Ghost Girl (10 page)

Once Miss Vest had hurried off and most of the other kids had started to drift away, Ida and Luella stood with their arms crossed, staring down at me.

“So where'd that nasty Poke run off to?” Ida asked Luella.

“He hightailed it for the woods soon as he saw Miss Vest coming.”

“I think I must have knocked one of his front teeth out,” Dewey said. He was leaning against the tree, studying a cut on his knuckles.

Ida looked disgusted. “You're a sight, Dewey,” she said, glaring at the streaks of dirt and sweat on her brother's face and the ripped pocket of his jacket. “Wait till Mama sees that suit and finds out you been fighting with Poke McClure. And wait till she sees the doctor's bill she's gonna owe for taking care of
her
.”

Ida's voice turned sour when she said
her
, like she had just swallowed bad milk. She acted like I wasn't even there, lying right at her feet listening. I gritted my dusty teeth together as hard as I could and pushed myself up to my knees with my good arm.

“Hush up, Ida,” Dewey snapped. “Can't you see her arm's broke?” He came over to squat beside me, so close that I could see a smear of blood drying under his nose. “Shouldn't you stay put till Miss Vest gets back, April?”

Hearing Dewey say my real name made me even madder. He hadn't called me anything but ghost girl for more than a year, and now here he was trying to cozy up to me just so he wouldn't get in trouble. And what would Mama say? At least it wasn't my right arm, the one I mostly used for chores and writing. I squeezed my eyes shut and stood up all the way, hugging my hurt arm and trying to fight back the ripples of dizziness in my head.

Just then Miss Vest came running back. “April, wait,” she said. “Let me help you before you make things worse. . . . I called Dr. Hunt, but he's away at a conference in Charlottesville all week, so the medical aide from the marine camp is coming. At least he can take a look and tell us whether you need a cast or not.”

She started steering me back to the schoolhouse. Then she stopped and gave Dewey a hard look over her shoulder. “Come on, Dewey. After I get April and everyone else settled inside, you and I need to have a talk.”

I had never been in Miss Vest's parlor before, but for once I didn't care about examining every inch of another room at the schoolhouse. My arm felt so strange and achy, I leaned my head against the back of the davenport and kept my eyes closed until the man from the marine camp arrived. He said he was “Lou Witcofski, hospital corpsman.” But even though he carried a black bag, he didn't look like a doctor or even a doctor's helper. More than anything, he reminded me of an overgrown puppy with his friendly face and his long, loose legs and arms.

He was tall enough to make everything in Miss Vest's parlor seem small—the wide, stuffed davenport and the high walnut rockers, even the new piano that sat out in the middle of the room.

“Sorry about the furniture arrangement,” Miss Vest said as Corpsman Witcofski squeezed his lanky body around the piano to reach me. “I'm still trying to find a place for this in the classroom.”

“I think it's fine right here,” he said and pulled up the piano bench in front of the davenport where I was sitting. “Just what I need. An examining chair.”

Miss Vest smiled. “Will you two be all right for a few minutes while I go check on things in the classroom?”

I nodded even though I wasn't so sure, but then the man told me to call him Wit, since Witcofski was too hard to say, and he leaned forward and whispered, “If you promise not to be nervous, I'll play you a song on that new piano when I'm done.”

I nodded again.

Wit turned serious as soon as he started looking over my arm. He asked me to try and straighten it, but I couldn't even move a couple inches without yelping.

“Easy now,” he said and took my arm in both of his big square hands. Then he ran his fingers along my forearm like he was stroking a cat's back. “It's broken, all right,” he told me. “Right about there.” He pointed to a spot halfway between my wrist and my elbow.

“We'll put a splint on it for now, until we can get you down to see the doctor. He'll want to take an x-ray and put a proper cast on.”

Then Wit reached into his black bag and brought out rolls of bandages and white tape and some wooden splints, and went to work. He kept asking me questions while he fiddled with my arm, trying to keep my mind off the pain, I suppose.

“What's your favorite color?” he asked.

“Blue,” I told him.

“Any blue? What kind of blue?”

“The robin's egg kind.”

“Any brothers and sisters?”

I shook my head.

“What's your favorite food?”

“Fried apple pie.”

“Mmm. That sounds good.”

And before long he had my arm wrapped up tight like a package and hanging in a muslin sling tied around my neck.

When he was done, he rubbed his hands together and swung his long legs to the other side of the piano bench. “What'll it be, miss?” he said over his shoulder. “You held up your end of the bargain. Now it's my turn.”

“You pick,” I said, feeling shy.

He swept his thumbnail along the piano keys, making a long rippling sound that floated higher and higher. “How about this?” Then all at once his fingers were dancing and bouncing and hopping, and one hand was crossing over the other. Even though my arm was aching, I couldn't help pushing myself up from the davenport and going over to stand beside him to watch. I never thought I'd hear music finer than what I had heard on our Victrola, but I was wrong.

Then he was done. Since I couldn't clap, I just stood there grinning. Wit laughed and started packing his bandages and tape into his black bag. He had just snapped the clasp shut when Miss Vest rushed in.

“I'm sorry that took so long,” she said all in a fluster. “Did I hear the piano—”

Then her eyes landed on my sling and her face filled with worry. “It's broken?”

Wit nodded. “I think so. I'm hoping that the splint and sling will hold the bone in the right place until you can get her down to see a doctor.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a little jar of pills. “You can give her two of these every four hours for the pain.”

“Good,” Miss Vest said. “And April, I think you should stay with me tonight. I'll send Dewey down to tell your mother.”

I stared at Miss Vest, wondering whether I had heard right. “You want me to sleep
here
tonight? At the
schoolhouse
?”

“Yes,” she said. “There's a spare bedroom upstairs, and I'm sure your mother won't want you walking all the way home when you just broke your arm.”

“Well, I guess I'd better be getting back to camp,” Wit said. He patted the top of the piano on his way out. “Fine instrument you got here.”

Miss Vest sighed. “I know. Too bad the teacher doesn't play a single note.”

“Oh, really?” Wit raised one eyebrow.

“From what I heard earlier, you're very good.”

“Oh, I play a little,” he said. Then he looked down at me and winked. “Let me know if you have any more questions about April's arm . . . or about your piano.”

When Wit had gone, Miss Vest reached out and touched my sling, her fingers light as rain. “I'm so sorry, April,” she said. “I'd give anything for this not to have happened.”

I nodded, but down deep, I couldn't help being glad. A broken arm was a small price to pay for a night with Miss Vest at the schoolhouse.

Miss Vest's tub was wide and deep,
more like a swimming hole than a place just meant for washing. It had smooth, slippery sides and fancy curved legs and a little step stool ready to help you climb inside. I couldn't wait to lean back against that white porcelain. The only problem was I had to get undressed first—in front of Miss Vest. With my arm in the sling and all the gadgets, like one faucet for hot water and another for cold and the little rubber stopper on a chain, there was no chance I could figure everything out by myself.

But somehow Miss Vest made it easy. She kept chatting away as the water climbed higher and higher in the tub and the room fogged up, and we worked off my sling, then my sweater and my shirt and my skirt with the ripped pocket, and finally my underclothes. Then Miss Vest wrapped a towel around my bandaged splint to keep it dry and poured a dollop of lavender oil in the running water, all the while telling me about how she and her little sister used to take baths in a big wooden washtub outdoors, behind her farmhouse in the summer. She said they pretended they were fairy princesses, and picked daisies and bee balm and pink roses from their mother's garden to float on top of the bath water.

When I was ready, Miss Vest helped me into the tub, making sure that I rested my wrapped-up arm on the dry porcelain. It felt so good sinking down into all that steamy heat that I almost forgot about being naked in front of my teacher. She bustled back and forth, setting out soap and another towel and one of her very own nightgowns for me to borrow. Then she turned off the faucets and said she'd leave me to soak for a while. “Call me when you're ready to come out,” she told me.

It felt strange just lying still in the water, watching my fingers and toes wrinkle up like tree bark. At home, Riley and I never wanted to sit in the old metal washtub for long. The half-warm water Mama poured in made us shiver, and chips of rust were always rubbing off the bottom of the tub and floating to the top.

I wondered whether Mama was worried about me at all. I hoped she was, just a little. I took a deep breath of the sweet, thick lavender steam rising off the water and smiled to myself. I would smell like Miss Vest tonight, and after today Mama couldn't help but be grateful to her for taking such good care of me.

I glanced over at the nightgown she had left folded on the step stool. It was white flannel with silk blue ribbon laces at the neck. I couldn't wait to put it on. I didn't want to bother Miss Vest, so I climbed out of the tub by myself as careful as I could. It took me such a long time to dry off and work the nightgown over my head and bandaged arm that I had to stop to rest for a minute afterward. But even though the sleeves of the nightgown were too long and the bottom dragged the floor, the flannel felt warm and snug as a cocoon.

I hurried over to the mirror and tried to wipe away the steam with the towel, hoping to get a better look at myself. But the mirror kept fogging over so I finally gave up and started studying Miss Vest's lipsticks and tiny pots of rouge and powder lined up on the shelf above the sink. I picked out a little gold case, and being sure to hold my broken arm steady, I opened the lid with my good hand. Inside there was a tiny flat brush and a tin filled with something black and sooty.

I dipped the brush into the tin and was standing there puzzling over what it could be used for when Miss Vest walked in. She stopped in the doorway, looking surprised.

“I'm sorry!” I said, rushing to fit the brush back into the case. I was so clumsy that I jabbed it against my fingers instead, smearing them with the black soot. “I didn't mean to get into your things,” I said. “I was just—I was—”

Miss Vest only smiled. She walked over and took the gold case from me. Then she said, “Hold still,” and she started painting my eyelashes with the little brush, leaning close and biting the side of her lip as she worked. When she was done, she turned me around to face the mirror. I could see myself now that the door was open and the glass had cleared.

“Lordy” was all I could say. I looked close to pretty with my cheeks still pink from the bath and my white eyelashes turned as thick and black as Ida's. Miss Vest found a comb and started fluffing up the wispy pieces of hair around my face, and for a while I couldn't take my eyes off the person in the mirror.

All of a sudden, we heard Aunt Birdy calling, and Miss Vest ran to fetch her. “Dewey just came by to tell me,” I heard Aunt Birdy saying in a breathless voice from the parlor. “How is she?”

“Come on back and see for yourself,” Miss Vest told her.

Aunt Birdy's eyes got wide when she came in the bathroom and laid eyes on me. “Why, Apry Sloane,” she cried, “you look just like the doll baby in Taggart's window.”

She fussed and fiddled over my eyelashes and the laces of my nightgown and my sling for a while. Then Miss Vest led us up a tiny flight of stairs to a little bedroom she called “the guest quarters.”

“Climb in,” Miss Vest said, pointing to one of the beds with a dotted yellow spread and a puffy blanket folded at one end. Before long, she and Aunt Birdy had me tucked into the soft sheets and satiny blanket, with my broken arm resting on top of a feather pillow. I was sure I would never fall asleep with the strangeness of it all. But before she said good night, Miss Vest brought me two more pills with a glass of water and she pulled a rocker up close to my bed. Aunt Birdy sat down, and I finally drifted off to the sounds of her creaky rocking and humming beside me.