by Lois Lowry
Something was so definitely missing that she took her legs out from under the covers and counted her toes. They were all there.
Then she began to count her fingers. When she got halfway through her fingers she realized what had happened.
"Mom! Daddy!" Anastasia yelled. "My wart is gone!"
She pulled back the covers of her bed and looked at the sheets. No small pink wart. It had simply disappeared as magically as it had come. Her left thumb felt naked.
She could hear her parents talking in the kitchen. She could smell coffee.
"Mom? Daddy?" she called. "Did you hear me? My wart is gone!"
Hastily she opened her green notebook to page two, and wrote, "I have no wart all of a sudden."
"Don't you guys even listen when I yell something important, for pete's sake?" Anastasia said, going into the kitchen where her parents were sitting at the table in their bathrobes. Her mother's stomach, she noticed suddenly, was huge. Humungus.
Both of her parents looked very sad.
"You don't have to feel bad for me or anything," said Anastasia. "It's not that big a deal. And probably someday I'll grow another one."
"Sweetie," said her father. "The nursing home just called. Your grandmother died last night."
"'Ruthie with the red, red hair. Ruthie with the red, red hair.'" Anastasia said that over and over again, to herself; and she started to cry.
"I remember her sitting there in the big chair at Christmas," Anastasia said, through her tears.
"And the other weekend, remember? She liked those little cakes so much, when she was here that day? Remember that?"
Her parents nodded.
"And for pete's sake, she wanted to be with Sam, she said that, remember that she said that? And now I suppose she is, so I can't figure out why I feel like this. It's just that I remember how she used to touch my hair, and her hands felt soft; and I remember her eyes, how she looked at me sometimes, even though she couldn't even remember my name, for pete's sake; she still looked at me and rubbed my hair, and I remember how nice it felt..."
Anastasia cried and cried.
"I'm getting memories, all of a sudden!" she sobbed. "And they don't feel good!"
"And I wish I'd been nicer to her and not got so mad when she didn't know who I was." Anastasia wept.
She blew her nose on a paper napkin.
"It didn't hurt, did it, when she died?"
"No," said her father. "Her heart just stopped beating. She died of old age. Her time for living was simply over."
"Like my wart."
"Well," said her father, "maybe a little like your wart."
"You don't think I was stupid for crying, do you?"
"Goodness, Anastasia," her mother said. "Your dad and I both cried before you woke up. Look in the wastebasket. A whole batch of paper napkins crumpled up."
"I'll be back in a minute. I want to write something down."
In her green notebook, at the end of the list of important things that happened the year that she was ten, Anastasia wrote, "I have no grandmother all of a sudden."
Then she wrote, "But I have an inward eye, for the first time."
Late that morning, Anastasia went with her father to the Riverview Nursing Home.
"I don't want to see grandmother dead," she said to him when he asked her to come along.
"No," he told her. "You won't. Grandmother's body has been taken away. But the people at the nursing home want us to come and get her things. I suppose they have someone waiting for her room."
So she went along. She had been to the nursing home before, to visit her grandmother, but she had never liked it much. The name Riverview was a lie. The Charles River was close by, but there was no view of it from the nursing home. From the window of her grandmother's room there was only a view of the underside of a fire escape, and one side of a Lutheran church.
"Grandmother must have hated looking at a fire escape all the time," Anastasia said when they went into the room and she saw the view again.
"I think," said her father, "that from her bed she could probably see the sky."
Anastasia lay down very straight and flat on the bare mattress of her grandmother's bed. She looked through the window and felt better.
"Yes," she said. "She could definitely see the sky."
"Would you help me, sweetie?" asked her father. "There are just these few things in the bureau. Let's pack them into the suitcase."
So Anastasia helped her father fold the clothes that still smelled like her grandmother: like soap and powder and lilac cologne. It made them both feel sad.
"I remember that she was wearing this sweater at Christmas," said Anastasia, rubbing the wool of the gray sweater against her cheek.
"She was wearing this nightgown when I came to see her last Sunday," said her father, looking at a folded gown of yellow flannel.
"What's this?" asked Anastasia, taking a shoebox from the top drawer. She opened it and looked inside. "Look! The paperweight that I made for her in first grade!"
She took out the little clay paperweight painted with tulips.
"And look! My school pictures!"
She took out the small photographs, three of them: first, second, and third grades. In the first grade picture, her front teeth were missing. In the second grade picture, her hair was a mess and her new front teeth made her look like a chipmunk. The third grade picture wasn't too bad, she thought, looking at it. "Hello, little girl," she said, imitating her grandmother. "What's your name?"
Her father took a gold ring from the box. "This was her wedding ring," he said. Anastasia slipped it onto her finger; it almost fit. Her grandmother had had small, thin hands.
"Who's that? It looks like you, with funny clothes." She took a photograph from her father's hands.
"That was my father. That was Sam."
The man had her father's face, but without the beard; he had a neatly-trimmed mustache, and a stiff collar. He had a nice, serious sort of smile.
"He was a good father, wasn't he, Daddy?"
"Yes," said her father. "He was a very good father."
"Grandmother sure loved him."
"She sure did."
"Boy," said Anastasia, "you know what I wish? I wish that everybody who loved each other would die at exactly the same time. Then nobody would have to miss anyone."
"Well," said her father slowly, "it just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't seem to work that way very often."
They packed the rest of her grandmother's things: her glasses, the gold pin that she had worn on her dress at Thanksgiving and Christmas, her stockings, and a pair of soft woolen gloves. It didn't take very long.
Anastasia thought of her own room, and about the time when she had decided to leave home, and had packed in her father's US Navy bag. There were so many things in her room that she had had to leave most of them behind.
She wondered how it happened that when you were ninety-two you didn't have very many things left.
"When I'm old," she said, "I would like to keep my favorite things, like my orangutan poster and my Red Sox cap. And Frank, of course. If I have to go to a nursing home, would you make sure that I still have those things?"
"When you're old, sport," her father said, "I won't be around anymore."
"Oh. I forgot. Well, I'll have to tell my children, I guess." Anastasia reminded herself to write that down in her green notebook: "Things That I Want To Take To The Nursing Home When I Am Old."
"Is there anything special that you want to have around when you're old? Because you should tell me, and I'll write it down," she said to her father.
"Just one," he said with a smile. "Your mother."
They snapped the suitcase closed and looked around the empty room. There was no sign of her grandmother left except the faint scent of powder and cologne. Anastasia lay down on the bed once more, flat on her back.
"Daddy, were there stars last night?"
"Yes. It was a very clear night. Millions of stars."
/>
"Well, I feel absolutely sure that when Grandmother died she was looking at the sky and seeing millions of stars. Probably she was even smiling."
"And thinking of Sam," said her father.
"Yes. Thinking of Sam."
A nurse appeared at the door of the room and looked inside. Anastasia sat up quickly, feeling guilty because she had her shoes on the bed.
"Dr. Krupnik?" said the nurse.
"Yes?"
The nurse smiled. "Your wife just called. You'd better go right home. Your baby's on the way."
"For pete's sake," said Anastasia. "Everything's happening all at once. I think my wart must have caused it."
11
The telephone rang late in the afternoon while Anastasia was alone in the apartment.
Once she had made an anonymous phone call to Washburn Cummings, to ask him if his refrigerator was running. But Washburn Cummings had answered the phone in a fake deep voice, and said, "For whom does this bell toll?" which threw her timing off, so that she had hung up giggling in embarrassment.
She had always, since then, wanted to answer the phone by saying, "For whom does this bell toll?" but her nerve always failed at the last moment.
It did again. She picked up the receiver and said, "Hello."
It was Mrs. Westvessel.
It made Anastasia feel very creepy to be talking to Mrs. Westvessel on the telephone. For some reason she didn't like to think of Mrs. Westvessel eating, or going shopping, or watching television, or being asleep. Teachers belonged only in front of a classroom, saying the spelling words in a loud, clear voice, or telling someone to turn around and sit up straight.
She also didn't like to think of Mrs. Westvessel as having any first name except Mrs.; so it felt very creepy to hear the voice say, "Anastasia, this is Dorothy Westvessel."
"Oh," said Anastasia. "Hello."
"Anastasia, when you were absent from school today, I thought it was just because you had a cold. Yesterday you were sniffling a little."
Anastasia couldn't think of anything to say, except, "Oh," again.
"But the evening paper just came, dear, and I saw that your grandmother had passed away. I called to tell you how sorry I am about that."
"Well," said Anastasia in a small voice, "she was very, very old."
"Yes, I know. But last year my mother died, and she was almost as old as your grandmother. And it made me feel very sad anyway, because I loved her. I know you must be feeling sad."
"Yes," Anastasia said. "I am."
"Well, I'll let you go, dear. But don't worry about your schoolwork. We all missed you in school today, but nothing very important happened. We had a film about Eskimos."
"Mrs. Westvessel?"
"Yes, dear?"
"My mother's at the hospital because she's having a baby today."
"Well, Anastasia! My goodness! You are certainly having a day of important events, and when you get back to school we will have lots to talk about!"
Anastasia said good-by politely, and Mrs. Westvessel said good-by politely; and Anastasia went to her room, found her green notebook, and crossed Mrs. Westvessel off the list of THINGS I HATE.
"I am most heartily sorry that I wished Mrs. Westvessel would get pimples," Anastasia confessed aloud to the empty apartment. She really felt sorry, too, and thought briefly that she might have been an okay Catholic after all.
She flipped the pages of her notebook and looked at the baby's name. Good old One-Ball Reilly Krupnik; Anastasia hoped that he was coming along all right, getting born.
Maybe, after all, it wouldn't be too bad, having a brother. Anastasia wandered into the little pantry room. Her mother had replaced the broken pane of glass, carefully puttying the edges; and the unicorn curtains were in place. The crib was set up, and there was a folded blue blanket in it. In the drawers that had once held tablecloths, the little clothes were folded and stacked. She picked up a tiny undershirt, unfolded it, and wondered how anybody could possibly be so small.
"For pete's sake, One-Ball," Anastasia said aloud to the empty room, "you are going to be revoltingly helpless if you are that little.
"I suppose," she said, looking at the baby carriage that stood in a corner of the dining room, "that I would be willing to take you for walks, maybe past Washburn Cummings's house. But I am absolutely not under any circumstances ever going to change your diapers."
"Anastasia!" Her father came through the front door of the apartment. "It's a boy!"
"Daddy," said Anastasia very patiently, "I know that."
Her father looked at her for a moment, and grinned. "Of course you do. I forgot. I need coffee. No, I need a beer. It was terrific. Your mother was terrific, and the baby is terrific. He weighs eight pounds and four ounces. Or maybe it's four pounds and eight ounces. No, I guess it's the way I said it first. I really need a beer."
Anastasia got him a beer and sipped the foam before she gave him the glass.
"Relax," she said, "and tell me about it. Did Mom do the breathing right?"
"Exactly right. And I didn't faint. For a minute I thought I was going to faint. But I didn't."
"Daddy, why would you faint? That's ridiculous."
"Of course it's ridiculous. Why would a grown man faint? The baby looks like you, Anastasia."
"Was he repulsive and screaming and did he pee on the nurse's hand?"
"That's exactly what he looked like and what he did. But then later, when he was all cleaned up and asleep, he looked terrific and he looked just like you. Same color hair."
"Freckles? Does he have freckles?"
Her father thought. "No," he said. "I didn't notice any freckles."
"He didn't get my wart, did he?"
"No. No wart."
"Good. Maybe when he's older he'll get his own wart."
"Come on. I came home to get you and take you back to the hospital so you can see Mom and the baby."
They stopped at the drugstore on the way to the hospital.
"I need a box of your best cigars," Anastasia's father said to Mr. Belden. "My wife just had a baby boy."
Mr. Belden leaned across the counter and shook his hand. "Congratulations," he said. Then he reached down to shake Anastasia's hand. "Congratulations to you, too, little girl. That's quite an accomplishment, to have a new brother." He took a foil-wrapped chocolate cigar from the candy counter and gave it to her.
"I happen to know that you like Mounds bars best," Mr. Belden said to Anastasia, "but today you'll have to make do with a chocolate cigar, because of the baby. Compliments of Belden's Pharmacy."
"Thank you," said Anastasia in surprise.
Back in the car, Anastasia took her green notebook from the glove compartment, turned to THINGS I HATE, and crossed out Mr. Belden's name.
Then she turned to the very last page, which was blank, and wrote something very carefully, very private, as a surprise. It made her feel good to write it.
In the hospital room, her mother was sitting up in bed, smiling. In a little crib beside her bed, the baby lay on his back with his eyes closed tight. Anastasia looked at him carefully. Yellow hair. No freckles. No warts. He didn't smell bad; he smelled clean and powdery. He wasn't crying.
"He's not a bad baby, for pete's sake," said Anastasia. She touched his curled-up hand; in his sleep, the baby opened his fist and wrapped his fingers around her thumb.
"Hey," said Anastasia in surprise. "I really like him!"
Her parents were smiling.
"Does he wet his diapers a whole lot?" Anastasia asked suspiciouslv.
"He's only five hours old," said her mother, "so I haven't had time to conduct an exhaustive study. But in all honesty, Anastasia, I have to tell you that I think he will probably wet his diapers a lot."
Anastasia sighed. "Well," she said, finally. "I can tell that this baby is going to be a lot of work. So probably I will be willing to change his diapers occasionally.
"Only wet ones, though. Nothing else."
"Fair enough," said
her mother.
"Have you picked out his name?" asked her father.
"Have I picked out his name?" said Anastasia. "What kind of dumb question is that? Of course I've picked out his name. But wait a minute; I want to write something down.
"Give me back my hand, please," she said politely to her brother, and took her thumb gently out of his fist. In her green notebook, under THINGS I HATE, she crossed out "BABIES."
Then she turned to the last page of her notebook, to what she had written in the car, and tore it out carefully. She laid the sheet of paper on the baby, on top of the white blanket that covered the little mound of his body and curled-up legs. She watched as the paper moved a tiny bit, up and down.
"Look," Anastasia whispered, awed. "Look how he breathes."
The paper said: "Someone Special: Sam."
"Hi, Sam," she said.
"Hi, Sam," said her mother.
"Hi, Sam," said her father.
"You know what?" said Anastasia, after a moment. "There's absolutely nothing left on my Things I Hate' list except liver, for pete's sake. I guess I'll always hate liver."
"Gee, Anastasia," said her father solemnly, "that's too bad, because that's what I was planning to give you for dinner tonight."
Anastasia took her foil-wrapped cigar out of her pocket. Very slowly she removed all of the foil. Then she put the cigar into her mouth and chewed on it, frowning, briefly. Finally, she took it out of her mouth, wiggled her eyebrows up and down, Groucho Marx style, flicked an imaginary ash from her cigar, and said, "Say the secret word and you win a hundred bucks."
"And the secret word is not liver?" asked her father, wiggling his own eyebrows.
"Nope."
"Steak?"
Anastasia grinned. "With mushrooms," she said.
