The Wonder of Charlie Anne

by Kimberly Newton Fusco

  This time, Mirabel’s frown is big as the barn. She takes a long icy look at Phoebe. “Go home,” she says. “You’re not wanted here.”

  “Mirabel, it wasn’t her fault,” I say, shooing Olympia away from my feet. “It was my idea to have the chicken race because of Birdie’s bee sting. It’s my fault we’re not hoeing between the carrots.”

  Birdie is already holding Phoebe’s hand. Mirabel steps over and slaps it away.

  I see that ironing board go down Phoebe’s back again. She gives Mirabel a hard look and then flies off home.

  CHAPTER

  17

  There are about one hundred ways to cook potatoes. Mirabel knows them all: potato puff, potato casserole, potato cream soup, potato stew, potato dodge, potato dumplings, creamed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, potatoes with flour gravy, potato filling side dish, potato pancakes and my favorite, pigs in a potato patch. This is a huge pile of mashed potatoes with crisp pieces of bacon pushed in, all over. This is Birdie’s job. My job is to peel the potatoes, lots of them.

  When Mirabel was down in the cellar organizing all the canning jars, she noticed that mice had gotten into our potatoes from last fall.

  My new job is making sure Big Pumpkin Face gets down there every day on mouse duty. Big Pumpkin Face is not so easy to find these days. Sometimes she is up in the barn sunning herself, sometimes on the stone wall sunning herself, sometimes on the porch swing—sunning herself. She is getting fat from sunning herself so much. “Get to work,” I tell her.

  While she is mousing around, I have to pick through the bin because there’s a bad smell coming from deep inside, and when you have one rotten potato, pretty soon you have a lot of them. We can’t afford to be losing potatoes when we eat so many of them, Mirabel says. I say we could lose a few.

  I begin tossing the bad ones out. Even the ones that Mirabel says we can save because they are just getting a little wrinkled, I toss into the pail, plus all the ones that have little mouse nibbles on them. Then I carry the whole load out to the compost pile.

  Phoebe and Rosalyn are out by the road working in their garden. Anna May and Belle want to know why don’t I take a little stroll over to see them, and I tell them I think I will. I throw down the potato pail.

  They are planting seeds and humming. I hear their fence being all happy about their company.

  “What are you planting?”

  “Sunflowers,” says Phoebe. “Want to help?”

  “Sunflowers, by the road? Most people plant them by their gardens. Sunflowers are for birds.”

  “That may be so,” says Rosalyn, standing up and wiping the sweat off her face, “but I want people who walk by here to know there’s a family living here now. And these are the only seeds I have.”

  Rosalyn hands me a shovel. “Here, why don’t you help us plant some of these seeds. Do you know how?”

  Do I know how to plant seeds? I roll my eyes.

  After I am digging for a while, I say, “My mama used to plant flowers with me.”

  “Yes,” says Rosalyn. “I’m sorry you’ve lost your mother, Charlie Anne.”

  “Yes,” I say, because when you think about it, what else is there to say?

  “Would you like to come in with us and have some sweet raspberry tea?” Rosalyn wants to know.

  I don’t even pause. “Yes,” I say, because when you think about it, what else is there to really say.

  There are big changes happening inside Old Mr. Jolly’s house. Everything is getting painted and made over. Someone has even touched up the roses on the wallpaper so they are blooming again.

  The stairs going up to Phoebe’s room are the color of the sky on a good day. Rosalyn has made new covers for the sofa and chairs, so now everything is dressed up in her trouser cloth: red pepper red, crushed blueberry, sunflower yellow, evergreen.

  Phoebe has made curtains out of muslin sheets, and she’s embroidered little cornflowers and poppies along the hems. Old Mr. Jolly has been busy making bookshelves, and now the one thousand books that Rosalyn brought are neatly tucked in together, and everything smells good, too, because there are dishes of cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg on the shelves.

  Just like at our house, there is no electricity, but there is a kerosene lamp on the kitchen table. And when Rosalyn pours us all cups of sweet raspberry tea, I am noticing we are all glowing with a special light. Even Old Mr. Jolly.

  CHAPTER

  18

  For about the hundredth time, I want to see Phoebe’s bedroom way up under the eaves, but she keeps telling me no, she has never had a room to herself and it is not ready for visitors, but soon, soon, soon.

  What does it look like? I want to know. I am imagining it must feel like a castle to have a room all your own.

  “It’s a surprise. You’ll see.”

  “Today?” I ask as soon as I see her the next day.

  “No,” she says, her hands covered with whitewash. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Today?” I ask when I see her the next day.

  “No. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday.”

  “Come on,” she says, laughing at my pouting face. “You can help me pick these flowers.”

  “What’s it like?” I ask as we walk through Old Mr. Jolly’s fields, picking black-eyed Susans and goldenrod and wild asters and rose hips.

  Phoebe smiles. “You’ll see. Soon.”

  The briers are cleaned out. Any day now, Old Mr. Jolly will come looking for Belle. I sigh and pick a clump of daisies.

  “I will light a candle in my window when I am ready,” Phoebe says. “Make sure you watch for it.”

  That night, there is a candle burning in Phoebe’s window. I light one, too, to say yes, I’ll be there, but your room better be ready, because I’m getting awful sick of the waiting.

  It takes forever to get Anna May milked and two eggs found and then Ivy burns the oatmeal so I have to help her start over and show her how to do things. “Don’t you know anything?” I tell her, and she starts screeching, “Mirabel! Charlie Anne is being mean to meeeeeeee!”

  “What are you rushing for?” Mirabel wants to know, and Ivy says, “Yes, what are you up to, Charlie Anne?”

  I want to get over to see Phoebe so badly, but I still have to wash the dishes and put everything away and finally, finally, I rush outside, not bothering to listen if Mirabel is going to give me any more work. I am too excited about Phoebe’s new room.

  I rush across the street and right up on their porch and I plow into Old Mr. Jolly and he says what the heck, what the heck, and before he can say anything to me about Belle I fly in the house. I bump into Rosalyn and she points up those sky blue steps and before you can count ten I am sprinting up and they are steeper even than my stairs and they creak with every step and then I turn the corner and finally, finally, I see Phoebe’s room.

  She is standing in the doorway. “Welcome, Charlie Anne.”

  The walls are whitewashed and the trim is that same happy sky color and the bed has a bedspread made with the sunflower trousers cloth. There are curtains at the little windows under the eaves with little roses embroidered on them and the floor has been oiled and shines in the sun that is pouring through the window.

  There is a washstand with a pitcher and bowl for washing her hands and face and a table beside her bed that has a little white cloth and on top are several books.

  She shows me her closet, where her trousers are hanging in a neat row beside some dresses, and she points to a secret door that Old Mr. Jolly has made.

  We go inside and there is a blanket on the floor and a secret window that looks outside and I see Ivy carrying the compost bucket out to the garden.

  “Tell me a secret you never told anyone else,” Phoebe is saying.

  I feel a little nervous. I never shared secrets before with anyone but Mama. “You first,” I tell her.

  “Okay.” She closes her eyes and thinks for a while. I watch Ivy dump the compost and bring the buc
ket back up to the porch. Then she looks over at Old Mr. Jolly’s house and I move away from the window.

  Phoebe opens her eyes. “My mama told me there was a light inside me that no one could put out unless I let them.”

  I lean back against the rafters and breathe in the warm smell of the old timbers. I think about what she said. “That’s a good secret.”

  “Now tell me.”

  I look at her. I hope I can trust her. I close my eyes, and begin. “Sometimes my mama talks to me, usually when I am up by the river near her grave, but other times, too. Sometimes I think I hear her just before I wake up.”

  When I open my eyes, Phoebe is smiling. “That’s a good secret, too,” she says.

  Then Rosalyn is calling us down to lunch. While we are slurping the best vegetable soup I ever had, Rosalyn says, “Maybe Charlie Anne would like to hear David Copperfield?” and Phoebe goes over to the one thousand books and brings one back to the table and starts to read.

  Well. Phoebe reads way better than me and pretty soon I forget all about where I am and how Mirabel is probably looking for me by now. I want to know how Phoebe learned to read so good, when I can’t hardly read at all, but I am too caught up in the story to stop her and ask.

  “Would you like a turn?” asks Rosalyn, pushing the book toward me. I am shaking my head no, no, no, and that’s when I hear Mirabel down by the road calling me, and for the first time ever, I am glad. I won’t have to watch the letters all jumble and remember all about Miss Moran if I get away from Rosalyn and Phoebe quick enough. Which I do.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Mirabel tells us we are going to start going to church, and this means Saturdays are bath day, and this means about a hundred trips to the well to get the water that we need to fill the washtub that we pull to the middle of the kitchen floor.

  We hang a curtain from the ceiling, but you really don’t get any privacy at all. “Get out of here,” I tell Birdie, who keeps wandering in when it is my turn.

  Mirabel comes in with the dress I wore to Mama’s funeral.

  “I am not wearing that dress,” I tell her, feeling that awful hole inside me that opens up any time I look at that dress, and Mirabel says, “Yes, you are, because tomorrow your aunt Eleanor is coming.”

  She pulls an envelope from the front of her apron and slaps it down on the table.

  “Papa said not Aunt Eleanor.”

  “Don’t Papa me,” Mirabel says, holding a towel up for me.

  “I can do it myself,” I say, snapping the towel out of her hands and holding it in front of me.

  Birdie is already naked as a baby jaybird, and as soon as I’m out, Mirabel lifts her up and plunks her in. Mirabel starts scrubbing Birdie’s arms with a washrag. “And, Charlie Anne, I want you to make two of those vinegar pies, one for church and one for when Eleanor comes.”

  I pick up the letter and open it and try to read it, but the letters jumble all up like they always do. Very badly I want to know what Aunt Eleanor has to say.

  I look over at Ivy. She is watching me, one eyebrow raised high. “What’s the matter, Charlie Aaaa-aaaanne?”

  “Read this,” I say, putting the letter in front of her.

  “Why don’t you, Charlie Anne? Can’t you read or something?”

  Ivy knows very well I can’t read like she does. She knows what Miss Moran made me do. Mirabel looks over. My face is burning.

  “You really can’t read at all?” Mirabel asks as she scrubs Birdie’s back. “I thought you were just fooling on us because you didn’t like to read.”

  “I can read. I just have to make the pies. You give me so many chores all the time, I don’t have time to practice.” I pull the flour off the shelf.

  Ivy is happier than I have seen her in a long while. “Does Mirabel know why Miss Moran made you stand in her trash bucket, Charlie Anne?”

  That’s it. I throw down the flour scoop, sending a cloud of flour all over me and the table, and some of it even reaches Mirabel where she is trying to get the dirt off Birdie’s neck. I rush at Ivy just as Mirabel starts sneezing, and I grab at Ivy’s pinned curls. Ivy screams and Birdie jumps up and spills half the water all over Mirabel and all over the floor.

  I don’t wait to be yelled at. I run out the door and out to the butternut tree where Anna May and Belle are resting in the shade, and they want to know what was I doing in that hot kitchen when I could be so much happier sitting out here with them in the shade, watching the buttercups moving in the breeze. When I get myself settled, with my back lying all up next to Anna May and my eyes feeling all happy to be filled up with the sight of my beautiful Brown Swiss Belle, that’s when the two of them tell me how very sorry they are that I am having enough troubles to fill a wheelbarrow.

  “Who wants to read anyway?” I tell them.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The next morning is Sunday and Mirabel keeps checking Peter: behind his ears, his fingernails, his elbows. She gets her own comb and wets it in her coffee and slicks his hair into place. He bellows as loud as Anna May and Belle put together. Then she finishes letting out his pants, and when he puts them on, they are still so short he looks like the scarecrow Papa made to watch over his corn.

  Then it is time for us to all go to church. We walk right past Old Mr. Jolly’s house and Rosalyn’s bright yellow new door. I look for Phoebe but there’s no sign of her. Ivy is wearing the shoes she wore to Mama’s funeral and she hobbles up the hill, they are so small. I am wearing Thomas’s old muck boots, which I scrubbed so they don’t smell and I stuffed with rags so my feet fit, and I’m not hobbling at all.

  We have to walk right past the Thatchers’ house, and the oldest Thatcher boy is up in a tree waiting for all the people walking to church. He throws an apple and it hits me in the arm.

  “Ouch!” I scream, and I go right over and start giving him a piece of my mind, how he is a snake and will always be a snake, but Mirabel takes one look at the condition of their yard, at the dogs barking and the clothesline creaking around and the paint all falling off the house, and she pulls me away.

  When we get to Becky’s house, Ivy pats at her curls to make sure they are sticking in place and she tries not to hobble and I think some more about how they deserve each other and then we are at church.

  I put my pie on the table under the maple tree where everyone brings something to share. It is being neighborly is what we call it.

  Then I go inside and tell Peter to shove over so I can sit between him and Birdie. “Even more,” I tell him, because I am mighty sick of him rolling on top of me all night long. I ask Birdie where is her lemon drop, and she unrolls her balled-up hand, and I see where her skin is sticky and the lemon drop is sitting, getting thinner every day.

  “Do you want a lick?”

  I shake my head, and she pops it into her mouth for a minute, then spits it out into her hand and folds her fingers around it. Birdie did not want to wear her funeral dress, either, because she thinks that when she wears it, someone else will die. I take her other hand in mine and hold it and miss Mama.

  We are early and so Mirabel gets to nod to the ladies who walk in. She likes this. She is wearing her hat with gray and white feathers and a little veil that comes down on her forehead, and I cannot figure out who looks more like a mockingbird: Mirabel, or the real one that keeps flying past the Jesus picture in our stained-glass window.

  The Morrell girls walk in alone, because their mother sends them without her. They are barefooted. Papa told me he thinks she is too ashamed of not having shoes.

  “Why?” I asked. “That makes no sense to send them alone.”

  He shrugged. “Some things are just too much, that’s all.”

  I told him I didn’t see how listening to this preacher talk about the things he always talks about, how we are all terrible sinners and all, is going to do the Morrell girls or anyone else any good.

  Papa laughed that day, his deep belly laugh, and he reached over and hugged me.
I sigh. I miss Papa very much.

  As I am thinking about Papa, Becky Ellis walks in with her mother, and they sit in their fancy pew up front, the one they donate extra money for, and Ivy places her foot right at the edge of the aisle so Becky will notice that she is wearing her fancy shoes.

  Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich come in next. They are all gray and bent over, and they can’t see very well, but they always have a nice pudding cake to snack on if you ever skin your knees when you are running past their house, and they bring nice casseroles when your mama dies. Mr. Aldrich smells like nutmeg from all the baking his wife does, and Mrs. Aldrich comes right up and tousles my hair and rubs her cheek against my face, and I can smell the lavender water she washes with.

  “Make sure you sing so I can hear you,” says Mr. Aldrich, winking at me, and that’s because I like to sing “Amazing Grace” very loud. We sing it every week.

  After that, in comes Zella Polanski and her family, all pressed and polished, and then Mrs. Reilly, who I bet is wearing chicken feathers on her hat, and then Evangeline. When the church is full, there are very few men, on account of so many of them have gone up north to build roads, all except for Zella’s husband and Mr. Aldrich, who are too old, and the preacher, who keeps preaching so we will one day see the light.

  Then the door swings open again and in walk Rosalyn and Old Mr. Jolly and Phoebe. There is a whole lot of silence as everyone stares, because having somebody new in church doesn’t happen every day and Rosalyn’s hair is billowing all around her. Also, I don’t think we ever had a colored girl in church before.

  Old Mr. Jolly stands at the back of the church for a moment, looking like he just swallowed a pile of bad meat, and Rosalyn grabs on to Phoebe’s hand and motions with her head that they should hurry and sit down. Please.

  Old Mr. Jolly leads the way and then the whispering starts.

  “So that’s who he married.”