used to be a drummer, but Mrs. Harrison likes John, because he’s the most avantgarde.

One thing for sure, if I lived with the Harrisons, I’d get real smart, real fast.

1: an act of regurgitating

2: the casting up of incompletely digested food

Billy Ray and I are alone sitting on a hill near the Great Falls Bridge. In the past twenty minutes, he’s given me a lifetime’s worth of information about hydroelectric power.

“Five hundred acres of Catawba River out there in that reservoir,” he says.

I squelch a yawn. “It’s a mighty big dam.”

“Yessirree, electricity is a miracle,” he says. “God is so generous, he allows us to turn water into fire.”

“Turning water into fire is pretty spectacular,” I say, aggravated that the subject has veered to God, which seems to happen every time we’re by ourselves. I’m glad I brought along my
L-Z
dictionary in case I got bored. I flip to the “Vv” chapter and scan the page until I find a righteous-sounding word. “Verily, verily, verily, I say unto you, Billy Ray Jenkins, doesn’t the Bible get on your nerves sometimes—with all those
woes, begats
, and
verilys
on every page?”

“I like them just fine.” Billy Ray shakes his head as if I’m an angel too dumb to fly.

“What about all those words with
-eth
suffixes, like killeth?” I ask.

“Killeth
sounds like it might not hurt as much as killing,” he says, trying to stop the smile about to break out on his face.

“Well, personally, I’m thrilleth we managed to ditcheth the twins back at the campsite so I didn’t have to killeth them,” I say.

His face crinkles up, and he laughs like he’s charmed to death. Billy Ray’s face is oval and his eyelashes are longer than mine. But lately he’s grown as tall and muscular as a college boy. “When’s the Shirley County Spelldown?” he says.

“Twenty-three and half days from now,” I say.

“Hand me that dictionary—let’s see if you’re ready.”

“No, wait.” I pull out my homemade bookmark. “Let me ask you a question first!”

He leans over. “What’s that?”

“It’s a chart I made after I estimated the number of entries for each chapter in the dictionary. That way, I can figure out my study schedule better.”

Billy Ray moves closer until his face is six inches from mine. “Don’t you have any other hobbies besides spelling?” His pale green eyes look into mine, then settle on my lips.

“Don’t you have any other hobbies besides Boy Scouts?” I look at the dictionary, but my heart’s flipping around like a catfish that’s just been caught.

He laughs. “Excuse me for asking!”

“Spelling is NOT a hobby, Billy Ray Jenkins. Spelling is the most important thing in my life. It keeps my brain working properly.”

“Then why don’t you pull a question out of that brain of yours and ask it?”

“Okay, genius, which chapter in the dictionary has the most words?”

Billy Ray pulls his little scouting notebook and pencil from his pocket. “Um, let me think.” He turns to a fresh page and scribbles out the letters of the alphabet. After a few seconds, he circles
T
and shows it to me.

“That is utterly incorrect,” I say, trying not to notice his pouty lips.

He looks at me kind of cocky and circles
B
.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” A spicy scent of cologne zooms up my nose.

“Come on, give me a hint—is it a consonant or a vowel?”

God in heaven. I want to lick that smell right off of him. “It’s a consonant.”

He circles
R
.

“Another good guess, but it’s dead-ass wrong.”

Billy Ray raises his eyebrow like Mama when she hears a cuss word. Then he consults his list of possible letters and finally circles
S
.

“Correcto, retardo! And for your information, the ‘Ss’ chapter has twice as many words as the ‘Aa’ chapter.”

“Come on, hand me the dictionary and I’ll call out some words,” he says.

“Not now.” I put the dictionary on the ground and stand up. “Let’s go to the bridge before the sun goes down.” I figure
putting a little distance between us might squelch the juicy Jezebel seething inside of me.

We wander up the hill into a patch of dried-up Queen Anne’s lace. One of the flowers is as big as my head and crumbles when I touch it. Billy Ray walks over to the trunk of a giant pine tree and scrutinizes the bark. I wish he’d hurry up and earn that damn nature merit badge. I walk over to where he is and look around on the ground.

He turns to me. “Why do you always go around humming ‘Kumbaya’?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not humming ‘Kumbaya’!”

“Yes, you are. You hum it all the time.”

“I do NOT,” I say. But Billy Ray is not a liar.

“Maybe you’re nervous about something.”

“What do I have to be nervous about?”

“Spelling?”

“Oh, no, I’m not nervous about spelling. I’m nervous when I don’t spell.”

“Do you know what
kumbaya
means?” he asks.

“It’s an African word, and it means ‘come by here.’”

“As in ‘Come by here, my Lord’?”

“Exactly,” I say.

“I like it when you hum. I think it’s cute,” he says.

“Whatever you say, Billy Ray.” I go back to looking around on the ground. “Kumbaya” swirls around in my larynx, but I don’t let it come out. I wonder if I only do the stupid humming around him.

After a while, he says, “What you looking for?”

“Ain’t nobody’s bidness but my own,” I say, determined to be mysterious.

“Come on, tell me. You looking for arrowheads?”

“No, Bark Boy, I am not looking for arrowheads.”

He holds out his magnifying glass. “Maybe this will help you find whatever in the world you
are
looking for?”