by Richard Peck
Miss Spaulding hung over me, interested, as I pulled out article after article. A starchy shirtwaist with tucks. A jacket with bone buttons. A tam-o’-shanter with a grosgrain band. A pleated skirt. Everything to match. With it two pair of stockings, white and tan, and a pair of shoes with pearl buttons. Stuck in one shoe top was a complimentary buttonhook with SELECT DRY GOODS COMPANY FOR THE DISCERNING stamped on it. I’ll say one thing for the Shambaughs. They are overbearing but not cheap. My eyes misted over.
Miss Spaulding touched my shoulder. “This is not charity, Blossom. You earned it. Now skin off your clothes, and let us see if these are a fit.”
There are teachers who treat poverty like a crime, but not Miss Spaulding. While I was wiggling into my hard-won finery, she took up my old clothes. It was in her mind to pitch them out. But then she said, “You will want your other things for second best.” This is a true lady speaking, who knows how to spare your feelings. Then she went out in the yard to give my old duds a good shaking to get the worst of the dirt out.
While she was absent, I happened to glance at the United States geography tests we’d lately taken. They were piled on her desk, hot from her grading pen. I only glanced at the top one and then the one beneath. They were the works of two girls in Letty’s club: Nola Nirider and Ione Williams. Miss Spaulding’s red-ink comments on them were in strong language. This was snooping, and I only mention it because it bears on future events.
When she returned, I was tricked out in my new togs. There was room to grow in the boots, but the rest fitted like a glove. Even the tam-o’-shanter fitted down well on my forehead. “Why, Blossom, what a transformation!” said Miss Spaulding, well pleased. And I was pleased too, in part that I hadn’t revealed Alexander as a gang member. “You bob along home now,” she said. “All’s well that ends well.”
But of course that was not an end. It was only a bare beginning. Nor was it the last time I was to see the inside of the principal’s office.
3
IN EARLIER TIMES I would have hastened to trap Alexander Armsworth in some out-of-the-way spot and there told him I’d saved him from a sure thrashing at Miss Spaulding’s hand. She’d got the names of Champ Ferguson and Bub Timmons out of me with no trouble. She’d already dealt with Les Dawson. And she’d called him “Leslie” as she walloped him, adding insult to injury.
But my new refined appearance made me refine my methods as well. Alexander would put two and two together. Even he would figure that I was the Ghost in the Privy and that I’d had a private word with Miss Spaulding. Let him learn in his own time, and let him stew in his own juice. It would dawn on him that he owed me a favor, and I could wait. He knows I collect my debts.
At school next day I caused some comment but nothing direct. Though I was dressed better than most and entirely unlike myself, nobody came near. They were in the habit of paying me no mind. Still, many looked. I expect Letty Shambaugh explained to all and sundry that my outfit was her mother’s gift. But it didn’t seem to dawn on her just how her fate and mine had entwined themselves.
Somewhere in my travels I’d come by a length of plaid taffeta ribbon. I tied my unruly hair back with it as best I could. And this was the crowning touch to my new appearance. I’ve already said I am not vain, but I was not far from it that day. Alexander seemed not to know me at all.
At lunch I laid out a nickel for a cup of milk and was having that with an apple when Letty Shambaugh came up, dragging her feet. There were purple marks on both our necks, souvenirs of the departed Les Dawson.
“Say, listen, Blossom,” she said in a loud voice right in my face, “Mama says I should . . . well, anyway, you want to come over to my house after school today?” She eyed my new Select Dry Goods, and I could hear the ring of the cash register in her head. Her mama was clearly leaning on her to show me some friendship, and I enjoyed the pain Letty was having.
“I don’t mind,” I replied.
“You mean you won’t come?” she said, brightening.
“I mean I will.” And I did.
* * *
None of the Sunny Thoughts and Busy Fingers would walk me to Letty’s house after school, not even Letty. I figured out my own way along Fairview Avenue, turning up late. As I climbed the porch steps, I knew I’d sooner face Les Dawson in a rage than a clique of stuck-up snips. But it’s not my way to turn back.
Though the Shambaugh place is nowhere near as large as the Armsworth mansion, it surpassed all my experience. There were rugs upon rugs, a profusion of overstuffed furniture, and of course electric lights. I walked in, supposing no one would answer if I knocked.
There in the front parlor all flopped on the floor with their skirts daintily tucked under their ankles were the club members: Letty, along with Nola Nirider and Ione Williams and Maisie Markham and Harriet Hochhuth and the Beasley twins, Tess and Bess, who are identical.
Now several of these were the very same girls who’d done me an injury back in fourth grade when I was new in town. And none of them had spoken a civil word to me since. Still, they were trying to act grown up. Harriet Hochhuth let out a strangled gasp and clutched her forehead when she saw me enter. Evidently nobody remembered to tell her I was included. But Tess and Bess leaned her way and whispered her into the picture.
Luckily for me Mrs. Shambaugh was passing among the group with refreshments. She had what Miss Spaulding would call “a civilizing influence” on them. “Why here is Blossom!” she cried. “Make room for her in your little circle, girls!” Letty’s tongue shot out of her rosebud lips at her mother’s blind side.
“How grateful we all are that Blossom was the one girl who stood up for Letty when she needed a friend the most!” boomed Mrs. Shambaugh. “I do wonder where the rest of her friends were in her hour of need!”
All the rest of her friends stared down into their little glass cups of apple juice.
There was a plate of finger sandwiches on the floor. And as conversation languished when Mrs. Shambaugh was near, everybody chewed on them quietly. Though I was starved, I only had two. Maisie Markham wolfed down six, but she was soon to be sorry.
Finally Mrs. Shambaugh left us, and I wondered how a club worked. Nobody said much at first, though everybody shot everybody else looks full of meaning. At last Letty opened the meeting by putting down her cup and saying, “Oooo, I just hate apple juice, don’t you?” And everybody agreed.
After more silence Letty sucked in her cheeks, saying, “Well, Blossom, you can’t be here at the meeting without being a club member. And you can only belong for this one meeting.” And everybody agreed.
This suited me well enough, since I didn’t see much to it beyond the eats. “But you can’t belong even for today without an initiation.” And everybody agreed to this too. You never saw a group of girls more agreeable.
Letty could tell I didn’t know what an initiation was. She twitched her shoulders importantly and explained. “You must entertain the group by showing off some talent such as singing or playing a piece on the piano. Or you can tell a story that is either very scary or about boys. Since you don’t have any talents, you can start telling the story now. But keep your voice down, and if Mother comes back in the room suddenly, shut up.”
I thought it was not wise to tell anything I knew about boys to a bunch who might know more. They were only waiting to laugh at me anyhow. So I tried to dredge up something scary to tell them. With such a simpering group, I thought this might not be too hard, At once I recollected an experience my mama had, one of several similar and stranger than fiction.
I cleared my throat and began. “My mama has the Gift of Second Sight.”
“Oh, Heaven help us,” Ione Williams said, “she’s going to tell whoppers about her awful mother.”
“Do you want to hear this story or not?” I inquired.
“Shut up, girls, and let’s just see what she has to say,” Letty remarked in her position as president.
* * *
Well, I told the story, which
was an entirely true event. Mere white truth in simple nakedness, as the poet says. But I added little touches and extras to it. The bare bones of the story are these. When we lived down at Sikeston, my mama commanded respect for her powers and could sometimes help out the law when she felt like it. Sikeston is in many ways backward and largely lawless.
Now and again dead bodies turn up and lie unclaimed in the morgue, a tramp of either sex found in a ditch or bodies washed up on the riverbank. As I say, it is not an up-and-coming town, so there was no system of fingerprinting or the like for identification.
If a body hung around unspoken for in the morgue till it like to get ripe, the sheriff cut off its head and put it in a jar of alcohol for future reference. Anybody missing a relative could apply for a look through the jar collection. Certain people looked just for thrills. The rest of the body below the neck was buried at County expense.
One such a body turned up in a plowed field and excited comment, though the sheriff kept the details quiet. This was no ordinary corpse. It was a young woman of gentle birth and some beauty, now fading, wearing dressmaker clothes. And nobody claimed her, though a general notice went out.
Her severed head was in a jar on the sheriff’s shelf before my mama got drawn in. The face on the head kept its beauty, even in death and alcohol. It bobbed in its jar before the sheriff’s gaze. At last the mystery of it preyed on his thoughts until he called on my mama to identify the head with her powers.
She was brought into the room where the head reposed. By then the sheriff had pulled a croaker sack over the jar for his own peace of mind. Of course I was not along when my mama was sent for, but I can picture her in that chamber of death, dressed for the occasion. When she was about her business, she always threw a long shawl over her head. With her black eyes and dark lips and the gold crosses in her ears, she made an impression on all who saw her. Many would cross the street.
She stood before the shrouded jar and began to sway. Several witnesses were brought in and looked on. Mama told the sheriff not to show her the head until her Inner Sight had its chance. So they waited while she went into one of her trances.
After some moments a voice within Mama began to chant, “I see a young woman of breeding with hands unused to rough work. I see her too sheltered from the wickedness of this world to be proof against its dangers. I see her face before me, not in death, but as it was in life and is no more. She is past her first youth now, easy prey to any scoundrel who might cross her path and whisper lies into her ears.
“Her ears!” my mama moaned. “Oh, her pore ears, for some beast of a man has jerked the emerald eardrops from her lobes, and left them ragged! And her eyes! Her eyes stare into mine, and they are her only natural imperfection. For one eye is robin’s egg blue and t’other is hazel.”
My mama fell silent then. And several in the room were unsure if she was playacting or not. But the sheriff reached over and pulled the sack off the jar. Pandemonium broke out then, and one man fainted. There were no ladies present, of course, except for Mama and the head.
Days before, when the sheriff had covered the jar with the sack, the eyes on the lady’s head were closed. But when he whipped the sack off, the eyes on the severed head were wide open, staring into Mama’s. And one of the dead eyes was robin’s egg blue, and the other was hazel.
Some witnesses made for the door. But others stayed behind to see that the lobes on the staring head’s pierced ears were torn indeed, just like Mama said.
She continued, still half in her trance, but addressed the dead head directly: “Yore people will find you now, for there is another feature which they will know you by. You have had a gold tooth in yore head since you was a girl. It’s on the left side of yore mouth and chipped somewhat. What with that and them eyes, you will be reunited with yore loved ones, but naturally you won’t know it, you pore cut-up thing.”
At that, Mama seemed to come to herself and look around. She always knows exactly what she’s said in any of her fits and swoons. Somebody urged the sheriff to lift out the head from the alcohol and check around in the clenched mouth to see if there was a chipped gold tooth anywhere in there. “And while you are about it,” my mama mentioned, “you will find a knot the size of two walnuts at the base of the skull beneath her back hair where she was knocked in the head with a bottle and killed by a tall man with a squint and a limp wearing a ring in the shape of a serpent.”
The sheriff got the lid off the jar and reached down into the alcohol. He drew the ghastly head up; it hung by the hair in the air, dripping from the neck. All but the stoutest hearted turned aside while the sheriff explored in the head’s mouth, drawing up one side. The mouth fell open, as if obedient. Sure enough, there was the gold tooth, slightly chipped in a mouth that seemed half to grin beneath them piercing eyes. The lump was on the back of the skull too.
A detailed description of the head went out to all the towns on the river. Shortly thereafter some well-to-do people of Stuttgart, Arkansas, answered the call. They were the dead woman’s folks and come north for a view of her head. Not knowing she was dead, they’d never reported her missing.
She’d eloped with an implement salesman who’d killed her on her wedding night for the emeralds in her ears and the money in her purse. He’d spirited the body as far as Sikeston, where he’d dumped it. Then the crafty devil sent telegrams to the dead woman’s kin from various places, signed with her name. Come to find out, he’d done this with many women and made a living at it.
He was a monster, and he was caught. For Mama seen him with her Second Sight: snake ring, limp, squint, and all. A man answering that description was rounded up in Texarkana. He was hanged there on the tree in Spring Lake Park they keep for that purpose. Mama got very little credit and no reward. Still, a public demonstration of her skills brought people to her for advice and vision, though few could pay and fewer did. She was later hounded out of town by a more progressive element.
That’s the sum and substance of the story I entertained the Sunny Thoughts and Busy Fingers girls with. They were an interested audience in spite of themselves. Though when I come to where the sheriff holds up the severed head and pokes into her green mouth for the gold tooth, it was too much for Maisie Markham.
I paused there because Maisie jumped up and made a run for the porch. We all watched from the window as she hung over the railing and threw up into the forsythia. Directly that interruption was over, Tess and Bess urged me to go on. They were so encouraging that Letty made a nasty gesture at them with one of her fingers. Maisie came back and stretched out on the couch to hear how the story ended.
When I finished up, they fidgeted but were speechless, except for Harriet Hochhuth, who said, “How do you suppose the head happened to open its eyes?”
But Letty said, “Oooo, that was repulsive. I wish I hadn’t heard it.”
“Well, you said it was to be scary,” said Tess or Bess, “and it was.” This was brave of her, but she soon fell back. Letty was sending her a silent message. It may have been that if everybody liked the story, I’d have to be made a life member of the club.
“It wasn’t a story,” Letty explained. “It was just a lot of Blossom’s lies. She couldn’t tell the truth if she tried.” She waited then till everybody had to agree. This might not have got my dander up, but the next thing Letty said did. “There is no such a thing as Second Sight as everybody knows. And if there was, Blossom’s family wouldn’t have any. Heaven knows, they don’t have anything else.”
“That’s a lie right there,” I said. And then before I thought: “I have the Second Sight my own self.”
“Aha! I saw this coming!” crowed Letty, jumping up. “If you have the Second Sight, Blossom Culp, let’s see it. Haul off and do something spooky. Talk is cheap, Blossom, particularly yours. Prove it!”
“That’s right. You’d better prove it, Blossom,” all agreed. I liked to have fainted with the strain of the moment, because they looked ready to set on me and ruin my new outfit if I
didn’t deliver. Even Maisie was recovering fast and raising up from the couch. Her little pig eyes looked mean.
I didn’t truly think they’d cut me up for bait. Not with Mrs. Shambaugh somewhere in the house. But I had to satisfy them or slink off in disgrace. Pride is a terrible thing sometimes. I racked my brains and played for time.
“We have to be in a dim room,” I remarked. “It’s too bright in here. After dark would be better.”
“Now, Blossom,” Letty said, and her little dimpled hands were on her hips, and her little dimpled elbows were fanning the air. “We can go into the room where Daddy smokes and pull the blind.”
Everybody made a rush for this room, under the back stairs. Letty yanked heavy curtains across the window. “Now what do you need, Blossom, a crystal ball?” She poked the girls nearest her in the gloom to remind them to laugh. I did just notice, though, that being in a darker place with me had quieted them down some. One more point in my favor and they might desert Letty completely, if only long enough to cover my retreat. Then I got a sudden inspiration, more secondhand than Second Sight. It was in regard to something I’d spied in the principal’s office.
I pulled out a straight chair and sat down with my back to the door. As there weren’t enough chairs to go around, the rest had to settle at my feet. So far so good, I thought. “It takes me a while to warm up,” I mentioned.
“Don’t be too long,” Letty warned, “or we’ll give you a broom, and you can fly home on it, ha ha.”
I began to sway in my chair then, starting up slow. I always have been able to roll my eyes up into my head so only the whites show. As a kid I practiced that by the hour. “Oh, look what’s happening to her eyes, isn’t that sickening!” somebody said.
I moaned low in my throat, wishing I’d thought to ask for a candle. Candlelight always adds a touch. But I proceeded without it. In a far-off voice I began to moan a poem, working up from a whisper:
The . . . ghost . . . am . . . I
