To Come and Go Like Magic (13 page)

We’re babysitting Ginny’s little brother, Clayburne, and he says: “Let’s fly to Neverland.”

We take off our shoes and crawl inside the cardboard box the Murphys’ new refrigerator came in. You wouldn’t have to take off your shoes and crawl into a real airplane.

Ginny’s behind me with Clayburne on her lap and Priscilla is all the way in the back, leaning against the box and making it move from side to side.

“We’re experiencing turbulence,” I say, talking into my fist like it’s a microphone.

“What?” Both girls speak at once.

“Turbulence. Lenny says that’s what it’s called when an airplane ride is bumpy.”

“Like potholes in the road?” Priscilla asks.

“I guess.”

“How would Lenny know?” Ginny says. “He’s never been on an airplane.”

“Lenny knows,” I say.

I look out the round window we’ve cut in the cardboard airplane and catch sight of a real jet passing in and out of the clouds. I wonder what Mercy Hill looks like to all those outsiders. Would it look the same to me from up there as it does to a person who’s never gotten any closer to us than the clouds? I’ll bet you could see right past these mountains. They couldn’t hold you back.

Miss Matlock’s world globe doesn’t have a single
speck on it to show that Mercy Hill exists. Still, you can feel the Appalachians. They’re like a row of pimples down the slick face of America. But you can’t see or feel the rivers that twist through the green valleys, or the way the willow trees bend over and dip their branches in the water, or the crawdads that hide in mud castles along the banks.

Sometimes I twirl the globe and stop to see where my finger lands, pretending I’ll go there someday, but most of the time I land smack in the middle of the ocean on the other side of the world.

Priscilla’s pushing hard now, making the box sway from side to side. At some point she’ll lean too far and we’ll start rolling across the yard and keep rolling until we get dizzy and have to stop. Clayburne will probably get hurt and start crying and tell on us. That’s how it usually goes. “You’re too big to play in boxes,” they’ll say. “That’s not what babysitting is all about.”

I look up and watch the real airplane disappear into the sun, leaving nothing but its white streaks across the sky. That’s what I want to do. I want to ride in a silver plane someday and leave my own white streaks high above Mercy Hill.

W
illie’s Granny Dies …

Willie Bright is standing at the bus stop in the sprinkling rain. He’s not even wearing a jacket. He looks at me with red eyes.

“Granny died,” he says.

I don’t know what to say. He never once mentioned that the old woman was sick, only that she was mean. Too mean to die, he once said. Maybe he regrets it now.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I guess I’m sorry. I didn’t really know her that well, don’t know how to feel, don’t know what he’s expecting.

“It’s okay,” he says. “She was old.” He turns to walk away. “I won’t be going to school,” he says.

I start to offer to take his homework in or tell the teachers, but the rain starts coming down harder and I pull up my hood and slip my books under my jacket to keep them from getting wet. When I look up, he’s gone.

Third period Miss Matlock sits at her desk with her hands in her lap waiting for the bell. Everybody’s
talking. Zeno has brought in his baseball-card collection and is passing the cards around, trying to get some of the boys to swap because he has a lot of duplicates.

When Miss Matlock coughs, everybody gets quiet.

“Helena Wilkins died last night,” she says.

Helena
.

“Who’s that?” Ginny asks.

“Willie’s grandmother,” Miss Matlock says.

Tomorrow she’ll send flowers from the third-period English class if we all bring in a little extra money. Helena was once a friend, she says. They were girls together.

“A friend?” Ginny and Priscilla frown at each other.

“Normal teachers aren’t
friends
with welfares,” Ginny whispers across the aisle.

If they were once friends, why weren’t they friends now? Why wouldn’t Willie’s grandma want him going to Miss Matlock’s house? Not questions to ask in school, I suppose.

The day flies by and Willie’s grandmother is not mentioned again. I guess none of the other teachers knew her. Maybe they’re all too young.

At the dinner table Momma says she’ll go to the funeral. It’ll be at the Osborne Funeral Home, she says. They couldn’t possibly set the old woman up for a viewing at the Bright house.

“Her name was Helena,” I say.

Six heads turn toward me.

“That’s right,” says Pop.

Momma stirs cream into her coffee. “It’s a shame they have to bury her in the pauper’s lot.”

“She was friends with Miss Matlock when they were girls,” I say. “That’s what Miss Matlock told us today.”

Pop clears his throat like he’s got something stuck in it. “Helena Wilkins was a maid,” he says. “She worked for the Matlocks. Not exactly a friend, I’d say.”

“A maid?” I didn’t know anybody in Mercy Hill had ever had a maid. “But Miss Matlock said—”

“You can’t believe half what people tell you,” Pop says. “You have to watch what they do.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just what I said. Sometimes the mouth says one thing and the heart does something else.”

“Still, they were girls together,” I say. “Like Ginny and Priscilla and me.”

Pop laughs again. “I can’t imagine any other peas in a pod like the three of you.”

At bedtime I think about what Pop said, about the mouth saying one thing and the heart doing another.

Third period Miss Matlock tells us she’s bought a basket of white lilies for Willie’s grandmother with the collection
of leftover lunch money, and she asks us all to sign the card. Everyone writes
I’m sorry
. When the card lands on my desk, I sit thinking until my pencil is wet with sweat. I try to come up with a verse or a pretty saying or something Miss Matlock has read to us or even a word from my word list that would just fit, but my mind is empty. I write:
I’m sorry
. Under it I sign my full name, Chileda Sue Mahoney, like that makes a difference.

W
inding Down …

The days fly by, and the pink and white flowers of wild redbuds and dogwoods blow away with the wind, leaving the new leaves of spring to darken and turn the hillsides a deep, rich green. At night a zillion lightning bugs zip and dive above the timothy grass in the meadow. During the day, when the fireflies sleep, the hay grass is full of yellow sulfur butterflies and tiny loopers.

Two more days until we’re free. School’s winding down and summer’s winding up. My favorite time. Jack’s and Lenny’s, too. Every kid in Mercy Hill is wearing a smile.

At suppertime Pop says everybody has to “get his ducks in a row.” Get organized for the summer. He says we can’t just sit around doing nothing. Lenny and Jack will help Pop out at the hardware store when Jack’s not at summer football practice and Lenny’s not at the library. Lenny has a whole list of books he has to get through this summer because he signed up for the advanced classes next fall.

Everybody has to do garden work, and you can’t do much planning for it because you never know when it will rain or the sun will shine, when there’ll be weeds to pull up or sprouts to water. It’s like being “on call,” Pop says.

“What are
your
plans, Chili?” Pop looks at me as if I’m supposed to have plans, but I was counting on being free as a bird, just like I’ve been every other summer.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re almost thirteen,” he says. “Time to think about what you want to get done this summer.”

I have to think fast. “Books,” I say. “I think I might read a lot.”

Pop raises his eyebrows and stares at me for a long time, maybe five seconds. “It’s okay to read,” he says, “if you’re aiming in some direction. But don’t waste time on foolishness.”

“Foolishness?”

“On nonsense,” he says. “Don’t hole up in this house reading books from the Rexall and turning peaked when you could be out in the fresh air.”

“I can read outside,” I say. “Besides, the fresh air around here is full of cow manure.”

Lenny and Jack start everybody laughing. Everybody except Pop, and he just looks at me and shakes his head.

“You heard me,” he says.

I nod and go back to eating my shuck beans, the last of the dried beans from the cellar.

“Next time we have green beans, they’ll be fresh off the vine,” Momma says in her best bird-chirping, change-the-subject voice.

W
orkers …

The back of Miss Matlock’s little green truck is loaded with tools—a pick, a long-handled shovel, a mattock, a hoe, and hedge clippers.

“Get in,” she says. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Work?” I say.

“Work?” Willie says.

It’s the first day of summer vacation. Work is the last thing I want to do.

Miss Matlock had promised to show Willie and me pictures of Italy and make a special dessert.
Cannoli
. Crisp and creamy, she called it. But when we got to the house, she said it would have to wait; there was an important project to get started. She didn’t say one thing about us driving anywhere. Pop would ground me for life if he knew I was getting in this truck.