The Wonder of Charlie Anne (11 page)

I look over at Ivy. She is watching me, one eyebrow raised high. “What’s the matter, Charlie
Aaaa-aaaanne?”

“Read this,” I say, putting the letter in front of her.

“Why don’t you, Charlie Anne? Can’t you read or something?”

Ivy knows very well I can’t read like she does. She knows what Miss Moran made me do. Mirabel looks over. My face is burning.

“You really can’t read at all?” Mirabel asks as she scrubs Birdie’s back. “I thought you were just fooling on us because you didn’t like to read.”

“I can read. I just have to make the pies. You give me so many chores all the time, I don’t have time to practice.” I pull the flour off the shelf.

Ivy is happier than I have seen her in a long while. “Does Mirabel know why Miss Moran made you stand in her trash bucket, Charlie Anne?”

That’s it. I throw down the flour scoop, sending a
cloud of flour all over me and the table, and some of it even reaches Mirabel where she is trying to get the dirt off Birdie’s neck. I rush at Ivy just as Mirabel starts sneezing, and I grab at Ivy’s pinned curls. Ivy screams and Birdie jumps up and spills half the water all over Mirabel and all over the floor.

I don’t wait to be yelled at. I run out the door and out to the butternut tree where Anna May and Belle are resting in the shade, and they want to know what was I doing in that hot kitchen when I could be so much happier sitting out here with them in the shade, watching the buttercups moving in the breeze. When I get myself settled, with my back lying all up next to Anna May and my eyes feeling all happy to be filled up with the sight of my beautiful Brown Swiss Belle, that’s when the two of them tell me how very sorry they are that I am having enough troubles to fill a wheelbarrow.

“Who wants to read anyway?” I tell them.

The next morning is Sunday and Mirabel keeps checking Peter: behind his ears, his fingernails, his elbows. She gets her own comb and wets it in her coffee and slicks his hair into place. He bellows as loud as Anna May and Belle put together. Then she finishes letting out his pants, and when he puts them on, they are still so short he looks like the scarecrow Papa made to watch over his corn.

Then it is time for us to all go to church. We walk right past Old Mr. Jolly’s house and Rosalyn’s bright yellow new door. I look for Phoebe but there’s no sign of her. Ivy is wearing the shoes she wore to Mama’s funeral and she hobbles up the hill, they are so small. I am wearing Thomas’s old muck boots, which I scrubbed so they don’t smell and I stuffed with rags so my feet fit, and I’m not hobbling at all.

We have to walk right past the Thatchers’ house, and the oldest Thatcher boy is up in a tree waiting for all the people walking to church. He throws an apple and it hits me in the arm.

“Ouch!” I scream, and I go right over and start giving him a piece of my mind, how he is a snake and will
always be a snake, but Mirabel takes one look at the condition of their yard, at the dogs barking and the clothesline creaking around and the paint all falling off the house, and she pulls me away.

When we get to Becky’s house, Ivy pats at her curls to make sure they are sticking in place and she tries not to hobble and I think some more about how they deserve each other and then we are at church.

I put my pie on the table under the maple tree where everyone brings something to share. It is being neighborly is what we call it.

Then I go inside and tell Peter to shove over so I can sit between him and Birdie. “Even more,” I tell him, because I am mighty sick of him rolling on top of me all night long. I ask Birdie where is her lemon drop, and she unrolls her balled-up hand, and I see where her skin is sticky and the lemon drop is sitting, getting thinner every day.

“Do you want a lick?”

I shake my head, and she pops it into her mouth for a minute, then spits it out into her hand and folds her fingers around it. Birdie did not want to wear her funeral dress, either, because she thinks that when she wears it, someone else will die. I take her other hand in mine and hold it and miss Mama.

We are early and so Mirabel gets to nod to the ladies
who walk in. She likes this. She is wearing her hat with gray and white feathers and a little veil that comes down on her forehead, and I cannot figure out who looks more like a mockingbird: Mirabel, or the real one that keeps flying past the Jesus picture in our stained-glass window.

The Morrell girls walk in alone, because their mother sends them without her. They are barefooted. Papa told me he thinks she is too ashamed of not having shoes.

“Why?” I asked. “That makes no sense to send them alone.”

He shrugged. “Some things are just too much, that’s all.”

I told him I didn’t see how listening to this preacher talk about the things he always talks about, how we are all terrible sinners and all, is going to do the Morrell girls or anyone else any good.

Papa laughed that day, his deep belly laugh, and he reached over and hugged me. I sigh. I miss Papa very much.

As I am thinking about Papa, Becky Ellis walks in with her mother, and they sit in their fancy pew up front, the one they donate extra money for, and Ivy places her foot right at the edge of the aisle so Becky will notice that she is wearing her fancy shoes.

Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich come in next. They are all
gray and bent over, and they can’t see very well, but they always have a nice pudding cake to snack on if you ever skin your knees when you are running past their house, and they bring nice casseroles when your mama dies. Mr. Aldrich smells like nutmeg from all the baking his wife does, and Mrs. Aldrich comes right up and tousles my hair and rubs her cheek against my face, and I can smell the lavender water she washes with.

“Make sure you sing so I can hear you,” says Mr. Aldrich, winking at me, and that’s because I like to sing “Amazing Grace” very loud. We sing it every week.

After that, in comes Zella Polanski and her family, all pressed and polished, and then Mrs. Reilly, who I bet is wearing chicken feathers on her hat, and then Evangeline. When the church is full, there are very few men, on account of so many of them have gone up north to build roads, all except for Zella’s husband and Mr. Aldrich, who are too old, and the preacher, who keeps preaching so we will one day see the light.

Then the door swings open again and in walk Rosalyn and Old Mr. Jolly and Phoebe. There is a whole lot of silence as everyone stares, because having somebody new in church doesn’t happen every day and Rosalyn’s hair is billowing all around her. Also, I don’t think we ever had a colored girl in church before.

Old Mr. Jolly stands at the back of the church for a moment, looking like he just swallowed a pile of bad
meat, and Rosalyn grabs on to Phoebe’s hand and motions with her head that they should hurry and sit down.
Please.

Old Mr. Jolly leads the way and then the whispering starts.

“So that’s who he married.”

“She’s too young for him.”

“And what are they doing bringing their maid and letting her sit with them up front like that?”

The preacher takes a good long look at Old Mr. Jolly, like he’s cussing him out for being late, and then he clears his throat and begins.

You are not supposed to make people feel worse during a funeral, but that is what the preacher did at Mama’s. Papa put his lips into that thin line and stopped taking us to church, even though Mama wanted us to be church-raised and all. Papa said we would let the angels guide us after that. I told him I already stopped praying after Mama had so many babies, and then went straight to heaven, and he said I did not need to worry, that angels watch over us no matter if we are mad about things or not. God is very good like that.

The preacher clears his throat, and that is my signal to look out the window and think about other things. I wonder if Phoebe is going to hate this as much as me.

Old Mr. Jolly must have told Rosalyn about how after church there is a picnic outside, because when I come out from church, she and Phoebe are already standing behind the table, taking the cover off their sharing plate.

I am stuck behind everyone, all standing and gabbing and whispering, and Zella, right in front of me, is saying to Mrs. Reilly, “She should pin her hair up or something,” and Mrs. Ellis says, “Maybe he made a mistake, marrying a woman from the South, don’t you think? They are funny down there.”

“He’s not much to look at, either; maybe she’s all he could find,” Zella says, laughing.

I think they sound just like Minnie and Olympia and Bea. I am trying so hard to listen to them that I do not notice what Rosalyn and Phoebe brought for sharing until I get almost right up to them.

Well. Somebody must have forgot to tell them that these are hard times and that we all bring things like vinegar pie and biscuits and jam from all the blackberries that grow around here. But no one did, because sitting on their plate are the most glorious cupcakes I have ever seen. They are chocolate with chocolate
frosting so thick it looks like dark butter, just ready to be licked, and on top of each one is a little purple violet, looking up and smiling at everyone. I bet even Jesus himself is smiling, hallelujah.

“Well, will you look at those,” Mrs. Ellis says, and she stops and stares for a minute, and then she skips right over them and takes one of her own sour lemon squares. When Becky reaches for a cupcake, Mrs. Ellis pushes her hand away.

“Who does she think she is?” asks Zella. “What’s she doing, trying to outdo us all?”

“Somebody ought to tell her pride is a sin,” laughs Mrs. Reilly.

“No thank you,” Zella says with her best manners when Phoebe holds a cupcake out for her.

“No, dear,” says Mrs. Reilly when it is her turn.

I notice Phoebe slump just a little. It turns out that several people hurry past Rosalyn and Phoebe’s cupcakes and go right to Mirabel, who is cutting pieces of my vinegar pie, pretending it is hers.

A big long shadow moves over Rosalyn. Phoebe is about to cry. I keep trying to catch Phoebe’s eye, but she is too busy trying to give her cupcakes away.

Then the little Morrell girls go up and take cupcakes from Phoebe, and then Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich take two each. I think maybe they are trying to make up for all the bad manners all around them.

When I finally get up to Phoebe, I hold out my plate. “I’ll take three.”

Rosalyn smiles. Phoebe looks at me all grateful-like and she piles the cupcakes on my plate. Then I tell Phoebe why doesn’t she come over and sit with me by the tree, and she does. I am just itching for another invitation to her room.

“Where are your manners?” Mirabel says in her mad voice when she sees me with so many cupcakes piled on my plate, and I start wondering what the manners book will have to say about this, but before I get too far with my thinking, Mirabel reaches over and snatches one of the cupcakes and eats half of it in a single bite.

“Ohhhhh,” she says, her eyes glistening. “These are won-der-ful.”

Phoebe looks all proud and then Rosalyn comes over by us, and Mirabel says a quick good morning and then hurries off to find Peter.

Well. Peter is up in an old maple tree with some of his friends, and Mirabel starts yelling so loud I can hear her over here. In about one and a half seconds he is on the ground and Mirabel is marching up to us.

“We’ll see them home,” says Old Mr. Jolly, nodding at me and Birdie. “It will give me a chance to check on my cow.”

My heart falls. Mirabel stands there considering. Phoebe looks over and squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry,”
she whispers. “Rosalyn has already talked to him about you keeping that cow.”

Finally, Mirabel nods okay, and she takes Peter by the back of his shirt and marches him off to the road. Old Mr. Jolly winks at Phoebe and bites into a cupcake and starts grinning. “Never in my life have I had anything so good,” he says in a voice so loud that even the preacher looks over. I notice then that Old Mr. Jolly winks at Rosalyn.

She reaches over and hugs him and kisses him right on the lips in front of everyone—which is something we’ve surely never seen at church before.