The Daring Escape of Beatrice and Peabody (22 page)

Miss Healy wants to know all about the meeting when I get back to class. She brings me over to the rocking chair, where we can talk privately.

‘There has been some speculation here that you may be living in some unusual circumstances. Is there any truth to what I am hearing?’

She takes my hand and squeezes it. She looks at me kindly. I know she wants the best for me.

‘My aunts love me very much,’ I tell her. ‘I am fine.’

Miss Healy nods. I go over to our table and Susan wraps her arms around me. I let her hug me, and then when I get myself untangled I look at the arithmetic paper in front of me. The numbers swim around like they don’t know where they belong. I rub my eyes. My stomach rumbles.

After a while, Miss Healy comes over and kneels beside me. ‘Why don’t you go out and sit under that tree, Beatrice, and work on your basket for a while. When you get some of those loose ends all woven together, you can come back in and make another start.’ She hands me a piece of banana bread. ‘You might be hungry.’

I think maybe she is right about things. I put on my
coat and go out and sit in the sun and wonder about how sometimes things fall apart and how sometimes, if you work on it, they get put back together. And then I set the basket in my lap and begin weaving, stopping every so often for another bite of banana bread.

At supper that night I tell Mrs Potter and Mrs Swift about the meeting and about what Miss Healy asked about them. They have not touched the molasses cake I put on the table.

Mrs Swift looks over at Mrs Potter and clears her throat, a thin, fleeting sound, and Mrs Potter turns to me. ‘I think, dear, it is time to get Pauline.’

Maybe so, I think, my heart breaking all over again as I try to block out the last time I saw her, when Arthur was pulling her away.

The next afternoon while we are sitting around Ruth Ellen’s table eating spice cake, her mama wants to know if I would like to learn how to make shepherd’s pie.

My mouth is so stuffed I have to wait a minute to answer, but I nod right away and I think she gets the idea. ‘Peabody would love it,’ I say.

While we are browning the hamburger, Ruth Ellen takes Sammy out for some fresh air so Ruth Ellen’s mama can help me cook. She has been telling me it is very relaxing to be chopping and measuring and sautéing and mixing. ‘It is nice to keep your mind concentrated on something and not on your troubles.’

Yes, I know all about needing to do that, I tell her while I am watching her mince garlic. I wonder if she chops and minces to help her forget they haven’t heard from Ruth Ellen’s papa in so long. She hands me another clove and shows me how to smash it with the side of the knife so the skin falls off. Then she shows me how to chop it into a fine mince. ‘You kind of roll the knife, see?’

Then we chop onions. I am very good at this and I show her how I do it.

‘Why, that’s the best onion dice I’ve ever seen!’ Ruth Ellen’s mama starts giggling because she knows how much experience I’ve had with chopping onions.

It is relaxing to be cooking with Ruth Ellen’s mama. I forget all about the meeting in the principal’s office and start daydreaming about how I would like to bake a birthday cake for myself with real sugar and real buttercream frosting. I do like buttercream very much.

‘You can take half of this shepherd’s pie home to your aunts for supper. Do you think they will like it?’ Ruth Ellen’s mama is hunting through the cabinet for a big enough pan to bake everything in.

I think so. I tell her all about how they don’t eat much and I am quite worried about them.

‘Tell me more about your aunts, Bee. I haven’t gotten to meet them yet.’

I chop celery and think about how to describe Mrs Potter and Mrs Swift. ‘Well, they are awfully aggravating sometimes because they do not let anyone get to meet them. They do not like Mrs Marsh at all.’

‘No,’ agrees Ruth Ellen’s mama. ‘I can see why.’

She giggles and then I do, too. I reach for another stalk of celery. She peels and washes six potatoes and hands them to me. ‘We need these in small bite-sized pieces.’

She starts peeling and chopping carrots. ‘Bee, your aunts are really real and you’re not just making them up so you can have a place to live? Because you know you
could live with us any time you want.’

I look at her and my eyes start filling up and I do not know if it is the onions or the kindness she just said.

‘They are real,’ I tell her. ‘Peabody loves them, too.’

‘Well,’ she says slowly, ‘I guess you cannot fool a dog.’ And then Ruth Ellen’s mama, being the way she is, so good about children and what they feel and what they have to say, says she believes me.

But she tells me that perhaps it is time to go get Pauline.

‘Funny,’ I say. ‘That’s just what my aunts said.’

We have to wait for spring. Even a stay-put show like the one Ellis set up in Poughkeepsie has to close for winter.

I use the time to write to the
Billboard
and get a subscription. Bobby told me he won’t try and find me until the war is over and he is done building bombers but I want to be ready. So I stuff some money in an envelope and carefully write the address on the front and mail it, hoping I have done everything right.

One day in late February, the postman drops my first copy of the
Billboard
in our mailbox. Without even telling Mrs Potter or Mrs Swift, I grab it and race up to my room and stretch out on my bed, with Peabody beside me. There is a picture of Lawrence Welk on the cover and a ‘Gone to War’ ad from Wurlitzer on the back. It seems all the people who make pianos, accordions and phonographs have stopped making music and are now working on the war effort until we get our victory. ‘Work faster,’ I whisper.

I flip open the pages and look around for an advertisement that says ‘Anyone knowing whereabouts of Robert Benson’. I look at each inch of print. A travelling show in Norfolk is looking for a tattooed man and a
carnival in Little Rock wants someone to run a penny pitch and a fun house. A show in Baton Rouge will pay a merry-go-round foreman twenty-five dollars a week.

There’s a ‘Hotzi Notzi’ pincushion for sale where you get to stick your sewing pins in Hitler’s behind, and a story about greeting cards being a big seller during wartime, especially Valentine’s Day cards. There are money belts and boxes of paper shamrocks for sale and oodles of fortune-telling cards. I search through the entire issue twice, but there is no mention of Robert Benson. Peabody is wondering if I am going to look through everything again. No, I am not, I tell him, tucking the magazine under my pillow. Reading the whole thing again won’t make me feel any better, but I know what will.

‘Come on,’ I say, and we go take the compost bucket full of scraps out to Cordelia. I have never known anyone who loves getting their back scratched as much as my pig does, so while she is rooting around the apple peels and the squash seeds and the stale bits of bread stuck in the snow, I spend a good long while getting all the spots itched that need itching. She is getting so huge she doesn’t want to run any more. I don’t care too much. I love her anyway.

Every so often she looks back at me to let me know I am doing everything just right.

One day when the lilacs are blooming outside Ruth Ellen’s front door and there are baby chicks in her chicken shed peep-peeping and the barn swallows are back for another year, I know it is time to find Pauline.

Ruth Ellen’s mama has planted early peas in the victory garden, and honeybees found the apple blossoms. Everything is reaching and stretching and growing, even Peabody. He is no longer a bag of bones and he has decided he likes napping with Ruth Ellen’s cat more than chasing her, at least when the sun is shining.

We are all sitting around Ruth Ellen’s kitchen table eating fried donuts and making our plan. I tell them how Ellis sent Pauline to his show in Poughkeepsie and she should be there now.

‘But I thought you moved around all the time?’ says Ruth Ellen. She is trying to find Poughkeepsie on the map.

‘Our show moved. But Ellis was trying to keep the Poughkeepsie carnival in one place during show season – hire more singers and a flying trapeze and chimps and stuff like that – to attract more folks. That way he
wouldn’t have to worry about getting enough gasoline.’

We look at how to get to New York. ‘Poughkeepsie is big,’ says Ruth Ellen, bending closer to the map.

‘Yes,’ I say, knowing all about cities, because I think I have maybe seen the world.

On Saturday they pick me up in Ruth Ellen’s automobile. We hope that with their gas ration stamps and my leather envelope, we will be able to get to Poughkeepsie. Ruth Ellen’s mama has packed a picnic basket with peanut butter sandwiches and lemon squares. I think that is a nice touch. Pauline loves lemon squares.

Mrs Potter and Mrs Swift are half hidden behind the curtain. Mrs Potter promised to give Cordelia plenty of corn and now she is holding Peabody up for me to see. I wave to them and hope everything will be just the same when I get back. I choke back tears and stare out the window until we turn a corner and the house disappears.

I do not tell anybody that Ellis keeps snakes under his hat. I don’t tell them about the smell of Beech-Nut on his breath, or the way he creeps up on you so quiet your heart freezes solid. If I told them, we would never get Pauline.

My legs are already wobbling and all I’m doing is sitting in the backseat of this green automobile between Ruth Ellen, who is reading
Heidi
, and Sammy, who has his
Captain America
comic book on his lap. I make myself breathe in and out, in and out, just like Pauline taught me. I am better at breathing now that I am better at running. I look out the window at all the houses and all the little victory gardens getting cleaned up and ready for another planting season.

We have to pass the road that leads to the cemetery and Francine’s house and I wonder if I will have to battle her again. I know Ellis is not the only wolf in the forest.

I breathe in and out, in and out, and just thinking about Ellis makes the warning light inside me go on and off, on and off.

The thing about travelling shows is you hear ‘The Farmer in the Dell’ long before you see the rides. I have a headache before I get three feet out of the car.

‘Woweeee,’ says Sammy.

‘This is it?’ says Ruth Ellen, skip-hopping through the gate. ‘You lived at one of these?’

The warning light is going on and off inside me and it feels like I have a pound of butter stuck in my chest.

I nod and have to clear my throat over and over before I can get anything out. ‘See that long line of hauling trucks down there? Pauline and I lived in the back of one of those.’

‘Woweeee,’ says Sammy again. ‘Can we go on that?’ He is pointing to the Ridee-O.

‘No,’ says Ruth Ellen’s mama, watching the wheel spin and the folks scream, and we see a different Theodore the Cripple getting looked at and some other Silas Meany keeps his eye on the ground in case any wallets go flying. I wonder about LaVerne, Big Ben and Vivian and what happened to them.

I pull my hair tight over my face. Ruth Ellen’s mama notices. She does not know Ellis.

The first surprise is that Eldora is working the hot dog cart. She is chopping onions under a sign that says RATIONING = 1 HOT DOG A PERSON. EAT ALL THE POPCORN YOU WANT.

‘Well, me oh my, is that you, little Bee? We were wondering whatever happened to you.’ She throws down the knife and rushes out from under the tarp and gives me a big sloppy kiss and hugs me very close to her big self. I breathe an ocean of perfume. She brushes at my hair with her fingers because she was always jealous of my curls. I have to pull my hair tight over my diamond.

‘Has Ellis seen you yet? He was madder than an old dog that you ran off like that. He looked for you, too.’

My knees shake and my legs wobble. I do not know if I have it in me to face Ellis again. I keep watching over my shoulder because I know wolves sneak up when you are not looking.

Eldora notices Ruth Ellen and her mama and Sammy. ‘You bringing her back?’ she asks her mama.

‘No.’ I say it sharp because I do not want Eldora to get the wrong idea about me taking over the hot dog cart again.

‘Too bad,’ says Eldora, going back so she can turn the hot dogs. ‘I’m getting mighty tired of this, but Ellis didn’t think fortune-telling was making us enough money. My predictions kept going wrong. It’s hard to predict the future during a war, you know.’

I do not have time for this. ‘I need to find Pauline. Do
you know where she is?’

Eldora laughs softly. ‘Well, I’ll be. You haven’t seen her yet? She’s resting in that last truck back there. Holy cow, won’t you be surprised when you see her.’

Resting? In the middle of the day? That doesn’t sound like Pauline. ‘Why isn’t she running the hot dog cart?’

‘Go see for yourself.’ A line is forming, and I have to keep pulling on my hair and turning away because one mama and her two boys keep trying to have themselves a look.

Eldora goes back and turns her hot dogs. I look over at the hauling truck. And then before you can say Jack Sprat, I am running toward the truck and rushing up the ladder and climbing in the back of the truck and there is Pauline, just getting up from a nap, her hair all uncombed and flying all over the place, and then I am jumping in her arms. Only there’s not as much room as before on account of her belly being the size of a watermelon.

‘Bee?’ She whispers it in my ear like maybe she has forgotten what I look like. ‘Bee?’ And then she is crying and holding me, saying, ‘Oh, Bee, I didn’t know how I would ever find you. Ellis said you left, and I thought I lost you forever.’

And then the tears are rolling down my cheeks and I am home because she is wrapping her arms around me and we are together. The fit is not quite right, though, because of her belly, and I stand back and look at the size of it. Pauline looks at the floor of the truck. ‘I’m going to
have a baby, Bee,’ she whispers.

There is a bruise on Pauline’s cheek, dark as a rose at dusk. I reach up to touch it, but she winces and turns her head away.

‘He left me, Bee.’ She reaches for me and sobs against my shoulder and I brace myself so I can steady her. There is another bruise on her arm and she is very thin in all the places where there is no baby growing. I hold her tighter, feel her shaking. I rub her back and say many soft things in her ear. I know all about being left.

‘You were right, Bee,’ says Pauline, hugging me so tight again that I can hardly breathe. ‘Arthur said he was going to marry me. But he never did.’

I want to say, I told you, you silly, but I don’t. I look back at Ruth Ellen and her mama and Sammy. They have moved closer to peek inside. They are careful not to interrupt.

‘The baby’s coming in June. Ellis isn’t going to keep me on, not with a baby. It’s not been a good year for him at all.’

‘Oh,’ I say, glad things aren’t going so well for Ellis.

‘Did you come back to stay, Bee?’ Pauline is looking all worn out. She drops onto the mattress, even with Ruth Ellen and everyone watching.

‘No, Pauline,’ I say, going over and sitting beside her, wondering how long it will take us to pack up her things. ‘I came to bring you home.’