Ghost Girl (8 page)

Miss Vest looked at her wristwatch and let out a gasp. “But—but it's quarter to five now!” She stared down at her skirt and sweater. “Can I at least wash up and change my clothes?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sergeant Jordan told her. “I've got the truck waiting up by the schoolhouse.”

Aunt Birdy and I traded looks.
Miss Vest was going to Camp Rapidan.
For months everybody had been gossiping about what was behind those big metal gates down the mountain. Folks said that Mrs. Hoover rode around on her big bay horse wearing a suit of white riding clothes and the president spent all day fishing the trout streams, not even stopping to loosen up his high starched collar and tie. I imagined their summer house probably looked like the biggest one in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, the two-story one with the brick chimneys and the shutters and the porch with the pillars out front.

And now Miss Vest was heading off to see Camp Rapidan for herself. I watched as she flitted around, gathering up her catalog and the outline of my foot and shoving them in her satchel.

“It was so good to meet you, Aunt Birdy,” she said, all out of breath. “And April, I'll see you at school on Monday. . . . I'm sorry I have to run off like this. What in the world am I going to wear?” She laughed a high, nervous laugh and touched the tips of her fingers to the bright red spots on her cheeks.

Aunt Birdy and I walked out to the front porch to see her off. Mama and Daddy were still working, stacking wood against the shed over in the side yard. “Goodbye!” Miss Vest called to them. “Hope to see you again soon!”

Daddy waved, but Mama never even looked up from the load of kindling in her arms. I was glad Miss Vest was too riled to notice. As she hurried up the slope behind Sergeant Jordan, she turned around and gave me one last smile. It was all I could do to hold myself back from running up the mountain after her.

The Hoovers must have invited
Miss Vest over so they could ask her to work even harder. Because pretty soon after her dinner at Camp Rapidan, she told the class she planned to start holding Sunday prayer meetings at the schoolhouse. Most of the kids broke out clapping. We had never had a real church on our mountain before. The nearest one was over in Dark Hollow, near eight miles away, with no heat and a leaky roof to boot. So most folks chose to squeeze into the Jessup cabin on Sundays, where Mr. Jessup preached his long, rambling sermons standing on an old kindling box at one end of his front room. Now that their daddy would be helping Miss Vest with worship services at the schoolhouse, Dewey and Ida looked around the classroom grinning and nodding as if the whole thing had been their idea.

I was about the only one who didn't cheer over Miss Vest's announcement. I felt sorry for Miss Vest, having to teach us our letters and numbers and now the Bible, too. I couldn't help worrying over how hard she seemed to be working. After school let out every day, she sat right down at her desk and bent over her lesson book with her face feverish and her ink pen flying. One night I had supper at Aunt Birdy's and took the long way home, just to check, and sure enough, there she was, lit up in the schoolroom window, still sitting at her desk and rubbing her tired eyes.

I didn't even bother to ask Mama if we could go to the Sunday prayer meetings. We hadn't been to church since Riley died. Used to be, we'd all ride in the wagon to go to meetings in Dark Hollow. Once in a while, if the weather was too bad to make it that far, we'd crowd into the Jessup cabin with all the other neighbors. I knew Mama despised those mornings as much as I did. Most of the time, we got stuck sitting back in the sweltering kitchen next to the cookstove, listening to Mr. Jessup rant and rave for an hour or more. We always came home smelling like cabbage or collards or whatever had been bubbling on the burner next to us.

Mr. Jessup wasn't an official preacher anyway. During the week he worked at the sawmill over at Thornton Gap, heaving logs onto the conveyor belt. But on Sundays, he put on his black suit and combed his thick hair back with pomade and turned into someone else. Aunt Birdy said he had learned to preach from traveling men who wandered around the Blue Ridge holding tent meetings and revivals. She said his sermons were hand-me-downs, but even so, Mama and Daddy thought it was important for us to learn the Gospel, so Riley and I went along without complaining.

Then the accident happened and Mama never said another word about going to church. Whenever Aunt Birdy invited us to join her, Mama just shook her head and found a way to change the subject. Daddy didn't try to persuade her otherwise.

So you could have pushed me over with a broom straw one rainy Sunday morning when Mama said after breakfast, “You better get dressed, April. We're going down to the meeting at the schoolhouse.”

“Is Daddy coming, too?” I asked. I figured going to church must have been his idea. He had been away all week, helping to fence pastures for a cattle farmer down the mountain. Maybe since it was Sunday, he'd be joining us at the schoolhouse.

But Mama shook her head. “No. It's just us going. Daddy won't be back till tomorrow.”

I decided not to ask why we were going. I ran to put on my best dress before Mama could change her mind. My insides were so full of butterflies, I could barely hook up the buttons.
Mama was coming to school.
Finally, she'd get to see how fine everything was—the shelf full of
National Geographic
and
Child Life
magazines, and the world globe that could spin around, and the jars full of rulers and scissors and paintbrushes. Miss Vest had told us that after each Sunday meeting she was planning to serve coffee and hot cocoa. Maybe she'd pick me to add the marshmallows to the cocoa again, and I could serve a cup to Mama.

We didn't bother hitching up Old Dean for the trip over to the schoolhouse. The rain was pounding on the roof like hooves, splattering down to make muddy rivers in the yard. Mama found an old green slicker and I held a shawl over my head, and we set off with a gust of wind blowing at our backs. By the time we made it to the schoolhouse, the classroom was packed full with folks, all dripping wet from the trip over. Miss Vest was scurrying around, mopping at the floor with a rag and setting up folding chairs in between the desks.

She trotted over when she saw us coming, and the next minute Aunt Birdy was at my side, giving my hand a squeeze. “See there, Miss Vest,” she said, grinning, “I told you not to give up on 'em. I told you Alma was coming.”

Mama and Miss Vest nodded to each other, and then Aunt Birdy scooted us over to three folding chairs in the second row, behind the Jessups. I knew Mama would have rather found a place in the back, but she followed Aunt Birdy without a fuss, trying to ignore all the ladies who stared as she walked by. Most folks hadn't seen her out in company for a year or more, and I wasn't surprised at the way they put their heads together and started clucking like hens.

Mrs. Jessup, who was bouncing Dewey's fat baby brother, Little Elton, on her lap and sizing up everybody who came down the aisle, hoisted herself around and said hello to Mama. “Good to see you out again, Alma,” she said in a loud, sugary voice. “Look, Ida . . . Dewey . . . there's April. I hear Wes is working down in Criglersville now. It's been so long since we seen you all. We been looking for you over at our place on Sundays.”

Mama nodded, but I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. She'd sooner walk through fire than go to the Jessups' house again, with our Victrola sitting right out in their front room.

Aunt Birdy leaned across me and tapped Mama's arm before Mrs. Jessup could say anything else. “Look over yonder, Alma,” she said. “That's where Apry sits ever' day. In that desk where Alvin Hurt is setting. Miss Vest showed me at last Sunday's meeting. And look up there. There's her painting up on the wall, the one of the chestnut trees down the mountain. See, it's got a gold star on the top.”

Mrs. Jessup huffed herself back around again, and Mama seemed to relax. She flicked her eyes up to my painting on the bulletin board and tried to manage a smile. “Looks real nice, April,” she said, and I smiled back, feeling something flutter in my chest.

I was getting ready to point out some other things around the room when Miss Vest came up to the front and welcomed everybody, sweeping her hands this way and that. She was thrilled to see more new faces each week, she said, glancing at Mama and me. Then she announced that she had decided to start each Sunday with a Bible reading, since that seemed to be everybody's favorite part of the service.

“For today,” she said, carefully opening the Bible, “I've decided to read the passages from Genesis about Noah and his ark. . . . When I selected these, I honestly had no idea we'd be living through our own flood this morning. You all might need an ark to get back home today.” Everybody laughed and turned to look at the rain streaking across the windows.

Of course I had heard about old Noah before, but I never knew the whole story until Miss Vest began to read. Nobody had ever told me that Noah was six hundred years old when he made his big floating barn out of gopher wood. And I had never really thought about what it would be like for all those animals to squeeze together, two by two in the ark, with the windows of heaven stuck open and rain pouring down for forty days and forty nights.

I could have sat listening to Miss Vest for at least that long. Her voice was steady and soothing, like the sound of the rainfall outside, and next to me Aunt Birdy closed her eyes and rocked back and forth as she listened. It was like we were all under a spell of some kind in that warm, steamy room, with the smell of Silas Hudgins's pipe tobacco hanging in the air.

I was sorry when Miss Vest closed her Bible. But then she started talking to us about what happened after the flood, how God had used the rains to make the world clean and new again. Her words kept humming through my head, even when folks started standing up, one at a time, saying prayers for their kin. Effie Kerns asked the Lord to heal her sister's youngest, who had taken sick with scarlet fever. Somebody else had a father with palsy. And after each person finished speaking, we all said “Amen,” and it felt powerful, as if that one little word could truly help make the sick folks well.

And then the strangest thing happened. All of a sudden, it was me who was standing up, rising to my feet in front of that whole room full of people. All of a sudden, it was me saying right out loud, “God, please watch over my little brother, Riley, up in heaven and please help Mama and Daddy and me—”

But I never got to finish. Right then, I felt a sharp poke, like a broom handle, in my side. And I turned just in time to see Mama pulling her hand away. Her face was hard and blank as stone. But she had done it. She had jabbed me with all her might, cutting my words off at the quick. I stood there, wobbling, trying to decide what to do next, but there was no way I could finish after that. I sat down hard and stared at my lap, feeling my cheeks burning red.

“Amen, April,” I heard Miss Vest say, and a few others joined in, their voices all soft and nervous. They must have seen what Mama had done.

I couldn't look at her. All I could do was squeeze my fists tighter and tighter, hearing those same ugly words I had been saying to myself for more than a year, “
She hates me. . . . She loved Riley best and now she's stuck with me. . . . She hates me.
”

And there was no denying it—she would hate me more if she knew what
really
had happened that night.

After the accident, when all the questions came, when everybody started asking, “What happened, April? Where were you? What happened?”
I had lied.
Before I even knew what was coming out of my mouth, I found myself lying. I told Mama and Daddy the fire had been getting low and we were awful cold and that I had gone out back to fetch another log from the woodpile. Riley must have been trying to stoke the fire himself, I said, and by the time I came back inside and threw the quilt over his little body, it was too late.

But that wasn't the way it had really happened.

Aunt Birdy's hand crept over and caught hold of mine. That's when my eyes started filling up with tears. I was too ashamed to wipe them away, so they rolled down my face and dropped onto the back of Aunt Birdy's wrinkly hand.

I finally lifted my head when Miss Vest called Preacher Jessup up to say his piece. But looking at the Jessups, beaming at their daddy from the front row, only made me feel worse. Mrs. Jessup kept leaning over to kiss Little Elton's fat cheek, and Dewey was wearing his new brown wool suit—the one he had bought down at Taggart's with all the money the reporters had given him.

To make things worse, Mr. Jessup had started to rock back and forth on his heels, like he always did when he was getting worked up for one of his sermons. I knew he would probably preach for an hour or more, his words pouring out smooth as melted butter. He'd wave his hands through the air and bang the Bible against his chest, going on and on about scary-sounding things like Judgment Day and souls lost to the ways of sloth.