Home Free (3 page)

I told my mother I wanted to be a writer, but she wanted me to be a teacher or a nurse. “That's what good girls do,” she said.

“What do bad girls do?” I asked.

“That's enough, Lee.”

“Why?”

“Mind your manners, Lee.”

“But I want to know. Why is it enough? What do bad girls do?”

“Do you want to go to your room? That's what happens to bad girls.”

“No.”

“That's better. Then, after you work for a year or two, you can get married,” my mother said.

“But I don't like anybody,” I said. (This was a lie because I am going to marry David, but I don't want my mother to know.)

One day I tried something different.

“I want to be a
famous
writer when I grow up,” I explained. “I'll be a
millionairer
!”

“And just who do you think you are?” she asked.

This stumped me. I had a pretty good idea of who I was, but from her tone of voice I didn't think she meant Leanna Mets of Westlawn Avenue.

“Miss Gowdy says I'm a good writer. Miss Gowdy says that I –”

“Oh, ‘Miss Gowdy says.' And what makes Miss Gowdy so smart?”

But I knew the answer to that one.

“She's a teacher!” I exclaimed. “She's a good girl! So there!”

I got sent to my room. And while I was sitting in my room, something occurred to me. When my mother asked who I thought I was, maybe she was hinting that I was really adopted! Maybe I
was
an orphan and didn't know it!

I made up a really good story that night, let me tell you!

Cassandra Jovanovich moved here in July. Everybody knew she was coming, even though I didn't breathe a word to anyone – cross my heart and hope to die – and lots of girls showed up on her porch the night she came. Even Kathy. Everyone wanted to see what an orphan looked like up close and everyone was hoping that if she was any good she'd end up liking them best. (I thought I would just die if she ended up liking Kathy best because I needed a new best friend to replace Kathy, who didn't work out so good, as I said before. And Kathy was probably there just to spite me.)

So on this most important night of my life, I was babysitting Mrs. Carol's baby. For ten cents I had to take her for
a walk in her buggy to get her to sleep. But she kept crying, so I picked her up and she let out a big burp and stuff came out all over my shoulder.

All the girls saw it. I don't know how a tiny baby can burp so loud but she did, and everyone turned to look from way up there on the porch, and they all saw what happened.

Including Cassandra Jovanovich!

She had red hair!

An orphan with red hair moved in beside me and I was so mortified I'd never be able to talk to her ever! I looked up the word
mortified
in the dictionary and it means “to be ashamed,” but it comes from really old words meaning “to make dead.” I wanted to make dead right there on the sidewalk, let me tell you! It was the most tragical disappointment of my life! That's what Anne Shirley said when she thought Diana might not like her.

I shoved Mrs. Carol's baby back in the carriage. That's the truth. I shoved her and I hope I don't go to jail. Of course, I've seen Mrs. Butterfield shove her kids lots of times and she isn't in jail and I think she should be. I ran up the street pushing the carriage. I thought about just going and going and running away from home, but then I'd really have to go to jail. If I took Mrs. Carol's baby with me, or if I just left Mrs. Carol's baby on the side of the road. Either way, I'd go to jail.

So I walked around the block and snuck into Mrs. Carol's house from the other way and gave them back their baby. Then I snuck in my back door to change my shirt. Then I wondered how I could live the rest of my life never going outside again. I decided I'd better make a trip to the bookmobile and get lots of books to read before I became a hermit.

But before I left, I snuck a peek at Mrs. Fergus's porch. Cassandra Jovanovich was there all by herself. Maybe the other girls all had to go home. Maybe they didn't like the orphan up close. Cassandra looked very orphan-like, sitting there all alone, with her red hair hanging over her face, and suddenly I thought maybe baby burp-up wasn't so bad. I walked over to Mrs. Fergus's.

“Where did everybody go?” I asked her.

“I told them to go away.”

“Don't you want friends?”

“Not nosy ones.”

I wondered if she meant me, too, because I had just asked two questions. I waited, but she didn't tell me to go away.

“My name is Lee.”

Then I made a face, the one I make when my mother says to be careful my face doesn't freeze like that. “I meant to say my name is Leanna, but nobody calls me that so I keep forgetting myself.”

“I'll call you Leanna if you call me Cassandra.”

“Isn't Cassandra your name?”

“Yes, but I get Cass all the time. The people I was with two before this said that Cassandra was too fancy a name for me.”

“Just like Anne Shirley!”

“Who's that?”

“You know, Anne of Green Gables. She wanted to be Cordelia Fitzgerald and everybody laughed at her.”

Cassandra didn't know what I was talking about. “You're an orphan,” I explained to her. “There are lots of books about orphans. You have to read them. Especially
Anne of Green Gables
. It's the best.”

I had high hopes Cassandra would look tremendously excited and ask to read the book right now, this very minute, so that we could start being best friends immediately.

“That girl Kathy doesn't like you,” Cassandra said.

I think I must have looked very stupid.

“She told you that? Already?”

Cassandra nodded. “She says you're a little … you know …” She put her finger up to her head and twirled it around. “… Nuts. She says you talk about orphans all the time and I should watch out. She said she felt sorry for me living next door to you.”

Kathy! I hated her! She'd already ruined Cassandra for
me! I knew I was going to cry. I stood up. I had to go home. I had to get away and be by myself. I started down the steps.

“Aren't you going to ask me why I'm an orphan?”

I stopped. Of course, I wanted to ask.

“All the others wanted to know. They wanted to know how my mother and father died.”

In my heart of hearts I wanted to know, too. But she pushed her hair off her face for a second and I could see her eyes get sort of squinty and I suddenly knew if I asked, she'd send me away.

Then I got really considerate all of a sudden. I thought about being an orphan myself and always having to answer questions. So I just said, “Do you want to tell me why you're an orphan?”

Cassandra shoved her hair back over her face.

“Maybe.”

So I waited but she didn't say anything more, so I figured that maybe her maybe meant some day, but not now. Then I got tired of saying nothing.

“Do you want to come to the bookmobile with me?” Even though it didn't look like I'd have to be a hermit, I still needed some books. Because right now, it didn't look like I'd have anyone to play with this whole summer.

I looked up
hermit
in the dictionary. It means “someone
who lives in seclusion.” And
seclusion
means “to shut yourself off from others.” Cassandra Jovanovich was doing a pretty good job of that. But maybe she was like me. I didn't really want to be a hermit. Sometimes, I just wanted to be alone.

Cassandra went inside to ask Mrs. Fergus if she could go to the library with me. And when she came out, she was wearing go-go boots and a John Lennon hat pulled down low over her eyes. I wanted go-go boots for Christmas last year, but my mother said no. She said white boots were ridiculous. And I couldn't get a John Lennon hat because my mother doesn't like The Beatles. I felt just like Anne Shirley wanting a dress with puffed sleeves. I even said the same thing to my mother that Anne said to Marilla.

“Oh, but Mother,” I said, “it would give me such a thrill to have go-go boots or a John Lennon hat.”

And my mother said the same thing back to me that Marilla said to Anne.

Sniff
. “You will have to do without your thrill.”
Sniff
.

My favorite Beatle is Ringo or sometimes George. Everybody else loves Paul or John, so I thought I should be considerate and show ardor to the other two. I have one Beatles record. I bought it with my babysitting money, but I only play it when my parents are out. They say it isn't music. That's just silly because I dance to it, so it must be music. After The Beatles were on TV on
The Ed Sullivan Show
, some of us decided to put on a Beatles show at school. We wore pants and we got white shirts and ties from our dads and we wore our hair combed over our eyes. Then we put on the record and pretended to sing. I looked at David the whole time we sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Way back then I thought he liked me as much as I liked him. He gave me a Valentine and on it he wrote a Beatles song except he changed the words. David wrote: “She was just nine-ein, and she didn't look fine-ein, cause the way she looked was way beyond repair, oh she'll never dance with another, because she was smothered by her mother,” so I thought maybe he loved me. I also thought
I'm a better ‘writer than he is and that's why I always get the highest mark on composition
.

“You look so … (I wanted to say groovy, but Kathy says I'm not cool enough to say groovy) … so neat.”

“Try it on.” Cassandra gave me her John Lennon hat. Then she frowned. “It doesn't look so good on you.”

“It's my glasses. And my ponytail.” I took off my glasses and pulled out my hair. I pulled my hair over my eyes and down my face like Cassandra. “How's that?” I asked.

Cassandra nodded. “You should get one.”

“My mom won't let me. And besides, without my glasses, I cant see.

On our way to the bookmobile, I showed Cassandra where everybody lived.

First I pointed out where four of the Debbies live.

“Can you believe it? We have six Debbies on our street. Most of them are nice, but you have to watch out for Debbie Oldman. She cries whenever she loses games and tells her mother on us and then her mother comes out and calls us brats and says she's going to phone our mothers. My mother says Mrs. Oldman thinks she's special because her sister's husband's brother is a mayor somewhere. Then my mother sniffs. My mother doesn't like people who think they're special. I don't know why. I want to be special when I grow up. Don't you?”

Cassandra looked down at the sidewalk. “I guess so,” she said. “I'm sure not special right now.”

I remembered to be considerate. “Yes you are. You've got red hair and I'd die for those boots!”

I showed her where the twins Ronnie and Donnie live.

“They're a grade younger than me and they like to beat people up. I stay out of their way but there are some kids who will pay Ronnie and Donnie a dime to beat someone up for them. One time Donnie pushed me down and pulled my hair because Paula asked him to. He said it would have been worse, but Paula only had a nickel.”

I explained that Paula is fat and picks her nose and lives in the corner house. Nobody likes her because she's a showoff and smells like dirty underwear.

I showed Cassandra where Nancy lives. Her father drives a taxi and sometimes, if it's raining, he'll load all the kids he can fit into his cab. So you have to know where Nancy lives because if it's raining, you have to get there early enough to get a ride to school.

“Once I got there first, and I never did that again because I got stuck with Paula sitting on my lap. She caught me making a face and the next day is when Donnie half beat me up.”

Then I pointed across the street. “The house with the big tree is where Susan lives. I either play with her a lot, or I don't play with her at all. Her mother doesn't like me, I can tell.”

“How can you tell?” Cassandra asked.

“Well, sometimes when Susan asks me to stay for lunch
or for dinner or for breakfast Mrs. Tupper says in a very loud voice, ‘Doesn't Lee have a home of her own? Tell her to eat there,' like I can't hear. I hate it when adults say things loud enough on purpose for me to hear.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Adults always say stuff like that in front of me. I'm an orphan. I don't count.”

“How inconsiderate,” I said. And I added, “And how inappropriate, too! When I have children I won't say mean things. And get this. I hate margarine and Mrs. Tupper uses margarine, the kind in the bag with the red blob of color inside, and you have to squish it all around to make the margarine yellow. My mother says it costs less and Mrs. Tupper is cheap.”

The biggest house is where Linda White lives. She is an only child. She wasn't supposed to be an only child, but from what I have overheard from my Sanctuary, something is wrong with Mrs. White. My mother and Mrs. Fergus and Mrs. Carol and Mrs. Petovsky all talk about Mrs. White and my mother sniffs and everybody else raises their eyebrows a lot.

So I told Cassandra, “I don't know why they don't like Mrs. White, but I know why they don't like Linda. She always wants to play doctor. She's always trying to get us to take our clothes off so the doctor can look at our bums. My mother caught us once and dragged me home and
smacked my beee-hind with a hairbrush. She always calls it my beee-hind when she's mad enough to spank me. She said we were dirty and filthy and we'd end up like so-called Mrs. Harris.”

I showed Cassandra where Mrs. Butterfield lives.

“She hits her kids all the time, but not like my mother wallops my beee-hind. None of her kids are old enough for me to play with so none of them are my friends, but I feel sorry for all of them. Sometimes they come to school with black eyes or bruises on their arms and they say they fell down the stairs. How can three kids fall down the stairs so many times all the time? My mother says it is none of my business. My mother also tells me to keep my hands to myself. One day I saw Mrs. Butterfield smack Laura across the mouth. I saw Laura's eyes go all dark like the black part was running into the colored part and I heard Mrs. Butterfield say, ‘That'll learn ya.' I don't know what Laura has to learn, but Mrs. Butterfield should learn to keep her hands to herself, even if it isn't any of my business. The next day at school Laura was missing a tooth, and I gave her the dime I got from the tooth fairy for the tooth I lost that week. After I wondered if I should have given my dime to Donnie and Ronnie to beat up Mrs. Butterfield.”