The Wonder of Charlie Anne (25 page)

It takes a few more days, but good manners finally get the better of Mrs. Ellis. She and Becky call on us and ask about Phoebe. Mrs. Ellis brings a lemon tart, and Rosalyn cuts it into neat slices.

“Why, it’s such a beautiful tart,” says Rosalyn, smiling brightly.

“Thank you,” says Mrs. Ellis, sipping on sweet raspberry tea.

Then Rosalyn says maybe Becky might want to come to our school and help teach reading, seeing as she’s so advanced and all. “She’s at the top of the class.”

“Well,” says Mrs. Ellis, sipping at her tea. “Maybe. Maybe she will.”

We start thinking about doing that play again, and I tell everyone I am not being the donkey, no matter what.

Since no one else wants to be stage director, I volunteer for the job. This means I get to make decisions about everything. It turns out I am very good at this.

And so on the day that Becky starts coming to our school in Phoebe’s living room, I tell her she has to be the donkey this year. Right away she starts screaming, and it takes a long time for me to tell her I was only kidding and that we’re not going to even have a donkey this year.

“You can be an angel, Becky. And Sarah and Deborah and Mary get to be angels, too.”

“But I am the only one with wings.”

“We can sew, Becky,” I say, pointing to my new poppy-colored trousers and eyeing the basket of fabric on the table.

“I noticed,” she says, looking at my trousers, then over at Ivy, and rolling her eyes.

Birdie comes over and tells me she doesn’t want to be an angel, she wants to be a lemon-drop fairy.

Becky stomps her foot. “We don’t have lemon-drop fairies in a Christmas play.”

“Yes, we do,” I tell her, picking up a piece of yellow fabric from the box. “Things are different now.”

“Good job,” says Phoebe, who has been helping me with what I want to say.

Then I decide to write out invitations for everyone else in town, everyone except the Thatchers. Mr. Jolly says that’s okay. He’s not ready for the Thatchers, either.

Phoebe helps me write on the invitations that everyone should come with a candle, and when we light them, we will be one light.

And wouldn’t you know it? At five o’clock I see half our town coming up the walk of our little church. Mr. Jolly carries Phoebe in, and there is a lot of whispering about how maybe she is going to sing again.

“Did you know she has the voice of an angel?” Mrs. Aldrich is telling her daughter, who is visiting with five little grandchildren.

I hear Mirabel telling Zella that Phoebe is the Jollys’ new daughter. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” she says, and I smile to myself.

Since I let everyone who wanted to be an angel get to be one, we have four of them, plus a lemon-drop fairy. Rosalyn made all the wings, and now Birdie and the Morrell girls have wings as beautiful as the ones that Becky Ellis is wearing. Mrs. Morrell dabs at her eyes as she watches her little girls glitter in the candlelight.

I am so happy to see them sparkling that I think maybe I’m going straight to heaven at this very minute to be with Mama. But I don’t. It is time for the play, and it is time for the heavenly chorus, which is the part we made special, just for Phoebe. Mr. Jolly carries her up front and she leans against him. I nod and smile at her, and then the organ starts and Phoebe opens her mouth, and just like that, heaven comes out:

I look over at Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich and notice they have tears in their eyes.

*    *    *

The moon is full and the stars are filling up the heavens and I tell Mama as I walk home that the only thing missing from tonight is my family, still all broken apart.

“All right, everyone. Make your manners.”

This is how Rosalyn starts the day, now that we have opened the little schoolhouse again. I think she sounds a little like Mirabel. But Rosalyn says if we are respectful of each other, things will go better for all of us.

“Good morning, Charlie Anne.” This is my cue to stand up beside my desk, which I do.

“Good morning, Rosalyn.”

“My, those are lovely trousers. They remind me of the violets growing along your stone wall.”

I am beaming. “Mirabel and I made them out of one of her old dresses.” I turn this way and then that beside my desk, and the rest of the class is wanting a pair, I can tell.

“How’s your reading coming along, Charlie Anne?”

“Much better,” I say.

“Would you show me in a bit?”

I grin. “I am ready,” I tell her.

She moves to the next desk.

“Good morning, Phoebe.”

“Good morning, Rosalyn.”

*    *    *

It was Mr. Jolly’s idea to get Mrs. Thatcher to send her oldest boy up north to build roads. “He needs to get out and see how the world works,” he told her, and she went along with the idea, as long as Mr. Jolly promised to help her other boys with the heavy work. He’s got those boys fixing the porch and chopping wood and getting the barn ready for a cow in the spring. “Charlie Anne will help you pick one,” he told Mrs. Thatcher, winking at me. “She’s very good with cows, you know.”

The rest of the Thatcher boys seem to be taking to school pretty well. They all have runny noses. Perhaps the golden harvest soup that is bubbling on the woodstove by Rosalyn’s desk will take care of that.

Looking at the Thatcher boys makes me miss Peter and feel all the broken Peter-places still in my heart.

Rosalyn calls me up to her desk. She places
First Reader
in my hands.

“Let’s try some of these words.”

I look at the list, at all the
b
s and all the
d
s, and I think about Miss Moran and the awful place under her desk.

“Come on, Charlie Anne,” says Rosalyn all softlike. “It’s just like I Spy. Don’t quit.”

I notice her brown eyes. They are almost as nice as Anna May’s. I look at the first word. I hold up my left hand and make a fist. “B … a … ll, d … o … ll, d … e … ll.”

“My heavens, you’re a wonderful reader,” says Rosalyn. Then she picks up
Second Reader
and places it in my hands. “I think you’re ready for this.”

I am? Me? Charlie Anne?

Yes
, Mama whispers.
You are.

I look at the words, and they jumble up. But I take a deep breath and tell them to stop, and wouldn’t you know it, they start minding their manners.

I hold up my left hand again and make another fist. Then I take a breath. “A … b-i-rd … b-u-i-lt … its … n-e-st,” I read. I peek over the top of the book because I can’t help myself. I want to see Rosalyn’s face.

She is leaning forward, holding her breath.

“In the n-e-st were f-our wh-ite e-ggs, with …” I stop again to see if it’s a
b
or a
d.
“Br-ow-n sp-ecks.”

“Yes,” Rosalyn says softly, “that’s it, Charlie Anne. I knew you could. Now, keep going.”

And then I am all fired up. “O-u-t of th-ese f-our eggs ca-me four wee b-i-rds. Their sk-in was b-a-re, and they could not fly; b-u-t the old birds ke-pt them wa-rm.”

And then I peek over the top of my book and see what I have never seen before. Rosalyn is sitting there with big tears falling down her face. And they are for me.

“I knew you could, Charlie Anne.”

Mirabel tells me I have to go get the clothes off the line. More snow’s coming, she tells me, and I tell her, “Well, why the dickens didn’t you think about this when I was out there hanging it all up?” Even Belle and Anna May want to know.

She puts her hands on her hips and asks me if I need to start reading that book again. I tell her no. “No, I do not.”

Then she says that when I am out by the clothesline, maybe I could walk down by the garden and see if there might be room for an extra two rows of peas in front of where we plant the corn. She wants me to measure it out with my feet. She is reading a book called
American Husbandry
and she wants me to read it, too. It is filled with ideas on how to run a farm even better, which pretty much means more chores for everybody. I tell her we don’t need to be thinking about planting peas. We will be lucky to just get through all this snow.

She tells me not to worry about a little snow. She says I am strong as an ox.

Humph, I tell her. My boots are warming beside the cookstove. Mirabel says I should keep them there now
because I have so many outside chores. I cut new pieces of cardboard because the holes in my boots are bigger than ever. I hunt through the rag basket for some extra wool to wrap around my feet, and I see that Mirabel has cut up Peter’s old jacket and is making it smaller so Birdie can wear it.

Then I go outside. The snow is so cold it crunches under my feet like soda crackers. I start pulling the laundry off the line. What is Mirabel thinking? These blankets are wet and heavy and stiff as a barn door. I can hardly move under the weight of all the wool.

It is then that I hear a motor and I look at Belle and Anna May out by the butternut tree and they look up, wondering what all the noise is on this still day. Then a big black automobile comes driving up on our yard and hanging out the window is Peter and before the car even comes to a stop he is opening up the door and jumping out and running out to where I am running to him.

I drop the blankets and I don’t care because there is Peter rushing toward me with his arms stretched out and then he is jumping up in my arms and I am falling down and hugging him and laughing, right there in the snow, and then Birdie is running out of the house and climbing on top of us and then wouldn’t you know it, there is Ivy saying, “Peter, you’re getting that fancy coat all wet,” and sounding just like Mirabel.

Only, Mirabel isn’t saying that. She is rushing off the porch toward us. She pulls Peter up off the ground, and then she holds his little face in her hands and smiles, and then she hugs him. She whispers to him, and I can’t hear what she says, but I can imagine because when she stops squeezing him, she has tears in her eyes.

“I’m staying,” he says, turning to the rest of us. “I’m staying home.”

It isn’t until a few minutes later, when we all head back to the house, that I overhear Aunt Eleanor telling Mirabel, “You should have told me he wet the bed like that. I’ve never seen anything like it. Poor Betty can’t keep up with all the washing. And he cries every single night of the week. There’s no stopping him.”

I look across to Anna May and Belle. Their eyes are filled with cow-joy. It is a beautiful thing.