Beholding Bee (16 page)

“But I don’t want to hold your books.” The girl is already carrying a stack of her own books, plus a lunch pail. She is thin as Jonathan.

“Do it anyway.” Francine puts her books on the top of
the little girl’s stack. The little girl totters and drops several books. Two girls around Francine snicker, but a third one bends over and helps the little girl with the books.

“The little one’s Mary,” whispers Ruth Ellen. “She has ten brothers and sisters and a whole bunch of grandmas and grandpas living in one little house. Can you believe it? The one who just helped pick up the books is Betsy. Sometimes she’s nice, but mostly she does what Francine says, just like the others.”

Francine catches sight of Ruth Ellen and me, crosses her arms, and stares at us. “Wouldn’t you lie down on a train track if you were them?” she says to the other girls, loud enough for us all to hear. Somehow she makes her voice sound like tinkling bells.

I pull my hair tighter on my cheek and pretend I am a wisp of smoke passing by. Ruth Ellen takes a step back and then skip-hops toward her mama, who is standing outside an old green automobile. Soon Ruth Ellen is getting wrapped in a hug and I watch them drive away.

I wipe my eye and then Mrs. Potter is limping over to me. Her flappy hat is all crooked. Peabody jumps, trying to get into my arms.

“Well, how was it?”

Francine is watching me. She turns to her friends and they all laugh.

“Guess,” I say, turning away and clomping off for home.

66

I run straight upstairs to Mrs. Swift’s bedroom. It is wallpapered with blue cornflowers and there is a white iron bed with a lace spread and puffed pillows and a stuffed chair in the corner. There is a yellowed copy of a very old newspaper,
The Liberator
, on her bedside table. I am not here for those things, though. I am here for the hand mirror on her dresser.

You hold your breath when you have not looked at yourself in a long while. You close your eyes and tell yourself it can’t be that bad. You count in your head,
one, two, three
, and then you are afraid to open your eyes.

67

I do not remember my diamond being so dark. It looks like somebody poured raspberry juice on my forehead and it trickled down over my eye and fell especially hard on my cheek.
Spatter, spatter, spatter
.

The moaning deep in my belly rises and I can’t dam it up or push it back. I rush to my bed and let my sobs shake me like a puppet. I do not want to cry like this in front of Peabody, because it makes him whine so, but whatever grit I had inside me is gone. I am soft as petals.

I wrap myself around and around in my blankets, rolling myself up so tight I can’t think of getting undone, even if I wanted to, and the tears fall. Peabody is getting good at jumping up on the bed himself now, and he nestles up beside me. Mrs. Potter shuffles in and tries to hug me, but I don’t let her. I don’t want someone who nobody can see to hug me. Peabody, though, is greedy. He likes hugs very much.

Mrs. Potter rocks in the rocking chair. She sighs over and over and the chair creaks against the wood floor. I pretend I am falling asleep and I hope she is very sorry she sent me to school.

After a while she limps to my dresser and shuffles through the top drawer. She pulls out Pauline’s little notebook and fans through it. I close my eyes again when she brings it over
to the rocking chair and sits down. Before long, she is giggling. I guess some folks really can play the ha-ha game by themselves.

The next morning Pauline’s little notebook is lying on my pillow. I push it under my mattress as far as it will go.

68

Cordelia sniffs around the back of her food bucket trying to get at an old scrap of potato peel and half a pickled egg. She has brightened up since I got her the corn. Already she is gaining weight.

I open the gate and Peabody runs through. He chases Cordelia around and around the pen. My pig squeals so loud Mrs. Potter comes out the back door to check on what is that noise. I wave her away. I do not want to talk to either her or Mrs. Swift, possibly forever.

Cordelia grunts and squeals. Peabody chases her around the pen four times and then she rushes into her shed, and when they fly out it is Cordelia chasing Peabody and Peabody who is yelping.

I sit on the ground with my knees pulled up to my chin, just watching my pig and my dog and feeling the sun on my back. I am thankful the food bucket is empty and that Cordelia is not a bag of bones. Every time the tiniest memory of my awful day at school floods my thoughts, I push it away.

I do not hear Mrs. Marsh until she is up next to me. “I see you still have that nasty little pig. Well, it won’t be staying long, and neither will you or your dog. I have news.” She flaps a long, thin envelope in front of me.

“Yessiree,” she is saying. “This property is now in probate and a judge will decide who it belongs to.”

Peabody and Cordelia have stopped chasing one another. Peabody growls and Cordelia pushes her snout out of the fence and grabs hold of Mrs. Marsh’s shoelace. This throws Mrs. Marsh off balance.

“Oh no!” I shout, just as Cordelia pulls on the lace and Mrs. Marsh starts falling over. Peabody barks and Mrs. Marsh lands on her backside, a little dazed and unbelieving. Then she is up, picking up her letter and pushing her glasses back in place.

I have to hold my mouth to keep it from smiling.

“Well, I have never met a more unruly pig,” Mrs. Marsh says as she wipes the mud and apple pieces and bits of straw from the back of her dress. “Or one more ugly. Look at those ears. They’re not right. One sticking up, one down. Pigs aren’t supposed to look like that. And the back of that pig? Look at that hump. That’s not right. This was a runt, wasn’t it?”

I want to pull Cordelia away, but she is looking up at Mrs. Marsh.

“And the tail doesn’t curl right. Never win a beauty contest, would it? That is one ugly pig, if I ever saw one. You can’t butcher it too fast.”

I want to hold Cordelia’s ears closed so she can’t hear the awful things Mrs. Marsh is saying, but she’s already run into the shed. “Cordelia is not getting butchered,” I whisper.

“Whoever heard of a pig not getting butchered? It will need doing sooner than later. I expect soon, unless you want to take a huge pig with you wherever you’re going. And believe me, you will be going. Probate shouldn’t take long.”

She pulls a piece of straw from her hair. “I came to see your aunts.”

“They’re not home,” I say quickly.

“Are they ever here, young lady?” She narrows her eyes. “I think I’ll go check.”

I don’t have time to say anything, because she turns abruptly and hurries toward the house.

I rush into the shed where Cordelia is flopped down on her favorite pile of straw and Peabody is curled up to her with his head on her belly. I scratch behind Cordelia’s ears and along her backside. I also kiss her quite a bit because she needs a lot of snuggling to get back to feeling good about things.

69

On Saturday, there is a knock on the door and we all take cover. Mrs. Swift slides her ledger into the kitchen drawer. Mrs. Potter drops her hammer. I scoop Peabody in my arms. “Shush,” I tell him. We are all getting very good at this.

“That blasted woman.” Mrs. Potter looks at the wall in the kitchen that is nearly demolished. “I have just a little more to go.”

The knocking goes on and on. “Go see who it is, Beatrice.” Mrs. Swift gives the kitchen one more look, notices her spectacles, and tucks them in her apron pocket.

The knocking stops for a minute and then begins again, even louder.

No one moves. “Humph,” I say, finally turning and walking out of the kitchen, edging my way along the wall, holding my dog with one hand and my hair with the other. I am careful to peek out the window without being seen.

“Well, who would’ve thought,” I say, looking at Ruth Ellen standing on our porch. I rush and open the door.

Ruth Ellen holds out a basket covered with a blue-and-white cloth. “You aren’t coming to school. I thought you might be sick.” She leans on her good leg.

“Yes,” I say, wondering what is in the basket, lifting the cloth, and smelling warm bananas and walnuts and cinnamon.

Her mama is waiting in the green automobile parked on
the road. She leans over and waves. A little boy in the back with hair the color of a sweet potato leans out the rear window. I pull my hair tight.

“Oh, what a sweet dog, Bee.” Ruth Ellen scratches Peabody between the ears. He thumps his stumpy tail on my chest.

“I know you’ve been sick, but if you’re feeling better, we were wondering if you could come to our house? My mama will drive us. She’ll bring you home, too.”

Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter slip into the library. “Yes,” I say, trying to keep Peabody’s tail from smacking me.

“Can I meet your aunts first?” Ruth Ellen tries to look past me into the house.

I block her view. “My aunts are napping. Maybe some other time.” If I weren’t so mad at them, I might tell them where I am going. Instead, I slam the door behind me.

Ruth Ellen opens the back door of the automobile for me and I pull my hair tight. She climbs in the front. “Mama, this is Bee. And Peabody. Bee, this is my little brother, Sammy.”

Sammy makes propeller noises like he is a fighter bomber and Ruth Ellen’s mama turns around and smiles and tells me all about how nice it is that I am Ruth Ellen’s friend.

If they notice my diamond under my hair, they don’t say anything. Ruth Ellen must have already warned them. Then of course Peabody steals all the attention from everybody by jumping all over all of us and then Ruth Ellen’s mama starts the motor. “I didn’t know this was the house Ruth Ellen meant until we got here. I didn’t know anybody was living in the old Bradford place.”

“Yes,” I say slowly, “I am living here now.”

“I didn’t know the place sold. Are there lights? All the electricity was shut off for a long time. The town was worried about vagrants breaking in and starting fires.”

“Yes, there are lights.” I do not mention how we use a lot of candles and how my aunts cannot cook or how they want me to wear clothes from a hundred years ago. When you are used to living in the back of a hauling truck you do not worry so much about small things.

70

Ruth Ellen’s house sits way back in the woods and is about the size of an apple crate with a little chimney poking out the top. Peabody sticks his nose out the window so he sees all there is to know about the dirt driveway and the thin shed with chickens poking in the grass and especially the turkey-sized gray-and-white cat napping on the front porch.

You can tell Ruth Ellen’s mama is as particular about the house as she is about Ruth Ellen. There is a neat little whitewashed fence around the house and another fence around a little postage stamp of a victory garden. The corn is heavy with cobs and there are pumpkins soaking up the late September heat. Pauline used to tell me she would like to live somewhere long enough to learn how to grow things. Maybe I will ask Ruth Ellen’s mama if she will show me how.

Peabody barrels out of the automobile and runs for the cat and he gets clawed pretty good. He screams and then rushes after the chickens and I have to go grab hold of him and whisper firmly that he better behave or he won’t be invited back.

We all go up on the porch and then Ruth Ellen opens the door and her mama says, “Well, make yourself at home, dear,” and Sammy runs around pretending he is a fighter bomber. I wonder if he knows Jonathan.

“Why don’t you show Bee around while I cut the cake?”
Ruth Ellen’s mama pulls mugs from the cupboard. “Do you like cake, sweetheart?”

Do I like cake? I nod, wondering if she uses real sugar.

Ruth Ellen takes me in the little toast-sized kitchen, where there is a card table sitting between the big black stove and the sink. It is set with a lime-green checked cloth, four small plates, and four navy napkins. Ruth Ellen’s mama puts the mugs on the table and fills them with milk.

“I got everything ready for you,” Ruth Ellen says, looking all proudlike of this teeny room, which is less than a quarter of the size of our kitchen. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”

There is a parlor off to the side with a thin little camel-colored sofa, one of those lie-back-and-sleep-all-day chairs with a forest-green afghan thrown on top, and a rocking chair with crocheted pink cushions. The walls are covered with old wallpaper that has surely seen better days.

Ruth Ellen skip-hops over to a little table by the sofa and picks up a picture of a man in an army uniform and goggles, standing with his arms folded in front of a plane. He is smiling.

“My papa,” whispers Ruth Ellen. “It is very dangerous to be a gunner.” She rubs and polishes the photo, even though there is not a speck of dirt on the glass or in the whole house as far as I can see. “We haven’t heard from him in a long time.”

She sets the picture back on the table and we look at her smiling papa for a moment. Then Peabody and I follow her to a little bedroom on the other side of the kitchen, with a bed for her mama and another picture of her papa. This time her papa is wearing bathing trunks and is squeezing
Ruth Ellen’s mama very hard and Ruth Ellen is giggling beside them and Sammy is in his mama’s arms. There is also a picture of Ruth Ellen’s mama sewing at a big factory. “She makes parachutes now for pilots and their crews. Maybe one will save our papa.”

Ruth Ellen shows me a little white bathroom with roses on the walls and a rose-flowered rug on the floor. Upstairs under the eaves is the room Ruth Ellen and Sammy share. Ruth Ellen’s bed is pushed up against the wall and it is covered with a pink quilt and Peabody and I are both thinking we could really stretch out here, and Sammy’s bed is pushed against the other wall and has a navy-blue spread. He has drawn many pictures of fighter bombers and they are hanging all over his side of the room.

Ruth Ellen has drawn a picture of her family: her mama, her papa, Sammy, and her. Looking at it makes me wish I had a family just like hers.

71

After we have our snack (fruitcake made with honey, and Peabody gets an old used-up ham bone), my belly is ready to go off and take a nap of its own. But Ruth Ellen’s mama says it is time to go get some exercise and she asks if I want to come and I look at Ruth Ellen, who is waiting for me to answer, and I think how everything in this house seems pretty fun, so why not? Lordy, why not?