by Phoebe Stone
“We’re going with a fishing theme, Jessie Lou, figuring that’s Bailey’s strong point. We’re hoping Big Box Home and Hardware won’t be carrying fishing gear,” says Granddaddy, putting on his waist-high waders.
Looks like this stuff has been planned behind Mama’s back and somehow I got roped into it. I stand here on the hot sidewalk holding the big sign that’s like a sail in the wind, pulling me one way and then pulling me the other. Moon n’ Stars’s mother walks toward us. I can see sweat on her forehead. It must be roasting inside that globe outfit. I want to ask her if Moon n’ Stars got invited to the dance tonight by Conrad Smith, but as she walks closer, I decide against it.
We’re all here now in our tall rubber waders, with our poles and our signs. We walk up and down the sidewalk. As we stand here, old-fashioned biplanes on flat trailer beds are brought in around us. Bleachers and platforms for speakers are being unloaded from several semi trucks. The Big Box Home and Hardware balloon truck grows bigger and bigger. More and more people bring in more and more equipment, speakers, microphones, more airplanes. Pool World is here setting up the giant outdoor aboveground pool. Trucks carrying lines of Porta Potties drive by us.
We walk back and forth on the sidewalk. Nobody pays any attention to us. Nobody honks at us. Nobody shakes their fists at us. Nobody seems to even notice us at all. We walk back and forth for two hours. I’m getting a sunburn and Moon n’ Stars’s mama is practically fainting from the heat inside her outfit, so finally we decide to go on home.
As we are walking back to our car, we pass the front of the shopping mall. There’s a big gold abstract sculpture standing near the double doors. Just put in place this weekend. I know it is abstract ’cause of our lesson at school. Mrs. Duster explained that abstract art is something that doesn’t look like anything. The statue doesn’t appear to be anything at all, just a bunch of shiny gold metal pieces looping in and out of each other, looking important and baffling and stupid all at once.
“That’s abstract art, Granddaddy,” I say. “Learned all about it in school.”
“Maybe so,” says Granddaddy, handing me the binoculars, “but look over there on top of it. There’s a bunch of something flying around and sitting all over that statue. What do you think they are?”
“Birds, Granddaddy,” I say.
“Yeah, they are birds,” says Granddaddy. “Statues make great bird perches. But what kind of birds are they?”
“I don’t know, Granddaddy,” I say, looking through the binoculars. “They’re black and white and brown.”
“That’s right, Jessie Lou. What did I tell you? What did I tell you?” says Granddaddy. “They aren’t supposed to be in this region at all, but by golly, there they are. Those are magpies, Jessie Lou. Just a bunch of magpies.”
By the time we get home, it is late afternoon. Mama has vacuumed the whole house, giving everything a kind of glow. Windows are open, and the smell of lilacs blows through the screens. The house is the kind of magazine-photograph clean that normally would make me feel special and happy, but today is not a normal day. I’m guessing Conrad has already picked a girl and asked her to the dance. They’re both probably getting all dressed up right now.
“Catch anything?” says Mama as we walk into the beautiful, clean kitchen that makes you feel washed and fresh just stepping through the door.
“Nope,” says Granddaddy, looking over at me with that sheepish, sorry look he gets when he’s been ranting too much and he knows it. “Didn’t get anything at all except a big headache.”
I go on off to my room. Nothing left of the afternoon but to watch it fade away from my window upstairs. Nothing left but to watch it turn rosy red on the horizon and disappear. There is a lot going on this weekend. I know the sixth-grade graduation dance is being made ready. I can just feel the festivities being prepared. The air feels electric and charged like it’s singing a song I can’t hear, a song normal ears can’t detect. I’m on the outside of those festivities, not a part of them. It always feels funny to miss a big event like that, like looking at a frame on the wall with no picture in it.
I sit at my desk and I write out two poems quickly. Both of them are stupid. I rip them up into confetti bits and let them fall out of my hand like snow. There’s a stray piece of paper on my desk and I turn it over and it’s that envelope I found in the old house. Just says To Vera Bailey. Is that the name of the person who lived in the old house?
I feel a double shiver of loneliness. I think about calling Quentin Duster but then I change my mind. I open my window and watch the sunset. Best thing about my room. I’ve got a window onto the sunset just about every night.
I can hear a marching band in the distance, the drums sounding like a dark heartbeat inside me. The sound of the drums makes me remember happier times, like when we hosted the All-State here in West Taluka. I figure everything is going to change now. Conrad isn’t going to need me to sit with him on the curb during any parades. He isn’t going to need me to think of getting a triple chocolate Mister Softee cone just at the right moment. He isn’t going to need my friendship at all anymore, now that he can have his pick of anybody he wants, now that his popularity has doubled or tripled and keeps on growing just like that dreadful enchanted porridge that pours into the streets and floods the town in that Grimm fairy tale.
I look out my window and I can see the lights across the valley opening up like little buds bursting into bloom in the new darkness. I hear that marching band in the distance again, and I know going back to school I’ll be marching straight into “the worst-case scenario,” as Mrs. Duster says. Whenever some kid in our class is scared to do something, she’ll go, “Let’s talk it over. What’s the worst-case scenario?”
I don’t even think I can go back to that school ever again. I know I can’t. I feel like I might break into a thousand pieces, like one of Granddaddy’s jigsaw puzzles, like the time he dropped President Woodrow Wilson in a thousand pieces on the floor after spending a whole week putting him together.
I guess if I quit school, I would miss Mrs. Duster’s comforting voice. Maybe I could go back if I had a bunch of her magnets taped to my arms. Mrs. Duster even sleeps on a mattress with magnets in it. Maybe she could tell me how I could get one of those mattresses that pull all the sadness out of you magnetically while you sleep.
I go over to my mirror and look in. I can see I have a pretty bad sunburn on my face. There’s a pair of scissors lying on the dresser. I pick them up and I’m about to start hacking off my hair again when Mama calls up the stairs, “Jessie Lou, there’s a boy on the porch with a big bag of candy for you.”
“What’d you say, Mama?” I call back.
“Jessie Lou, come on down, honey. There’s a boy on the porch wearing a fancy jacket with a bag of candy for you.”
“For me?” I say.
“That’s what I said, honey,” says Mama.
“There must be some mistake,” I call back. “You must have got it wrong.” I am standing at the top of the stairs and then a shadow moves across the porch down stairs and goes to the screen door below and stands there looking in. The porch light is behind whoever it is, so I can’t make out any features. Whoever it is, is wearing a white jacket slightly on the too-big side. And that person is wearing a little bow tie and holding a big bag of candy. And when that person turns his head a little so that the light falls across half his face, I can see then that person has a Mr. Moon smile and I close my eyes to keep from going dizzy.
“Jessie Lou, come downstairs. It’s Conrad Parker Smith, honey, wants to invite you to the sixth-grade graduation dance.”
“Me?” I say. I open my eyes and then I close them again because my heart is going down to my stomach and then back up to my throat just like an elevator making a fast run — first floor, fifth floor, first floor, fifth floor. I take a breath and then I open my eyes again and I look down at myself.
Me? I’m wearing worn-out jeans and a faded plaid shirt and a pair of black high-top sneakers
, the kind boys wear. My face is all sunburned. Me? Suddenly, I don’t want Conrad to see me. I don’t want anybody to see me the way I look right now and then I say, “Uh, I don’t have anything to wear. I can’t go. Don’t you have to wear pretty dresses to those kind of dances?”
Melinda is standing in the upstairs hall now. A moment ago she had been lying on her back in her room, looking up at her ceiling the way she has been recently. But then I saw her moving out of the corner of my eyes. I could see her walking toward the hall. She leans now against the door near me. She says, “Jessie Lou, you gotta go to the dance. I had so much fun two years ago when I went to that sixth-grade thing. You have to go.”
“But I can’t, I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Jessie Lou,” she says, “I think I can loan you a dress. She’ll be right there in about ten minutes, Conrad,” she calls down the stairs. “Isn’t that just like a boy to wait till the last two seconds to ask you to a dance? Don’t give you but a minute to get ready, do they?” Melinda goes over to her closet and pulls out a pale purple-colored layered fluffy dancing dress with hundreds of little buttons up the back. It’s a dress a princess or a queen might wear, a dress so soft and light as to be made of dragonfly wings, a dress you barely felt like you could touch, never mind wear.
Before I have a chance to say no, Melinda has me all buttoned up and inside that dress, looking down at it and around at it. A dress like that just makes you feel like turning in circles. Then she puts pink lipstick on my lips and a barrette in my hair, pulling what bangs I have off to one side. “That sunburn gives you color, Jessie Lou. Now the shoes are a problem ’cause we don’t wear the same size,” Melinda says.
“My only good pair are in Granddaddy’s car and it’s over in the repair shop getting its spark plugs changed,” I say. In fact, all I have to wear for shoes are my black high-top sneakers, but I figure this fluffy dress is long enough to cover them up most of the time. Anyway, I don’t have any choice — I have to wear them. It’s better than going barefoot.
When I get downstairs, my mama clasps her hands together and says, “Oh, Jessie Lou, don’t you look pretty. Turn around for me, honey, so I can see your hemline.” Mama and Melinda are awful concerned about straight hemlines. Me, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if your hem hangs crooked. As I turn, my mama sees the black high-topped sneakers underneath my dress. She throws her arms around me and hugs me and says, “Oh, you’re a rare breed, Jessie Lou. You’re just my upside-down fairy princess. Got a style all your own. Got a style all your own.”
Conrad’s mama is waiting in the car in the driveway. As we leave the porch, Conrad hands me the big brown bag of candy, saying, “Here’s some loot in case we get hungry.” I take it, but I’m still feeling stiff and shy and stupid. I can’t believe Conrad just gave me a whole big bag of candy and I didn’t even have to fight for it.
We open the car door, and Conrad’s mother gives me a corsage that she put together with a clothespin angel and a purple rhododendron. It matches my dress perfectly and I pin it on my shoulder.
Conrad and I sit in the backseat, and his mama starts up the motor, and Conrad says, “The school, Jeeves,” pretending his mama is a chauffeur and that kind of breaks the ice and I laugh. Then Conrad’s mama laughs and Conrad laughs and pretty soon everything’s all normal — we’re just a car full of laughing people backing out of a driveway.
Granddaddy’s up on the porch now, waving to us as we drive off. He looks kind of sad and full of worry. He’s not used to seeing me all dressed up, I guess. He keeps waving and waving like he’s saying good-bye to me forever, like he’s never going to see me again.
“Faster, Jeeves,” says Conrad, falling back against the seat. The fields rolling by out the window make me think of my abandoned house and the old barnstormer airplane and the envelope To Vera Bailey. I have been dying to tell Conrad how I snuck into his house and got the T-shirts, how Granddaddy and I’ve been crossing out Things and putting in Tulips. I want to talk to him but the words just won’t budge in my throat. Feels like even if I had a crowbar working away in there it wouldn’t do me any good.
When we get to the school, kids’ parents are pulling up in all kinds of cars. My used-to-be-friend Elizabeth Parnell and Sarah Jane Peabody have invited Josh Jameway and Michael Malten and the four of them have rented a stretch limo. It isn’t the first time Elizabeth P. has ridden in a stretch limo. Her parents rented one for her last year when Elizabeth had to get a tooth pulled at the dentist. They rented the limo so she could watch her favorite video on the way there and back just to cheer her up. The one her parents have rented this time is a big long white limo and it’s pulled up at the curb and kids are clustered around it acting like it’s the coolest thing they ever saw and Sarah Jane and Elizabeth are getting star treatment as they step out in their party dresses.
As soon as we pull up, the stretch limo seems to shrink in size. It isn’t all that long. It isn’t all that cool. Conrad is way cooler. He’s been on TV. He’s famous. Maybe his famous doctor is going to take him with him on a tour. Hurry. Quick. Get his autograph. Grab him. Everybody is in a big circle around us, asking all kinds of dumb questions. Conrad just pushes his way through the crowd, smiling.
When we get into the school, things kind of settle down. The decorations are so beautiful — all red, white, and blue, so patriotic as to bring tears to your eyes. Even the principal’s office seems to glow with streamers and flags. All down the hall are the huge selfportraits of all the sixth graders graduating, going on to junior high next year. A big banner across the top says, OUR SIXTH GRADE GRADUATING CLASS. WE LOVE YOU ALL. I try to look away when we pass mine. Mine has nothing on it, just a big blue line around the outside. Nothing else, just an empty white space inside.
If the halls dazzled me, the gym itself takes my breath away. It doesn’t even look like a gym. There are tables with candles lit and flowers in big jars of water and there are streamers hanging from the ceiling and red, white, and blue balloons are tied everywhere. Music is playing in the darkness and there is a refreshment table lit by candlelight. Parents and teachers are sitting along the side, dressed up too. Everything feels like a dream. I stand here letting the warm darkness blow around me in the center of the gym, letting my dress billow out as I turn in a circle.
Conrad is headed for the refreshment table, and I take it in mind to do something. I slip out through the crowds of kids and I find myself a big Magic Marker in a desk and I go over to my self-portrait and I give myself two eyes, a nose, and a big old smile. And then I write all around the border, HAPPY. HAPPY. HAPPY. HAPPY. HAPPY.
When I get back to the gym there’s a slow dance playing, and Conrad is sort of standing there, and suddenly we start dancing a kind of made-up waltz. We’re faking big-time ’cause neither of us really knows how to dance and we’re laughing about it. In fact we’re roaring out of control, stepping all over everybody’s feet. Then we start getting goofy and doing a sort of galloping step, horsing across the gym. Finally we stop over by the far wall and we get out the bag of candy and divvy up a bunch of M&M’s and a Snickers bar.
Later when the music gets real loud and fast and you can’t hear yourself think and we’re all dancing in a big swarm, everybody looking like idiots waving their arms around, I shout to Conrad, “I got the T-shirts. I went to your house. I got ’em.”
“You did?” says Conrad.
“Yes, I did,” I say.
“I’m glad, Jessie Lou,” Conrad shouts back. “It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up from my operation.”
The rest of the evening is kind of a blur. For some of the dances Conrad stands along the back wall of the gym with all the other sixth-grade boys talking about shows they saw on TV. Other dances we aren’t in the gym at all, we’re running around in the empty cafeteria and down the long halls, enjoying the fun of running free all over the school at night. Later, when I’m dancing one slow dance with Conrad, my rhododendron corsage loses its pet
als. They fall all around me as we’re dancing, leaving me with a clothespin angel with a big safety pin on the front of her dress, sitting on my shoulder. But I’m proud of that clothespin angel. Gonna keep it forever, hang it on my wall in my room, look at it every single morning soon as I wake up.
I have to say that during the whole night, Conrad’s popularity is astounding. He can do no wrong, even when we’re dancing and we step on other people’s toes or on a long trailing skirt passing through. Everybody just makes jokes and laughs, nudging Conrad with their elbows or slapping him on the back. People wave to us when we go over to get cider. They call out, “Hey, Conrad, how’s it going?”
Quentin Duster was banned from attending the dance since he’s only a fourth grader, but he has weaseled his way into working at the refreshment table with a couple of the unsuspecting teachers, so he has a chance to take a few potshots at me and Conrad. But I don’t care. I don’t care about anything because when Conrad and I are dancing, I might as well be in the air show myself, skydiving through the darkness.
Funny thing has been happening when I am with Conrad tonight. Seems like some of his popularity has been rubbing off on me, and in a way, I feel like I am popular too. Everybody sure is being nice to me. I don’t know how I look on the outside, but I’d like to say that I feel pretty on the inside, and Granddaddy always told me that’s all that really matters.
I wake up the next morning to fireworks, loud explosions big as cannons going off during the Civil War. I can also hear a brass band playing, Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day over and over again. It comes in on the wind and it sounds halfway out of tune. I get up quickly and I get dressed quickly and I hurry downstairs. I know Conrad will be over at Buttonwood’s Bowl-a-rama being in the popular Lewis-and-Clark skit, but I have to get these T-shirts to the Bailey brothers. I’m not going to the air show and opening day celebration. I’d boycott that anyway, even if these shirts were already delivered.
