The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish

by Claudia Mills

  “Who is willing to read next?” Mr. Abrams asked. “James?”

  “Okay,” James said, though Amanda knew that he wouldn’t have volunteered to read if Mr. Abrams hadn’t invited him.

  James’s entry was good, but long, written in a flowery, stilted style. James didn’t usually write that way, so he must be trying to imagine how a well-educated southern gentleman would speak. He had obviously done a lot of research on the Second Battle of Bull Run. Amanda thought the diary entry would have been more interesting if he hadn’t put in all the details about exposed left flanks and intercepted retreats. But maybe boys were interested in battles. Once again, Amanda was grateful that she had been assigned Polly, who could watch the battle from a safe, picnicking distance.

  “‘And so, my esteemed diary,’” James read in conclusion, “‘today has been a day of great glory for our courageous men and their glorious cause. Long may the Confederacy endure!’”

  Everyone clapped. Amanda wanted to jump right in to offer comments, but she had said so much about Beth’s diary that she waited for someone else to take the first turn.

  “It was long,” Ricky said. “I mean, long. How did you write so much?”

  James shrugged. What was he supposed to say?

  “You did a lot of research,” Meghan observed.

  “Yes,” Mr. Abrams said. “Your research was very impressive, James.”

  Amanda had waited long enough. “I loved the voice. It sounds just like I imagine Robert E. Lee sounding. Listening to it, you’d think James really supported the Confederacy, but you know he doesn’t. Not in real life.”

  She hoped she wasn’t jumping to conclusions about James just because he was black. Nobody supported the Confederacy nowadays. At least nobody Amanda knew.

  “Many of you are doing a wonderful job of creating characters very different from yourselves,” Mr. Abrams said. “We have time for one more. Any volunteers?”

  Before Amanda could raise her hand, Lance beat her to it.

  “Okay, Lance. Let’s hear what your slave boy, Jonah, is doing these days.”

  Lance stood up to read. “The spelling is really bad, like before, but I’m just going to read it. You can imagine the bad spelling. Okay?”

  Mr. Abrams nodded.

  “It’s, like, really bad spelling. Imagine the worst possible spelling, and that’s what Jonah’s spelling is like. ‘Dear Diary.’ This time I made it d-i-r for dear.”

  This was more excruciating than when Patrick read aloud and couldn’t decipher his own handwriting. The way Lance kept pointing out how bad Jonah’s spelling was, it was as if he was making fun of Jonah. Jonah couldn’t help it if he couldn’t spell. He had never been able to go to school the way Lance did. Who was Lance to be laughing at Jonah?

  Amanda forced herself to stay calm. She reminded herself that Jonah was, after all, a completely fictitious character whom Lance himself had created. But still. She would never laugh at Polly. Authors shouldn’t laugh at their characters in that sneering way, whatever their characters did or didn’t do.

  “Just keep on reading,” Mr. Abrams suggested. It was amazing to Amanda that he could keep any sound of impatience from creeping into his voice.

  “‘Dear Diary. My massah, he’s off in the army. There be a big battle. Some place called Cow Run, I heerd.’ See how he gets it all wrong? It’s supposed to be Bull Run, but he calls it Cow Run. ‘I hope he gets hisself killed. His wife be just as bad. She kin whip us as hard as massah can. Too bad she not in the army, too.’ The end.”

  Amanda wanted to tell Lance not to laugh at Jonah, but she didn’t say anything. Probably the other kids suspected she thought her Polly diary was the best. She didn’t want to sound conceited, picking faults in what the others had written.

  Ricky said he liked everything about Lance’s entry. And then it was time for math.

  Saturday morning, Amanda lay in bed a long time. Usually she loved getting up early. Steffi and Beth were both night owls; Amanda didn’t think Steffi would ever go to bed if their parents didn’t make her. Well, if their mom didn’t make her. Daddy wasn’t there at bedtime anymore. Amanda was a morning person. She loved sitting at her desk writing, knowing that soon the first pink flush of dawn would be creeping over the low hills to the east.

  This morning she didn’t feel like getting up. It had been two weeks now since the Monopoly game; on Monday it would be two weeks since her father had left. Although he called every night at eight o’clock, Amanda had seen him only that one stiff, strained time at the motel. Last night, in his eight o’clock call, he had told her that he was moving today to an apartment. Having a father who lived in an apartment was less strange than having a father who lived in a motel. But it made the “separation” seem permanent, not temporary. People stayed in motels for a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. You could live in an apartment for a couple of months. Or a couple of years. Or the rest of your life.

  Amanda looked at the clock by her bed. It was just past six-thirty. Steffi would sleep till noon. Even her mother would sleep late, till eight or nine; she didn’t have to show any houses until after lunch. Nobody would know if Amanda slipped her bicycle quietly out of the garage and pedaled three miles to the Best Western Motel and back again.

  In five minutes, she was dressed, her Civil War diary carefully protected by a plastic bag and tucked into her backpack in case it rained. She knew that rolling up the heavy garage door would make noise, so she walked her bike out of the side door in the garage that led to the path by her mother’s flower beds. There was no rosy glow to the sky this morning, only a lightening of the gray clouds massed on the horizon. Amanda buckled on her bright yellow helmet and took off.

  Hardly any cars passed her so early on a Saturday morning. An old man with a cane was walking a tiny dog; two women were jogging side by side; another woman was outside in her bathrobe picking up her newspaper. Houses gave way to shops, banks, a gas station. Then the road leading out of town started turning into more of a highway, and there was the Best Western. The water in the pool looked cold and forbidding. Only three cars were parked in the entire lot. One was her father’s Toyota Camry, outside of Room 97.

  It had been hard enough knocking at his door when Steffi had been with her and their father was expecting them. Amanda didn’t have to be brave when Steffi was willing to be brave for both of them.

  Amanda raised her hand to knock, but couldn’t make herself go through with it.

  She tried to pretend she was Steffi, drawing herself up taller, putting a bright, false, confident smile on her face. She still couldn’t make her knuckles rap against the door.

  It was easier to pretend she was Polly. All she did these days, practically, was pretend she was Polly. But Polly was hardly braver than Amanda. Polly hadn’t had to do anything brave yet. At the picnic by Bull Run, Polly had panicked like everyone else.

  Maybe Amanda wouldn’t have to knock. Maybe her father would come out to the car with his suitcase, so he could drive to the new apartment bright and early and start getting settled in.

  Maybe he’d sense her presence outside his room. “Mandy!” he’d say joyfully as he flung open the door. “I had a feeling I’d find you here!”

  Another minute went by.

  Just knock!

  Amanda did it, one timid little knock, then another. No one answered. Maybe her father was in the shower. Or still asleep. She knocked more loudly.

  Did she hear footsteps?

  Then the door opened, just a crack, and her father peered out at her from behind the short length of heavy chain that kept the door from opening farther. He was wearing his pajama bottoms. His hair stood up every which way. “Amanda! What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Plainly she had startled him.

  “Nothing. I just came to visit.” That didn’t seem reason enough to show up unannounced so early in the morning. “I—I brought my Civil War diary for you to see. You know, the social studies project I’ve been telling you a
bout.”

  “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  He still hadn’t opened the door. The chain between them made her feel that she was visiting him in prison, talking to him through a grille of iron bars.

  “No. She was sleeping.”

  “Mandy.” She could see the strain in his face. “Your mother is going to be worried when she wakes up and finds you gone. It’s not a good time, honey. I’m moving today—1 told you—and your mother will be furious with me if you worry her like this.”

  Amanda tried to say that it was all right. She should have known all along that it was a bad idea to visit, a bad, dumb, stupid idea. But no words would come.

  “Mandy, honey, go wait by the car while I throw on some clothes. We can toss your bike in the trunk, and I’ll give you a ride home. I won’t be a minute.”

  “Okay.” Amanda forced the word out.

  The door shut, with her father on one side of it and Amanda on the other.

  He had never even taken off the chain.

  Suddenly all of Amanda’s timid hesitation turned to fury. He should have wanted her to be there. He should have welcomed her into his room with a warm, grateful hug. What kind of father turned his own daughter away from his door?

  Trembling with anger, Amanda jumped on her bike and started pedaling. She didn’t need for him to drive her home; she didn’t need to show him her Polly diary; she didn’t need for him to open the motel room door and be a real father; she didn’t need him at all for anything, ever.

  She was almost glad when it started to rain. Somehow it seemed to serve him right that she was cold and miserable. At least Polly’s diary was safe and dry in its plastic bag inside her backpack.

  A few blocks later, a car slowed beside her. Afraid to let herself hope it was her father, Amanda pedaled faster.

  “Mandy!” she heard her father call through the open car window. “Honey, please, let me drive you home. I don’t want you riding by yourself in the rain.”

  Amanda halted by the side of the road. More than anything, she longed to give in, to let her father’s strong hands relieve her of her dripping bike, to slip into the front seat of the car beside him and warm herself by his car heater, while she cried on his broad shoulder.

  But she couldn’t forget that chain on his door.

  “I’m fine!” she spat at him. “I’m practically home now. And I’m not a baby!”

  “Mandy …” He sounded almost pleading.

  Without another word, Amanda started riding again, refusing to turn to look at him as he slowly drove behind her the rest of the way home.

  Her mother and sister were still sleeping when Amanda crept into the house. After changing back into her pajamas, she hung her damp clothes over the shower rod. Then she climbed into bed, shivering, and let herself be Polly for a while.

  July 27,1861

  Dear Diary,

  It has been six days since the Battle of Bull Run. We still have not heard anything about Jeb and Thomas. Surely if they were injured—or worse—someone would have gotten word to us. But maybe not. There was so much chaos and commotion that day. Those caring for the wounded and burying the dead might be too busy to take pen and paper to write to the families of the fallen men.

  Mother and I are back on the farm. We are glad to be here. The waiting would be even harder if we were away from home, and from Father. If any bad news comes to us, we will be able to bear it better together.

  This afternoon the newspaper will arrive from Washington. Father thinks they will have a list of the dead and wounded. I am going to walk into town to pick up a copy at Mr. Scott’s store.

  It seems that the morning will never pass. Blackie is restless, too. She climbed up onto my lap and settled down as if to purr. Then she saw a fly and leaped out of my lap again. It is starting to rain. One raindrop slides down the window. Then another.

  The rain stopped and I walked to town. Mr. Scott had the papers. He handed mine to me. I ran far away from the crowd in front of the store so I could look at the list of names alone. They were printed on the front page. No news in the world was more important than whether or not my brothers were still alive.

  I could not make myself look. The longer I went without looking, the longer it seemed that both of them might be alive.

  But Mother and Father were waiting.

  I had to be brave, as brave as my brothers.

  I stared down at the paper. There were two lists: Union dead and wounded, Confederate dead and wounded. I scanned the Union list first and found the M’s. Mason, Robert—dead. Matthews, Donald—wounded. No Mason, Thomas. I cheched the list again to be sure. Thomas’s name was not there.

  Then I looked at the Confederate list. I saw it right away: Mason, Jebediah—wounded.

  Jebediah.

  Jeb.

  Wounded.

  Not dead, but wounded.

  My brave, kind, funny, caring, favorite brother: wounded.

  7

  Amanda hadn’t known herself what Polly would see when she searched for her brothers’ names in the newspaper listings. Maybe she should have made Thomas wounded instead of Jeb? No, it had to be Jeb. Sometimes when you wrote something, you knew that the story you were making up was the story that had to be.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Amanda’s mother was emptying the dishwasher. Amanda could hear the brisk clink of one plate against another. She wondered if her father had called: the phone had rung twice, but the caller had hung up before the answering machine clicked on. Amanda had a feeling her father didn’t want her mother to hear his message and know what had happened.

  Amanda heard Steffi’s door open. She hopped out of bed and hurried to the hall. “Steffi?”

  Her sister’s hair was tangled from sleep, and her eyes were still half shut. “Yeah?”

  Amanda plunged ahead. “Can we talk?”

  Steffi scowled. Their father used to tease Steffi about waking up on the wrong side of the bed, until he realized that calling attention to Steffi’s morning crabbiness only made her even crabbier.

  “It’s important.”

  Steffi rubbed her left eye. “Does it have to be now?”

  “I went to see Dad.”

  Instantly, Steffi was awake. “Does Mom know?”

  Amanda shook her head. “I went on my bike, while you guys were sleeping.”

  “And?”

  “It was awful.” The swollen lump stuck in Amanda’s throat. “It was like—I could tell he didn’t want me to be there.”

  “How early was it?”

  “It was early—like seven? But—Stem—he didn’t even open the door all the way. There was this chain thing on it. You know, so burglars can’t come in? And he didn’t take it off. Like I was a burglar.”

  Amanda’s voice was shaking so much she couldn’t keep on speaking.

  Without a word, Steffi led the way into Amanda’s room and lay down on the bed, patting the spot next to her. Amanda followed. Steffi pulled up Amanda’s bright patterned quilt so that it covered both of them. For a while both girls were silent.

  “Do you think someone else was there?” Steffi finally asked.

  At first Amanda didn’t understand the question. “I told you, it was early. It was barely even light yet. Who has company at seven in the morning?”

  “Amanda,” Steffi said, gently but knowingly.

  Suddenly Amanda realized what Steffi meant.

  “No!” Their dad wasn’t a movie star on location, meeting another lady movie star. “That couldn’t be! We would have known. Mom would have known.”

  “Maybe Mom does know.”

  How could Steffi say such a terrible thing in such a calm, quiet voice? But Amanda could feel that beside her in the bed, Steffi was trembling.

  “We could ask Mom,” Amanda suggested tentatively.

  “No!” Steffi sounded almost angry now. “Don’t you dare ask her. What if she doesn’t know? Maybe it’s a one-time thing, and it’ll be over before Mom ever finds out. I don’
t think she does know. This is something new. I know it is.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “We have to find out ourselves.”

  “Like how?”

  “We look for clues.” Steffi sat up in the bed and clasped her hands around her bent knees. “Go get a notebook. A small, secret notebook.”

  If there was one thing Amanda had an abundance of, it was notebooks. She was always buying them in different sizes, colors, wide-ruled paper, college-ruled paper, spiral-bound, marble-covered. From her stash in the drawer in the nightstand next to her bed, she selected the smallest one, with a dark blue cover.

  “Okay,” Steffi said. “Don’t write anything on the first page, in case Mom or someone else opens it. Start on page three. Write ‘Possible Clues.’”

  Amanda obeyed. She was grateful when Steffi was like this, bold, confident, in the grip of a plan, willing to include Amanda instead of leaving her out.

  “Number one,” Steffi dictated. “Lipstick on his collar.”

  “What?”

  “Just write it down. That’s almost always the first clue: a bright red lipstick smear on the man’s shirt collar.”

  Once again, Amanda was amazed by the things Steffi knew, things she was sure they didn’t teach in middle school.

  “Number two. A long blond hair on his jacket. Well, any hair that doesn’t look like his, or Mom’s.”

  Amanda hadn’t even written down number one yet. “Should I be writing these in code?” Amanda asked.

  Steffi considered the question. “Maybe. Write LOC for Lipstick on Collar. And LBH for Long Blond Hair. Then write CCB.”

  “What’s CCB?”

  “Credit Card Bills. You know, for flowers, or candy, or fancy restaurants.”

  “Anything else?”

  “CPC. Cell Phone Charges. That’s probably the biggest one. If we can find out if he’s started calling some woman all the time on his cell phone, then we’ll know.”

  Amanda stared at the list: LOC, LBH, CCB, CPC.

  “I’m not sure I want to know,” she whispered.

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” Steffi admitted. “But we already do know, don’t we? Once he didn’t take that chain off the door, we knew.”