Lula won prizes for her needlework, whereas mine was straggly and pitiful. I couldn’t understand her powers of concentration when she rolled a French knot or toiled over a tatted collar in Sewing class at school.
“It’s the same as learning a piano piece, Callie,” she would say, “and you can do that fine. All you have to do is practice it over and over until you get it right.”
I pondered this and decided she was right. So why did I find the music so different from the needlework? When you played the piano, the notes vanished a second later in the air and you were left with nothing. Still, the music brought joy even as the notes evaporated, and playing a rag exhilarated everyone to the point of jumping around the parlor. What did the embroidery bring? Something decorative and permanent and occasionally useful, yes, but I found it dull and quiet work, suitable for a rainy day with only the monotonous ticking of the parlor clock for company. Mouse work.
I did convince Lula to play some Sousa arrangements for four hands with me, and we made a good go of it, pounding out twice as much music in a veritable torrent of strict-tempo chords, which was highly gratifying.
ONE AFTERNOON, my thirteen-year-old brother Lamar sidled up to me on the porch as I sat tallying Lepidoptera.
“Callie. . . .”
“What?”
“Do you think Lula likes me?”
“Sure, Lamar.”
“No, what I mean is, do you think she . . . likes me?”
This was a surprise. Lamar had never shown any interest in girls before. “Why are you asking me?” I said. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He looked aghast. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well . . . I don’t know,” he said lamely.
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.” I had a flash of inspiration. “Why don’t you talk to Harry about it?”
He looked relieved. “Yes,” he said, “that’s a good idea. But you won’t tell Lula, will you?”
“No.”
“And you won’t tell any of the others, will you?”
“No.”
“Okay. Thanks, Callie.”
I didn’t think too much about the conversation until a few days later, when Sam Houston, the fourteen-year-old, crept up to me in the hallway and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Callie, say, I need to talk to you. Do you think Lula Gates likes me?”
“What?” I said.
He flinched. “Don’t jump like that. I only wondered if maybe she likes me, that’s all.”
“Golly, Sam.”
“What?” he said.
I was in a minor panic. “I think maybe you should ask her yourself.”
He looked appalled. “I can’t do that.”
I said, “You better talk to Harry. He knows all about those things.” Who said inspiration doesn’t strike twice?
“You’re right, Callie. I’ll talk to him about it. You won’t say anything to Lula, will you?”
“No. I never would.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Double-Injun-blood-brothers-swear-to-die promise?”
“Double Injun.”
“It doesn’t count unless you say the whole thing,” he said.
“Saaaam.”
“Okay, okay, okay. But say it, huh?”
“Double Injun blood brothers swear to die,” I said. “Now leave me alone.”
“Shoot, you sure are getting to be an old grouch,” he said, and walked off, no doubt in search of Harry. I rubbed my temples where a headache was setting up camp.
A couple of days later, I was reading by myself in a quiet corner when my ten-year-old brother, Travis, wandered up with an odd expression on his face. I eyed him and snapped, “What do you want?”
He looked hurt. “I want to ask you something.”
“You aren’t going to ask me if Lula Gates likes you, are you, Travis?”
He gasped, and his face crumbled in panic. “What?” he cried. “No, no, I was only going to ask you if she likes cats, that’s all.”
“I have no idea if she likes cats, or you, or anybody else. I’m sick of this. Go and get advice from Harry.” I collected my books and stumped off muttering, “There’s an awful lot of this going around.”
“Sick of what? What are you talking about? What’s going around?” he called after me.
I ignored him, fairly certain that there were no hordes of boys across town pestering their sister about whether Callie Vee liked them or not. And what did it matter, anyway? Did I care? I did not. No. Did not.
Harry came to my room an hour later, laughing. “You have got to stop sending them to me. I can’t get a moment’s peace. Give them the benefit of your own wise counsel.”
“I don’t know what to tell them. It’s only old Lula. What’s come over them?”
“It’s an epidemic of crushes. They’re getting to that age.”
“Well, they can just quit it.”
“There’s no quitting at this point,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Out of curiosity, does she like any of them?”
“Um, not that I can tell, especially. Should I ask her?”
“If you feel like occupying the middle ground at the Third Battle of Manassas. If I were you, I’d keep well out of it.”
I decided he was right and said, “Yes, Harry, that’s the thing to do. I’ll pretend to know nothing.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” he said, and he ducked out the door.
“Funny!” I would have thrown something at him, but the nearest item to hand was my precious Notebook, which I’d never fling about.
The next school day, I met up with Lula at the main road as usual, and we walked the last quarter mile to school together, chatting about nothing in particular. I happened to glance back, and there were my three brothers behind us on the road, strung out at regular intervals, their eyes fixed on her. Oh, dear. Things were worse than I thought. This sudden change in them unnerved me. Weren’t they too young for this? Couldn’t I have a normal family like other girls? Why did it have to happen to all of them at once?
At recess that day, all three of them managed to find an excuse to stand close to the invisible line that, by unspoken agreement, divided the girls’ side of the yard from the boys’. They leaned against the trees in the schoolyard, looking like aimless loiterers, except for their eyes, which they fastened on Lula with studied nonchalance, and then cut sideways at each other like assassins.
Lula and I played hopscotch. Her silvery braid flashed in the sunlight like a living thing. Her petticoats flared as high as her knees, producing a strangled gasp from Lamar. I glared at him. A month before, she could have walked through the yard in her chemise and he wouldn’t have noticed. Now this. Tough times lay ahead.
“Lula,” I said, pitching my pebble.
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“No, what, Callie?”
“Um. Do you . . .” I had made a hope-to-die promise I wouldn’t tell. And while I myself did not know of anyone who had died after breaking one, it wasn’t worth the risk.
“Do I what?” she said.
I thought fast. “D’you think we should ask Dovie if she wants to play?”
“I thought you didn’t like Dovie.”
“Well,” I said as I hopped, “I never said I didn’t like Dovie. . . .”
“Yes, you did, Callie. You said so last week. You said exactly those words.”
“It’s Christian that we invite her, don’t you think?”
Lula looked at me curiously. “If you want to.”
I didn’t want to—I couldn’t stand Dovie—but I walked over to her. I was about to ask her to join us when Miss Harbottle rang the bell. Dovie gave me a funny look. I seemed to be getting lots of funny looks. I didn’t deserve a one of them.
We trooped back inside, g
irls in one queue, boys in the other. I began to dread the walk home after school and tried to think up an excuse to walk by myself. Miss Harbottle homed in on my distracted state and called on me an inordinate number of times with questions on Texas history, which I could not answer, much to the class’s amusement.
“Calpurnia Tate, are we interrupting you?” she said.
“Interrupting me, ma’am? I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly. Where is your mind today?”
“I must have left it at home, Miss Harbottle,” I said. The class tittered.
“Precisely,” she said. “And don’t you get pert with me, Calpurnia. Go to the corner. One hour. Any more comments and it’ll be the switch for you.”
I stood in the Corner of Shame with my face to the wall for a full hour and contemplated my brothers’ situation but came up with no answers. Then came lunch.
We took our pails outside and scattered under the trees. Lamar and Sam Houston sat with their respective friends. I felt sorry for Travis, the youngest and most tender of the bunch, who ate alone and cast piteous, moony looks at Lula.
Lula noticed him and said, “What’s wrong with Travis? Is he ill?”
“I think he has spring fever,” I said.
“But it’s not spring,” she said and gave me another funny look. “Shouldn’t we ask him to eat with us? He looks lonely.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Lula.”
“Why not? You sure are being odd, Callie Vee.”
Me? Odd? I thought, If you only knew the half of it. “Don’t worry, Lula, he’s fine. I think you should leave him alone.”
But it was too late. She walked up to Travis, whose eyes got bigger and whose face got redder and redder as she came toward him. Lamar and Sam Houston, on the other hand, turned all pinched and squinty.
She bent down and spoke to him. I couldn’t hear her words, but he leaped to his feet and followed her back to our spot. Lamar and Sam Houston looked like they were about to go into spasms. Travis sat down, and I thought he might pop with happiness.
“Hi, Callie. Lula asked me to sit with you.”
“I know, Travis.”
“This is a good place to eat lunch, don’t you think? You picked a real good place. Lula, do you want half of my sandwich? Viola made us roast beef today, and it’s real good. I’ll share it with you, if you like. And I have pie. Lula, do you want to share my pie? Or I can give you the whole piece, if you want. It’s peach, I think. Wait, let me look. Yep, it’s peach all right.”
“Thank you, Travis,” she said, graciously, “but I have enough lunch of my own.”
“Say, Lula,” he said, “do you like cats? Mouser, she’s our old barn cat, she had kittens, and I get to look after them all by myself. Mother said so. I named them all by myself, too. Do you want to hear their names?”
I sighed. Do you think it’s any fun listening to a ten-year-old pitching woo?
“And then there’s Jesse James, and then there’s Billy the Kid, and then there’s Doc Holliday, and then there’s . . .” He droned on, giving the names of all eight. Lula actually looked interested.
“The one I like best is Jesse James,” he finished. “He’s got stripes all over him except for his toes, which have some white places on them. He looks like he’s wearing spats,” he giggled. “He’s real friendly. He lets me carry him around in my overalls. Say, Lula, would you like to see my kittens sometime?”
“That would be nice, Travis. I like cats. We used to have a cat, but my mother wouldn’t let it come inside the house. It disappeared, and it never came back.”
I could almost hear the gears meshing in my brother’s head. “Say, Lula,” he said, slowly, “maybe you could have one of my kittens. If you wanted.”
“Gosh, Travis, really?” Her whole face lit up. “That would be so nice.” Travis looked stunned by her radiant smile. “Of course,” she said, “I’d have to ask my mother first. Maybe I could come after school tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he gulped.
Egad, my ten-year-old brother had made a date. Then I looked over and saw my older brothers shooting daggers at him.
Uh-oh.
The afternoon dragged by. I was as tense as a cat in a room full of rockers. When school let out, Lula and I met up outside as usual, and there stood Travis, his face a beacon of hope. A few paces behind him, Lamar and Sam Houston hung about looking shifty.
“Hi, Lula,” said Travis. “Hi, Callie. Can I walk with you?”
I grunted noncommittally, which Travis chose to interpret as assent; he fell in beside us, and he and Lula chattered on about the kittens. Lamar and Sam Houston followed twenty yards behind, nudging and plotting.
“You’re being real quiet, Callie,” said Lula.
“Mmm? Oh, I’m thinking about my book report.” And how I was going to prevent two of my brothers from killing a third. I would have to seek advice from Harry, although my estimation of him as a counselor in affairs of the heart had received a substantial drubbing at the hands of the wretched Miss Minerva Goodacre. I wanted to run on ahead, leaving Lula and Travis to their inane conversation, but I feared he would be fallen upon by thugs along the road.
“So what’s your book report on, Callie?” said Lula.
“Ah. My book report. Yes. Well, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe Kidnapped. Maybe Treasure Island. What are you going to write about?”
“The Last Rose of Summer, I think. Or Love’s Old Sweet Song.” I had noticed that Lula’s taste in literature had been tending away from the good old ripping yarns and toward the sticky romantic stuff. Travis looked impatient to get back in the discussion, but he’d run out of conversational coin.
He thought hard and then said, “What are those books about, Lula?”—a pretty good gambit on his part. So I feigned interest in flowery descriptions of thwarted romance and complicated sacrifice all the way back to the main road, where Lula turned off to her house while Travis strenuously waved goodbye. We walked on, and he nattered away for a while. One small cloud floated on his otherwise sunny horizon. Thoughtfully, he said, “You don’t think I’d have to give her Jesse James, do you, Callie? I like him best of all. Maybe I should have told her she could pick any of them except him. Maybe I should have said that.”
“Don’t worry, Travis. Lula wouldn’t take him.”
“Are you sure, Callie? How can you be sure?”
“She wouldn’t do that. She’s not like that.”
He nagged at me for reassurance for a good five minutes, with me turning every few yards to glower at Lamar and Sam Houston to make them keep their distance.
“How come they wouldn’t walk with us today?” said Travis as we headed up our drive. A pang shot through me. He didn’t understand that his own brothers—older, bigger, stronger, smarter—were rivals for Lula’s affection. He was as damp and wobbly and susceptible to damage as a newly hatched chick. How could I possibly protect him from heartbreak?
_____
LAMAR SAT stony-faced at dinner that night, and Sam Houston didn’t speak a word. I kept waiting for one of them to pounce on Travis in some way. Travis bubbled over with his news of walking Lula home, which amused Father and alarmed Mother, who no doubt thought he was too young for such matters. Granddaddy was distracted, as usual. Normally he was not much interested in the dinner conversation. I think he would have preferred dining alone in the library, and while I think Mother might have preferred it too, that just wasn’t done. We ate en famille, as she called it, and everyone (except Granddaddy) had to make some polite contribution to the general conversation, even if it was no more than a brief description of one’s day.
“Callie,” Mother said, “what did you learn in school today?”
“Not much,” I said.
Lamar perked up and said, “Callie got sent to the corner today.”
What a pill. Mother put down her fork and looked at me.
“Is this true?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
&nb
sp; “Miss Harbottle sent you to the corner?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For what?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I said.
“How can that be?” said Mother, with steel in her voice.
“She wasn’t paying attention in class,” said Lamar. He was fast turning into my least-favorite brother.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I said. “I was . . . I was thinking about my book report, and I didn’t hear her, that’s all.”
“I don’t ever want to hear of you standing in the corner again, Calpurnia. The boys, I can understand at times. But you. Your behavior is a blot on the family name.”
“Well,” I huffed, “that’s no fair.”
There was stunned silence. Whoops. Everybody looked up, even Granddaddy. Then he threw back his head and let loose a laugh, which shocked the room even more. All heads snapped in his direction. It was a surprisingly vigorous bellow, not an old man’s wheeze at all. I almost expected the chandelier to start tinkling. I nearly giggled in response.
He said, “She has a point there, Margaret. Pass the gravy, please. Ha!” And with that, he punctured the tension in the room and deflected any punishment I might have called down upon myself. Harry winked at me. Lamar stuck out his tongue at me, but of course the disciplinarians at the table missed it.
After dinner, I asked Travis to show me his kittens again, and we walked to the far stall in the barn, where a weary Mouser kept watch over her furry family in the nest she’d burrowed in the straw. The kittens tumbled over her, batting at each other.
“See, Callie, don’t you think Jesse James is the best one? He purrs real loud. You can hear him from way far away.” He lifted the kitten from the straw and tucked it into the bib of his overalls, where it looked at home and produced a rumbling bass purr remarkable for something its size. “You’re sure Lula won’t take him?”
“No, Travis, I told you. She’s not like that.”
“She is awful nice, isn’t she?”
“Travis,” I sighed. “Listen, Travis, you know that Lamar and Sam Houston are sweet on her, too?”
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Page 11
