Anybody Shining

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “Miss Pittman didn’t write any such thing!” I cried. “Why, she’s our friend!”

  Will shrugged. “She might be your friend, but she sure don’t think too highly of you.”

  James leaned forward. “Maybe Miss Pittman was making things sound worse than they were so she could get more money. If she told ’em that we was all doing fine and didn’t need much help at all, they probably wouldn’t send her a dime.”

  “Could be,” Will said, not sounding worried about it one way or another. “But my mama’s fixing to go down there and give her a piece of her mind. Told Thelma she weren’t to go back in the morning, but Thelma says she’s sewing on a dress she wants to finish before the next dance, so she’s going back anyway.”

  I thought maybe I’d go down and give Miss Pittman a piece of my mind myself. But just the thought of standing in front of her and crying out, How could you? set my lower lip to trembling. There are the Lucilles of this world, who put their hands on their hips and fuss and fight, and then there are the Arie Maes, who just store things up inside and never say a word. I wish I was the other, but I am myself and not good for making a scene. So I just sat on that porch and looked at my feet and felt the shame settle deep inside.

  Well, pretty soon I just had to go inside and lay across my bed. Did Miss Pittman really think us ignorant and backward? Maybe James was right, and she had to say such things to get the money to run her school. Still, I hated to think of people off the mountain believing we live in filth, when that’s the furthest thing in the world from the truth. Why, Mama won’t hardly let us go out of the house if we’ve got a speck of dirt under our fingernails.

  Is that why you never have written me back, Cousin Caroline? Do you think I’m backward? I hope it ain’t so. I hope you can find it in your heart to reconsider.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  I have terrible news. We have been invited to a picnic.

  Now, usually I will jump up and down at the news of any kind of gathering where there is food and games and maybe a song or two. It is not uncommon to have church suppers on summer Sundays, and we children have the best time! We play Anty Over, where you have two teams, one on one side of the house, and one on the other side. One person tosses a ball over the roof, then runs fast as a deer to the other side to see if the ball is caught. If not, he gets the ball back. If so, the catcher runs around to the thrower’s side and tries to tag people with the ball. Another game we play is town ball, which Miss Sary says reminds her of baseball, only in town ball, you get runners out by throwing the ball directly at them. Miss Sary disapproves of that part of the game, but all she will say is, “Just don’t throw that ball at me!”

  So you would think that I would be happy to attend any picnic I was invited to. But this particular picnic invitation come from Miss Pittman, and I wish like anything I didn’t have to go.

  It was Ruth who brung the invitation. She come up yesterday morning with her little cousin named Mazie tagging along behind her. I was hoeing the garden to the side of the house when here come the two of them looking fresh and clean. Mazie is Lucille’s age, and you can see she is training up to be just like Ruth when she gets older. She holds herself straight and fine when she walks. They was both of them wearing blue dresses with white sailor collars, long white socks stretched up to their knees, and black patent leather shoes. Ruth was wearing a white ribbon in her hair, and I bet it was killing Mazie that she didn’t have a ribbon herself.

  “Good morning, Arie Mae!” Ruth called out when she saw me. Whenever Ruth says a word to me, her tone sounds halfway between making fun and nice. I can’t quite figure her out. She’s bossy, but she ain’t quite as awful as some bossy girls I have knowed. Still, I don’t ever feel at ease with her.

  “Hey, Ruth!” I called back, brushing some dirt off the skirt of my dress and wishing like always when I saw Ruth that I had shoes on. “Lucille’s gone with Mama to the dry goods store, but I reckon she’ll be back soon enough.”

  “We can’t stay but a moment,” Ruth told me. “Mazie and I have slipped off from a sewing lesson, and we’re expected back soon. But we were so excited, we just had to come tell you. Miss Pittman and Mother have decided to have a picnic for the local children tomorrow, in the clearing by the creek behind the cabins. It’s going to be such fun!”

  My first feeling upon hearing this news was disappointment. Now Tom and I would have to put off our trip to find Aunt Jennie Odom! My next feeling was that I did not particularly care to spend time with Miss Pittman, even at a picnic. How would I even look her in the eye, knowing what she thought of us?

  “Do we have to dress up for this picnic?” I asked Ruth, wishing I had a basketful of ribbons to put in my hair so I could impress Miss Pittman with how civilized I was, not filthy in the least.

  “No one need dress up, especially as we’ll be having games,” Ruth told me, Mazie nodding solemnly behind her. “You don’t want to get your best dress dirty, now do you? Besides, Mother was concerned that if we asked people to dress for the picnic, some of the boys might not come.”

  “She said most of you don’t even have nice clothes,” Mazie added. “And it would embarrass you to show up all plain and degradated. So we are to wear our plainest dresses to make you feel more at home.”

  “Hush, Mazie!” Ruth hissed. “You’ll make Arie Mae feel badly about the things she doesn’t have.”

  “That’s all right,” I mumbled, feeling not even one inch tall. “I got nicer clothes than this. I just don’t like to dress up to hoe.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Ruth said, nodding her approval. “Of course you wouldn’t wear your Sunday best to work outside.”

  “I got at least five dresses,” I lied. “Though one or two may be getting tight. I guess Mama will have to take me shopping over to Asheville soon enough.”

  Well, I have never been to Asheville nor worn a store-bought dress in my life, but you will say all sorts of lies when you’re feeling not even one inch tall.

  “The best dresses are the ones the dressmaker makes,” Mazie informed me. “Mrs. Green on Eager Street. Ready-made dresses seldom fit properly.”

  “That’s enough, Mazie,” Ruth said. “Not everyone can afford Mrs. Green.”

  “Mother says—”

  “Enough.” Ruth give Mazie an icy glare, and Mazie’s mouth clamped shut.

  “So, tomorrow then, Arie Mae,” Ruth said, turning to me. “Tell Lucille and James and Harlan we very much look forward to seeing them at noon. Mother and Miss Pittman have all sorts of treats planned. Be prepared for an afternoon of delights!”

  I watched them two walk down the hill toward the road, and then I went and sat on the porch steps to recover from their visit. I was still setting there worrying about that picnic when Mama and Lucille got home from the store, where they had gone to fetch coffee and sugar and some nails for Daddy. I knowed my only hope was that Daddy would say no to Miss Pittman’s invitation. But for all that he did not care for the settlement school, Daddy thought it poor manners to turn down an offer of hospitality, and he might make us go.

  “You finish up in that garden yet, Arie Mae?” Mama called when she saw me. “You got to get them weeds before they take over.”

  “I’m almost done, Mama,” I replied. “But before I get back to it, I best tell you the news.”

  This picnic Miss Pittman has planned is going to be as hard on Mama as it is on me. I only have myself to worry about, but Mama must add James, Harlan, and Lucille to her list. It’s important to Mama that her children make a good show in the world. We may not have pretty ribbons or handsome suits, but we’re to have the nicest manners and the cleanest faces and the best-combed hair. When she gets us ready for church on Sunday morning, it’s like an army general preparing troops for battle. Fetch me that scrubber brush! she yells. Harlan, you best wash behind your ears, they’s a garden growing back there! Arie Mae, your b
raid’s coming undone and you look like a wild thing!

  “Oh, Lordy,” Mama moaned when I told her of Miss Pittman’s picnic. “She sure didn’t give us much time to get ready. We’ll wash clothes this afternoon and the children this evening. And we’ll have to prepare some vittles for you’uns to take.”

  “Ruth didn’t say we needed to bring anything,” I told her. “I believe they’re fixing all the food themselves.”

  “But you still carry something with you, Arie Mae!” Mama exclaimed. “You can’t just walk into somebody’s place empty-handed. I know I raised you better’n that!”

  Then she got to worrying about what she should fix. It had to be something that didn’t need to be hot to taste good, and it had to be able to travel down the mountain to the songcatchers’ school. “I’d have to use the last of our dried apples to do it, but an apple stack cake would be a nice treat to send,” Mama declared after pondering on it a few minutes. “I got a box saved you’uns could carry it in.”

  “Yes, Mama, make an apple stack cake!” Lucille exclaimed. “Yours is the nicest one anybody’s ever had.”

  And it’s true, Mama’s apple stack cake is well appreciated in these parts. She brings it to most every church supper, and folks clap their hands when they see it, it tastes so awfully good.

  “Well, I will make it first thing tomorrow morning,” Mama said. “So it will be as fresh as can be for your party. Now, come on, girls. We need to go see about the clothes for you to wear.”

  It was time to play my only card. “Daddy ain’t gonna like this,” I told Mama as she hurried across the porch to the door. “He don’t want us to have nothing to do with that school.”

  “This is different, Arie Mae,” Mama said. Her point was just as I feared. “This is an invitation to a party. It’s hospitality, and we don’t turn down hospitality when it’s offered.”

  That is how we come to spend the rest of the day getting ready for Miss Pittman’s picnic. When Daddy, James, and Harlan come in from the high field, they fussed at Mama for making such a poor showing for dinner, just heated-up soup beans, not even a pan of cornbread, though James brightened some at the news of the picnic. It was like he’d plain forgot that Miss Pittman thought we was filthy and ignorant.

  “I hope they got races and swimming!” he exclaimed. “And strawberry ice cream, too.”

  “Strawberry ice cream?” Harlan asked, as if such a thing were beyond all belief. “Sign me up for that!”

  Cousin Caroline, I am writing this letter late at night. I can’t sleep for thinking on all the things that might happen tomorrow at Miss Pittman’s picnic. What if there’s special forks and spoons that we don’t know the proper way to use? What if I spill all over myself and Tom pretends not to know me? What if in the middle of a polite conversation, Harlan starts to spitting and cussing, in spite of all the training Lucille has give him? I fear we will behave in such a way that Miss Pittman will think she’s right to say that we are uncivilized, ignorant folks.

  Maybe I will wake up tomorrow with pneumonia and will have to stay home. That is what I’m hoping for, leastways.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  There is such a good deal to tell you about all that happened today. Most of it I’d rather not think about ever again, but if I don’t write it down, then I won’t have no peace in my mind. There is a voice asking why write it to you, when you don’t ever answer back, and I wonder that myself. Maybe now I’m just in the habit of it. Maybe I’m in the habit of believing that you read my letters and care what I got to say, even if you don’t write back.

  Maybe you got two broke hands. If so, I am sorry to hear it, but that sure would explain things.

  I’m writing this beneath the window of the room I share with Lucille and Baby John. Moonlight is streaming in and lighting everything up, so it’s just as good as having a lamp by my side. I’ve been gazing at Baby John’s face, which is as round and ruddy as an apple. For so long he was the prettiest baby you have ever seen, and he’s still nice to look at, but he’s coming on nine months and not so much a baby anymore. You can see in his face the little boy he is about to be.

  Sometimes I think it would be nice to be Baby John’s age again and have no worries. Today, walking down the mountain to Miss Pittman’s picnic, carrying Mama’s apple stack cake in a box tied up with string, I worried about being ignorant, and I worried about the dress I was wearing, my blue everyday, the one that shows the least wear and tear, but is still drab and dreary. With it I wore my brown lace-up oxford shoes and white socks. James and Harlan went barefoot, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that, even though my brown oxford shoes are too tight.

  Lucille and I trailed James and Harlan to the cabins where the Baltimore folks was staying. The closer we got, the slower and slower my feet moved. You are a good girl, Arie Mae Sparks, I told myself over and over, but I did not feel good. I felt like nothing about me was good enough, not my dress, nor my shoes, nor the words I spoke or the thoughts that run through my mind.

  I used to be so happy that the songcatchers had started their school here, even if I couldn’t go. But now I wished they’d never come, so I would never have these bad sorts of feelings about myself and everyone I know.

  We could hear the laughter of children as we got closer, and suddenly I thought to wonder what other children would be there. Will Maycomb and Ivadee Ledford, I supposed, along with all their brothers and sisters, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to come across Addie and Billy Eckley nor Minnie, Carl, and Caroline Vinson. I thought of all the houses you will find along the road from the settlement school to the Hollifields’ place on the highest perch of Pumpkin Patch Mountain and counted up a righteous number of young’uns. What would them Baltimore children make of us all gathered together? I shuddered to wonder.

  Well, it was quite a sight when we rounded the corner of the visitors’ cabins and headed in the direction of the creek. All the children I have named and plenty more was running wild as unbroken horses in the grass. The Baltimore children stood to one side and looked on as though they was watching a show. Every last one of them wore shoes, and their faces was shiny clean. The mountain children looked more used up and most had dirty feet.

  As soon as she saw us, Ruth called out, “Arie Mae! Lucille! Come help us set the table!” She sounded as though she was doing us an honor by asking. I thought it odd that there was tables for a picnic, but it turned out to be just the one for setting out food and another for plates and punch. When it come time to eat, we would spread out blankets on the grass and sit with our plates in our laps.

  We followed Ruth into a cabin where platters of food were laid out upon a table. “Miss Pittman and Mother thought sandwiches were appropriate, and I agree,” Ruth told us, pointing at the food. “At first we considered beef and pickle sandwiches, but in the end decided that cream cheese and olive would hold together best.”

  Lucille and I nodded, though we are not much for sandwiches as Mama don’t make light bread, which is the kind you can slice into thin pieces to put something between. Mostly we have biscuits and cornbread. Still, I have seen pictures of sandwiches in magazines, so the sight of them weren’t shocking.

  But olives and cream cheese? I glanced at Lucille and saw her lower lip a-trembling. Lucille is one of them who is particular about what she eats and don’t take to unfamiliar food easy. When we attend a church supper, she’ll stick to whatever Mama has made, in spite of all the ladies who urge her to try just one bite of their famous dishes.

  “I am sure you and your mama have made the right choice,” I told Ruth, setting down Mama’s apple stack cake on the far end of the table. “Cream cheese and olives sounds like a treat.”

  “You don’t think the mountain children will find them too unfamiliar?” Ruth asked. Her tone made me suspicious. Maybe she hoped we would turn on our heels at the sight of such food and run back up the mountain, showing ou
rselves to be ignorant and plain.

  The sandwiches was cut up into triangles and set upon pretty platters. There were also bowls of nuts and cucumber spears, and plates with sliced radishes and tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. While there was plenty of everything, it seemed to me a meager spread, nothing there to fill your belly. Still, I thought maybe this was how high-class folks ate, and I swore to myself that I would try a bite of everything.

  A tall woman with a crisp, white apron tied around her waist walked into the room, looking brisk and full of good cheer. “Hello, girls!” she called when she saw us. “I’m Ruth’s mother, Mrs. Wells. You must be Ruth’s friends Arie Mae and Lucille. Now, which one is which?”

  I could tell from the second I laid eyes on Mrs. Wells that she was who Ruth got her bossy side from. From the very manner in which she walked into the room, her head turning this way and that, making sure all was as it should be, it was clear she was in charge.

  “I’m Arie Mae Sparks, ma’am,” I said. “And this here is my little sister, Lucille.”

  “ ‘This is my sister, Lucille,’ ” Mrs. Wells corrected me. “Say things directly, Arie Mae, and you’ll be better understood. From looking at the two of you, it is clear that Lucille is younger than you are, and the use of ‘here’ in that sentence was extraneous. Now, let’s carry these platters outside and tell the children it’s time for luncheon.”

  That’s when I wanted to tell her that she’d fixed all the wrong sorts of food for the mountain children, who would have as soon chucked a radish slice through the cracks in the floor than eat it, but I suspected she would not have listened to me. Mrs. Wells did not strike me as the sort who listened to anybody but herself.

  I followed Lucille over to the table and was about to pick up a plate of buttered bread, when Mrs. Wells said, “Arie Mae, may I speak with you for just a moment?”