by Tamara Bundy
Sitting cross-legged, I looked down at our room, imagining what Charlotte used to see each morning. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at, just an old brown dresser in the corner, which now only held my clothes. And next to the dresser was a desk that used to be Mama’s. Actually, everything here used to be Mama’s, which used to make me and Charlotte feel happy, imagining Mama using it all.
I held the letter in my left hand, and with my right hand I traced the outline of my name. I couldn’t help but smile at the honest-to-goodness proof that my sissy was still in my world. I took a deep breath and opened the letter, making sure not to rip the still-damp paper.
Dear Pixie,
Hi! How are you? How’s school? And how are things with Miss Beany? I hope you are giving her a chance and have found out how nice she is. Tell her I said hi.
Guess you know by now I have polio. When they first told me, they called it “infantile paralysis,” and that sure sounded bad! But I was so sick back then that I didn’t even care. Then later I heard one of the nurses talking about my bad case of polio, so I understood.
I really don’t remember much about how or when I got here. They tell me my fever was so high, I was acting crazy . . . They call it “delirious.” I swore I saw Mama then. She looked so pretty. I wanted to run to her, but my legs wouldn’t work. She smiled at me and disappeared.
Maybe it was just the fever—but it gave me such comfort.
For weeks and weeks (it’s hard to remember what day it is), I was in a room all by myself, called “isolation.” I remember my legs hurt so much, especially my left one. I couldn’t even have a sheet on it. If someone even touched it, it felt like they were digging a fork into it. Can you believe that? I tried not to cry. But I did.
Some of the nurses here are afraid of catching polio. There’s one that made the student nurses from Indiana University check on me whenever my fever was high. And there’s one who is my favorite. She’s Nurse Margie, and she stays with me when I’m having a bad night.
I was so happy when I finally got to get out of isolation. I’m now bed number two in a twelve-bed ward with eight other polios.
My legs don’t hurt as much anymore, but they don’t work too well. Nurse Margie promises me I will walk again. She helps me in the pool they have here. It’s a pool that is inside! Can you believe that? It’s warm and really feels good. When I’m in it, I forget I can’t walk. But then I get out again.
But I know I’m lucky. In the ward next to me are boys and girls who can’t breathe on their own, so they have to lie in these machines the size of Daddy’s old coffin boxes, with just their heads sticking out. They call it an iron lung.
I’m lucky my lungs are still working. I’m also really tired. I hope so much that I can see you this weekend and hand this right to you. But if I can’t, know I miss you something fierce.
Sorry I won’t be there for Halloween. What are you going to be? I remember last year you liked my princess costume better than your clown one, so you can have it if you want.
Maybe I’ll be home by Christmas—or even sooner—the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
Love,
Charlotte
Yep. My sissy is in a faraway hospital, full of pain, but she still called herself lucky. That’s my sissy.
I’d plumb forgot Halloween was so close. We always loved dressing up for it. Last year, we couldn’t go trick-or-treating, since our old town decided, what with the wartime sugar shortage, it didn’t make sense. We still dressed up and did some fun tricks, though—throwing corn kernels at houses, Ivory-soaping the windows. But never the screens—that wasn’t allowed.
It didn’t even matter that we didn’t get treats because of the sugar rationing. With Charlotte, everything was fun.
I had no idea what this town did for Halloween. But no matter what they did, I wouldn’t be wearing Charlotte’s princess costume. She didn’t know all her clothes got burned. Grandma’d probably tell me to be a dang clown again.
Looking at her letter once more, I remembered Charlotte sitting in that wheelchair with her hand on the window—and felt guilty that I’m the reason she got polio in the first place. That’s when the letter started to get all blurry, as I realized I would dress as a clown for the rest of my life if only I could get my princess back.
CHAPTER 8
I was right—Grandma said the clown costume still had life in it, and she had nothing else to offer.
“But it’s so scratchy—and too small,” I complained when I tried it on.
Grandma inspected me from head to toe. “Does look like you’ve grown a foot, doesn’t it?” She clucked her tongue and cocked her head to one side as my hope grew that she was seeing my side of it for once. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. “But with wartime rations, we don’t have the material . . .”
Once Grandma starts talking wartime rations, I know I shouldn’t even try to argue. But I still do.
“Maybe you could cut up an old dress or something?”
Grandma gasped. “Oh, now I should put scissors to one of my dresses so you can wear it for one day? It’s not your wedding day, Prudence Ann; it’s just Halloween.” She shook her head. “And there’s no extra money right now.”
“What about the piggy bank?” I remembered the coffee can Daddy put in the kitchen last month, telling us it was now the farm’s piggy bank. “Could we use some of that money?”
“I reckon when your daddy said that was to be for improvements around here, he wasn’t talking about costumes.” She patted my shoulder, which was already itching under the too-tight costume. “This will do just fine.”
* * *
* * *
So on Halloween, there I was at school dressed as an itchy overgrown clown.
After lunch, there was a party in the gym with paper skeleton and pumpkin decorations and cookies and punch. I was sitting by myself eating a cookie when Rotten Ricky walked up to me. I’d managed to avoid him since that day in the closet, as he’d been absent for a couple weeks. When he returned to school, he seemed quieter—but I figured him to be still as rotten.
He was wearing his usual clothes. All around us stood ghosts and witches and cowboys and cats, but there he was, looking like it was just any old day of the year. I really couldn’t have cared less, but I had to ask: “Why aren’t you dressed up?”
Rotten Ricky blushed a bit and then puffed up his chest, reminding me of Teacher, before he answered, “Halloween stinks.”
I don’t know why that bothered me. What with Charlotte gone and my awful costume, I wasn’t feeling particularly fond of Halloween myself. But when Rotten Ricky said those very words, I felt myself bristling like he’d insulted my kin. “What do you mean—stinks?”
He shrugged. “Just does.”
“Well, maybe you stink.”
He sighed the way Grandma sighs sometimes. Then he looked away from me as he said, “I just come over to tell you Miss Beany says it’s our turn to help at the children’s table.”
I’d forgot we all had to take turns cutting out and coloring jack-o’-lanterns with the first and second graders. But how’d I forget I was assigned to help them with Rotten Ricky?
Miss Beany’d been nice enough to me the last week or so that I’d decided Granddaddy was right and stopped calling her Meany-Beany. But I hadn’t changed my mind about Ricky.
“Prudence . . . Ricky . . .” Miss Beany said. “You’ll have so much fun helping the children cut these darling jack-o’-lanterns!”
Before I could ask her why we might like that so much, Big-Mouth Berta practically danced over to the table in her perfect princess costume. “Miss Beany, do you want me to help? I’d be happy to help.”
“Berta, you are so thoughtful to ask,” Miss Beany told her. “But maybe you can go to the bobbing-for-apples bucket and help there. This year, we’re using blindfolds an
d letting the children use their hand to reach into the water, instead of the usual bobbing, since everyone’s worried about the threat of polio.” With that, Miss Beany put her hand over her mouth like she’d said a bad word. “Oh, I’m sorry, Prudence. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I-I’m okay,” I told her, even though my cheeks had started burning and I didn’t feel okay at all. Especially when Berta kept talking.
“How ’bout if Prudence helps over at the bobbing-for-apples bucket?” she said. “Seems to me her clown costume is better suited for that job than my princess one.”
As much as I didn’t want to be stuck with Rotten Ricky, even more I didn’t want Berta to get her way. I stepped closer to Ricky. Me and Big-Mouth Berta probably looked like two hunting dogs fighting over who cornered the raccoon. Not sure how long we stood like that, but it was long enough for Rotten Ricky’s cheeks to blush a deep shade of red.
Lucky for me, Miss Beany was as stubborn as Berta. “I’ll go with you to help you get settled over there, Berta,” she told her. “I’m sure your lovely princess dress will be fine.”
I tried not to smile too much as I watched Miss Beany lead her across the room. By the time I turned back to the table, a little girl dressed as a cat was hugging Ricky.
“Hey, Betsy! Or should I say, ‘Hey, kitty’?” he said, and with that, the little girl began meowing.
“Hey, clown, can you help me?” a voice behind me said.
I turned to find a first-grade boy holding a jack-o’-lantern scribbled with blue crayon.
“Tommy, right?”
He smiled at me remembering his name and nodded.
“Don’t you want your jack-o’-lantern to be orange like everyone else’s?”
“Why would I want it to look like everyone else’s?” Tommy asked, and I didn’t have a great answer for that.
As I sat with Tommy, helping him cut out his blue pumpkin, I listened to Rotten Ricky and Betsy, who I learned was his little sister. “Mama says she won’t take us into town to go trick-or-treating tonight, Ricky. But you’ll take me, right? I just gotta go trick-or-treatin’! I never been before. Oh, please, Ricky—there’s a party at church too. Please talk to Mama. Please!”
“Why won’t your mama take you trick-or-treating?” I asked Betsy.
“No reason,” Rotten Ricky mumbled.
But Betsy seemed to know a reason. “Mama’s been extra sad since Daddy left, and now that Billy’s in the—”
“Betsy, that’s enough. Don’t go telling our family business to everybody.”
Betsy stuck her bottom lip out in a pout. “I wasn’t tellin’ our family business—I was tellin’ my business. I can’t go trick-or-treating ’cause Mama’s sad about Daddy being gone and Billy being in the war. She never wants to do anything, and that’s not fair.” Tears started rolling down her face.
Rotten Ricky looked like he might be fighting back a few of his own tears, and so I felt the need to look away. But I could still hear him comforting his sister. “It’s okay . . . I promise . . .” Somehow in my head those words started mixing with Granddaddy’s words about not deciding who someone is before they have a chance to show you.
And at that moment, Ricky didn’t seem so rotten anymore.
CHAPTER 9
A cold November wind blew against me as I brought the egg basket to Grandma after school. Wearing my mittens made it safer to get the eggs from Teacher, but it sure didn’t make that grumpy old hen any more pleasant. I’d hoped to warm up inside by the fire, but Grandma said Granddaddy could use help with the firewood.
Walking toward the sound of Granddaddy’s chopping, I spied Daddy way out in the field. It turned out that Daddy liked working on the farm and was real handy. Staying busy all the time seemed to suit him. It suited him so much that lots of days I’d barely see him.
“Afternoon, Pixie,” Granddaddy said, between firewood chops. “How was school?”
“Okay,” I answered. “But what’s Daddy doing out there? I thought the crops were all done, what with it being so cold.”
“Harvesting the field corn. It grows later than sweet corn, and it isn’t for our eatin’—it’s for the livestock and chickens.”
Even though I shivered in the cold, I noticed the beads of sweat on Granddaddy’s forehead from all the ax swinging. I began stacking the cut wood in the wheelbarrow.
“Careful there,” Granddaddy said as he nodded toward the extra-big pile of wood I was planning to move to the wood box up by the house.
“It’s fine,” I told him.
But as soon as I turned the wheelbarrow around, the dang thing fell to its side, spilling every last log out on the ground.
The next time, I put half the wood in the wheelbarrow and made two trips.
When I returned, Granddaddy was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “Sometimes, Pixie, we make things harder than they need be.”
I knew he was talking about more than wood in a wheelbarrow.
Some people talk to me like I’m just out of diapers—but not Granddaddy. I like how he talks to me like I have opinions.
“I suppose I might do that sometimes,” I said. “But it’s awful cold out. How much more chopping do you have to do?”
Granddaddy motioned to the already-chopped wood. “This here wouldn’t get us very far in a usual winter. And this winter’s fixin’ to be a bad one.”
“How do you know it’s going to be so bad?” I asked.
“Crab apples,” he told me.
“What?” I smiled, figuring this was going to turn into a story.
“Every time there’s lots of crab apples on the trees in the fall—winter’s gonna be tough.”
“You can tell that just by looking at the crab apples?”
“Well, no. I also look for the rabbits,” Granddaddy said as he began helping me stack the wood in the wheelbarrow.
“And what do the rabbits tell you?”
“They’re fattening up and telling me this coming winter’s gonna be colder than Grandma’s homemade ice cream.”
I laughed. “How do they tell you that?”
“Well, Pixie, if the rabbits are fat now, it’s ’cause they know winter’s gonna be a long one. When we pay attention to nature, it can tell us a lot. So I’ll pay attention and chop a little bit longer every day to get us through to at least Thanksgiving.”
At the mention of the holiday, my stomach sank, and it felt like the logs toppling over again—but this time on me. I shook my head. “I don’t think we should celebrate Thanksgiving this year.”
Granddaddy snorted. “Now, don’t tell me you aren’t looking forward to Grandma’s pumpkin pie.”
But that wasn’t it. “Of course I love eating all Grandma’s yummy Thanksgiving food, but should we . . . I mean . . . with everything that’s happened, maybe we shouldn’t be celebrating.”
Granddaddy motioned toward the fields. “Maybe we can borrow another lesson from those rabbits.”
“Come on, Granddaddy. The rabbits can’t tell us to celebrate Thanksgiving.”
“In a way, they can.” He sat on the chopping stump, and I hopped on next to him. “You see, those rabbits get as fat as possible for the winter ’cause they know food’ll be hard to find, what with all the plants dying or being covered in snow. But when those hungry rabbits find a patch of food—don’t you suppose they treasure that?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But that still doesn’t mean we should be giving thanks while Charlotte’s in the hospital and not with us.”
“Well, Pixie, don’t you think we should give thanks for a right fine hospital that’s helping your sissy get better? And shouldn’t we give thanks for what we have left?”
I wasn’t ready to admit that Granddaddy—and those dang rabbits—were probably right. All I could think of was that each Thanksgiving that rolled around left
us with one less family member to give thanks for.
And I didn’t like that at all.
CHAPTER 10
Daddy left early on Thanksgiving morning to drive to the hospital to try to see Sissy. I wrote her a letter that I hoped would cheer her up, filling her in on school, Halloween, and the goings-on at the farmhouse. I wanted more than ever to visit her, but Daddy told me that until we knew we were all allowed to go and sit with her a spell, there was no point in going all the way up to Indianapolis to wave at a window.
So while he drove my letter to Charlotte, I kept busy helping Granddaddy and Grandma.
I tried to be thankful, but the entire house smelled of pie, bread, and memories. And those memories—of our family visits to the farm for the holiday, with Mama alive and Charlotte well, and us all baking pies, stuffing the turkey, and laughing the whole time—they grabbed me with a powerful hold.
I expected Grandma to point out I was being ungrateful, with my gloomy mood, but she didn’t say a word. She didn’t even scold me for dropping the silverware smack on the floor when I was setting the table.
Instead, she shook her head kind of sad-like as she spoke. “How ’bout you and Granddaddy go and take that pumpkin pie to our neighbors? Ethel over there is having a hard time with her husband gone and her older boy off in the war. And while we have less than usual this Thanksgiving due to war rations, I’d be surprised if they got much food at all today.” Grandma looked in the stove at the roasting pan and shook her head again. “That bird is taking its time and won’t be done for at least another hour, so you and Granddaddy can run over there now. Isn’t her other boy in your class at school? What’s his name?”
“His name is Ricky,” I answered, like I just decided that was his official name, and I noticed Granddaddy giving me a wink.
Granddaddy made sure I put on my coat and mittens, but when I pointed out he only had on the heavy flannel shirt he wore in the winter while he worked in the barn, he shook his head. “My skin’s old and tough,” he said. “It can’t get hurt by a little chill in the air.”
