The Wonder of Charlie Anne (2 page)

I have one other dress. It is the one I wore to my
mama’s funeral at the little church over the hill last year. Now it is all balled up and hidden way at the bottom of the chest at the foot of our bed, underneath all the books Mama told me I would read someday.

My boots are on the porch, where Mirabel makes me leave them. No dirt in this house. Not anymore. The door to the barn is open a little, so I know Thomas has already milked Anna May and let her outside. He gets boy chores. He plows and plants and mucks out the barn and fixes the fences and pounds nails that need nailing everywhere. The only outside jobs Mirabel gives me are hanging up the laundry and beating the rugs and looking for eggs.

“I would be doing your mother a disservice if I didn’t help you become a young lady,” she tells me.

Mirabel wants to know why I don’t know how to do more things. Like how come I don’t know the fork goes on the left? How come I don’t know about good manners and how girls are supposed to be quiet and generous and not boastful at all? I don’t tell her Mama never told me about those things. She told me to practice my reading, because one day all the jumbled words would sort themselves out and I would be the best reader she knew. “Don’t worry,” she told me, tucking an armful of someday books into the chest. “Everything takes time, Charlie Anne.”

Mirabel teaches me different things. She brought a
little book with her,
The Charm of Fine Manners
, and she keeps it in the pocket of her apron and she pulls it out at night after the supper dishes are done. “It is impossible for the selfish or ill-tempered girl to win love and friends,” she reads. A moth thrashes against the inside of our screen door, and I get up to let it out.

Then Mirabel shows me how to make a vinegar pie that tastes almost like lemon pie because you need to know how to make things better when the hard times come, and Lord knows, they come. They come for everyone. That’s what she tells me. I want her to stop talking about bad things.

“Are you listening?” Mirabel asks when she finds me on the porch, putting my boots on so I can go with Papa. “I want you to make one of those vinegar pies, the one your papa likes so much.”

I am looking out at the river. It is all angry this morning. It is crashing over the big boulders. I wonder if it knows what my papa is going to tell me.

The grass is wet from the rain last night. I am walking behind Papa. His footsteps are very big. I can fit two of my steps in one of his.

For once, I don’t want to go to the river. My papa says the river is a good place to talk about bad things. The river pulls all the bad words into the deep part and lets them sink to the bottom and then it carries them
away. For this reason, I want to go back to bed. I do not want to hear any more bad things.

The river was Mama’s favorite place. That is why her grave is on the hill, under her favorite oak tree. You can see way down the river and the tree keeps you all shaded and sometimes an acorn falls on your head. Those are lucky days, the acorn-falling-on-your-head days. They make you wise, Mama told me once.

Now I come here when Mama calls me. I tell her all about Mirabel and about how Ivy isn’t turning out so well, now that she is a teenager. Mama tells me to try and put up with Mirabel so things go better for me. She tells me to let Ivy look at her
Movie Mirror
magazine if it makes her happy. She tells me Ivy is very lonely. I tell her it is no wonder, since no one wants to be with her.

A tiny grave stands beside us, for the baby who took Mama away. I try not to look at it much, seeing how that baby took Mama straight to heaven without time for any goodbyes at all.

Papa picks some daisies on the way. I know what he is doing. Whatever he is going to tell me, he is going to tell Mama, too.

We stop in front of Mama. I ask her what Papa is going to tell me. She does not answer me. I think she is wondering, too.

My legs are feeling like they are going to buckle right out from under me. I reach for Mama.

Papa sits down beside Mama. “Have a seat, Charlie Anne.” He pats the ground next to Mama. I sit down. I know she is holding my hand, but I wish I could feel it better.

“I want you to keep an eye on those chickens, make sure they get enough corn so they keep laying eggs, Charlie Anne.”

I wonder what he is getting at. I look out at the river. It is racing and flying over the boulders, knocking them so hard they move, and when they do, they are thunder booming. The river is very angry this morning.

“I noticed Bea was trying to hide her eggs under the blackberries.”

He watches the river, but I am wondering why he is talking about chickens.

I look at Mama’s grave, at the daisies, and then I notice Papa has put some daisies on Baby’s grave. I
reach over and push them back to Mama. I think about how maybe they should not have put Baby’s grave so close.

“And make sure the coop is locked at night. You don’t want that fox getting in there again. And keep Big Pumpkin Face away.”

I sit back on my heels. I listen to the river pound. I hear my heart pound. I take a deep breath. Very slowly I ask, “Where are you going?”

“Well, that’s the thing I am trying to get to, Charlie Anne. It will only be for a little while. I know you’ll be fine.” He doesn’t say anything else, and we both watch the river thunder past.

“Where are you going?” I say again.

“I took a job building roads up north, Charlie Anne. There’s work up there, now that President Roosevelt is doing something. I’m taking Thomas with me. It won’t be for long.”

The river crashes. My thoughts are all mixed up. I feel my heart get all worried and then mad and then start crashing inside of me like the river.

“You can’t do that. You can’t leave. Mama won’t like that. She won’t like that at all.”

“Charlie Anne,” says Papa. He rubs his hand through his hair the way he does when he does not know what to say next. Then he reaches up for me.

I pull away, and turn so he cannot see the tears that
are hurrying down my face. I wipe them away with the back of my arm.

He watches the river. It is crashing and roaring and furious. He keeps running his hand through his hair.

“Mama will be really mad. She told us our family was more important than anything, remember?”

The tears are falling down my face so fast I can’t see anything. The boulders are thundering.

Papa is watching the river, too. Then he shakes his head. “I am keeping this family together, Charlie Anne. Try and understand. We’re going to lose the farm if I don’t do something. There are whole families sleeping under bridges in the city, that’s how bad things are.”

I can hardly believe it. I look at Mama’s stone, at the name
Sylvie.
“Mama will be mad. Mama would want us to stay together, through thick and thin. Remember how she used to say blood is thicker than anything and you don’t run out on one another?”

Papa makes that thin line with his lips. He started doing it after the funeral. “There are all different ways of keeping a family together, Charlie Anne.”

I jump up and face him. “THROUGH IT ALL, A FAMILY STICKS TOGETHER!” I am roaring. I can’t hear the river anymore.

“I know it, Charlie Anne.”

Papa is still sitting, and he looks out at the river, and I think he has run out of things to say. Bluebirds fly over
our heads. The color of their wings is so blue it can make you stop breathing. They were Mama’s favorite birds.

“Look at that,” says Papa, standing up. “I think your mama is telling us that it will be okay.”

I stamp my foot. “No, she is not. She is saying she wants you to stay here. This is home. This is where the bluebirds are.”

I do not even have to ask what his plan is, about who will take care of us. “You can’t leave us with Mirabel. You know we hate her.”

Papa sighs. “I need you to be brave, Charlie Anne. I need you to help Mirabel.”

“I do not want to help Mirabel. I do not want to do so many chores all the time and I do not want her to teach me to be a young lady and I do not want you to go.”

I think for a minute. “And how about Thomas? Mama would be really mad if she knew you were taking Thomas.”

“Aren’t you really mad, Mama?” I say, turning to her stone.

“Charlie Anne …,” says my papa. “Charlie Anne.” He reaches for me, and for just a moment, I let him pull me so close I can smell the soap he uses to lather his face. But then I yank myself away, madder than the thundering river.

“Charlie Anne,” he says again, but I turn away and cross my arms and will not look at him anymore.

I know he is waiting for me to rush toward him and let him hug me. But I stand right where I am. I won’t look at him, either. After a long while, he sighs and starts walking away from me, toward the house. I turn and watch him go, and then I flop on the ground by Mama and cry so hard I cannot hear if she is saying anything to me or not.

Papa is yelling at Mirabel in the kitchen when I get back.

“I already told you, not Eleanor.” He stomps out on the porch and slams the door. I feel my stomach start balling up.

Mirabel follows him outside. “And I keep telling you, it’s the only way.”

Papa kicks the compost bucket again. A whole bunch of coffee grounds and eggshells and potato peels go flying, and I think my papa better stop doing this. It clangs and flies off the porch and onto the front yard and rolls up next to me. I do not dare take another step.

Papa watches the bucket stop right beside my feet. Minnie and Olympia and Bea rush right over, and Olympia pecks Minnie and Bea out of the way to get to the oatmeal first.

Papa’s lips are in that straight line. He turns back to Mirabel. “Not Eleanor. I will send money soon.”

“A few dollars a month,” says Mirabel. “What’s that going to get us?”

Papa gives her one of his terrific bad looks, the kind he gives only to Anna May when she kicks the milk pail over, and then he storms back in the house. I hear
him holler to Thomas to get moving. I am left wondering what they mean about my aunt Eleanor. I don’t like her at all.

“Where have you been?” says Mirabel as soon as she sees me standing beside the compost pail. She is carrying a basket of wet clothes. “You and your father, taking off like that, on a morning like this, when we have so much to do to get ready for tomorrow. Why, I just don’t understand you at all.”

I think the barn is calling me, right now while I am looking at Mirabel and her big frown.

“What are you doing just standing there like that?”

I look down at all the compost all over the ground. There is leftover vegetable soup on my foot. I wipe it on the grass.

I built myself a secret place in the barn, high in the loft, and I want to go there now. I made it out of a stack of hay bales, and there is a secret opening against the wall so nobody can find me, and it is peaceful inside. I am glad just to be there. I made little window places for the sun to jump inside. I spread Mama’s poppy-colored quilt on the floor, and when I lie down, I feel her hugging me. Also, I keep her hairbrush under the quilt. Sometimes I pull it out and brush my hair, and after about one thousand brushes, I begin to feel better about things.

“Charlie Anne, are you listening?” says Mirabel.

I jump a little and nod my head.

“Well, pick up that pail and clean up that mess and then come and help me hang up your father’s clothes. We have to get everything hung up right quick if we want them to dry in time. I want to get a big picnic packed. Your father and Thomas are going to be on the road for a long while.”

As I start cleaning up the potato peels, Mirabel lifts up the laundry basket and heads off to the clothesline, and I hear her shoes snap when she walks, even in the wet grass. They are so loud that I almost don’t hear the clothesline start whimpering when she walks near.

Mirabel tells me I have to make Papa his favorite lunch. She tells me she doesn’t care if I am mad at him or not. She has all this mending to do for Papa and Thomas, so I need to make lunch. I load up the cookstove with wood and let the coals get hot. Then I make eggs scrambled with browned onions, biscuits as high as I can make them, fried potatoes and pickled beets.