“Great,” I said.
Meanwhile, Lou had dropped her hands from the box she’d been trying to tug out of her aunt’s arms. She stood there for a moment, her hands hanging limply at her sides, her face oddly pale. Then she turned and rushed away.
I found Stacey, who suggested we take everyone to the Stoneybrook Elementary School playground. The idea was an instant hit with everyone, except possibly Lou. She didn’t say anything. She just put on her coat, gloves, and knit cap and stood silently by the door.
When we walked outside, she slipped her hand into mine, still without speaking.
At the playground, we ran into Mal and her brothers — the ten-year-old triplets, Byron, Jordan, and Adam, and eight-year-old Nicky — playing kickball. In no time at all, a large, energetic game had developed. I was glad to see Lou jump into the fray with the rest of the kids. I couldn’t help but notice how protective of her Jay was, something I suspected he had long been.
My spirits fell a little when Lou quit the game abruptly a few minutes later. She tried to catch a ball that Adam had kicked, but she missed and wound up with a streak of mud along the arm of her coat. She then danced up and down, shaking her arm as if something had bitten her, crying, “It’s dirty, it’s dirty.”
Everyone looked surprised. After all, while we weren’t at the playground to get deliberately dirty, it went with the territory.
“It’s okay, Lou,” I said, wiping most of the mud off with my mitten. But she didn’t seem to be comforted. And she didn’t return to the kickball game. She stood between me and Stacey and simply watched.
It was then that a lightbulb went on in my head. I was looking at the gathering of kids and thinking about the Black History Month project. I was completely stumped for ideas. Maybe the kids could help. They were beginning to look tired and cold anyway.
I pulled off one glove, put my fingers in my mouth, and blew a piercing whistle. “Okay, everybody, I’m calling a special Saturday SES playground assembly! Listen up.”
They all gathered around, even Stacey and Mal.
“This is the deal,” I said. “I need help with a project for school. I may also need a few volunteers.”
“What project?” asked Hannie.
“For Black History Month,” I said. That produced nods of recognition. “But I don’t know yet what my project is going to be about.”
“Kwanzaa,” said Linny. “We studied that in school in December. It’s a cool holiday. You could do your project on that.”
“It’s a good idea. But like you, most kids just finished studying Kwanzaa. I don’t think my teacher will go for the idea.”
Linny nodded, looking thoughtful.
“What about sports?” Mal asked. “You’re a sports fan. You could do a project on Wilma Rudolph and Jesse Owens.”
“Or the Negro Baseball Leagues,” said Jay.
I thought about that. It sounded good.
Then Nicky shouted, “No! Do the Underground Railroad. Do Mary Anne’s house!”
It was a brilliantly simple, simply brilliant idea. I stared at Nicky, openmouthed, then said, “That’s it! Nicky, you’re a genius.”
Nicky beamed.
Mal said, “Way to go, Nick.”
Mary Anne’s house is believed by some people to be haunted, in part because of the secret passage beneath it. The house was built in 1795 and used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad, which helped to smuggle slaves into the free North before the Civil War.
Lou pulled on my arm. “What about Mary Anne’s house?”
A cold gust of wind blew and I decided we’d all been outside long enough. “Let’s head back to your house, Lou, and I’ll explain.”
So as we walked home, I told Lou and Jay the story of the secret passage.
“I’ll help with your project,” Lou volunteered. “I can do lots of work. I’ll be really good and work really, really hard.”
I was pleased by Lou’s enthusiasm. She’d seemed so reserved up until now. “That’d be great,” I said.
“You’ll let me?” she asked.
“Silly,” said Jay. “Abby wants us all to help, don’t you?”
“Yup. Lou and you and everybody.”
“Wait until we tell Aunt Sarabeth and Uncle Mac that we’re helping Abby on a big, important middle-school project.” Lou gave a little skip and I hid a smile.
A big, important middle-school project?
Well, it was pretty big and important to me. I gave Lou’s hand a squeeze. This project was going to be a winner. I had a very good feeling about it.
And no idea of all the trouble that lay ahead.
Stoneybrook is rich in history.
If that sounds like the opening line of a project, that’s because it is. One of several I had in mind.
Unfortunately, the more research I did at the library and at the Stoneybrook Historical Society, the more it became clear that an opening line was the least of my worries. I mean, there are volumes and volumes of information about the Underground Railroad. Should I focus on Harriet Tubman, who had been one of the most famous members of the Underground Railroad? I decided against that, although she was certainly a very important part of it. But I was sure that other projects would have the same focus, and I didn’t think duplicating someone else’s material would impress Dolly One.
What about the daring escapes, like that of Henry Box Brown, who’d mailed himself to freedom in a box so small no one was suspicious of it? That had possibilities, but I didn’t think I had the capacity to film the escape, and if I didn’t film it, it would sound like just another book report to Dolly One. I was sure of that. The project would have to have something extra.
Maybe I could create an Underground Railroad map of Stoneybrook. It was a crossroads for one of the smaller lines of the Underground Railroad, sending fugitives north to Canada in a couple of directions. Not only that, but Abigail Grey, a leading abolitionist and Quaker, had been a resident of Stoneybrook and was suspected of being a Railroad station-master.
I was amazed and awed. And the more I read, the harder it became to narrow the subject. Not only did I feel pressure to make it the best project ever, but I also felt I could not do a disservice to such an important topic by turning in a crummy report.
By this time, Vanessa, Margo, and Claire Pike had also volunteered to be part of the project, which made thirteen kids in all, not including my fellow BSC members. I had enough volunteers. All I needed was something for them to do.
Time was passing far too quickly.
I finally decided on one thing. I was going to document my project on video. We have a video camera that is small and easy to use, so that was no problem.
I called a meeting of the “Railroad Project,” and we gathered at my house, along with Mal, Jessi, Stacey, and Claudia. When I announced the video idea, everyone was instantly enthusiastic.
“We can write a play! Hooray!” said Vanessa Pike. (She’s nine and plans to become a poet. She practices rhyming whenever possible.)
“I want to be a star,” Adam proclaimed.
“Me too,” Byron and Jordan chimed in.
“We could have a scary chase scene,” suggested Hannie. “We studied the Underground Railroad in school. One slave escaped by walking across chunks of ice in a freezing river — while she was holding her baby!”
I knew who Hannie envisioned starring in that scene.
Jay said, “Well, we can find a river and float blocks of ice in it. That would make it really real.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” I tried to calm the kids down. “We need to do more research before we make any decisions.”
That’s when I had a brilliant idea. I’d document the process of making the decision.
As everyone started talking again, I held up my hands. “This is the deal,” I explained. “We’re going to take a walk to the library. I want everybody to do some research: check out books, look up articles, even read the encyclopedia. Then at our next meeting, we’re going to
talk about what we learned.”
I glanced at Claudia, Stacey, and Mal, who nodded. We bundled everyone up and set out for the library.
* * *
The cool thing about the Stoneybrook Public Library (one of many) is that if you walk in one afternoon with thirteen kids who all want to do research on the same subject, the librarians take it in stride. Ms. Feld, the children’s librarian, bustled up to us with a big smile. In no time at all she had sorted us into groups by reading level. Soon the kids were up to their eyeballs, almost literally, in books, magazines, and reference materials.
Claudia said, “I’m going to work on visuals. Even if you don’t know what you’re going to do yet, you’re going to need titles. I was thinking I could do something with kente cloth.” She went in search of art books that might feature the traditional African pattern material. Mal set to work on her own project, which she described as a “deconstruction of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from 1852 until now.” It sounded impressive and made me more than a little worried about what I was going to do. Stacey found a book called Finances for Dummies and kept an eye on the kids while she turned pages and guffawed as if she were reading the funniest joke book ever.
After about twenty minutes of card catalog research and stack wandering I had an armful of books. I paged through all of them carefully, putting the ones I wanted to check out in a neat pile on one corner of the table and the ones I didn’t need right away on the chair next to me. I had just finished separating the books I wanted from the ones I didn’t when Lou appeared at my elbow. “Can I help you with something?” she asked.
“Maybe. I’ve got to look up some other books on Stoneybrook history and some more stuff about the Underground Railroad.”
A quick scroll through the computer card file gave me a new list of books. With Lou at my heels, I went into the stacks and began to pull more books from the shelves. Lou insisted on holding them.
One book wasn’t where it was supposed to be, although the computer had shown that it was not checked out. I squatted down and ran my finger across the shelf of books to make sure that it hadn’t been put back out of order. But I could find no sign of Get on Board, The Story of the Underground Railroad, by Jim Haskins.
“It’s got to be here,” I muttered.
“I could go ask Ms. Feld,” Lou volunteered.
“Good idea,” I said. “But put all those books down first before you drop them.”
“I won’t drop them, I promise,” Lou said quickly, but she set the books down and hurried away.
A minute later Lou came hurrying back. “Ms. Feld said that sometimes books have been returned but they haven’t yet been put back on the shelf. We should check and see if there are any library carts nearby that might have the one we want.”
She looked around and exclaimed, “There’s one. Which book was it?”
I told her and a moment later she was pointing triumphantly. “Here it is,” she said.
I don’t know what happened next. I do know that Lou pulled the book off the library cart — and the cart toppled over with a huge crash. Books cascaded around her legs and her face turned bright red.
“Lou! Are you all right?” I exclaimed.
Ms. Feld appeared at the end of the stack. “Oh, dear! I hope no one is hurt.”
Dropping to her knees, Lou began to scrabble frantically among the books. “It was an accident,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do it, honest. I promise. An accident.”
“Of course it was,” said Ms. Feld. “No harm done. Let’s just get this cart up and put the books back on it.”
She matched her actions to her words and, with Lou’s almost feverish help, had soon restored the books to the cart.
“Someone will come along and put these in the right order and shelve them a little later. Did you find your book?” Ms. Feld asked.
Lou’s hands clenched into fists. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I guess I … I put it back on the cart.”
“Well, it won’t be hard to find,” I said. I moved quickly between Lou and the cart, before she could help me. “Why don’t you take the books I’ve already picked out back to my table for me? That would be a big help.”
Lou nodded and hurried away. I quickly found the book and followed her.
Signs of restlessness in the troops (the triplets were spending their money making photocopies of their faces) alerted me to the fact that it was time to go.
“Let’s head out,” I said to Mal.
I went to my table to gather up my books, then stopped. The new books I had picked out were all there, neatly stacked up. But all the other ones I had been looking at were gone!
“Oh, no.”
Stacey looked up. “What?”
“Did a librarian come along and put away the books I had on the table?”
“No. Lou did. I thought that’s what you asked her to do.”
“No! She must have misunderstood.” I groaned. “We’re leaving now and I need those books.”
Claudia returned in time to overhear our conversation. “We’ll take everybody home,” she said. “You can look up the books again.”
“Thanks, Claud. I owe you.”
Claudia grinned. “I don’t want much. Just a credit in your documentary.”
Lou came running to me. “There are your books,” she said. “I put the others away.”
“Thanks,” I said. What else could I say?
“Come on,” Claudia said. “It’s time to go.”
Mallory and the Pikes were already heading for the exit. Mal signaled to us to hurry up, and I could tell that the Pikes had reached their limit, at least when it came to library time.
“What about you?” Lou asked. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ll catch up with you later,” I answered. “I still have research to do.”
I waved as everyone left the library. Then, with a weary sigh, I began to duplicate the work I’d done earlier. I didn’t have time for mistakes like this, I thought. Lou was trying to be helpful, but she was turning into a one-kid wrecking crew.
And I still didn’t have a clue as to what the project was going to be about.
“Keep talking, keep talking,” I urged.
Adam Pike stood up and bowed. “My name is Adam Pike.” He turned and stared straight into the camera and grinned a big, fake grin.
“Cut, cut, cut!” I cried, switching the camera off.
“What? What’s wrong?” Adam asked.
“You’re supposed to act natural,” I said. “This is a documentary, not Hollywood.”
“I am acting natural.”
“Ha!” hooted Byron. “Then why are you introducing yourself to people you already know?”
“I’m not. I’m introducing myself to my audience,” Adam answered.
“Forget about the audience,” Mal advised. “Just be yourself.”
“Oooh, boo,” Vanessa said.
“Adam, awful,” Jordan said.
Adam made a hideous face and sat down.
“Okay, let’s try again,” I said. “We’re discussing our research and talking about some of the things we’ve learned while we decide where to go with this project. Ready? Go.”
Silence.
More silence.
I clicked off the camera. “You guys,” I said. “Come on. All you have to do is talk.”
“What do you want us to say?” asked Linny Papadakis, who was sitting next to Jay.
“Talk about what interests you,” I said.
“Anything?” asked Hannie.
“About the Underground Railroad,” I amended.
Lou raised her hand as if she were in school.
“Go ahead, Lou,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. She lowered her hand. “I’ll go first.”
“Great! Thanks, Lou.”
I reset the camera. Lou cleared her throat and then said, “Stoneybrook was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. I didn’t know that, because I just moved to Stoneybrook.”
?
??You lived in Stoneybrook before,” said Hannie.
Lou smiled, almost normally. “I was visiting,” she said.
“It wasn’t really a railroad,” said Nicky. “It was just called that.”
“Why?” I asked quickly.
Several people began to talk at once. “One at a time,” Kristy reminded them.
After that, everyone seemed to forget about the camera. The discussion ranged far and wide, from the stories of wagons with false bottoms that had been used to transport the fugitives to freedom, to an argument over what the best disguise would be (initiated, naturally, by the Pike triplets).
It was the second meeting of the Railroad Project, held at my house with help from Mal, who’d brought her brothers and sisters, and Kristy, who’d come over with the McNallys and the Papadakises.
I couldn’t have gotten even this far without the help of the other BSC members, who were on hand and injected a little order into the potential chaos. However, I couldn’t help but feel that Kristy, our fearless leader and Most Organized Person on the Planet, was being, well, just a little judgmental.
Was it something she said? No. It was all the things she didn’t say. She was uncharacteristically short on suggestions. She didn’t even attempt to rearrange everything to suit her idea of efficiency.
Normally, I would have been glad, but now it was making me nervous. What did Kristy know that I didn’t? What did she think I was missing?
Besides a focus for my project, of course. I still hadn’t narrowed the subject down. And apart from the video documentation, I still hadn’t chosen a format.
But it would come to me, I reassured myself. Therefore, I resolutely ignored Kristy’s tactful silence.
“Low-battery break,” I announced when I saw the camera had run down.
“Empty-stomach break,” Jay said.
“It’s your lucky day,” Kristy proclaimed. “We’re making popcorn.” (We’d arranged this before.) “Who wants to help?”
You know the answer, right?
Everyone.
So we all trooped into the kitchen. Even though it was my kitchen, Kristy took charge, handing out chores and aprons like a master chef/drill sergeant. I think she was relieved to be in control again.