The Great Gilly Hopkins (7 page)

She borrowed some money from Trotter for “school supplies,” and bought a pack of heavy white construction paper and magic markers. Behind the closed door of her bedroom she began to make a greeting card, fashioning it as closely as she could to the tall, thin, “comic” cards on the special whirl-around stand in the drugstore.

At first she tried to draw a picture on the front, wasting five or six precious sheets of paper in the attempt. Cursing her incompetence, she stole one of Trotter's magazines and cut from it a picture of a tall, beautiful black woman in an Afro. Her skin was a little darker than Miss Harris's, but it was close enough.

Above the picture of the woman she lettered these words carefully (She could print well, even if her drawing stank):

Then below the picture:

And inside in tiny letters:

She had to admit it. It was about the funniest card she'd ever seen in her life. Gifted Gilly—a funny female of the first rank. If her bedroom had been large enough, she'd have rolled on the floor. As it was, she lay on the bed hugging herself and laughing until she was practically hysterical. Her only regret was that the card was to be anonymous. She would have enjoyed taking credit for this masterpiece.

She got to school very early the next morning and sneaked up the smelly stairs to Harris-6 before the janitor had even turned on the hall lights. For a moment she feared that the door might be locked, but it opened easily under her hand. She slipped the card into the math book that lay in the middle of Miss Harris's otherwise absolutely neat desk. She wanted to be sure that no one else would discover it and ruin everything.

All day long, but especially during math, Gilly kept stealing glances at Miss Harris. Surely at any minute, she would pick up the book. Surely she could see the end of the card sticking out and would be curious. But Miss Harris left the book exactly where it was. She borrowed a book from a student when she needed to refer to one. It was as though she sensed her own was booby-trapped.

By lunchtime Gilly's heart, which had started the day jumping with happy anticipation, was kicking angrily at her stomach. By midafternoon she was so mad that nothing had happened that she missed three spelling words, all of which she knew perfectly well. At the three o'clock bell, she slammed her chair upside down on her desk and headed for the door.

“Gilly.”

Her heart skipped as she turned toward Miss Harris.

“Will you wait a minute, please?”

They both waited, staring quietly at each other until the room emptied. Then Miss Harris got up from her desk and closed the door. She took a chair from one of the front desks and put it down a little distance from her own. “Sit down for a minute, won't you?”

Gilly sat. The math book lay apparently undisturbed, the edge of the card peeping out at either end.

“You may find this hard to believe, Gilly, but you and I are very much alike.”

Gilly snapped to attention despite herself.

“I don't mean in intelligence, although that is true, too. Both of us are smart, and we know it. But the thing that brings us closer than intelligence is anger. You and I are two of the angriest people I know.” She said all this in a cool voice that cut each word in a thin slice from the next and then waited, as if to give Gilly a chance to challenge her. But Gilly was fascinated, like the guys in the movies watching the approach of a cobra. She wasn't about to make a false move.

“We do different things with our anger, of course. I was always taught to deny mine, which I did and still do. And that makes me envy you. Your anger is still up here on the surface where you can look it in the face, make friends with it if you want to.”

She might have been talking Swahili for all Gilly could understand.

“But I didn't ask you to stay after school to tell you how intelligent you are or how much I envy you, but to thank you for your card.”

It had to be sarcasm, but Harris-6 was smiling almost like a human being. When did the cobra strike?

“I took it to the teachers' room at noon and cursed creatively for twenty minutes. I haven't felt so good in years.”

She'd gone mad like the computer in
2001
. Gilly got up and started backing toward the door. Miss Harris just smiled and made no effort to stop her. As soon as she got to the stairs, Gilly began to run and, cursing creatively, ran all the way home.

A
ll at once, leaving Thompson Park became urgent. Gilly knew in the marrow of her bones that if she stayed much longer, this place would mess her up. Between the craziness in the brown house and the craziness at school, she would become like W.E., soft and no good, and if there was anything her short life had taught her, it was that a person must be tough. Otherwise, you were had.

And Galadriel Hopkins was not ready to be had. But she must hurry. It didn't matter whether the people who hovered over her had fat laps or computer brains. For if a person could crack under heat or cold, a combination of the two seemed guaranteed to do in even the gutsy Galadriel.

By now she would have preferred to get Mr. Randolph's money on her own and leave both William Ernest and Agnes Stokes out of it, but in her haste she acted stupidly and used them both.

The opportunity fell into her lap unexpectedly. Trotter had never asked her to baby-sit with William Ernest before, but suddenly two days after the card joke bombed, Trotter announced that she was taking Mr. Randolph to pick up a few things at the dime store and would Gilly watch William Ernest while they were gone.

It was too perfect. She should have realized that, but her anxiety to get the money and get going had fuzzed her common sense. With shaking hands, she leafed through the fat suburban phone book until she found the number for the Stokeses in Thompson Park who supposedly lived on Aspen Avenue. (Another of the world's lies. The senior Stokeses had long before left the Washington area, abandoning Agnes to a maternal grandmother, seventy-five-years-old, by the name of Gertrude Berkheimer. But Agnes's delinquent father was still listed in the directory just as though he had never left her.)

Agnes arrived immediately, nearly falling over herself with joy that Gilly had not only invited her over but was actually asking for her help in carrying out a secret and obviously illegal plot. She agreed, without objection, to being the lookout at Mr. Randolph's house, although Gilly suspected she would have preferred an inside role. Agnes was to do her whistle, which she claimed could be heard a mile away, should the taxi bearing Trotter and Mr. Randolph return while Gilly was still inside.

Prying W.E. away from the TV and explaining his part to him proved far more difficult.

“I don't understand,” he said for what seemed to be the thirtieth time, blinking stupidly behind his glasses.

Gilly started all over again from the beginning as patiently as she could.

“Mr. Randolph wants you and me to do him a favor. He's got something on the top shelf in his living room that he needs, and he can't see to get it down. I told him you and me weren't too busy this afternoon, so he says, ‘Miss Gilly, could you and William Ernest, who is just like a grandson to me, do me a tremendous favor while I am busy at the store?' So of course I told him we'd be glad to help out. You being just like a grandson to him and all.” She paused.

“What kind of favor?”

“Just get this stuff down off the shelf for him.”

“Oh.” Then, “What stuff?”

“William Ernest. I haven't got all day. Do you want to help or not?”

He guessed so. Well, it would have to do. They had already delayed far too long. She gave Agnes some last-minute instructions out of range of the boy's earshot. Agnes would have to be paid in cold cash to keep her big mouth you-know-what. Then she went and got W.E. by the hand, and using the key that Trotter kept, they let themselves into Mr. Randolph's house.

The house was dark and damp-feeling even in the daytime, but fortunately the boy was used to it and walked right in.

Gilly pointed out the top shelf of the bookcase. “He told me he had the stuff right behind that big red book.”

W.E. looked up.

“See which one I'm talking about?”

He nodded, then shook his head. “I can't reach it.”

“Of course not, stu—I can't reach it, either. That's why we both have to do it.”

“Oh.”

“Now look. I'm going to push this big blue chair over and stand on the arm. Then I want you to climb up the back of the chair and get on my shoulders…”

He drew back. “I want to wait for Trotter.”

“We can't do that, William Ernest, honey. You know how hard it is on Trotter climbing up and down. It wouldn't be good for her.” He was still hesitant. “Besides, I think it's kind of a surprise for Trotter. Mr. Randolph doesn't want her to know about it. Yet.”

The boy came close to the chair and tiptoed up toward her. “I'm scared,” he whispered.

“Sure you are. But just think, man, how proud everybody's going to be later. After the surprise can be told and everything. When they find out who it was that…”

He was already climbing up on the chair. It was an old, solid overstuffed one, so that when he stood on the arm and then on the back, it never moved. Gilly got up on the chair's fat arm and helped him onto her shoulders and held his legs. The little cuss was heavier than he looked.

“OK. First pull out that big red book I showed you.”

He grabbed her hair with his left hand and stretched toward the shelf without straightening and pulled out the book. It fell to the floor with a crash.

“I dropped it.”

“Don't worry about it! Just look back there behind where it was.”

He leaned forward. Ouch—she was afraid he'd take her hair out like weeds from a wet garden.

“It's dark.”

“Look, man! No, stick your hand up in there.”

She had to shift her balance as he leaned forward to keep from crashing to the floor herself.

“
Pow
,” he said softly, bringing back a dusty fist. In it was a rubber-banded roll of bills.

Gilly reached up.

“Don't let go my legs!” He dropped the money and grabbed her hair with both hands.

“Is there any more?”

“
Wheeeeeeeeeet!
” Agnes's signal.

Gilly nearly fell off the chair as she snatched W.E. off her shoulders, then scrambled back on the top of the chairback, tilted “Sarsaparilla to Sorcery” back in place, jumped down, stuffed the roll of bills into her jeans, shoved the heavy chair forward, grabbed a startled William, and dragged him out the back door.

“I gotta give it to Mr. Randolph later, when Trotter isn't around,” she explained to the blinking owl eyes. “Look, I gotta go to the bathroom. You go help Trotter get Mr. Randolph into the house. Oh—and tell Agnes to go home. I'll see her tomorrow.”

But Agnes was waiting for her in Trotter's hallway, lounging against the stairs. “Find what you was looking for?”

“No luck.”

Agnes looked down at Gilly's jeans. “Then what's bulging your pocket?”

“OK. I found some, but I didn't find much.”

“How much did you find?”

“Hell, Agnes, I don't know.”

“I'll help you count.”

“I swear, Agnes, I'll help you rearrange your nose if you don't get out of here. I promised I'd give you something for helping, and I will, but I can't now, and if you don't understand that, you're in worse shape than I thought.”

Agnes stuck out her bottom lip. “If it wasn't for me, you'd be caught right now.”

“I know, Agnes, and I won't forget that. But if you hang around now, we'll both be caught. So get out, and keep your mouth shut.”

Without waiting for further sulks, Gilly pushed past Agnes and ran up the staircase. She shut her door and pulled the bureau in front of it. Then she took out the special drawer and began to tape the money to the bottom with a sinking heart. Thirty-four dollars. Thirty-four measly dollars. Forty-four, counting the ten she had already. It had seemed like more in William's fist and bulging in her jeans. She counted it again to make sure. No, there was no more. Five five-dollar bills and nine ones. It had seemed like more because of all the singles. She laid out a one to give to Agnes, then reluctantly swapped it for a five. Agnes would not be bought off cheaply, she knew. If only she had done it by herself. It cost too much to use people. Why had she thought she couldn't do it alone? She had been in too big a hurry. She should have taken more time, planned more carefully. Now she had gotten both Agnes and W.E. involved and all for a measly forty-four—no, thirty-nine—dollars. Then remembering the weight of W.E. on her neck and shoulders and the pain as he yanked her hair in terror, she started to count out another dollar, but that would leave her only thirty-eight. It would take a lot more to get even as far as the Mississippi River. She returned W.E.'s dollar to the stack.

She would have to search again, but she would go back by herself the next time. As soon as she figured out a plan.

Dust. The thought hit her after supper when they were all sitting in the living room watching the evening news. Suddenly she saw it, lying like a gray frost upon the TV set. Dust! She would go on a campaign, dusting first this house and then the other. She jumped to her feet.

“Trotter!”

Slowly Trotter shifted her attention from Walter Cronkite to Gilly. “Yeah, honey?”

“Mind if I dust in here?”