The Wonder of Charlie Anne (18 page)

Mirabel looks over her glasses at us. “Does anyone know what that means?”

Ivy giggles. “It means don’t do what Charlie Anne did today at church.”

I glare at Ivy.

“Yes,” says Mirabel. “That’s right. We don’t need to stand up in church and get things all riled up.”

The next day, Rosalyn and Old Mr. Jolly are loading mops, brooms, rags and buckets into the back of Old Mr. Jolly’s truck. I can’t help but notice them, and my feet tell me they can’t hardly stand still, so don’t blame them if they run over without me. I tell them I’m already running.

Old Mr. Jolly is picking up Phoebe and flying her around the driveway before hoisting her into the back of the truck. He isn’t so stooped over anymore, I notice.

Phoebe is giggling. “Want to come and help us clean the school?”

Then Old Mr. Jolly comes and asks me if I am going or not. I don’t want to go back to that school and see that place under Miss Moran’s desk, but I do want him to pick me up so I can laugh as loud as Phoebe, so I let him. I miss my papa very much.

The little white schoolhouse is tucked between two maple trees that are already turning scorched orange. Fall is coming early.

Old Mr. Jolly picks Phoebe and me up and flies us down to the ground, and we screech a little and beg
him to do it again. But he says he’s getting too old for that sort of thing. I look at him, though—at how his hair isn’t hardly gray at all anymore, not since Rosalyn has been cutting all the gray out, and I think he could lift us a hundred times if he wanted to.

Then he hands us mops and brooms and everyone walks to the door, everyone but me.

“What is the matter with you, Charlotte Anne?”

I am remembering Miss Moran pointing to the words she just wrote on the blackboard, pressing her finger against the letters so hard her knuckle is white. “That is a
d
for
dog
and that is a
b
for
ball.”

She tells me to write them on the blackboard, each twenty times. I do. Then she tells me to stand at her desk for my drill. “Hold your book up, keep your back straight, now read that column right there.”

She points to my book. I tell my belly to stop doing summersaults because it is making everything worse. All the
d
s and
b
s are switching places, and I cannot tell which is which.
“Ball.”

“No. That is
doll.”

Miss Moran looks out to the class to see if this is a joke, if anyone is laughing, if everyone is in on my joke.

Becky is laughing. So is the oldest Thatcher boy. Sarah Morrell is already crying.

Miss Moran points to the door. “The woodshed. Go to the woodshed until the superintendent gets here.”

I am fighting back tears as I pick up my lunch bucket and my coat. The oldest Thatcher boy sticks his foot out into the aisle, but I step around it and go wait in the woodshed for Mr. Pritten and his paddle. It is going to be a long terrible wait.

Everything is the same, just as Miss Moran left it, that’s the funny thing. The desks are still lined up in five rows, and her desk is still in the front.

There’s a blackboard behind where she sat, and the words she was trying to get me to read are still written in her big printing.

There is a picture of Abraham Lincoln looking at me, and one of George Washington, too, plus a map of New England. The trash bucket is still sitting beside the teacher’s desk, and there is a stack of
First Reader
and
Second Reader
and
Third Reader
books.

Old Mr. Jolly comes in with an armload of wood and gets the woodstove started, and Rosalyn puts a box on the teacher’s desk and starts pulling out potatoes, butternut squash, onions, garlic, a big pot, plus a loaf of bread, a cup of butter, some coffee, cream, sugar, cups, bowls and spoons.

“We’ll make a soup,” she says while I am wondering what vegetables are doing in school.

“Learning takes a lot of energy, Charlie Anne. At this school, we’ll make a soup every morning and then we’ll have something hot for lunch.”

Phoebe and I get the job of getting water from the well, which used to be Peter’s job, back when Miss Moran was here. When we are back inside, Rosalyn wants us to peel and cut up all the vegetables, then she puts everything into the pot and sets it on the stove, which Old Mr. Jolly has gotten blazing.

We spend the rest of the morning sweeping and mopping and dusting and clearing cobwebs out of the corners and washing the windows. Old Mr. Jolly scrubs the blackboard, and I am happy to see Miss Moran’s sentences erased. Then he tells us stories about how he went to school here and how one day a bat flew around the school and the teacher fainted, and I think that if that ever happened to us, Rosalyn wouldn’t be afraid. She’d get the bat out. Then Rosalyn tells us her dreams for what kind of school she wants to open: a school for everyone, and then she writes a welcome to the students, and Phoebe has to read it to me because the letters are all jumbled up.

When we are done cleaning, we each have a big bowl of golden harvest soup, and I wonder if Miss Moran ever once thought of filling us up.

*    *    *

“Do you punish the ones who can’t read?” It has taken me half the day to get to the question I really need to ask.

“Punish?” says Rosalyn. “What on earth for?” She stops sweeping under the teacher’s desk and looks at me.

“Like make them stand in the trash bucket or make them go out to the woodshed or sit under the desk. Stuff like that.”

“Is that what the last teacher did?”

I nod my head.

“We will not punish here, Charlie Anne. We won’t have time. We’ll be too busy growing readers.”

I breathe out very slowly and have another helping of soup. As we are leaving, Rosalyn tells Old Mr. Jolly she won’t be needing that trash bucket anymore and how maybe he better throw it outside.

Old Mr. Jolly flies Phoebe and me back up on the truck. Phoebe and I stretch out between the mops and brooms and buckets and let the sun shine all over us, and I watch Phoebe close her eyes. Then I hear Mama calling and I tell her I’m not listening, but she keeps calling and calling, and I tell her to stop, but she won’t. That’s when I see the shadow in the woods, and I hear Mama saying
Watch out, watch out, Charlie Anne
! and I duck as a rock flies out from behind a birch tree, but not
soon enough. For just an instant, I see shards of glass inside my head and then about a hundred angry knives against my cheek, and I slump against Phoebe and everything goes black, everything except for the spot between the trees where I saw the oldest Thatcher boy step out.

Phoebe is screaming when I come to and Old Mr. Jolly and Rosalyn are climbing up on the back of the truck and Phoebe is cradling my head in her lap and then they are all trying to stop the bleeding. Old Mr. Jolly jumps off the truck and runs into the woods, but a while later he comes out shaking his head.

Rosalyn holds me as Old Mr. Jolly drives us slowly home. Rosalyn is keeping a cloth pressed against my cheek, and she sighs and tells Phoebe maybe they should forget the whole idea, how maybe opening a school here is too dangerous.

“Mama would be sad if we quit,” says Phoebe.

This is how Mirabel’s face looks when Rosalyn and Phoebe and Old Mr. Jolly carry me into the kitchen: confused, like why isn’t Charlie Anne up in the upper field with Anna May and Belle, and then mad, like a hornets’ nest just fell on her head.

“What on earth happened?” she wants to know, pushing the flannel cloth I have picked for my new underpants (no rooster) onto the chair, and Old Mr. Jolly sets me down. Then I have to listen to Rosalyn tell her how we went and cleaned up the school all afternoon.

“She was supposed to be with the cows,” says Mirabel, her voice all flat and hard, and Rosalyn looks at me and tells Mirabel how I had told her it was all right to go with them, and then I start moaning really loud to get everyone to forget how I haven’t been too honest with anyone. Then Old Mr. Jolly winks at me.

“It was the oldest Thatcher boy,” I say, sitting up.

Mirabel grabs a cloth from the drawer, dunks it into the boiling water on the cookstove, and pulls it up with a spoon. You can see the steam flying.

“No,” I scream, “it’s too hot!”

Mirabel pushes my arm away and starts dabbing,
and I am screaming because, all over again, it feels like shards of glass inside my head and then about a hundred angry knives against my cheek.

“Is that necessary?” Rosalyn asks, and Mirabel gives her the same icy look she gave me, and then Old Mr. Jolly clears his throat and says he better be on his way because he has some things he needs to be saying to the Thatchers.

“Wait,” I say. “I have some things to say to the Thatchers. Phoebe and I will come.”

Mirabel is making a paste of salt and flour. “You’ll do no such thing,” she says as she begins spreading it on my face. “You’ll stay right here where I can keep an eye on you.”

Then I am screaming so loud I forget all about how I wanted to go with Old Mr. Jolly in the first place.

“Why would that Thatcher boy do such a thing?” Mirabel asks as she brushes my hair into a ponytail and ties it up away from my face.

“Maybe he heard about the school and doesn’t want it to open,” Rosalyn says, reaching for Phoebe’s hand. “Maybe the rock wasn’t meant for Charlie Anne. We’ve been through this before.”

Mirabel looks at Rosalyn and Phoebe. “Nonsense. We’re not like that in these parts. We’re neighborly.”

“Then why don’t you let me play with Phoebe?” The words jump out of me so fast I don’t give any consideration to the consequences, as the manners book
says I should. I am glad I say it, though, because next thing I know, Rosalyn raises her eyebrow at Mirabel and stares her flat in the face until Mirabel looks down.

Mirabel won’t let me out of her sight for the next few days. She keeps putting a thin coat of molasses on my face so I won’t bruise, and it turns out that I heal fast and I do not get a cheekful of pus.

She reads to me every night from the manners book: