by KD McCrite
I’ll tell you something about Aimee. She has been snooty ever since we were little kids, so all this uppity Lottie business is nothing new to her. Her clothes have always been real nice, her blond hair has always been shiny and pretty, and she has never needed braces on her nice, even teeth. And something else you should know: she used to pick on Lottie. So what changed? I haven’t got the foggiest idea, but maybe someday, like when I am grown, I’ll figure it all out.
Laughing and talking loudly, they sashayed into the sanctuary.
“We’re here!” Lottie announced as if we’d been waiting breathlessly. As if.
Isabel did not seem to be impressed by those girls. She stood up and watched until they sat down in the very back pews.
“You are late,” she said, all snooty. Then she glanced at me and strained out that smile again. As far as I was concerned, she could have saved the bother and just reamed out those girls like she was hollering at everyone else earlier.
“Please have a seat up here with the rest of us, girls,” she told them. “And hereafter, remember to arrive on time if you are cast in this play. Punctuality and reliability are of utmost importance to pulling off the best play ever.”
Lottie and Aimee rolled their eyes and stayed where they were, but when steam started to shoot out of Isabel’s ears, they got up and sauntered to the front. Of course they sat apart from the rest of us. Maybe they thought when Jesus said, “Come ye apart,” He meant they needed to stick their noses in the air and be separate. I’m not a preacher, but I’m pretty sure He did not mean that. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, He does not care for that stuck-up, I’m-better-than-you behavior at all.
When Lottie and Aimee had settled down, Isabel gave everyone a nice, big, sorta-scary smile that wasn’t as scary as the other one.
“Now. Who else is going to read for the part of Rosemary Miller?”
Holly Burnside timidly raised her hand, and so did Christy Sanchez and Madison Holt, even though Madison was a year younger than me and way too short to play a married lady.
I have to tell you, all three of those girls read that part so much better than ole Myra Sue, I actually felt sorry for my sister.
Isabel went down the list of characters. George Miller, Rosemary Miller, Jim Burke, Nancy Burke.
Then she did something that nearly made me lose my supper. She handed me the book that had the part of Nancy Burke, the wife of the storekeeper.
“I want you to audition for this role,” she told me.
“Oh, Isabel,” I choked out, “I can’t. I . . . I . . . I’m your assistant, remember? You need me to run errands.”
“Just read it, dear. I think you’d be really good playing this part.”
Well, I tell you what. I’m not sure which I felt the most: petrified or insulted. You see, the role of Nancy Burke is not a nice one. In fact, she’s the rottenest character in the play, all bossy to the storekeeper and demanding that he not give any help to anyone.
“Isabel!” I whispered in my most pleadingest voice. “Let Myra Sue read for this one. I can’t.”
Then I heard that rotten ole Lottie snicker like there was no tomorrow, like she did not care if Isabel ate her for breakfast. She snickered like she knew I was a big fat chicken too scared to do anything.
I looked over at Lottie’s and Aimee’s smirking faces, and I couldn’t stand it. I grabbed up that book.
“What page?” I asked Isabel.
Then I went up there on that stage, stood under that spotlight, and read the part of Nancy Burke as if I were Nancy Burke herself.
Guess what?
Isabel assigned that part to me.
Guess what else?
She assigned the part of Jim Burke, the storekeeper and Nancy’s husband, to none other than J.H. Henry. I thought I might as well lie down and die right there, but that did not happen.
One more thing.
Isabel gave the part of the banker’s nearly silent wife to Myra Sue.
Later that night, ole Myra bawled her head off in her pillow.
“I am devastated,” she wailed with way more than a hint of drama. “Isabel gave the part of Rosemary Miller to that Christy Sanchez when she knew how much I wanted it, and she didn’t even give me a second chance!” She howled some more. “I didn’t know she could be so cruel. She even gave you a better part than she gave me!”
I almost felt sorry for her ’cause I know how much she wanted that part. I wished Mama could come upstairs; I wished Daddy didn’t go to bed so early sometimes. I wished Grandma wasn’t taking a bath. Any of those adults could’ve probably helped Myra Sue stop crying, but they weren’t around right then.
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Myra Sue, I’m sure she didn’t mean to be cruel to you. She loves you,” I finally said. Now, that sounded pretty good when it came out.
“It’s just too, too humiliating,” she blubbered. “I don’t get to do anything but walk around on stage most of the time. I don’t even get to say anything except a few words.”
The bathroom door opened down the hall, and I was purely glad to hear it.
I said, “Wait a minute.” As if she was going to move an inch from where she was scrunched up in a little ball, all pathetic-like.
I ran out into the hallway and grabbed Grandma’s arm before she got to her room. Her hair was damp and combed back from her face, and she wasn’t wearing a dab of makeup. Her red-and-blue-plaid robe was about a million years old.
“Grandma, come in here and talk to Myra Sue. She’s all upset, and I don’t know what to tell her.”
A little, worried frown settled between Grandma’s eyebrows, and she hurried to our room.
“Myra Susie,” she said as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong, child?”
With a new sympathetic onlooker, my sister set up to wailing again for a minute or two; then she tapered off that mess and poured out her heart and soul about Isabel and that ole play.
“I was so scared when I read for the play that I made a big fool out of myself, and now I am just utterly and totally humiliated. Isabel will never want to speak to me again.”
“Well now,” Grandma said, smoothing back Myra Sue’s tangled, sweat-damp curls, “you know Isabel thinks the world of you, honey.”
“That’s what I told her!” I said.
“I think she hates me. She gave my part to Christy.”
Here came the waterworks again, and I trotted off to the bathroom and got a fresh roll of toilet paper for her to mop her eyes and nose. She grabbed it from me and unrolled about three hundred yards and blew her nose for a good five minutes. Which grossed me out some, I have to say.
“Tell me about that part you’re gonna play,” Grandma said.
“It’s nothing but a walking-around part. I’m the banker’s wife.”
“At least you get to walk around and wear fancy clothes and look pretty, Myra Sue,” I said. “You’ll like that.”
She hushed blubbering for a couple of seconds to think about it.
“Listen, honey,” Grandma said. “I read that play when your mama had the book here, and it struck me then that all the parts are important. Ever’ last one of them. The banker’s wife, even though her role isn’t large, represents something. All that walking around in fancy clothes and saying hardly anything shows the indifference a lot of people have toward the Christ child.”
Myra Sue gulped back a sob and hiccupped a time or two, but she was looking at Grandma in a hopeful kind of way. “Really?”
Grandma nodded. “Yep. You get up there on that stage and act as cool and uncaring as you possibly can, and folks watching can’t help but understand what your part means.”
Myra swallowed hard. “But what if I get up there and get scared and make a fool of myself again?”
Here’s the thing. Isabel has yakked about being onstage ever since she moved to Rough Creek Road, and believe it or not, some of what she’s said has stuck with me.
“Hey, Myra,” I s
aid. “Who is the most uncaring person you know?”
“Binkie Shumacher,” she said immediately. She sniffed hard and raked her palms across her eyes. “Why are you asking me about that brat?”
“I don’t know a lot about this acting stuff, but most of it is just pretending, isn’t it?”
She sorta shrugged and said, “I suppose you could call it that.”
“Well then, just pretend to be Binkie Shumacher pretending to be the banker’s wife.”
She gawked at me for a minute like I was a Christmas elf, then she sat up straight.
“Yes! April Grace, yes! It’s called method acting, and Isabel would say it just that way.” She narrowed her red-rimmed eyes at me and looked at me all suspicious. “Have you been hanging around with Isabel behind my back?”
Oh brother.
“No way. And why would I?”
“Because you usually are not so smart.”
Sometimes I just wanted to smack that girl.
TWENTY-FIVE
Practice Makes Perfect. I Hope.
Once ole Isabel assigned that part to me, I dreaded that play and all the rehearsals leading up to it every waking hour of the day. I kept trying to get out of it.
“Listen, Isabel,” I said at supper the very next night after tryouts, “I’ll make you a deal.”
She looked up from her salad and raised one crazy eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I will wash your windows and make your bed and mop your floors and scrub your toilet for the next twelve years if you will not make me be in that play.”
“Why, April Grace!” Mama said as if she was surprised, when she knew I did not like getting up in front of people and reciting.
Isabel patted her lips with her napkin and blinked seven or eight times real fast.
“My dear child,” she said, all important-sounding, “I am depending on you to carry that part.”
Oh brother.
“Nancy Burke is a nasty, mean person. I might be a little sassy sometimes, but I’m not nasty and mean.”
“You have to pretend,” Myra Sue piped up. “Think of the nastiest, meanest person you know and then pretend to be that person pretending to be Nancy Burke.”
Ole Isabel clasped her hands and looked at Myra Sue in pure delight. “Darling! You are absolutely right.” As if ole Myra had come up with all that on her very own. Good grief.
I looked at Mama and Daddy, hoping they’d step in and say something like, “Isabel, April Grace really shouldn’t be getting up in front of people because she might throw up or pass out.”
But they didn’t. They just smiled. As far as I was concerned, a gigantic volcanic tornado-blizzard could come and carry us all to Oz or the North Pole, whichever was closer.
The following Sunday afternoon, I rode along to church with Myra and Isabel, dreading the whole entire first practice that was about to take place. I envied ole Melissa, who got to play the part of one of the Miller children, and she did not have to say a single line except “Merry Christmas.”
When everyone got to the church for that first rehearsal— and I do mean everyone ’cause I think they were too scared to stay away—Isabel had us stand in a circle on the platform and read. We read that whole entire play from first word to last. We were purely awful.
When we were finished reading, before anyone had a chance even to sneeze or sigh, ole J.H. stood up all straight and tall and spoke like he was about forty instead of in junior high. Do you want to know what that rotten boy said? Well, I’ll tell you.
He said, right out loud in front of that entire bunch of kids, “Mrs. St. James, ma’am, I think in that one place where Jim Burke gives his wife, Nancy, that diamond necklace she’d been wanting, he should kiss her. I mean, it would make the whole scene more realistic.”
Isabel didn’t have time to answer because I narrowed my eyes at him and yelled, “J.H. Henry, if you even try to kiss me, I will slug you so hard, you won’t come back to earth till you reach the Texas border. I promise you I will.”
He looked at me all surprised, like I shoulda been dying to let him smooch me, but no thank you very much forever!
Well, you can imagine how everyone laughed and howled at all that, but I just kept staring at ole J.H. with my fist ready for action. He looked around at all those snickering kids, then he got all smirky his own self and winked at ole Lottie. I glanced at Lottie, and she was giving me the dirtiest, meanest stink-eye look you ever saw.
Let me tell you a little something about J.H. Have you ever seen that old, old TV show Leave It to Beaver? If you haven’t, you should, because J.H. is exactly like Eddie Haskell, who thinks he’s way cool, but is in fact a Total Creepazoid. For instance, both Eddie and J.H. swagger instead of walking like normal humans. And they both are real polite to adults but all smirky behind their backs.
Why Lottie Fuhrman clearly likes J.H. Henry is beyond me, but as far as I’m concerned, they can have each other.
“People! I will have silence!” Isabel projected so loudly, the overhead lights shivered in fear. “There will be no kissing whatsoever, on this stage or off it, during these rehearsals. You, young man.” She fixed a poisoned-dart glare on ole J.H. “You’d better behave yourself.”
We all stood in our circle and stared at Isabel. You know what? I figured ole Isabel was not going to have one bit of trouble controlling her dance classes at school next semester. I figure if you can scare teenagers just with dirty looks and projecting loudly, you have a natural gift.
The next thing we did that afternoon was read the script again, but this time, Isabel broke us up in little groups, where we practiced the same bits over and over. By the end of that practice, I think everyone kinda was beginning to know how to say their parts.
Before she dismissed us for the day, Isabel said, “Begin learning your lines, people. Soon you will not be reading from your books.” There went that Look again. She passed it to every one of us, even me and Myra Sue, then she said, “Next rehearsal will be Sunday afternoon.”
On the way home, ole Isabel said, “April, dearest, you were wonderful! I knew you had a natural talent.”
“Thanks,” I said, sorta sadly, because I did not want her to get the idea that I was all enthused about being in a play, ’cause I was not, I promise you!
Ole Myra Sue crossed her arms over her chest and pooched out her lower lip.
“What about me?” she said, all dreadfully despairing and utterly undone.
“Oh, darling,” Isabel said, glancing from the road to Myra Sue, “you’ll be fine. Don’t be afraid to project.”
“I thought I was projecting!” she said.
“Perhaps you need some brush-up lessons, Myra, darling. We’ll drop April off at your house, then you come home with me and we’ll work on that.”
Ole Myra brightened so bright, you would’ve thought the sun was shining inside that old pickup.
TWENTY-SIX
Ian and Isabel Go Home
I tell you what. I needed something to take my mind off my problems, because it seemed all I could do was think about stuff that made me mad, sad, or ticked off.
My mama. That play. School. And the Lotties. Those goofy girls were getting on my nerves Big-Time, prancing around in their identical, oversized, padded-shoulder outfits and acting like they were God’s gift to Arkansas.
“Make way for the Lotties!” one or the other of them always hollered as they strolled through the junior high hallway, even though there was a school rule against hollering in the halls. You know what? Everyone, even those smarty-marty eighth graders, got right out of their way like a bunch of ninnies.
The Lotties made fun of everybody except a few kids they chose to be nice to, like J.H. and his bunch and the basketball players and the cheerleaders. One day, ole Lottie followed behind Portia Wilkes, holding her nose and rolling her eyes while everyone laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
I’d stepped right up and said, “Lottie Fuhrman, you’re mean.”
And t
hat just made everyone laugh harder. Luckily, Portia never knew what was going on.
Aside from the Lotties, there was math, which drove me crazy and which I do declare here and now that I will never understand unless someone with some good sense explains it where I can understand it, which I don’t think our math teacher, Eugene Lesko, ever will.
You know what that teacher does during most of the time he’s supposed to be explaining equations? I’ll tell you. He talks about science fiction books. Who knows? He’s kinda pale and glassy-eyed. Maybe he’s an alien or a robot.
Lottie and Heather, the only two Lotties in that awful math class, draw pictures of him and pass them around during class, but ole Mr. Lesko has never caught on. Now, I don’t like him much, but I don’t think that’s funny, my own personal self.
Of course, you know that Christmas play hung over my head like a rotten ole cloud, and at night I dreamed I was in front of a huge audience in only my underwear. That dream just never goes away, and it’s a pure nightmare.
And let’s not forget that baby. By November, Mama was getting rounder than a butterball, and that baby’s due date kept creeping closer and closer like the approach of winter.
“I can’t believe I still have almost three months to go,”
Mama said one night at supper. She looked at Daddy and said with a laugh, “Mike, honey, you might need to bring in the wheelbarrow before long to haul me around the house.”
I eyeballed my mama’s plumped-out figure and wondered if she’d ever look like Mama again.
The first week of November, the St. Jameses moved themselves, bag and baggage, into their very own personal house. At last.
We helped them move, of course, and it was an adventure, let me tell you, because even though ole Isabel was more than fully recovered by that time, she did not want to break her long red fingernails or get her hands dirty. Not that I minded doing work too much. It kept my mind off other things.
You should’ve seen the St Jameses’ place. All that hard work everyone had done really paid off. That house was no longer the falling-down old wreck that it had been last summer, with broken windows, a holey roof, and a saggy front porch surrounded by a weed-infested yard. Now Ian and Isabel were moving into a snug, cream-colored house with shining new windows, a red front door, and a nifty front porch big enough to have two wicker chairs. The men had cut and cleared out the overgrown scrub, trimmed dead tree limbs, and prepared some flower gardens that would bloom next spring.
