A Girl Named Zippy (23 page)

As they dressed, Mom and Dad listened to Christmas carols on Dad’s little brown radio. Just after “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” the radio announcer came on to say that an unidentified flying object had been spotted somewhere over the east coast. Weather service radar was tracking the object, which seemed to be a large sleigh pulled by eight horselike creatures.

“Reindeer, you idiot,” I muttered to the radio. I was annoyed that he had been spotted, because if The Radar People tracked him all the way to my house and something bad happened involving my piano, everyone would know.

I trudged despondently behind my parents all the way to Rose’s house. My burden was already so heavy, and I hadn’t even been faced with the heat and beauty and bounty that William and Joyce provided for their children. At one point, under the streetlight in front of the post office, my mom turned her head back toward me and said, “No matter how much it hurts, try to be gracious, sweetheart.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, thinking of all the times I had already tried, and how many gracious Christmases awaited me.

Rose met us at the door with one corner of a wet washcloth stuffed up her nose. Her wavy hair was so clean and shiny and black it looked blue in the Christmas lights. Her mother kept it cut very short and combed at all times. Her face was also shiny clean, and I noticed, after trying to measure how bad her nosebleed was by the condition of the washcloth, that she had on a pair of her mother’s clip-on earrings. They weren’t plastic, either, they were some kind of utterly precious metal, with real green stones in them. Probably emeralds.
Earrings
. I didn’t dare look at her legs for panty hose fear.

She grabbed my hand before I could take off my coat and hat. “Come quick! You’ve got to see the early Christmas presents we got!”

We stopped at the Christmas tree, where she showed me a Santa about a foot tall, made out of what I now know was white chocolate. I assumed it was the biggest bar of soap in the world. Rose took a bite off the tip of his hat, which I took to be some Catholic thing, then offered it to me, but I refused, holding up my hands and backing up at the same time. It hadn’t been so long since I’d had some soap to eat at my own house, after telling my mother to go to hell.

The real present was up in her room, she said, dragging me up the stairs. She led me into her room with her hands over my eyes, positioned me, then pulled them away, shouting, “Okay, look!”

It was a piano. Well, not exactly a piano, more like an organ. And not like a church organ, this was a little organ that sat on the floor. And it didn’t have a full keyboard, just two octaves and buttons you pushed for the chords, but it might as well have been a piano.

I wondered if it would still work if I threw up on it. I wondered what would happen to the beautiful little white keys if I picked Rose up and threw her down on it, repeatedly. I wondered what on earth I was supposed to do with myself now.

“And look! It came with a book of Christmas songs! I can’t play any of them yet, but I bet you could, and then we could sing them. Here, see, you just play the notes by the number written right here with this hand, and then with the other hand you press the chord button. You try.”

I was nodding, yeah, yeah, it was perfectly clear what I was supposed to do, and then I was sitting on the floor with my legs crossed Indian-style playing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” except that this book had both the English and the Latin, which Rose already knew and chose to sing.
Latin
. I’d never heard such a thing in my life. It sounded utterly Catholic. It sounded incredibly beautiful and strange, like soap you’d want to eat. When we reached the end of the song I had tears in my eyes, but I would have stuck an ice pick in my own eardrum before I would have cried in front of Rose and Maggie.

I went downstairs to the bathroom, where there were still spatters of blood on the sink and mirror from Rose’s big nose problem. I looked in the mirror at my saddest self; my hair was winging up all over my head, and I had a smear of something charcoaly across one cheek. Part of my shirt collar was tucked under and I had a gray ring around my neck, because I refused to allow it to be washed, on principle. Some of my permanent teeth hadn’t come in yet, but the two front ones had come in overlapped, and big as horse’s teeth. Who would give something so fine as a miniature piano to someone like me? What on earth had I ever done to deserve it?

Outside the bathroom door I could hear my parents conferring. It had begun to snow quite hard, and my dad was saying he thought he ought to go home and get the truck, so that Mom and I wouldn’t have to trudge home later. I waited until he was gone and then stepped out of the bathroom, where my mom was standing silently waiting for me.

I slammed my head into her warm, soft shoulder, choking back a sob.

“They gave her a
piano,
” I said, miserably.

“I know.”

“How could they?!” I nearly cried. William and Joyce didn’t love me, not like Julie’s parents did, but I thought they cared a little bit.

“I’m sure they didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said, trying fruitlessly to smooth down my wicked hair.

“That’s the same thing you said when my teachers
spanked
me, like it was an accident.” My mom could get me so indignant.

“Well, that was different, I’ll admit. But I think what you’ll discover more and more as you get older is that most people aren’t thinking about you at all.”

She kissed me on top of the head and sent me back upstairs. We sang some more carols, Rose chased me with goose liver for a while, then we settled down to Evil Queen. Not long into it Rose and Maggie fell asleep, but I never did. I was nearly despondent by the time we put our coats on to leave.

As we got into Dad’s warm truck my parents said nothing about my despair, and I swore to myself I would never comment on it again, either. So my best friend got the one thing I wanted most, the one thing I would never have? So what if when she woke up in the morning there would be presents spread so far out across the living room floor the children would have to begin opening presents in the hallway? What was all this to me?

Our house looked cold; the lights from the tinsel tree feeble. In the living room we could see our breath. I took off my coat and boots and started to turn left to go straight into the warm den, but my dad stopped me and eased me deeper into the living room.

And there, in front of our sweet little tree, stood a piano. Not a piano, exactly, more like an organ. Not a church-size organ, but one much, much bigger than Rose’s. It stood on
legs
. It had its own
bench
. It had probably four octaves, and three music books. And propped up on the music stand was a letter, written in script so ancient it wobbled, big, loopy handwriting that could only come from a very shy, very strange man:

Dear Child,

I hope you don’t mind that I delivered this a day early, but I thought you might like to have it tonight. I’m sorry I can’t also bring you the doll, but to be honest, no one has ever before made such a request. My elves are working on it, but it might be a long time before we get it just right.

Thank you for not losing faith. Thank you for being so brave tonight.

Love,
Santa

The author gratefully acknowledges the kindness and support of the following people: Tom Koontz, Tom Mullen, the faculty, staff, and students of the Earlham School of Religion. My first family: Bob Jarvis, Delonda Hartmann, Melinda Frame, Daniel Jarvis. My other families: the Pitchers, the Newmans, the Hickses, and all the good people of the Mooreland Friends Church. Beth Pitcher Dalton. Julie Newman Attaway. Loretta Orion. Will and Dorothy Kennedy. Carolyn Chute and Pamela de Marris. Ben Kimmel, who makes all things possible. My daughter, Katie, and my son, Obadiah. Don and Meg Kimmel. Dick and Anna Boykin, who gave me a computer. Tom and Noelle Milam. Lawrence Naumoff and Marianne Gingher.

My agent, Stella Connell, and my editor, Amy Scheibe. Paula Press and John Rosenthal. Lee Smith. And John Svara, guardian angel of every word.

A GUIDE FOR
READING GROUPS
 (or for Anyone Who Wants to Ponder Zippy Further)

Whisking us to a simpler time and a much, much simpler place,
A Girl Named Zippy
provides a refreshing escape from twenty-first-century woes. If your reading group has decided to treat itself to a Mooreland sojourn, you’ll discover that there’s plenty to say about the town’s most imaginative little girl (even if she did remain speechless until age three). We hope that the following questions will enhance your discussion, spotlight memorable passages, and make your reading experience even livelier. For information about other Broadway Books reading group guides, visit us at
www. broadwaybooks.com
.

1. Zippy’s numerous pets include Sam the Pig, Speckles the Chicken, the dogs Kai and Tiger, a pony named Tim, the cats PeeDink and Smokey, and Skippy the Hamster. How does Haven Kimmel develop the animals as sympathetic characters or villains (such as Chanticleer, the abusive rooster)? How does a child’s bond with animals differ from that of an adult? Which of Zippy’s pet stories was the most memorable for you? Discuss the significant animals of your own childhood.

2. At first glance,
A Girl Named Zippy
appears to be a collection of assorted scenes, almost like a scrapbook. Yet the chapters unfold as if they were part of a novel. What themes thread their way through the work as a whole? What recurring predicaments are resolved as Zippy gets older?

3. Haven Kimmel introduces us to a slew of eccentric Mooreland residents, from the grumpy drugstore owner to the postman who delivers only the mail he approves of. How do various communities—big cities and small towns alike—define eccentricity? Were Mooreland’s attempts at clean living successful? How does Mooreland compare to your town?

4. The introductory quote from Emerson asks, “Is there no event . . . which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form?” Which portions of
A Girl Named Zippy
do you perceive as being precisely accurate, and which ones seem slightly embellished by the process Emerson calls “soaring from our body into the empyrean”?

5. Consider Zippy’s family: her gun-toting but sensitive dad, bookish mother, adored big brother, and mercurial big sister. In what ways is the Jarvis family dynamic both typical and unusual?

6. Does Haven Kimmel seem to approve or disapprove of her upbringing?

7. Zippy often discusses religion. How does her mother’s Quaker community differ from her father’s “church in the woods”? Is he really as godless as his wife thinks he is?

8. Numerous memoirs have been published that expose deeply painful childhoods. Haven Kimmel alludes to a few dark aspects of life in Mooreland, such as poverty, a lecherous teacher, and her father’s gambling problem. How do Zippy’s coping skills compare to those of other children you’ve read about?

9. The chapter entitled “The World of Ideas” introduces us to Zippy’s maternal grandmother, described as “a moneyed old woman in a small, depressed city.” What insight does this section give us into Zippy’s mother, who was raised in an environment that was very different from Zippy’s?

10. How was Zippy changed by her friendship with Dana, whose parents worked in a factory, were atheists, and seemed uninterested in their child?

11. A few aspects of Zippy’s childhood would be hard to find in today’s households. Which of her recollections best represent the late 1960s and early 1970s?

12. Zippy had an unusual bond with Julie, her snaggletoothed friend. How do you suppose Zippy was able to interpret Julie’s silence, even over the phone? Why did Julie hit Zippy three times in the chapter of the same name?

13. Petey was Zippy’s nemesis, abusing animals and even raising a carnivorous rabbit. Discuss the grade-school bullies in your past. What sort of adults did they become?

14. What is it about Haven Kimmel’s tone that makes even everyday events seem compelling? How does she balance humor and poignancy?

15. Where the Jarvises poor?

16. In light of the book’s beginning, what is the significance of the story in the final chapter, in which Zippy receives a piano from Santa? What do the closing sentences “Thank you for not losing faith” and “Thank you for being so brave tonight” reveal about Zippy and her parents?

John Rosenthal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Haven Kimmel is the author of the novel
The Solace of Leaving Early
. She studied English and creative writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University and attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.