Getting Near to Baby

by Audrey Couloumbis

  Our group played tag. But not until we got an old broom from the church kitchen and chased a snake off the grass. Miss Pettibone was the one who had to do the chasing. We did the running and the shrieking.

  We also had to wait while Miss Pettibone pried a splinter out of the palm of the girl who carried the broom. More than one girl cried, although only the one had a splinter. This was fairly exciting, but nowhere nearly as much fun as trying to stay out of that snake’s crooked path. We were all relieved to finally get around to playing the game.

  When we were too hot to run around anymore, we made friendship bracelets out of braided twists of plastic. Two sisters got into a nasty fight over theirs. One sister said the other was copying her colors. It was almost as good as the snake.

  We all gathered together under a tree to eat our lunches. I wasn’t halfway through a sandwich before a girl named Dee Dee gave a small scream. “A tick, it’s a tick on me.” She began to cry.

  Dee Dee had already that morning scraped her knee and had the splinter removed and had to take green Kool-Aid when the red was all gone. She cried over everything, so no one paid her any mind except Miss Pettibone, who declared it was a tick. She gave Dee Dee a look, like she thought Dee Dee might have gone and gotten this tick on purpose to ruin things.

  Miss Pettibone rummaged through her purse until she found matches. “Oh, stop that sniveling,” Miss Pettibone said. “You’re a big girl, now act like it. Here,” she said, coming up with the matches. “This is just the thing.”

  She lit one and blew it out, then tried to touch it to the tick on Dee Dee’s leg. Dee Dee was not enthusiastic about this. “Ow, ow, ow,” Dee Dee cried and jerked her leg away before Miss Pettibone got close enough to burn the tick off.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Miss Pettibone said. But Mrs. Weeds had to hold Dee Dee’s leg still while this operation was performed. Mrs. Weeds looked like she might try to soothe Dee Dee’s tears, but was discouraged by a mean look from Miss Pettibone. “Oh, boo hoo,” Miss Pettibone said when she was finished and Dee Dee was still alive.

  In all fairness, it didn’t take but a moment before the tick fell right off into the grass. I don’t believe for a minute that Dee Dee had the burned spot she claimed she did. She wouldn’t show it to me. But while this was going on, two more girls found ticks on themselves and so the whole thing started all over. It wasn’t finished before more girls found ticks.

  I looked myself over, then checked Little Sister very carefully. She is the only sister I have left and I’m not letting her go to some tick bite. But even when we didn’t have a tick between us, I could see Little Sister was getting that wide-eyed look she got the day Baby died. I couldn’t bear to see her look that way. I wouldn’t stand by helpless to do anything about it.

  “They’re probably falling out of this tree,” I said to Miss Pettibone. I didn’t sit back down and I wouldn’t let Little Sister sit down either.

  “I haven’t seen nothing falling out of trees,” Miss Pettibone said.

  “Not trees, just this one,” I said. “My health teacher back home explained how ticks do things. They don’t have to be falling out now. They could have fallen out early this morning. Now they’re waiting in the grass for some big animal to lay here in the shade.”

  Mrs. Weeds looked like she might be ready to leave off sitting under that tree. But she was a timid woman and she settled back when Miss Pettibone shot her another of those mean looks.

  “Aren’t you the little nature student,” Miss Pettibone said. I know she was disappointed that things were not going well, but she had no call to be sarcastic. I might have told her so but her attention was taken up by a tick found underneath somebody’s white anklet.

  “Get your sandwich, Little Sister,” I said. Little Sister and I went over and sat on the church steps to finish our lunch. It was hot there, and sunny, mainly because there were no shade trees. But if a tick was to get us, it would have to crawl over two feet of hot concrete to do it.

  “Why don’t you girls come on back here,” Miss Pettibone called. It looked like the last tick had been detected and scorched off its victim. She’d had time to look around and see what everyone was doing.

  I said, “No, thank you,” as politely as anyone could want.

  She walked over to the steps where Little Sister and I were sitting. I pretended I didn’t notice her coming. She said, “You’ll get sunburned unless you sit in the shade.”

  “Little Sister and I are used to the sun,” I said. “We don’t have shade tree one on our property.”

  Miss Pettibone narrowed her eyes at me before she went back to sit under that tree. I contemplated leaving Bible school altogether and walking back to Aunt Patty’s. It wouldn’t have taken any time at all if we had been wearing our tennis shoes. But we had on those ugly leather sandals that had already rubbed a fresh red spot on Little Sister’s heel. So I thought we might only walk as far as the drugstore where we could ask somebody to call Aunt Patty to come get us.

  This looked like the best plan and I was gathering up the waxed paper our sandwiches were wrapped in when one of the girls joined us on the steps. “She’s telling stories under there now,” the girl—her name was Linda—said. “It was bad enough we had to eat there, but stories? I’ve come to sit with you.”

  I decided to stay a while longer. It didn’t seem right to make Linda sit there all alone.

  13

  The Way Things Sometimes Work Out

  The drone of storytelling went on, only now and again interrupted by a scream of discovery and the throes of a tick-burning. After a while there were seven of us on the steps, including Dee Dee. When another girl stood up to follow that last one, Miss Pettibone marched over to us, her face flushed an angry pink.

  “I don’t know why you girls insist on getting sunstroke when it is my turn to be the teacher. I’m calling your mothers right now to let them know how you’ve misbehaved.”

  No one said anything to this. There didn’t seem to be much to say.

  “Unless, of course, you are wise enough to mend your ways and join the others for a game of kickball.” With these words, she pointed to the empty baseball field across the street. The boys had gone off somewhere to eat their lunches and hadn’t come back. She signaled to the other girls, who swarmed out from under that tree and ran for the baseball field. Miss Pettibone followed them at a more leisurely pace.

  “My mom is going to be mad,” Dee Dee said.

  “Mine too,” Linda said.

  “Aunt Patty is going to be fit to be tied,” I said. “Tick bites can make you awful sick.”

  “I mean my mom will be mad at me,” Dee Dee said.

  “My mom always sides with the teacher,” somebody else said.

  “We ought to do like she said,” Linda decided. “Go on and play like nothing happened. She won’t make us sit there again.”

  “Yeah. We might not even have had to finish eating lunch under there if Miss Priss here hadn’t acted like no one could tell her what to do,” Dee Dee said, looking at me. “This whole thing is all your fault.”

  Linda and the other girls agreed with this.

  I guess Little Sister and I could’ve gone along and played kickball, but I wasn’t too crazy about those girls and I didn’t like Miss Pettibone at all. I was counting on her making good on her threat and calling to report what bad girls we were. Aunt Patty didn’t live more than ten minutes away by car.

  All the same, I watched with a sick feeling in my stomach while the others marched off with that look of the saved. It’s a look made up of the relief a person feels when something hasn’t been as bad as they feared and of the warm feeling it gives them to be accepted back into the fold.

  “You can go play if you want,” I said to Little Sister. But she looked at me like the words didn’t make any sense. We sat there for a while, and when the game got going, I gave Little Sister’s hand a pull. But we hadn’t gotten ten feet past the churchyard before Miss Pettibone hurried
up alongside us.

  “You girls can’t go anywhere without my permission.”

  “Then I guess you ought to give us your permission, seeing you didn’t call our aunt Patty like you said.” My voice shook a little. But Miss Pettibone’s mouth pocked up like she was sucking lemons.

  “I made up my mind to be forgiving,” she said. “I won’t tell your aunt Patty on you if you come back right now and—”

  “I’m going to tell my aunt Patty,” I yelled. I was suddenly so angry with her tears spurted right out of my eyes, and my mouth was so full of spit I could hardly hold it in. Even Little Sister was taken aback. “I’m going straight to the drugstore to call her and you can’t stop me.”

  Miss Pettibone smoothed her hands over her beige slacks, like maybe her palms were damp like mine were. I was shaking all over and I think I would have buckled but for what she said next. “Mrs. Weeds seems to think you girls deserve another chance. So for her sake—”

  “Mrs. Weeds, if left to herself,” I said through my teeth, “would’ve had better sense than to make us sit under that tree once we found there were ticks in the grass.” I started walking, bringing Little Sister along behind me. I was walking fast; I didn’t have it in me to go slow. I couldn’t believe the way I’d talked to Miss Pettibone. It seemed to me some punishment, something, must be hard on my heels.

  It turned out to be Miss Pettibone. Right behind me, she was walking real fast. She would run a few steps every so often. She finally got out in front of us, keeping her back to us all the way. She never looked back to see were we there, as if she was determined to reach that drugstore before us. Or as if she intended to look like this was her idea. That was it, I realized, as we went along looking like we were following her. She wanted the people in the drugstore to think we were put to shame.

  Little Sister was limping. She’d been half running to keep up. I didn’t notice it right off, but the red spot on her heel had turned into a blister. So when we got to within a block of the drugstore, when we got to this corner where there is a wooden bench like it’s a bus stop, except there aren’t any buses in Linden City, Little Sister and I sat down to wait for Aunt Patty.

  “We have matching blisters,” I said to her so it would feel like this was where we ought to be. After a while, Little Sister took off her sandals and swung her feet back and forth while she waited.

  Miss Pettibone walked by on her way back to the church. Her eyes were all red and puffy, and she sniffled into a fistful of Kleenex when she saw us. She hurried past us like she was afraid of getting beaten up. This seemed like strange behavior until I saw that there were two women standing outside the drugstore who were watching this whole thing. They were mostly looking at me, I think, but I got the feeling they were more sympathetic toward pretty Miss Pettibone. After all, she was the one doing the crying. It made me real nervous about facing Aunt Patty.

  It seemed like a long time before we saw Aunt Patty coming. She passed us by at first, heading for the drugstore, but she must have seen us because she made a U-turn at the corner and came on back. “Put your shoes back on, Little Sister,” she said as we got into the car.

  “I don’t know how I’ll be able to raise my head in this town. My two nieces will be known as the terrors of Stokes County.” It was like the girls had guessed, she was siding with the teacher and she was mad at us. At me. It’s hard to get mad at Little Sister if she won’t say anything to defend herself.

  I began, “She must’ve told you lies—”

  But Aunt Patty never even paused to draw breath. I doubt she knew I’d said one word. “She didn’t have to tell me you can’t make it through a single day of Bible school without getting thrown out for bad behavior. You embarrassed that poor young woman, Willa Jo, do you realize that? No wonder you got thrown out. I would have thrown you out.”

  I was not in the mood to feel sorry for Miss Pettibone. “We didn’t get thrown out, we left,” I said.

  “And that smart mouth of yours is exactly why,” Aunt Patty said. “You sound just like your mother. If I told Noreen once, I told her a hundred times she ought not to raise a sassy child.”

  “It wasn’t our fault. Won’t you give me a chance to explain?”

  “I will not. You are in the doghouse now, Willa Jo. You are to hush up until I tell you I can bear to speak to you again.”

  So I did. But the first thing after we got home, Little Sister scratched at something on her butt. It was a tick that had crawled up under her shorts. Aunt Patty got all flustered and didn’t know what to do.

  “Miss Pettibone lit matches and touched it to the ticks and made them drop off,” I said. I would’ve felt smug if it hadn’t been Little Sister that tick was attached to. “I don’t think it hurt anybody,” I said, so Little Sister wouldn’t be scared.

  “You make it sound like the woman spent the better part of an hour dropping ticks,” Aunt Patty said, still sounding mad. But she was getting the box of matches from over the stove.

  “She did,” I said. “But she still made everybody sit in the grass. I bet a lot of those girls still have a tick on them somewhere. Maybe I do.”

  It turned out I didn’t. “Too ornery to attract a blood-sucker,” Aunt Patty said. But she made us both strip to skin to be certain, and she wouldn’t let us put those clothes back on. She hung the clothes out on the line.

  “She didn’t like us right from the start,” I told Uncle Hob that evening. We were sitting on the shaded porch. Little Sister was running around the yard with Isaac. Only Isaac’s voice could be heard.

  “What was the start?” he asked.

  “She wanted Little Sister to be in the Lambs, but I said I had to talk for her. She acted like Little Sister could talk if she wanted to.”

  “Well...” Aunt Patty said.

  “She can’t,” I said.

  “No, I don’t suppose so,” Uncle Hob said.

  “Well, she could,” Aunt Patty said. “It’s not like her throat has been injured or anything. But she can’t. Of course.”

  I said, “You think Little Sister is pretending she can’t speak?”

  “No, I don’t,” Aunt Patty said. “Willa Jo, that day you all went to the fair, did Little Sister drink any of that dirty water?”

  “The water wasn’t dirty.”

  “Not so’s you could see it, I know,” Aunt Patty said. “But the water was bad.”

  “Nobody else drank it.” Nobody but Baby.

  We were all quiet for a few minutes. Aunt Patty swallowed so loudly her throat squeaked. I knew if I looked I would see her eyes had welled up with tears, but I wouldn’t look. I was afraid she would get me started.

  “Her voice was like an angel’s,” I said.

  Aunt Patty’s voice trembled when she asked, “Little Sister’s?”

  “Miss Pettibone’s,” I said.

  “You mustn’t take it to heart,” Uncle Hob said.

  “Women who don’t have children...” Aunt Patty started, then stopped, turning a pretty shade of pink. She cleared her throat and began again. “Women who have not been with children don’t know what a child goes through.”

  Uncle Hob rustled his newspaper like he was preparing to read.

  “She didn’t like us,” I said, but I wasn’t minding so much anymore.

  “She didn’t understand, that’s all,” Aunt Patty said. “She’d like you fine if she knew what this was all about.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” Aunt Patty said, giving in after a long moment of saying nothing at all, “you might be right.”

  We could have gone back to Bible school the next week because Miss Pettibone lost the rest of her turn at being the teacher. Too many girls told their folks what happened and it didn’t go down too well over supper.

  Aunt Patty was so happy to get a call inviting us back that she didn’t even mind that I said I didn’t care to go. Well, she minded a little. But Uncle Hob said he didn’t mind and we didn’t have to go. Aunt Patty told whoe
ver it was on the phone that we were going to be busy for the next few days.

  14

  The Piggly Wiggly Pickle

  Things might’ve smoothed out after that, but for the fateful trip to the Piggly Wiggly. Little Sister was picking out breakfast cereal when a woman pushed a grocery cart around the end of the aisle and said, “Patty, is that you? I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

  “Tressa,” Aunt Patty said, looking pleased. Her voice didn’t even go high. “Why, you haven’t changed a bit.”

  “I have been meaning to call you, Patty, but you know how it is. With the boys home from school, I don’t have a minute.”

  “What are you doing all the way over here?” Aunt Patty asked. “Don’t you still live on the other side of Raleigh?”

  “We’ve moved back,” Aunt Patty’s friend said. “As soon as school starts—”

  “We’ll get together,” Aunt Patty said. “Oh, it’ll be so nice to be able to have coffee with you again.”

  A boy of maybe fifteen came up to her and said in a deep voice, “Mom, which brand do you want?” He held up two bottles of dish detergent.

  “Is this Randall?” Aunt Patty said, while her friend Tressa pointed to one bottle.

  “Nope, this is Robert,” Tressa said. “He’s tall, like his daddy.”

  “Your youngest,” Aunt Patty said, as Robert bobbed his head. He was shy.

  “Well, not exactly,” Tressa said.

  A boy about Little Sister’s age, maybe younger, had come from the other end of the aisle and he dropped a box into Tressa’s grocery cart. “Oh, no,” she said. “Not this sugary stuff. Get Corn Chex or Cheerios. And get two boxes.”

  He went off again.

  “That’s your youngest,” Aunt Patty said almost gleefully. “You tried for that girl.”