Bold Beauty

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “Calvin!” she scolded. “How could you let this happen? Get my hairbrush!”

  Catman cleared his throat. “Mom.” He called his parents Mom and Dad to their faces, but Claire and Bart otherwise. They always called him Calvin. “Check Winnie out—like, not just her hair.”

  For the first time, his mom looked directly at me. Her green eyes through her glasses grew as big as spit curls. “You have bruises around your eye!”

  I shrugged, which made me wince.

  “Check her shoulder,” Catman said.

  “What happened?” Mrs. Coolidge asked, poking my ribs.

  “I fell.” I got it out before Catman had a chance to answer.

  Mrs. Coolidge dragged in a kitchen stool and made me sit. “Let’s have a look at our shoulder.” She kneaded my arm as if I were bread dough. “No swelling. Nothing broken.”

  I nodded at Catman. “Told you!”

  While Mrs. Coolidge jabbed me, waves of multicolored fur flowed at my feet, cats of all colors and sizes. Moggie, a small light-orange tabby, and Wilhemina scratched at the stool legs.

  “Ow!” I cried when Mrs. Coolidge punched my shoulder.

  “Sorry, dear. Our shoulder is not dislocated. But we have a nasty bruise there. That must have been quite a fall! Where did you—?”

  “Mom?” Catman jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Do I smell brownies?”

  “First things first, Calvin.” She held out her palm, the surgeon waiting for her scalpel. “Brush!”

  After Mrs. Coolidge performed hair surgery on me, she brought out chocolate milk with ice cubes and straws as long and winding as the Mississippi. Catman and I ate brownies the size of North and South Carolina.

  I forced down food so they wouldn’t think I was sick. But all I felt like doing was going home and curling up in my own bed. “Catman, will you tell Pat I’ll answer my horse e-mails tomorrow after church?”

  “That’s cool.”

  I thanked Mrs. Coolidge. Catman trailed me to the door. I reached for the doorknob, and the door burst open.

  Bart Coolidge entered like a gust of wind. He looks like a used-car salesman—maybe because he is a used-car salesman, owner of Smart Bart’s Used Cars. His hairpiece lay crooked on his round head, and his Looney Tunes Taz tie was flipped back over his shoulder.

  “Sa-a-ay!” he shouted. “Winnie! Listen to this one. So this fellow loses control of his automobile and crashes into a cornfield. He manages to drive the car into town, cornstalks sticking out his bumper. A boy observes said car as the fellow motors down Main Street. What do you think the lad asks his mother?”

  I laughed. I may not always understand Bart Coolidge’s jokes—and he does have a million of them. But he always makes me laugh, usually way before the punch line. “I give. What’d he say?”

  “‘Mommy, look at that bumper crop!’ Get it? Bumper? Crop? I got a million of ’em!” He leaned in. “Young lady, have you and Calvin been fighting?”

  I couldn’t even imagine peace-loving Catman in a fight. “I fell.”

  “Bart!” yelled his wife from across the room.

  “Claire!” They ran into each other’s arms, like in a sappy, romantic movie.

  Outside, Catman walked with me as far as the orange pumpkin-wanna-be balls. “I can ride you home,” he offered.

  “No thanks. I’m fine.” I did feel better . . . on the outside. Inside I felt like a pinball machine, thoughts banking off each other and never scoring. What had really happened at that hedge?

  A window opened, and Bart Coolidge yelled down, “What did the car say to the Canadian goose?”

  I gave up, palms raised.

  “Honk, eh?” He laughed in wind-filled huffs, like a donkey braying.

  As I walked home, I replayed the jump in my mind. I’d been so sure I could get Beauty over that hedge.

  At the pasture Nickers trotted up to meet me. She stuck her head over the fence, and I pressed my forehead against her silky cheek.

  As I walked on to the house, I glanced back at the hedge. It couldn’t have grown in the last hour, but it seemed twice as tall as it had that afternoon.

  Dad’s truck, the old cattle truck we’d driven from Wyoming, hogged the curb in front of our house, so I knew he was home. I spotted him in the side yard. He was rocking frantically in his chair invention. I kept my head down and waved as I hurried inside.

  Lizzy was clearing the table. “You missed dinner!”

  “Not hungry.” I darted back to our room. But I wasn’t quick enough for my sister.

  “Winnie!” She raced past me and blocked our bedroom doorway. “What happened? Did you get in a fight? I’ll bet it was Summer Spidell! But you could beat her with your hands tied in a bow behind your back! Not that you should beat her! I didn’t mean that! She must have had help! That’s so unfair! Does it hurt? You have to get hold of that temper of yours—!”

  “Lizzy!” I finally got a word in. “I didn’t fight!”

  Lizzy’s green eyes widened. “You didn’t? But your eye—!”

  “I fell.” I ducked under her arm and slipped into our room. “You know how clumsy I am.”

  No lies here. Not really. I did fall. I am clumsy.

  “Are you okay? What did Dad say?”

  “Lizzy, all I need is a good night’s sleep.” I kicked clothes out of the way, clearing a path to my unmade bed. Lizzy’s bed was made with hospital corners, neat as her half of the room. “Don’t make a big deal out of this to Dad. Tell him I’m fine. I fell. I’m going to bed.”

  I knew Lizzy wanted to ask a hundred questions. But I convinced her to go so I could rest.

  When I was sure the coast was clear, I moved to the foot of my bed and gazed out the window, where night was taking over. Crickets chirped, growing soft, then loud, as if reading the same music. I could make out Nickers and Towaco grazing on either side of Bold Beauty as if they knew she needed a friend. I’d sure let her down.

  In the middle of the night, I jerked bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. My clothes stuck to me in a clammy sweat.

  I’d had nightmares, replays of Bold Beauty in the air, the sound of the hedge scraping her belly. The landing. The fall. Catman’s blurry face as I tried to breathe.

  This is stupid! I’ve fallen before. It’s just a nightmare, I told myself.

  But it wasn’t. The pictures were more real with my eyes open. Details formed, things I hadn’t noticed—a glimpse of a white hoof boot, the reins slipping from my hands, a patch of clover as I thudded to the ground.

  Over and over the pictures raced through my mind. Again and again, I fell. I couldn’t stop the pictures. The nightmare wouldn’t end.

  Sunday I woke a dozen times before finally hauling myself out of bed. Nothing hurt except my shoulder. All I wanted was to get through the day without having anybody suspect I’d fallen off Bold Beauty.

  When I looked in the mirror, I winced. A purple-green-yellow splotch circled my left eye. A matching bruise stretched from my left shoulder to my elbow.

  Voices floated in from the kitchen, along with the scent of bacon and pancakes. Lizzy and Dad were laughing at something as I slipped into the bathroom. I hung a washcloth over the doorknob, our substitute for a lock, and ran the bathwater as hot as I could stand it.

  After my bath, I braided my wet hair and dressed in the same denim jumper I’d worn last Sunday, adding a long-sleeved shirt under it to hide my shoulder bruise. But there was nothing I could do for the bruise circling my eye.

  Here we go, God, I prayed as I plastered on a smile and walked to the kitchen. “Morning, Lizzy! Dad!”

  I made a beeline to the fridge and squatted behind the open door, conducting a slow search for the orange juice that sat on the top shelf.

  “Heard you had a great fall, Humpty Dumpty,” Dad said. “Must run in the family. First time I held your mother in my arms was when she tripped over a sidewalk crack and I caught her.”

  Even Lizzy didn’t say anything. I could count on one hand the
times Dad had said “your mother” over the past two years. I knew Dad thought about Mom as much as I did. But neither of us could bring ourselves to talk about her.

  Things were changing, getting better. How could I wreck everything by telling Dad about my fall? What if he asked me to quit? We’d be back to fighting.

  “What are you doing in that fridge?” Lizzy asked.

  “Looking for juice.”

  “I already poured yours.”

  “Thanks.” I didn’t budge. Dad still hadn’t seen my black eye. On the bottom shelf, I spotted the plastic bagful of rubber bands. “Um, Dad, why do you keep rubber bands in the fridge?”

  “Haven’t I explained the physics of that to you?” Dad put down his paper.

  Bingo! I’d hooked him.

  “Rubber bands last longer when kept cold,” Dad explained. “It’s a question of contraction and elasticity and—”

  I closed the fridge and made a break for the table.

  “. . . chemical reaction with the particles—Winnie!” Dad shouted. “Your eye!”

  “Looks worse than it is, Dad.” I slapped two pancakes on my plate, poured syrup over them, and dug in. Couldn’t talk with my mouth full.

  “But how . . . ?” Dad leaned in for a better look.

  “Yeah!” Lizzy pulled up a chair. “I thought about that all night. I mean, did you fall in the street? Was Catman with you? What are you going to do about your eye when you go to school and—”

  While Lizzy rattled on, I kept chewing on my pancake, holding up one finger, the sorry-I-can’t-talk-my-mouth’s-full sign.

  Finally, I swallowed. “Lizzy, great pancakes! What flavor is this?” My sister loves cooking almost as much as Dad loves inventing.

  “Bubblegum!” Lizzy exclaimed. “Do you like it? Mix vanilla, cinnamon, and wintergreen, and you get bubblegum flavor!”

  Dad coughed and set down his fork. “I was trying to place that taste.”

  I felt like I should keep chewing, even though I’d swallowed everything.

  Dad glanced at the clock. “When are the Barkers picking up you girls for church?”

  “About an hour,” Lizzy answered.

  “I think I’ll come along.”

  “That’s so tight, Dad!” Lizzy exclaimed.

  I agreed. “That’s great!”

  In Wyoming the four of us had gone to church every Sunday. No discussion. But Dad hadn’t been to church since Mom’s funeral. I knew he hadn’t stopped believing in God. But Mom had kind of taken the family lead in the God department. And after Mom died, Lizzy was the one who kept us praying before meals.

  I hoped Dad liked the Ashland church.

  Dad left, and Lizzy scooted closer, chin in hands. “Okay, Winnie. What’s up? Why didn’t you go riding this morning? You ride every Sunday morning before church—unless it’s raining hard or maybe too icy. Are you hurt or what?”

  “Can’t I sleep in for once?” I forced myself to take another bite of bubblegum pancake. To tell the truth, I didn’t know why I hadn’t ridden.

  Lizzy wouldn’t let it go. “But you never—”

  “Lizzy, how’s that spider of yours doing?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Lizzy sat back, arms crossed, and raised her eyebrows at me so I’d know she knew I was trying to change the subject. But she couldn’t help herself. I was inviting her to talk about her beloved spiders. “He ate his own web, Winnie! The whole thing! I watched. Then he spit it out and designed a whole new web! This one’s even better than the last one! You ought to see it.”

  I stood up. “Good idea. I’ll go look right now.”

  I made my escape and stayed outside with the horses until almost time to go.

  Dad stepped out of the house as I walked up. He had on the suit he’d worn at Mom’s funeral. He must have lost weight because it hung on him. Dad used to wear a different suit every day to his office. But he’d left them along the way, in the I states, replacing dress suits with one-piece work suits.

  I sat on the front step next to Dad.

  “Your mother would have liked this, Winnie.”

  Your mother. Twice in the same morning. I knew what Dad meant. Mom would have liked all of us going to church again.

  A fall breeze rustled the leaves, making a shower of brown and gold in the sunlight. We didn’t speak but sat there together, listening to morning birds. It felt good. I didn’t want anything to spoil it.

  “A lot of things have gone right lately, don’t you think?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Dad put his arm around me. “Except that shiner.”

  I tasted bubblegum pancakes that wanted to come up. I wanted to come clean, to tell him about Beauty, how I’d really gotten the bruises.

  But I couldn’t risk it. Our relationship was like a delicate spiderweb. If I tugged out a thread, I was afraid the whole web would be destroyed and we’d have to start over from scratch.

  Mrs. Barker drove up in the Barker bus, a yellow van that looked more like a school bus. Johnny and Luke, Barker’s four-year-old and six-year-old brothers, stuck their heads out of windows and yelled for Lizzy to sit by them. Great-granny Barker sat by the open front window, her white hair blown wild around her wrinkled face. If I had a great-granny, I’d want her to be like Granny Barker.

  Mr. Barker climbed out of the backseat, where he’d been wedged between Mark, who was seven, and the youngest boy, William, who was two. He met my dad on the lawn. “Good to see you, Jack. Coming with us?”

  Mr. Barker’s not as tall as my dad, but his neck is about twice as big around. He used to play football at Ashland University, where he now teaches poetry. Mrs. Barker teaches there, too. I was glad they didn’t make Dad feel bad for not going to church before now.

  “You look pretty full in there. I’ll just take the truck.” Dad made a move toward the cattle truck.

  “Get in, Jack!” Mrs. Barker shouted. “We’ll make room.” She did a double take of me. “Winnie, girl! What happened to your eye?”

  “Isn’t it awful?” Lizzy exclaimed. “She fell!”

  The boys hung out of windows and groaned. “Yuk!” “Gross!”

  Lizzy squeezed in back with the boys. Dad and I took the middle seat with Matthew, the second oldest son at nine. He was the only Barker whose face didn’t fall into a natural smile. His dog was a bulldog, and it suited him.

  “Hey, Matthew!” I buckled in next to him. “How’s Bull?”

  Matthew frowned. “Mean and dangerous.”

  “Is not!” Luke screamed. He’s six but small for his age, like his puppy, Chico.

  “Is so!” Matthew yelled back.

  I was kind of glad to see them argue. The Barkers are the happiest family I’ve ever been around. It was nice to know they weren’t perfect.

  Minutes later, Mrs. Barker pulled into the church lot and backed into a narrow parking place.

  “Nice, isn’t it, Dad?” The church was a lot smaller than ours in Wyoming, but I loved the way the maples hugged the white steeple. I hoped Dad would love it, too.

  We walked to the front of the church and filed into the Barker pew, me last.

  Pat Haven hollered at us from across the aisle.

  Dad waved, but I slouched, hiding my eye with the hymnal.

  Organ music started, and Catman strolled down the aisle as if he’d waited for it. He wore white sandals, light blue bell-bottoms, and a high-necked, wide-sleeved shirt that could have come from a Hollywood wardrobe room. He scooted in next to me.

  Dad leaned across me. “Nice Nehru shirt, Catman! I used to have one just like it!”

  Catman gave Dad the peace sign.

  We stood and sang the first hymn. Then Ralph Evans, the substitute pastor, strolled to the front of the church and motioned us to sit. In khakis and tennis shoes, Ralph didn’t look much like a pastor. His real job was running the animal shelter. The old pastor had moved on to a bigger church in Akron. Barker said Ralph had agreed to fill in until the church could make up its mind on a ne
w pastor.

  I started to explain Ralph to Dad, but I was too late.

  “Mornin’!” Ralph shouted. “Anybody here for the first time?”

  Note to self: If I’m ever a substitute pastor, don’t make first-timers raise their hands! I felt so uncomfortable for Dad.

  Dad raised his hand.

  I looked around. One woman, about a hundred years old, raised her hand, too. I thought I’d seen her in church before.

  “Well, welcome!” Ralph grinned at Dad. “I’m just filling in as pastor. Some of you may have met me down at the animal shelter. I admit I’m not much of a speaker. But that’s all right, I guess. This way if I say anything that makes sense, we can be pretty sure it comes from the good Lord.”

  People chuckled. I glanced at Dad but couldn’t tell if he was smiling or gritting his teeth.

  Ralph prayed with his eyes open. “God, thanks for this pretty day! I couldn’t have thought up all these colors if you gave me all eternity to do it!” Then he went on, thanking God for stuff, including “the new people.”

  Finally, he got to his sermon. “I like the name Jesus. But I also love the name we hear around Christmas—Immanuel. It means ‘God with us.’ Isn’t that a great thing! I know. We’re still in September. But Immanuel isn’t just for Christmas. He’s for every day of the year. After all, it’s only when I forget that God’s always ‘with us’ that I end up in a mess of trouble. But when I remember Jesus is with me, things work out.”

  Ralph read the story about the disciples getting caught in a fishing boat during a raging storm. “Can’t you just see those big, brave fishermen scared silly? And Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat, calm as you please? I bet those fishermen tried every skill they had until one of ’em remembered Jesus was on board! Immanuel. And that’s all it took to get them out of that mess.”

  When church ended, I wanted to hurry out to the van before Pat spotted me. No such luck.

  “Whoa! Winnie!” Pat blocked the aisle. “Any-who, how’s it going?”

  Could she have missed my black eye? “Fine. Thanks.”