The Penderwicks in Spring

by Jeanne Birdsall

  Batty realized how peculiar she must look to them, with her huge sweater and boots and her poor, wretched pajamas. And what about her hair? She reached up to check.

  And with hair a gigantic mess, full of twigs and leaves, and with a face that possibly reflected the desolate truths she’d learned in the last dozen hours.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I sat on your swing,” she said. “My ankle hurts.”

  “Do you live in the woods?” asked one twin.

  “We’re not allowed to talk to strangers,” said the other.

  “I’m not a real stranger. My name is Batty Penderwick, and I go to Wildwood, just like you do.”

  The twins turned to each other, communing wordlessly before facing Batty again.

  “You’re Ben’s sister,” said one. This seemed to make them think Batty was safe to talk to and also added to her stature in their eyes.

  “He’s in second grade,” said the other. “And he’s friends with Rafael.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Batty. “Do you know where we are? What your address is?”

  “Massachusetts.”

  “Anything more? Your street?”

  They didn’t know their street, but they thought that their mom would know it. And also, their names were Tess and Nora, and could Batty please say hello to Ben for them when she got home? When she promised, reluctantly, they took her inside, where their mother politely hid her shock at the sudden apparition of a bedraggled fifth grader. More important, she told Batty the street address.

  Now Batty knew where she was and how to get back to Gardam Street. Not through Quigley Woods—she’d only get lost again—but along the roads. It was quite a long walk, though, much too long for her in this state, especially with a sore ankle.

  She had to call someone, wake up whoever it was, and expose her pathetic adventure. Not Iantha or her dad, who would need explanations she couldn’t give, and not Rosalind, who would need almost as many explanations, and who, besides, probably would bring Oliver along. And not Jane, either, because if she called Jane, Skye would find out. And Batty didn’t want to see Skye, or for Skye even to know anything about all this.

  So when the twins’ mother handed her a phone to call home, Batty pushed up the sleeve of the ancient, wrecked sweater, and instead dialed the number still written on her arm.

  Ten minutes later, Batty was climbing into Nick’s truck, laden with drawings Tess and Nora had made for Ben, folded up into tight little squares for privacy. Nick hadn’t been happy with her when she’d called, and he wasn’t happy now.

  “When I said you could call me for an emergency, I didn’t mean that you should create one of your own. What made you think it was a good idea to take a dawn stroll through Quigley Woods?”

  “I guess I didn’t really think.”

  “You guess? And you crossed the creek! Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  She fought back. “Well, I didn’t get stuck in quicksand!”

  “Of course you didn’t!” He shook his head. “I made up the quicksand a long time ago to discourage Tommy from following me.”

  “Then maybe it wasn’t so dangerous.”

  “You could have broken a leg and no one would have known where to find you.” He glanced at her, then went on more calmly. “Are you all right? Because you look terrible.”

  “My ankle hurts a little. I tripped over a log.”

  He pulled over the truck and made her take off the boot so that he could inspect her ankle, bending it gently this way and that. “Doesn’t seem too bad. I’ll give you an ice pack for it when we get back.”

  He started up the truck again. “Did Oliver upset you? Is that why you ran off?”

  She shook her head, wishing she could pin everything on Oliver. “Don’t ask me any more, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Whether or not you talk about it, your family is going to know something’s wrong. Because it’s written all over your face.”

  “I’ll change my face!” she cried. “And they won’t notice. Oliver will distract them.”

  “Finally, a use for Oliver.” He concentrated on driving while she stared out the window at the spring morning, bleak and meaningless like everything else in her life. “Batty, I can’t help being concerned about you. I’ve known you for too long.”

  “There’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  He frowned. They both knew she wasn’t telling the truth. “I’ll stop asking questions if you promise to stop running around the wild parts of Quigley Woods by yourself until you’re older, and I mean much older, not just eleven.”

  “I promise I won’t cross the Quigley Woods creek by myself until I’m at least twelve.”

  “I guess that’ll do for now.” They pulled onto Gardam Street and then into the Geigers’ driveway. He told her to stay where she was while he put together an ice pack for her. Staying in the truck was easy. Batty wished she could hide there for the rest of her life.

  He came back with a plastic bag full of ice cubes. “Put this on your ankle, and with a little rest, you should be fine.”

  “Thank you, Nick. And for rescuing me.”

  “You’re welcome. Wait, before you go, one more question. Don’t give me that look. This is a good question. What do you want for your birthday?”

  Her birthday! How had she managed to not consider her approaching birthday? Suddenly she couldn’t bear the idea of celebrating that day in May, almost eleven years ago, when she’d come into the world and her mother had started to leave it. The birthday that was supposed to have been so much fun, a triumph of surprises, had turned into a nightmare.

  The anguish that Batty had been trying to outrun caught up and took over. She slumped in her seat, and the tears she’d fought off poured out of her, buckets and rivers and oceans of tears. If only Nick would have gotten out of his truck and left her alone, she could have cried forever. But there he was still, waiting patiently.

  “I’m sorry,” she gulped when she could get herself under control.

  “You will tell me what’s upsetting you before you get out of this truck.”

  “It’s nothing. I just don’t want anything for my birthday. Maybe I won’t even have a party.” She wiped her nose and eyes with her father’s holey sweater. “And don’t tell anyone about this morning, or about me crying, or about anything. Please, Nick, please. Not my parents or my sisters. Nobody. Please.”

  Nick refused to make promises, and Batty refused to explain her tears. It was a standoff, and soon there was nothing left but for Batty to get out of his truck and sneak back into the house. She used the kitchen door and saw no one but Lydia, perched in her high chair, happily moving spoons around.

  “Lydia loves Batty,” she said, waving one spoon in greeting.

  This got Batty crying again. She ran upstairs, stuffed the most obvious evidence—sweater, boots, the twins’ drawings—into her closet, and threw herself into bed between Funty and Gibson.

  DREAMING, BATTY WAS IN MAINE. Hound was chasing a flock of cardinals across the beach, bright flashes of red against gray rocks and blue water. And Skye was there, too—no, an older version of Skye whom Batty knew and yet didn’t know. There! The cardinals were safely away, and Batty reached for Hound—

  “Wake up, honey, please.”

  With a sickening lurch, she crashed awake. No ocean. No Hound. No mother.

  “No,” she said into her pillow.

  “Batty? Are you all right?”

  Batty rolled over, blinking away her sleep. The person talking to her was Rosalind, but a different Rosalind from the one Batty had last seen, the one to whom she could tell anything. All that was changed now. Batty shut her eyes tight, stuffing her sad secret back into its box, way down deep.

  “Do you realize it’s afternoon already? Every time we looked in on you, you were out cold. Do you feel sick?” Rosalind put her hand on Batty’s forehead. “No fever.”

  Batty restlessly jerked her head away. “No fever.”
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  “Your stomach?”

  Batty gently kneaded her stomach. Yes, the giant knot was still there. “It’s okay.”

  “You must be hungry, though. You slept through breakfast and lunch. Should I make a sandwich for you before I leave? Eggs and toast?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll get something later.” She was hungry—the stomach knot hadn’t affected her appetite—but first she needed to be left alone to deal with her ankle and the dirty, ripped pajamas.

  “Do you know that Jeffrey went back to Boston?” Rosalind asked.

  “Yes.” Batty waited for Rosalind to say more, like that she knew how much Batty must mind, or simply to reassure her that everything would work out. But now Oliver appeared in the doorway, looking pointedly at his watch.

  “Rosy,” he said. “Time to go. Long drive back to school.”

  So now he was calling her Rosy. That was a name for family and close friends only. Batty had a quick fantasy of Rosalind standing up to him, telling him never to call her that again.

  “Just a few more minutes, Oliver.” Rosalind once again put her hand on Batty’s forehead. “You’re sure you’re okay? I don’t like going away with you not feeling well.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “We didn’t get our chance to talk, I know, but I’ll be home again on Saturday. Iantha’s going to drive down to bring me and my stuff back,” said Rosalind. “Only six days. Barely enough time for a new countdown!”

  Batty tried to smile, knowing that’s what Rosalind wanted.

  “And then it’s your birthday!”

  In what was already an instinctive gesture, Batty put her hand on her stomach, trying to soothe the writhing knot. “I’m not sure I want any presents,” she said.

  “That’s crazy,” laughed Rosalind. “Of course you want presents.”

  “Rosy!” said Oliver.

  “I’ve got to go, honey.” Rosalind kissed her good-bye and left, taking with her Oliver, whom Batty hoped never, ever to see again for the rest of her life and beyond.

  She pulled back her covers and cautiously examined her ankle. It was only a little sore, and when she stood up, she found she could walk normally. This was a big relief. Limping would have made it hard to keep her morning misadventure a secret. She also needed to get rid of the ice pack, but that was easy. She emptied it out the window—by now it was only water—and threw the plastic bag into the closet to join the sweater and boots. Her pajamas were a bigger problem. Dirt could be washed out, but the rips were gaping, far beyond Batty’s small mending skills. Briefly she considered taking them to Jane for repair, but she’d have to make up a story to explain how they’d gotten that way, and lying wouldn’t make her feel any better about herself. The pajamas went into the closet, too.

  Anything else? Socks would cover the telltale scratches on her feet and ankles until they healed. But wait, those drawings from Tess and Nora! If Batty didn’t hand them over to Ben, and then those twins approached him with a story about his sister appearing in their backyard with leaves in her hair, he would go berserk. Batty had to give Ben the drawings, along with some sort of an explanation, and bind him to secrecy. She would call a MOPS.

  The tradition of the MOPS, originally standing for “Meeting of the Penderwick Sisters,” had been started long ago by the three oldest sisters. Batty had attended plenty of these as she grew up, and so had Ben, although when he was added to the family, “Sisters” had been changed to “Siblings” to accommodate his boy-ness. A MOPS was always a private meeting, with built-in rules about honor and secrecy. Secrecy! Batty was thoroughly sick of secrecy.

  Taking the drawings with her, she snuck to the bathroom, hoping a shower and clean clothes would give her the sense of a fresh start. And afterward, when she scrutinized her face in the mirror, she couldn’t find any traces of her new burden. Maybe she could pull this off. Holding her head high, she went downstairs to test out this new Batty—“After Batty”—on the family.

  Parents first, she decided, and found them in their study, peacefully preparing for the coming week at work.

  “You’re up!” said Iantha. “How are you, sweetie? Feeling okay?”

  “I’m good. Hungry.”

  “Hungry is excellent.” Her father got up from behind his desk. “Plenty of quesadillas in the fridge. I’ll reheat some for you.”

  “I can do it, Daddy. Honest.”

  And she fled, because right now that was all she could handle. Cursing herself for weakness, she pressed onward. Next up was Skye, not by Batty’s choice, but because there she was at the dining room table, under the shadow of Oliver’s absurd still lifes, and working on her computer. She looked sad but was wearing the calculator watch Jeffrey had given her. That was something, Batty supposed.

  “Hi.” Batty stopped beside Skye’s chair. She had to get this over with sometime.

  “Hi.” And Skye glanced up, one second, two seconds, then bent over her work again.

  That done—and who cares if Skye is sad, thought Batty—she soldiered on, into the kitchen for the quesadillas. She got down two of them, and the food propped her up enough that she hardly noticed when Jane breezed through looking for pretzels. Now to tackle Ben about the twins. She went outside, hunting for him.

  She heard him before she saw him, from somewhere behind the hydrangeas.

  “You can play with the Chinook,” he said. “And this is the sound it makes: schwoof, schwoof.”

  “Schwoof, schwoof, schwoof.”

  Batty peered through the stalks. Good grief, it was Lydia back there, waving Ben’s Chinook in the air. Ben never, ever let her play with his action figures.

  “Lydia, are you bothering Ben?” she asked.

  Ben answered, with a shade of embarrassment, “No, she’s okay. The Chinook is already missing some rotor blades. I won’t let her touch the Black Hawk.”

  “Lydia is the army,” said Lydia.

  Batty’s surprise at this cooperation between her two younger siblings must have shown in her expression, because Ben offered an explanation.

  “You know, the quesadilla smashed on Oliver,” he said. “Plus that Spanish thing she yelled at him.”

  “No me gusta,” said Lydia obligingly.

  “It was cool.” Ben beamed proudly. “When Oliver left, neither Lydia or I said good-bye. I thought you’d want to be there not to say good-bye, too, but Rosalind said you were still in bed. Why were you in bed all day, anyway? Everybody thought you were sick, and I called Rafael and he said maybe you were bitten by a tsetse fly and dying of sleeping sickness.”

  Batty pushed her way through the bushes and sat down with them. “You can see that I’m not dying. Anyway, there are no tsetse flies in Massachusetts.”

  “Are you sure?” Ben was used to her being healthy. Except for that time a few years ago when she’d gone into the hospital to have her tonsils out—he hadn’t liked that at all.

  “Yes, I’m sure. We learned about them in science.” They’d studied bugs that March. Vasudev had done his report on tsetse flies, glorying in the details of their lethal bite. Keiko had chosen crickets, and Batty, ladybugs. Strange, she thought, how that ladybug report seemed to have happened a very long time ago. Right, because that had happened to Before Batty.

  “Then why did you sleep so much? You missed lunch and everything.”

  “I’ll explain, but I have to call a MOPS, but just us. No Skye or Jane.”

  “Then it’s not a MOPS,” said Ben. Among the MOPS rules was one about not leaving people out.

  “You’re right. But since it’s just for you and me, and Lydia, since she’s here, I guess we could call it a Meeting of the Younger Penderwick Siblings. A MOYPS.”

  “What can you tell me that you can’t tell Skye and Jane?” asked Ben, suspicious.

  “I can’t tell you until we swear secrecy. Obviously.”

  “This better not be about dying, because you already said you weren’t. Anyway, Lydia doesn’t know how to do the swearing part. Or how to keep secret
s.”

  “We’ll teach her the swearing part, and I’m not worried about her and secrets. Nothing she repeats ever makes sense,” said Batty. “Lydia, put down the Chinook and face this way. Good. MOYPS come to order.”

  “Second the motion,” said Ben with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  “All swear to keep secret what we say here, even from the parents, and also from the older sisters.” Batty made her right hand into a fist and held it out toward Ben, who put his fist on top of hers. “Now you, Lydia. Make a fist.”

  It took a while to persuade Lydia to make a fist and then, once she’d made it, not to punch it in the air like a winning athlete—no one knew where she’d learned that—but eventually her little hand ended up on top of the pile, and Batty and Ben could chant the oath.

  “This I swear, by the Penderwick Family Honor,” they said, then broke apart the fist pile.

  “Here’s why I slept late,” said Batty. “I woke up really early this morning, took a walk in Quigley Woods, got lost, hurt my ankle a little bit but it’s much better now, found a way out of the woods, called Nick, he picked me up in his truck, and I came home and went to sleep again. The end. Except there were these twins—”

  Ben interrupted her. “You’re going too fast. Why did you get up so early?”

  Batty hadn’t counted on questions. How could she possibly explain her pre-dawn madness? “I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like—” She picked up the Chinook and flew it around for a while, but her thoughts weren’t coming together. “Ben, do you ever think about your dad, you know, not Daddy, but the one whose genes you have?”

  “Jeans.” Lydia pointed to Ben’s denim-encased legs.

  “Genes, not jeans,” said Ben.

  “Jeans,” repeated Lydia happily.

  “No, Lydia, you don’t understand,” said Ben. “My first father died in a car accident before I was born, and then Mom and Dad got married and Dad adopted me. And I do think about my first father. Mom’s told me lots of stories about him.”