A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  She felt the rumble of a subway train coming underground; after a few moments, the sound and vibration stopped, then started, then diminished. There was a hustle and bustle as people emerged up the steps and made their way down the street. Nobody paused at the newsstand, and nobody saw Pearl, crouched silently on a stoop. Any minute now, she thought, my theory will be proven—or not.

  And just then, she heard it and froze. It sounded as if someone was dragging a coat so long that it swooshed along the ground. And there it was: a raccoon. It was the same one she’d seen with Mom, all right: Mrs. Mallomar. The swooshing noise was her fat striped tail brushing the pavement. Could she see Pearl? Could she smell her? (Pearl realized she really didn’t know that much about wild animals.)

  The raccoon swept past and crossed the street to the newsstand, hurrying along on all fours, making that ak-ak-ak squawk Pearl now realized was raccoon talk. She went into the little door in the newsstand—it was a raccoon door, Pearl realized, with happiness that she’d guessed right. Then Tallulah came out the regular side door, reached up and pulled a newspaper from a clip, rolled it into a tube and stuck it under her arm, and passed by Pearl as she headed along Lancaster Avenue. In the little low window, Pearl could see the black, intelligent gleam of Mrs. Mallomar’s eyes as she gazed out from amid the clotheslined fringes of Moons, the bags of almonds and sunflower seeds that might have appealed just as well to raccoons as to humans, the multicolored magazines and wrapped candy.

  Pearl backed away, smiling. She trotted home, keeping to the shadows of the small trees along the street, tiptoeing down the sidewalk, and let herself in, removing the flip-flops wedged in the doors. Surprisingly quickly, she found herself sitting on her chair-bed, where she belonged, sleepy but wired. Had any of this really happened? Yes. Sure. Right?

  Her mother turned over in her sleep and called out, “Pearl?”

  “Just going to the bathroom.” Pearl made her voice drowsy. She went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and went back to bed. And then she had a sort of argument with herself in which she went over everything that had just happened as if she was explaining it to someone extremely logical, like, say, Ramón. Or mean Elsa at school. She had to give just the evidence, no fantasy.

  First: She had dropped a note in a mail slot, a note about someone named Mrs. M showing up for work at the newsstand at midnight.

  Then: A raccoon had gone inside the newsstand and taken up position at a smaller, raccoon-sized door.

  Then: Tallulah had left the newsstand, as if she was getting off work. Like someone else had taken over the shift.

  Pearl lay back in her chair-bed and stared up at her poster. Strange things did happen in New York at night. Pearl had just seen proof. But who was to say reading raccoons were any stranger than people doing math worksheets or getting choco tacos from the Mister Softee truck or sleeping behind umbrellas or riding in tunnels under the street at all hours of the night? Every one of those things would sound like fiction if you didn’t know they were true. Pearl could feel herself teetering on the brink between believing her eyes and sticking to the facts.

  Raccoons reading papers, raccoons writing papers, raccoons selling papers.

  A Sidebar About Bread

  Maurice Sendak (who wrote and illustrated In the Night Kitchen) wrote about the mysterious quality of bread. As he wrote, bread is made in the dark of the night, a time when kids know that anything can happen. Not only is bread not there at dusk and there at dawn, it is made by people who do what human children cannot: get up in the middle of the night and stay awake until dawn. Kids wake up at dawn, and by that time, the magic is complete; the bread is baked.

  There’s another mystery about bread, in how it rises to its beautiful crusty roundness. There’s a potion, a fermented soup of grain or fruit that has a chemical reaction with the water, salt, and flour of the batter. That reaction bubbles up; it makes the bread’s size change. Bakers save a bit of the potion, feeding it to the next batch of bread. They pass it down like stories, from one loaf to the next, and when they move to a new location, they carry their potion in special jars, keeping it safe for the following generation.

  —M.A.M.

  And with that, Pearl chose to believe it was true. It wasn’t just the New York City night that made it true. It was the fact that when New Yorkers needed something, they made it happen, no matter what. New Yorkers needed to move around the city at all hours, so trains ran underground all night. New Yorkers needed bread in the morning, so there were bakers baking it all night. New Yorkers—nocturnal New Yorkers, but New Yorkers, nonetheless—needed the news, so there were raccoons writing it, and printing it, and selling it—and Pearl had just seen proof, if she needed any.

  Why should she need any? Hadn’t her own mother told her about these very neighborhood raccoons her whole life?

  Pearl brushed her feet together and some sidewalk dust rubbed off, proof of her midnight expedition. She’d always believed her mother’s stories were made-up. But now it turned out that she had been wrong and Mom had been right. A raccoon really had gone to work selling the midnight Moon, after reading a note that Pearl had delivered with her own hand. Pearl decided it with a bang: She had seen what she thought she’d seen.

  18: LIBRARY CARDS, FREE

  SEP 26

  WHAT DO YOU NEED TO GET A LIBRARY CARD? LOVE OF READING!

  “Not very sexy,” said Alice over Patricia’s shoulder, peeking at her screen. “You’ll have to do better than that, Trish.”

  Pearl said, “Loving reading isn’t even the point. The point is you don’t need to have an ID. Or money. Just an address.”

  Mom said, “The point is, it’s a free country. If you want to read, you can.”

  Francine said, “How about just: ‘Library cards, free.’”

  “Got it,” said Mom, hitting print. “I’m putting a sign on the door.”

  “I’ll hang it up for you,” said Pearl. She was itching to get away from everyone, to take off around the building and down the basement stairs where the raccoon—but no, Francine just had to come with her to hold up the sign while Pearl taped it.

  Francine said in a hurried, excited whisper, “I’ve got an idea for a dance to make more schoolkids come, not just babies. You’re not going to like it, though, Pearl.”

  A dance? Pearl had no time for dances. She was piecing together a story in her head, a story with drama and mystery and potential.

  “It’s got the Rock Lady in it,” Francine said as they came back inside. “The headless Rock Lady.”

  A Sidebar About Mothers

  In societies where fathers stick around during the gestation of children and help rear them, sometimes you get a division of labor and responsibilities that is purely biological. The females, who are biologically responsible for pregnancy and nursing, stay close to home and children, while males go out to find or hunt food for their families.

  In societies where fathers mate with the mothers and then disappear right away, the mothers are responsible for everything. My grandmother says it’s better this way—less messy and less scratching and snarling. The mother relies on her own resources, for better or worse, and the children grow up to reflect her strengths, as well as her weaknesses.

  There is never just one influence on a child, not among raccoons, oh no: You get the full benefit of grandmothers and aunts as well as your mother. Lucky for me, my grandmother’s house is nearby and my aunt’s tree even nearer. Even luckier, my aunt is literate and ambitious, even if that makes for certain bratty cousins who put on airs. Luckiest of all, I’m my grandmother’s favorite granddaughter. My grandmother’s writing holds our society together, informs and inspires us. But the story I’m telling has the power to save us from the loss of our most precious resource: our castle, our hearth, our library.

  My mother’s weakness is a longing for her own history, not ours. If only my own mother was not so hell-bent on recapturing the magic of a certain two nights of her life. Like Cinderella, she m
et her prince not once, but twice. My brother and I, each only kits with no littermates, are together the offspring of the same union. And my mother is always looking for my father. She has a dream of getting out of the city and taking my brother and me with her to live with our father—her Prince Charming, the one who got away.

  But I have a different dream. I intend to be more than ready to stand on my own. When it comes to writing, I’m a geek, like my grandmother, I guess. It’s Grandmallomar—Grandmar for short—who taught me to read, and is nagging me now to teach my brother, before he gets away, too. Someone else can be her mother’s daughter. I’m saving the world, one paragraph at a time.

  —M.A.M.

  “She might not be headless much longer,” announced Ramón. “Oleg Boiko has found stone carvers.”

  “What? You mean he can’t carve it himself?”

  (Pearl was getting tired of Oleg being such a hero.)

  Francine said, “Who on earth can carve a head out of stone?”

  (She truly was impressed. So was Ramón. So was Pearl, really; she was just jealous.)

  “A sculptor,” said Ramón. “Right here in New York City, we have a cathedral under construction, with a team of stone carvers. Can you believe it?”

  “And they’re going to carve the head?”

  “Your mother is drafting a letter to them right now.”

  Pearl did not know what to think about this. She couldn’t imagine Vincent wearing some new head. She couldn’t stand to envision what it would look like. But what she was impressed with was how much Oleg knew about his one thing—rocks!—and how he was using it.

  He was a geek, too, and everyone liked him.

  (To Pearl, this was enlightening.)

  Mom and Ramón were already talking excitedly about what kind of a ceremony they might have to introduce a replacement head, and how Mom could write a press release to get the media to cover it—good press, positive press, the library striding boldly into the future as the centerpiece of Lancaster Avenue, an event they could announce to the board before their October 2 vote to make sure it knew the library intended to fight for its right to be a library, not apartments.

  Pearl couldn’t argue with this, but that afternoon, she couldn’t stop feeling crabby about the new head. She trudged up the straight stairs and pulled some picture books for Alice to consider for a story hour, just to remind herself which kid was key around here.

  But Alice was babbling about an idea for a Rock Lady costume Francine could make, “since she was so good with her hands,” and it was too much for Pearl to take. Pearl took advantage of their annoying excitement and escaped back down the spiral stairs. When she heard Mom carrying on about the “new head night” and Ramón suggesting calling it “a gala . . . a fête . . . an extravaganza!”—she knew they were too distracted to worry about where she was. So she opened the basement door and ventured down the worn wooden steps.

  Now, understand: Pearl was a brave, fierce girl, but she wasn’t used to darkness. She was a city girl, and the city was always blinking and shining, so places where the darkness was unbroken were few. Even Pearl, who had nerve enough to sneak onto the street at night, avoided such places. She couldn’t help being fascinated by darkness, of course: Like any city kid, she had gone through a phase of riding in the front car of the subway so she could peer into the blackness beyond the headlight’s beam. She had been at summer concerts in Central Park; she’d gone out after sunset. But even there, there were headlights and fireflies.

  And she finally let it in: She was afraid.

  Pearl didn’t want to admit to herself that she was afraid of what might be in the ancient, dirt-floored, low-ceilinged, absolutely unlit, pitch-dark basement of her very own library.

  But now, there was something at stake. Now there were raccoons who might have news to share, raccoons who Bruce thought lived in the trees overlooking the garden and the statue, raccoons who were the only ones who might know what happened in the garden the night Vincent’s head was stolen. Raccoons who could write. What else they could do, a bunch of them together, was beyond Pearl’s understanding right now. For all she knew, in this overdramatic moment, they could be the thieves of Vincent’s head. Maybe the head was down here right now!

  (Did she think she could slip in, find the head, not wake the sleeping raccoons, get back upstairs, and arrive, triumphant, to restore Vincent to her former glory?)

  The door snapped shut on some kind of spring behind her. She pushed away all thoughts of cobwebs, silverfish, rats, and corners you couldn’t see into. I’m still in the library, still in the library, still in the library, she told herself with every step she descended. The only light came from the cloudy window that looked onto the driveway, Pearl’s own flashlight, and the glowing EXIT sign at the top of the stairs. It smelled like dirt. Still in the library. And when she stepped through the doorway at the foot of the stairs, she shouted inside her head, I’m still in the library!

  Something down here was holding its breath along with Pearl. She heard it rustle, and she thought: They really are here. I wasn’t making it up.

  “Hey,” she whispered in a singsong low voice. “It’s only Pearl. You know me. I won’t hurt you. I just need your help.”

  There was a small scuffle and muffled chattering.

  The flashlight’s weak beam picked up the gleam of two shining eyes, then two more. She raised the beam slightly and saw two black-masked, white-whiskered faces. The tiny one was the raccoon kit she’d scooped out of the street, she was sure of it.

  Pearl crouched down and put out her hand. The little one stepped forward, gathered its nerve, and skittered out of the reach of the larger one, who tried to stop it. The little one reached out a paw and touched Pearl’s finger, then ran back to the other one.

  “I want to find out if you know where Vincent’s head is. Who took it? How do I get it back? Because maybe if we know then we can convince people that the library’s worth saving.”

  The larger raccoon grabbed hold of the smaller one and they both disappeared into the darkness. What was back there, some kind of hole or tunnel or nest or burrow? Nothing else happened. The head didn’t roll into view; the raccoons didn’t suddenly speak. The books said—and Mom’s stories said—that raccoons nested in hollow trees or shallow holes in the ground. But in the city, why shouldn’t they nest inside, too, their nests lined with shredded Moon, especially with winter coming on?

  What was I expecting? Pearl stood there feeling hugely stupid. It made perfect sense for raccoons to be in the basement. That didn’t mean they wanted to help her, or even that they knew who she was.

  Pearl emerged from the basement, peeking through the glass window of the door first to make sure the hallway was empty.

  “Where were you?” said Simon when she got to the circulation desk.

  “Nowhere,” said Pearl. She stared at his head. He’d done something to his black hair—the ends were dyed red and orange. “Have you gone insane?”

  “That seems to be the general opinion,” Simon said. “It’s for my band. If we’re going to stand out, I need to stand out.”

  “You already do,” said Pearl, then quickly asked, “What’s your band called now?”

  “We’re still working on it,” said Simon. “What do you think it should be?”

  He was always doing this—talking about the band without giving its name. He’d tell her what songs they practiced, what he wanted to play next, but all he did when she asked the band’s name was tell her to suggest one.

  Now she said, “The Masked Band-Its.”

  “Like bandits, like raccoons?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Sounds too criminal,” said Simon. “So what were you doing in the basement, Pearl?”

  “Don’t say anything, Simon, promise? I’m looking for . . . what was that headline? A something remedy?”

  “An elusive remedy,” said Simon.

  “There’s your band name,�
� said Pearl.

  19: IN THE GARDEN

  SEP 27–28

  The next day after school, Pearl led Francine on a search of all the alleys leading off Lancaster Avenue. She told Francine they were looking for Vincent’s head, but actually Pearl was looking for something else: She noted the raccoon footprints in the dirt around trees and along garden edges. What were their trails, their routines? And when did they leave their homes—on Beep Street or in the basement or up the trees—and when did they come home?

  For all Pearl knew, Mrs. Mallomar was the only aspect of her mother’s stories that was in any way real. The raccoons in the basement could just be trash pandas—Bruce’s phrase—who had just happened to be at the window next to that wet note in the grass. Pearl wanted to get to the bottom of the raccoon stories once and for all. If she could do that, maybe next she could figure out how to ask them if they’d seen who stole Vincent’s head.

  Francine clicked along behind Pearl in her tap shoes, doing her Rock Lady dance in her head, her hand out like Vincent’s, reaching toward Pearl. “I want—” Francine moaned. Clicka-clacka. “I want something from you!”

  She wanted Pearl to ask what the Rock Lady wanted, but Pearl’s focus was on her own goal.

  “Where are your goldfish flip-flops?” Pearl asked in annoyance.

  “Where are your dolphin flip-flops?” asked Francine.

  “They’re too noisy,” Pearl said pointedly.

  Francine shrugged. “Let’s go back to the garden,” she said. “My taps sound better on the bricks.”

  “I don’t want that Oleg spying on us,” Pearl said. But she hadn’t seen any tracks for a few blocks, so they turned back.

  Francine rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’s too busy with his rock-hunting.”

  On the bricks around Vincent’s sad form, Francine performed a strange dance to music that played only in her head. “Rock Lady,” Francine said to herself, but loudly, so Pearl could hear. “If only Pearl would let me show her the Rock Lady dance!”