The Wonder of Charlie Anne
Page 9
“Phoebe?”
She looks up at me, soon as I get across the road. Her face is wet.
“Phoebe. What’s wrong?”
She puts her face on her lap again. I bend down closer. I think how with that many tears, the sunflowers won’t need watering.
“Phoebe?”
“What?”
“What’s wrong?” I look over at Anna May and Belle. They have come all the way down to the fence and are telling me to keep trying.
“Phoebe?” I say softly.
“My mama did my hair the right way and Rosalyn does it all stupid,” Phoebe says, crying so hard she has to stop talking. Finally, she says, “I don’t want Rosalyn anymore. I want my mama.”
I look up, and Anna May and Belle are remembering what it feels like to lose someone you love.
I reach over and touch Phoebe’s hair, her every-which-way braids all undone. “Oh, Phoebe,” I say. “Rosalyn loves you, I know she does.”
“Rosalyn is terrible with hair.”
“I bet she’s better than Mirabel.”
Phoebe shakes herself away from me.
“I will do it,” I say, finally.
Phoebe cries even more. I’m not expecting this.
“What do you know about my kind of hair, Charlie Anne?”
I look back at Anna May and Belle. “Nothing,” I say. “Except I think it’s pretty. And you can teach me how.”
I keep wondering the next few days if Mirabel will ever see the hole in my heart. She says that after I milk Anna May, I can have some time to myself. She hands me The Charm of Fine Manners.
“Keep it in your pocket, and keep looking at it whenever you think to,” she says, wiping the biscuit flour off her hands. “Your reading will get better before you know it and you’ll be bettering yourself at the same time.”
Mirabel picks up a tray of biscuits and puts them in the oven.
“What about Ivy?” I say, looking at the book. “How come she never has to?”
Mirabel shuts the oven door and turns around. “She’s started being friends with that Ellis girl, that’s why. She’s developing plenty of manners over there, I’m quite sure.”
“With Miss High-and-Mighty? How can Becky Ellis be better than Phoebe?”
“It is quite clear, Charlie Anne, that you need that book more than anyone. Why must you make a to-do about absolutely everything? Now go, before I find more work for you.”
Anna May doesn’t stand still for milking any better than she used to, but at least with Belle close she’s happier.
I still have to be very stern with her, though, because Anna May is that kind of cow. I give her my most terrible mad look, just to get things started on the right foot, and then I tell her I am in no mood for any horsing around.
Then I turn soft as butter while I brush her with her favorite cow brush and scratch her behind her ears, and I whisper sweet things in her ears, like what a lovely girl she is and how all the other cows in the world can only wish they were as wonderful as her.
This makes her happy.
Then I scratch her some more and give her some corn, and while she’s eating, I set the milk stool on her right side (cows like things to be the same way all the time) and I wash her udder. I tell her in my sweetest voice to behave.
While I am milking, Belle is wondering what the dickens is going on, and I tell her to hold her bonnet, that if Anna May does her job, we will all be out under the butternut tree very quick.
Anna May shifts her weight around and I pull my feet away, because getting stepped on by a cow can make your heart stop beating, it hurts so much. She moos to make sure I am doing everything right. “Yes,” I tell her. “I know how to milk a cow.”
“How on earth did you get so much?” Mirabel wants to know when I bring the pail up to the house.
“She’s happier with Belle here. Cows are happy when you don’t take away someone they love.”
Mirabel just stares at me. “You are a funny girl,” she says slowly. Then she goes back to frying potatoes.
CHAPTER
25
After breakfast I sit on the porch and open The Charm of Fine Manners, but the letters get all switched up and I can’t make sense of much of it.
Then I hear Phoebe and Rosalyn down by the road, tending to their flowers, and pretty soon my feet are telling me that if I hurry, I can go over for a visit, and Mirabel won’t even know.
I rush off, hiding the book in the apple barrel in the barn, and before I can say milk cow, I am jumping over the stone wall and running across the road.
They are replanting the sunflowers that Phoebe mussed up, trying to make the little broken ones stand up again. Phoebe has new ribbons in her hair, and the braids I made for her are looking fine.
“Charlie Anne,” says Rosalyn, “we were just talking about you. We are just finishing up. We have a surprise for you inside. Want to come see?”
I nod and I let Rosalyn pull me into the house, where there is a bright yellow dress on the kitchen table that someone has cut up to make over.
“It’s for you, Charlie Anne,” Phoebe says. “We are making trousers so you can have some, too.”
Rosalyn puts wood in the cookstove to heat up her kettle. “Want tea?”
I nod. As long as it’s sweet raspberry. I walk over and touch the cloth. It is soft like the fluff on a new chick.
“We thought your dress was a little small, and that maybe you were ready for something that fit you a little better?”
“Well, yes,” I say, looking down at my chore dress, and at how it hardly covers up my underpants anymore.
“Have you ever had trousers like this?” Rosalyn wants to know.
I shake my head. “I’ve never known any girls who wear trousers except for overalls, not until you two.”
“I see,” says Rosalyn, picking up a pair of scissors and beginning to cut. “Well, I think girls should wear trousers if they want to. Do you know why?”
She is looking at me, waiting for an answer.
“Why?”
She looks glad I asked. “Because we do not need to be defined by our circumstances. We can make things different, we can change things, even climb right up and out of the boxes that some people want to put us in. But we have to work hard and we have to decide that we’re no quitters and that we’re going to succeed at what we set out to do—no matter what. Are you a quitter, Charlie Anne?”
I watch the two of them, Phoebe cutting around the pattern in careful lines and Rosalyn sitting there in red pepper red trousers. I think about Mirabel and what she would say about all this. I shrug because I really don’t know if I’m a quitter or not. Maybe I’ll talk to Anna May and Belle about it when I get home.
Rosalyn smiles at me. “You let me know what you decide, okay?” Then we cut out the pieces and pin everything together, and I prick myself over and over because sewing is one chore that I cannot do. Then Rosalyn takes the pieces and puts them in her sewing machine, and she pumps the foot pedal up and down, up and down, and before I know it, my trousers are getting sewed. Phoebe asks me if I want to help her make carrot sandwiches, and I say I have never had carrot sandwiches before but I will be pleased to try some and, yes, I will help.
This is how you make them: Peel and then chop up uncooked carrots as fine as you can get them. Put the carrots in a bowl and add a handful of chopped-up salted peanuts (or raisins if you are up north, where no one has any peanuts anyway) and a spoonful of mayonnaise. Spread on warm bread.
Carrot sandwiches go especially nice with a bowl of applesauce and about a hundred cups of sweet raspberry tea.
* * *
I eat so much—two sandwiches, two bowls of applesauce and all the sweet raspberry tea I can hold—that we are not sure if I will fit in my new yellow trousers, but when they finally come off the sewing machine, they are fitting just fine.
Phoebe and Rosalyn make me stand in the middle of the room with my trousers on because it is pinning time, and they put a bunch
of pins in their mouths, and both of them fold and pin where the hems should be. Then I have to take the trousers off and Rosalyn clears all the crumbs off the table and we go over and she gives me a needle and takes one for herself.
While I am learning to hem, Rosalyn asks Phoebe if she will read to us again, and before I know it I am feeling so bad for little David Copperfield and his awful life that tears start welling up in my eyes and then dripping down my face and then Phoebe puts down the book and asks what is the matter and I tell them all about how my life is not turning out so good.
Then Rosalyn reaches over and hugs me and then Phoebe does, too. I am not used to so much hugging since Mama left us, certainly not from a colored girl, not ever, but I pretend that I am used to being hugged a lot. When the hems are done, I put the trousers back on and go look at myself in their mirror and say, Hey, wait a minute, when did you get so tall, anyway?
When I leave a little later, I think that even the sun is not as bright as I am in my new yellow trousers.
CHAPTER
26
I run across the road and into the barn, where I hurry out of my trousers and fold them as small as I can make them and hide them inside the apple barrel and walk back outside as calm as can be so no one can see how happy my heart is feeling about everything. It is a nice change.
“Oh, Charlie Aaaa-aaaanne!” I hear from up in the tree by the barn. “We saw you. We saw you over at that house with that colored girl!”
Ivy and Becky Ellis are high in the apple tree, looking down at me. They throw apples on my head.
“We’re going to telllllllll on you.” Ivy is laughing. “And what’s that you were wearing when you went in the barn? Tell us. Was it something yellooow?”
A few more apples fall on my head. “Mirabel told you to stay away from that colored girl, and now you’re going to really get the what-for,” says Ivy.
Five apples fall on me all at once. Then Ivy starts climbing down.
“Fine, go ahead, Ivy,” I say, stepping out of the way of any more falling apples. “At least I’m not spending my time kissing Becky Ellis’s shoes.”
When I get up to the house, Mirabel tells me to get the clothes on the line. “Take Birdie with you. She’s been pestering me all day. Where’ve you been, anyway?”
Birdie does not understand how when you are with Mirabel, you should not be asking her a hundred questions every five minutes, and you should especially not be asking, “Where is Charlie Anne?”
Just as we are folding the last blanket, Ivy tears past me with a streak of yellow flying behind. Becky is running after her, laughing so hard and staggering so much she looks like she is going to pee.
My heart flips and I let the blanket fall on the ground and I run after Ivy, trying to catch her before she gets any farther with my yellow trousers, which now look like a kite flapping behind her.
Birdie cries, “Stop, Charlie Anne, wait for me, wait for meeeeeee.” She falls and wails, but I don’t stop. Ivy is not the fastest runner in the world. I am gaining on her, and she looks back and shrieks for Mirabel.
I reach Becky first and grab on to the back of her dress and pull and it tears and then Becky falls and screams that her dress is all ruined. Just a few more strides and I will be close enough to overtake Ivy and I pump my arms and look for strength from I know not where and gain on Ivy. But what I am not counting on is that Mirabel will be sitting on the porch, mending.
“What is it with you two?” she says.
“Look!” screams Ivy. “Look what Charlie Anne is hiding.” Then Ivy runs right up on the porch and drops my yellow trousers onto Mirabel’s lap and Becky is still screaming on the lawn and I know my goose is cooked.
Well. We have to walk Becky home and I have to go, too, because Mirabel is going to make me tell Mrs. Ellis how I ripped Becky’s dress and how I am sorry, and I must beg her pardon and use my best manners while I am doing it. We will talk about the trousers and about being with that colored girl when we get home, Mirabel tells me, and this gets Ivy and even Becky laughing, and I tell Becky if she does not quit it, I am going to make sure that more than just her dress is ripped up.
“Are you threatening me, Charlie Anne?” she says in that whiney voice of hers, and I lunge at her, but Mirabel pulls us apart before I can get at her face.
“What’s gotten into you?” Mirabel takes Becky’s hand and heads toward the Ellis house, and I have to pick up the back of the line, behind Ivy and Birdie, who keeps asking me, “What was that yellow thing, anyway?” and I have to keep saying, “Shush your mouth up, Birdie.”
“And don’t drag your feet,” Mirabel yells back.
Belle and Anna May are watching our parade, and Belle wants to know why I am looking so miserable. Poor, poor, pitiful Charlie Anne, I tell myself as we walk up the hill, and even Olympia and Minnie and Bea come running out to see where we are all going.
Across the road, Old Mr. Jolly’s house is looking all happy with its new door, and now there are sky blue shutters. After a while, I get a little tired of hearing me telling myself what a terrible, troubled life I am having, how nothing is turning out the way I want, and I decide I need to give myself a good talking to, and I do. When I am done, I am feeling all yelled at, and right then and there, as we turn into the Ellis driveway, I tell myself that someday I am going to teach that Ellis family a few manners. Lord knows they need some.
Mrs. Ellis takes one look at Becky all ripped up and dirty and starts boo-hooing, and then she asks about a hundred times, Are you all right, dear? and then she decides Becky is all right, but she gives Mirabel a what-kind-of-family-are-you look anyway.
Mirabel is very unhappy to be standing there, and I bet she is wishing she sent us on our own. Then Mrs. Ellis looks down to see if we have shoes on or not, which of course we do not, and this makes Mirabel’s frown come back.
“What shall be done?” Mrs. Ellis wants to know.
Mirabel clears her throat and gives me the why-aren’t-you-apologizing look, and I give Ivy and then Becky my most terrible mad look, and then I turn to Mrs. Ellis and say as mannerly as I can, “Please pardon my bad manners, ma’am.”
Ivy and Becky snicker, and I look off back toward Old Mr. Jolly’s house and wish more than anything that I were sitting at the table listening to Phoebe reading, and drinking sweet raspberry tea. Instead, I hear Mirabel suggest that maybe I could mend Becky’s dress.
Mrs. Ellis thinks about it for a moment and decides it is a good idea. She tells Becky to change and bring back the dress, and while she is at it, to bring the pile of mending from the back parlor that needs doing.
“I am not good at mending,” I say.
Mrs. Ellis looks at me sharply. “Children need to learn their place, wouldn’t you agree, Mirabel?”
“Well, yes, I certainly do,” says Mirabel, and then Becky is standing in front of us with a pile of clothes so high you cannot even see her face, and then Mirabel isn’t looking so sure about things.
“If she wasn’t Sylvie’s child, I wouldn’t be so forgiving, you know,” Mrs. Ellis says. “Bless that woman’s sweet soul, she always had something kind to say to everyone.” Then Mrs. Ellis takes the stack of clothes from Becky and piles it into my arms.
“We’ll need these back before church on Sunday. Now off you go, you have a lot of work to do,” she says, waving her arm and sending us on our way, without ever once inviting us in.
I am so weighed down under my bundle that I can hardly see Ivy laughing at me the whole way home.
Mirabel puts my trousers in her rag box and tells me to stay away from them, and she decides the only thing to be done is to step up my lessons. Each night she sits in the rocking chair and I sit in the rail-back chair so I can learn to sit up straight without slumping, plus I am learning to mend.
“Tiny stitches,” says Mirabel, over and over. She is making us each a new pair of underpants out of feed sacks. My pair has a rooster on the back.
“I’m not wearing those!”
I roll my eyes.
“You don’t want to be able to see the stitches, see?” She holds up my new underpants and shows me the seam. She keeps checking to make sure I am sewing in a straight line.
While I am doing this, Mirabel reads:
We must persistently strive
against selfishness, ill-temper,
irritability, indolence. It is
impossible for the self-centered or
ill-tempered girl to win love and
friends.
Mirabel looks up at me. “All right, Charlie Anne. Let’s think for a moment about what that means.” She puts the book on her lap and sits back in her rocking chair and waits for the words to sink into me.
I watch the last of the sun dip down below our barn. I do not know why Ivy does not get these lessons, when she needs them more than me.
“Well?” Mirabel looks over her glasses and straight into me. “What does that mean?”
I take a giant breath and swallow all the words inside of me. I shrug.
“It means that you need a loving, generous nature if you are to get on in this world. I’m surprised you can’t see that.” And with that, Mirabel is off again:
One of the greatest blemishes in
the character of any young
person, especially of any young
girl or woman, is forwardness,
boldness, pertness. The young girl
who acts in such a manner as to
attract attention in public; who
speaks loudly, and jokes and
laughs and tells stories in order
to be heard by others than her
immediate companions; … who
expresses opinions on all subjects
with forward self-confidence, is
rightly regarded by all thoughtful
and cultivated people as one
of the most disagreeable and
obnoxious characters to be met