“Christina Katerina and the Box,” she said, looking at the cover lovingly. “This was always my favorite. You know, mine and Jean’s mama was the librarian before us, and her mama before her. I grew up in this library. This is the first book I can remember sitting and reading to myself. I must have read it hundreds of times. Sometimes I wonder if it didn’t have a bigger influence on me than any of these other big grown-up books.” She handed the book to me. “You can’t take it out of the library, but why don’t you sit here and read it? I think you’ll enjoy it, and that might be just what the doctor ordered right about now.”
The book was about a girl named Christina Katerina whose mother gets a new refrigerator and gives her the box to play with. She drags it out under an apple tree in the yard and turns it into her play castle. Then a mean boy called Fats gets mad and tips it over, so she makes the box into a clubhouse. Then they fuss again, and Fats sits on top of the box and caves one end of the roof in, so she makes it into a race car and pretends to drive it around the tree. Every time something bad happens to the box, Christina turns it into something else. Finally, it becomes a ballroom floor for a fancy party until they try to wash it and it falls to pieces. And then she isn’t even upset! I was surprised about that until I found out that Fats’s mama just got a new washer and dryer (whatever those were) that came in not one but two big boxes, and they turn them into sailing ships right there under the apple tree.
I finished the book and then read the whole thing again two more times. I loved the way all the pictures looked like they were drawn with a pencil and some were filled in with brown paper. Something about the story made me feel happy. I wasn’t sure why Evi would say that it mattered more to her than all the big books she’d read, but I thought it might have something to do with the way Christina saw the box. She didn’t need it to be just one certain thing, and she didn’t even need it to stay the same. Whenever something happened to the box that wasn’t what she expected, she just decided to try something else. She didn’t waste time crying over things that couldn’t be undone. That seemed like it might be a good way to be.
Nineteen
The next morning, I went back to the gardens to work. I hoped Jessie would show up, but she didn’t. Hanna and Nina were there, though, and I was glad to see them again. They were good about making me feel included in their conversation without me having to say too much myself. That morning, they were both excited about something they kept calling “the Fourth.” I was tired of feeling like everyone else knew things that I didn’t, so I tried to just listen and hopefully figure out what this meant, but eventually I had to break down and ask.
“The Fourth?” Hanna replied, confused. “You know, the Fourth of July. The Fourth!” When I still looked lost, Nina jumped in.
“Wow! Did you celebrate any holidays where you come from? Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving?”
“Well, yeah, of course!” I said, not bothering to mention that I’d never heard of Thanksgiving. “We celebrated religious holidays. But I never heard of this Fourth of July thing.”
“It’s America’s birthday!” Hanna exclaimed, laughing. “It’s the day we declared our independence from England in 1776 and became our own nation.” No wonder we didn’t celebrate it on the compound. I could practically hear Papa spitting out government holiday.
“Oh, well, yeah. I read about that in my old encyclopedias, I guess. The date just didn’t really stick in my mind, and we never did anything special to celebrate it. What do you do on the Fourth?”
“We have a big cookout and make ice cream and play music and just generally make a huge racket. People used to shoot off these things called fireworks to make it like the rockets and all from the Revolutionary War, but we don’t have a way to make those anymore, and all the ones we’ve ever found don’t work for some reason. But still, it’s fun.” Hanna never missed a beat pulling the tassels off corn plant after corn plant, which was our job that morning.
“You forgot about the parade,” Nina said. “Everyone dresses up in red, white, and blue, and people decorate bicycles and whatever else they can rig up to roll along, and we all march in a big parade around this end of the lake. It’s kind of silly, I guess, but getting everything ready and trying to outdo each other is a lot of fun.”
“Ooh, Ami, you have to ride on our float!” Hanna said. “The boys are building some kind of rolling platform for us to decorate and ride on while we’re all dressed up. It’ll be fun!”
“Not just the boys,” said Nina. “Melissa and Jessie have been helping too. And Melissa is the one who drew the design for it.”
“Jessie?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t really a question but not able to figure out what else to say. Nina and Hanna exchanged a look. “I guess that’s where she’s been lately.” Hanna frowned but then quickly recovered her smile.
“Yeah, she’s helped work on it some, and she’s gonna play her guitar so we can all sing as we go rolling along. Say you’ll come and ride with us!” I didn’t know what else to say, so I just said okay. Hanna and Nina gave a little cheer, then went back to talking about what they would wear and how they could get everyone’s costumes to match up in different ways. All I could think about was Jessie. I needed to find her and apologize for the way I ran off after we kissed. My heart sped up just thinking about that kiss, and I had to turn away before the other girls could see my face flush red once again.
“Where are they building it?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.
“Over behind Will and Melissa’s cabin. There used to be one more past theirs, but it burned down at some point, and someone built just a roof over the foundation to make kind of a covered work area. It’s the perfect spot!” I nodded and kept working, but I knew where I’d be headed as soon as I could get away. Which turned out to be after Hanna and Nina dragged me to lunch with them. I had to admit that I was hungry, and if I missed lunch, I’d have to wait all the way until dinner. Still, I skipped the salad and stuffed down a peanut butter and strawberry sandwich before making my excuses and all but running away toward the cabins. Neither of them said anything, but I had a feeling that Hanna and Nina both knew where I was going. It seemed like my secret wasn’t so secret after all. I wasn’t sure how I felt about people being able to see that I liked Jessie in that way, but I also wondered how they felt about it. If I could believe Will, no one should think anything of it, but Will couldn’t really speak for everyone.
I made my way out the back door of the big room and around toward the cabin side. It was a cloudy day, and a breeze blew across the lake to make the heat feel a little less sticky. I kept myself from running and took deep breaths to try to slow the galloping of my heart. I thought about the things I wanted to say to Jessie and imagined different ways that she might react. Was she mad at me, or upset? Had I hurt her feelings by running away? Or worst of all, did she not really care that much? Maybe she was just waiting for me to go back home so she could forget all about me.
In the end, all that worry was wasted because she wasn’t there. I could see the work area and the float sitting there with no one in sight from a pretty good ways off, but for some reason, I kept walking toward it. I just couldn’t think what else to do. So far, the float just looked like a shallow wooden box. I guessed they planned to attach wheels to it somehow, but it was hard to picture it rolling along with people standing on it. Would they attach ropes so someone could pull it? I stood there trying to look like I was really interested in it for as long as I could, but there wasn’t too much to be interested in, and eventually I gave up and walked back toward the lodge.
When I got to the other end of the row of cabins, I noticed a path that I hadn’t seen or paid any attention to before and decided to follow it. It turned out to be pretty short, just a little way around a clump of trees, really, and it ended at something I’d never seen before. There were all kinds of metal ladders leading up to little platforms and playhouses, with slides and swings and old tires hanging off different secti
ons. It looked strange and wonderful to me, but even more strange and wonderful were the children playing on it.
There were three or four little kids climbing and swinging and running all over. One little boy was so small I couldn’t believe that he could walk around on his own. A huge smile lit up his face, and he was laughing and clapping his chubby little hands as he ran away from a bigger girl who pretended to chase him. When she got close, she would pretend to fall, and he would squeal and clap with happiness that she’d missed him. A woman who must have been the little boy’s mother sat on a bench off to the side, watching him and smiling. I was supposed to want that. Why was I looking for Jessie like everything would be okay if I could just talk to her? I couldn’t have a baby with Jessie, and that was God’s plan for my life. Wasn’t it? I stood there watching the little boy, probably staring, lost in my own thoughts and confusion until he turned and ran straight for me.
Just as he reached the spot right in front of my feet, he stopped and looked up at me. He glanced back over his shoulder at the girl who was chasing him, then held his hands out toward me.
“Up!” he said, giggling. I just stood there looking at him, then he said it again. “Up!” He was bouncing up and down, wanting me to be part of the game.
“It’s okay,” his mother said from her spot on the bench. I guessed she thought I was worried that she wouldn’t want me picking up her baby, but the truth was that had nothing to do with it. I’d never held any kind of baby. I didn’t even know how. But it looked like this little boy wasn’t taking no for an answer. And as it turned out, there was nothing special I needed to know. As soon as I bent over toward him just a little, he jumped up into my arms.
“Go!” he squealed, laughing. So I did. It felt good to give myself over to doing after all that thinking. I took off in a shuffling run, dodging around the swings and bars to keep the girl from catching us. He clapped his hands and screeched every time the girl almost caught us, bouncing up and down on my hip. His little body felt so solid in my arms, so warm and real, that holding on to him was as natural as breathing. We ran like that for a good while without him ever getting tired of the game, but finally my arms got too tired and I was out of breath. I slowed down enough to let the girl catch us. She tickled him, and he slid down my body and ran over to his mama, giggling and reaching his little hands out for her until she scooped him into her lap. He got quiet and still faster than I would have thought possible, then laid his head against her chest and popped his thumb into his mouth.
“Somebody’s ready for a nap,” she said, smiling. “Thanks, girls,” she said to us as she stood up, shifting his little legs around so they straddled her waist and his head was on her shoulder. “I don’t have the energy to keep up with him like that!” They walked off down the path toward the cabins, and the little girl wandered away. I sat down on the bench, still catching my breath from all that running, and felt how tired and shaky my arms were. The boy had been so small, but he seemed to get heavier and heavier the longer I held him.
Just think, Ami, I heard Ruth’s voice in my head. A little baby of your very own; can you imagine? Could I imagine it, I wondered, now that I had seen and held that tiny boy? I tried to picture myself as the woman on the bench, watching her baby play and laugh, feeling thankful for the bigger girls keeping him entertained for a few minutes. But if I went home and had a baby at Heavenly Shepherd, there would be no bigger girls. It would be the same for that baby as it had been for me, living in a world of grumpy adults. Maybe I could have more babies, but maybe not. I thought of Teenie and the baby she lost, her own life in danger if what the others said was true. I needed to find out more about that. Maybe I’d ask Nina to bring me to her midwife mama so I could ask her some questions.
And none of that even mattered, I knew, if there was no father to bring back with me. I’d tried to make myself think of Will or Ben as possibilities, but deep down, I knew they weren’t. I didn’t know why not, but I knew that what I felt around them was nothing like what I felt around Jessie. I didn’t know why that would be, or even if it should be, but I knew that it was. And I knew this wasn’t something I could solve by running away again.
Twenty
The next morning, everything changed. I was just walking into the big room, wondering if Jessie would be there to eat breakfast with everyone, when I noticed it was a lot noisier than usual in there. Before I could get far enough in to see what was going on, Miss Helen came around the desk and made a beeline for me like she’d been waiting to catch me walking in.
“What’s—” I started to say, but Helen put her hands on my shoulders and kind of spun me around so I was walking back the way I’d come in.
“Come with me,” she said. I tried to turn around to look at her, but those bony hands of hers were too strong, and she marched me into one of the little meeting rooms up near the front doors. “Wait here,” she said, and before I could ask questions, she was gone. What in the world? I thought, but I didn’t have to wait long to find out. A few minutes later, she opened the door again, but instead of coming in, she just stood there in the doorway.
“Ami, there’s somebody here I think you should meet,” she said. She smiled at me encouragingly, then stepped back and out of the doorway. For a second, I didn’t see anyone; then a woman stepped into the room.
She was a little shorter than me and so small and slight that at first she looked like a child. Her straight blond hair was cut just above her shoulders, shorter than Papa and Ruth ever would have allowed. It looked bleached out by the sun, while the rest of her was tanned a deep reddish gold. She took a step toward me, and I could see lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes, showing that she was not a little girl, as I’d first thought. She had fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but all at once, I knew I was looking at the face from my drawing. I felt the floor drop out from under me and reached out for the wall to keep myself standing.
“Ami.” It was my mother’s voice, saying my name for the first time that I would ever be able to remember. Not a question, a certainty. She knew me as soon as she saw me. I started to cry, and so did she.
“Mama?” I said, and before I could stop myself, I flew into her arms. She wrapped them around me so tight, saying my name over and over again. The name she chose for me, when I was her baby.
“You’re here; you’re finally here. I knew you would come; I knew it!” It was the happiest I’d ever felt in my life. As long as we stood there, nothing bad could happen. Gradually we broke apart, wiped our faces, laughed like we were embarrassed. She took a step back.
“Let me look at you,” she said, putting her hands on both my shoulders. Her eyes moved over my face and hair, and she never stopped smiling. It was nothing like the way Zeke Johnson or Will had looked at me, making me wonder what they saw. There was nothing in my mama’s eyes but pure love. “You’re so grown up,” she said, “and so beautiful!”
“I wish I looked more like you,” I said, not really thinking before I said it.
“Oh hush,” she said, “don’t be silly. You look like … well, you look just perfect. Those curls! I’d kill for those curls,” she said, reaching up to touch the curls that had sprung loose around my face. She reached behind me and pulled my braid forward over my shoulder. “It’s so long, though,” she said quietly. “I guess…”
“Yeah, Papa would never let Ruth cut it,” I replied. Her smile seemed to freeze for a second at the mention of her parents, but then she laughed and reached down for my hand.
“There’s someone I want you to meet!” she said. She turned and started through the door, pulling me after her. Back out in the big room, the noise had died down a little. I guessed it had been all the excitement of the travelers returning and that the crowd had thinned as people found their families and went back to their cabins and cottages and rooms. We made our way toward the back of the room, but about halfway there, we stopped. There was a man coming toward us. He stopped and looked at my mother like he was
waiting for something.
“Ami, this is Marcus,” my mama said. Her voice seemed to shake a little. She kept ahold of my hand and turned to look at me. “My husband.” Marcus’s skin was a smooth, dark, even brown. It was darker than Nina’s skin, and his eyes were a deep, dark brown. His hair was bound close to his scalp in tight braids that ran from front to back. He was looking straight at me, watching me take him in. What was it that I saw in his face? Happiness, yes, but also something that looked a lot like fear. The mixing of the races is an abomination unto the Lord, I heard Papa say. I looked from Marcus to my mama, not knowing what to say or how to react. She reached out for his hand, and he looked over at her and smiled reassuringly. He loves her, I thought. I opened my mouth to try to at least say hello, but then I noticed someone else standing behind Marcus, a girl maybe a little younger than me.
“And this is your sister, Penny,” my mother said, her voice shaking for sure now. I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. The husband I was ready for because of what Helen had told me, but a sister? Nobody had said anything about a sister! The name Penny did ring a bell, though, and I remembered Nina’s words. Penny’s gonna be so mad … I thought they’d be back by now … Even though her mama is white.
“Hey,” the girl said, and then we just stood there looking at each other. Her skin was lighter than her daddy’s but not as pale as Mama’s. There were freckles sprinkled across her nose, and her eyes were hazel like mine but more gold than green. Her face looked almost familiar to me, and I was surprised to realize that we looked a little alike. We both had our mama’s nose and the shape of her eyes. Even her dark hair had a coppery shine to it like mine, but I could tell hers was cut shorter, and she wore it pulled up into a puff at the crown of her head. I have a sister, I thought, and tried to return her smile.
The Ballad of Ami Miles Page 15
