Goat’s milk, which I’ve never tasted, but still …
Joey is way ahead of us, because Cassie and I are bouncing a ball, playing that game. It’s my turn: “W my name is Wilma and my husband’s name is Woodrow—”
“The cat’s name,” Cassie says.
“What are you talking about? Woodrow Wilson was a president.”
“It’s the cat’s name,” she says firmly.
I miss and the ball bounces away from me. It’s impossible to have a friendship with Cassie. Now she’s naming my cat.
“Clarence,” I say, and catch my breath, because Joey’s reached a bridge over the river.
Before I can stop him, he climbs up and begins to walk along the outside of the railing. He teeters, then balances himself, one arm out; one foot edges in front of the other.
My hand goes to my mouth. I want to yell at him to get down, but I’m afraid if I do, he’ll fall. Next to me, Cassie is frozen.
A moment later, Joey sails off at the end. Safe!
I let out my breath. Joey, always doing something dangerous.
I do yell now. “What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind?”
But he just grins at me.
A few steps, and Cassie and I stand at the bridge to look down: a terrifying drop. “Don’t ever do that again,” I call after him, but I could be talking to the air. Already he’s way ahead of us again.
We pass the school, with its faded drawings on the windows. My throat tightens. I just have to hope that no one saw me that day. I’ve spent every free minute reading Anne of Green Gables, but with every page, I know I shouldn’t have taken those books.
Cassie gives the ball a bounce. “X my name is—” she begins, and breaks off. “It’s the best luck in the world that the school is closed.”
I know she’s buying time so she can think of a name that begins with X, but still it reminds me that there isn’t one thing we agree on.
Ahead of us, Joey stops at the gate with the sign: GET YOUR GOAT.
We walk up the path and angle back toward the barn. The goat lady sits on the ground, her legs stretched out in front of her. Next to her is a gray goat with pale green eyes and two small horns next to her ears.
The goat lady looks up and smiles. “We’ve been waiting for a buyer,” she says. “Xenia and I.”
“Is that with an X?” Cassie asks.
The goat lady nods. “She’s my twenty-fourth goat. I’m going right through the alphabet. Maybe because I’m a teacher.” She smiles at us. “Mrs. Collins.”
Cassie and I look at each other. X my name is Xenia. Then I stare at Mrs. Collins. “A teacher?”
She’s still patting Xenia. “The school is closed.” She leans forward. “Do you know that schools have been closed in twenty-four states?”
“Because of the Depression?” I say.
“Exactly.”
I shake my head, but Cassie puts her arms around the goat’s neck. She looks thrilled for the kids in twenty-four states, especially herself.
“In the meantime,” Mrs. Collins says, “someone broke into my school.…” She looks as if she’s going to cry.
I feel heat creeping up my neck.
She tries to smile. “But you’re new.” She closes her eyes. “Let me guess. You live on the farm with the stained-glass window.”
“Yes.” I hope she doesn’t see that my face is red. I want to blurt out, I wasn’t the one, I would never—
“You walked a long way,” she says. She begins to tell us how to take care of the goat. What to feed her. How to keep her warm and happy. That goats like to eat strange things.
I can hardly listen. If only I could tell her I’d give anything to go back to school, to learn new words, to write … write letters, write poetry, write anything.
She must see that I want to say something. She stops talking, one hand in the air. Her eyes have lines around them. She squints and the lines become deeper, almost like rays of the sun.
“It’s just …” I shake my head.
She smiles, waiting.
But I never say any of it, because I see a flash of something from the corner of my eye.
I turn quickly. Is that the mountain lion boy, standing behind a fence, back by the trees? I can almost hear his voice. You don’t belong here. I take a step back.
Mrs. Collins doesn’t see that. She waits for a minute more, but then she gives us a bag of feed. “To start you off.”
“Thank you,” Joey and Cassie say together, but I’m still staring over Mrs. Collins’s shoulder.
She turns. “The stream out back is great for trout.”
She waves at the boy. He has a fishing pole in his hand, Was he at the school that morning? Was he the one who saw me?
“Would you like to see the cows?” Mrs. Collins asks, but before Cassie or Joey can answer, I say, “We have to get home. We have to get the goat settled.”
For once Cassie doesn’t argue. I can’t imagine why, unless she sees how anxious I am to get out of there.
I take Xenia by the rope Mrs. Collins has tied around her neck and lead her down the driveway, listening to the bells on her collar.
When we reach the road, I stop and look back over my shoulder.
“What’s the matter with you?” Cassie says.
I turn to Joey. “Did you see that boy fishing?”
He shakes his head.
I breathe again. We take turns leading the goat, petting her, and I’m so glad to glimpse the house ahead of us that I smile at Cassie.
Dear Miss Mitzi,
Our goat is thriving. Xenia was supposed to live in the barn, but Cassie thought she’d be lonesome with only the marigolds to keep her company.
So now we have hay in the pantry for Xenia’s bed. She loves to eat apples and raisins and my socks.
She’s a climber. She stands at the window with her front hooves on the low sill, chewing her cud.… Is that what they chew?
I miss learning words with you, Miss Mitzi. I love the sounds of them, the feeling of letters on my tongue and in my throat. I have to tell you that I talk to myself. Sometimes I make up words to go with whatever I’m thinking.
We miss Pop so much. Our letters are piling up on the table, waiting to be sent, and still we don’t hear from him. It’s a worry … such a worry.
And wanting to go to school is like wishing for Christmas. But I’ve done something I shouldn’t have. Every time I think about it, I go outside and run across the field to stop remembering what I’ve done. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Love,
Rachel
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
This morning, I stand in my bedroom with Miss Mitzi’s letter in my hand and read a piece of it aloud: “ ‘Look in the mirror and tell yourself what you did wrong, Rachel. Then figure out how to fix it no matter how hard that is. Know that I love you.’ ”
I stare at the mirror, with its wavy lines. “I shouldn’t have broken into the school. I shouldn’t have borrowed those books,” I say aloud.
I know I have to go back to the school. At least I’ve finished Anne of Green Gables. I loved it when she said her life was a graveyard of buried hopes. I close my eyes and wish there were a house down the road and Anne lived in it.
I sit on the floor and read a couple of pages of Understood Betsy, but I’ll never get to finish it now. Then I tiptoe downstairs with the books, careful not to wake Joey and Cassie, and let myself out. It’s early; a few stars are visible and a dusty moon lights the road ahead.
By the time I reach the school, daylight has edged its way up over the trees, and the moon has become a pale white sliver.
I wait for a few minutes, making myself count to one hundred and then another hundred, but no one’s there. “Poor school,” I whisper. “All alone with nobody getting ready to come for the day. No teachers. No children.”
At last I walk around to the back, on tiptoes again even though there’s no one to hear. The box is still there under the wind
ow, but a few weeds have begun to sprout around it.
It takes only a few minutes to climb inside and go down the hall to the principal’s office. I slip the two books back onto the shelf, filling the space where they belonged. I touch all the books; I have nothing new to read now and no way of getting a book. I run down the hall and climb out the window. I toss the stones and the box away, and I’m on the road.
Safe.
But not safe. I see a boy and I know who he is. And he sees me, too.
I take the long walk home and let myself into the kitchen. Cassie sits at the table, holding her head in her hands. I remember Pop sitting at that same spot, the day he told us he had to leave.
If only we could hear from him.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Cassie.
She doesn’t answer. She gets up and works the pump at the sink, up and down, up and down; the water splashes.
What can I say? “I wish I had something new to read,” I tell her at last.
“Is that all you think about?” she asks. “Always with your nose in a book instead of doing something instructive.”
“Constructive.”
“What a know-it-all you’ve turned out to be,” she says. “Just read that Betsy book.”
I can’t tell her it’s gone.
But she’s on to something else. “When does the man come for the rent?”
“Soon.”
She leans her head against the pump, but before I can figure out what’s the matter, Joey comes into the kitchen. “Ready to work on the garden?” he asks.
Cassie turns. “How about going fishing?”
We both blink. Cassie hates fish.
But Joey and I love fish. Pop used to cook smelts at home, and sometimes fluke.
“We need to save,” she reminds us.
I can’t believe it. She’s worried about money.
Joey looks at me.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll work on the garden.”
Before I go outside, I lean over the gate we’ve put up. Xenia’s eating some of the food Mrs. Collins gave us. She wiggles her nose with each bite and I pat her long ears.
In the barn I find a cloche hat on a hook. The felt is torn and dusty but I pull it down over my hair like a bell. It reminds me of Miss Mitzi in the blue cloche that matches her eyes, her curls escaping from the sides. Miss Mitzi, ready to take me shopping at the department store on Fulton Street.
Ah, Miss Mitzi.
I look around. I’d like to lie there in the hay with a lovely new book—and forget about gardening. Instead, I drag out a bunch of farm tools, most of which are incomprehensible to me.
Is that the right word?
Is that even a word?
I think about my garden. I’m going to make it even bigger than the one Joey and I began. I bend over, using a shovel. I hack away, but almost nothing happens. The ground is hard as cement.
Overhead, the sun is strong. It’s much too hot for the hat. I toss it over my shoulder and hack some more. And then I start to get into the rhythm of it. Dig, dig deeper, turn the weeds up, the soil up.
After a while, I throw myself on the warm earth. I grab a long brown weed and yank it. And then another.
Lying there, I keep pulling. I can see the clear spot becoming larger, the edge of the garden uneven, but satisfying. I get on my knees and reach for a trowel that will fit in my hand. I rough up the ground …
And keep going.
At last Cassie raps on the kitchen window. It’s lunchtime. I stand up and nearly fall over. My face is stiff; my knees ache; one foot is asleep.
I look down at my work. The earth is dark and rich.
I love the way it looks.
It’s almost as good as reading.
In the kitchen, I’m surprised to see three plates with paper napkins underneath them. On each plate is a sandwich. The bread is cut unevenly, but I love the peanut butter and jelly.
“Best lunch I’ve had since Pop left,” Joey says.
I gobble down the sandwich and then I go outside again. I wander into the barn to find a wheelbarrow that I saw the other day.
On the back wall is a drawing. It’s rough, because the wall is rough. The picture shows a girl. She’s reading a book that covers her face.
What is she reading?
Who is she?
Around the drawing is a pile of hay. From the way it’s pressed down, I figure the artist must have knelt there as she drew.
I wheel the wheelbarrow outside and throw in the weeds I’ve pulled up. I spend the rest of the afternoon pulling and throwing, then emptying the wheelbarrow behind the barn.
From there I see the stream. Joey, his feet in the water, waves the fishing pole Miss Mitzi gave him. Beyond him, I see rows of fern.
Oh, Miss Mitzi, you’d love this.
I don’t stop working until late in the afternoon, when Joey walks by with three fish on a string.
Poor things.
Never mind the poor things.
We need the food.
And it’s free.
We eat the fish from head to tail. It’s crispy; it’s so good; I’ve never tasted anything so good. I thank Joey. I even thank Cassie.
She’s a good cook; I have to give her that. And she’s put a couple of wild onions and chives on top to cover the fish. “So we don’t have to see their sad eyes,” she says.
She looks sad, too. Her eyes are red. I wonder if she’s been crying.
I try not to think about it. In the field, she’s found wild strawberries for dessert. They’re no bigger than my pinky nail, but they’re sweet; we sit there, satisfied.
Imagine, strawberries!
But something’s wrong with my face. I feel it and Cassie sees it. “Rachel’s as red as a beet,” she tells Joey.
“You’re sunburned,” he says.
“Didn’t you wear a hat?” Cassie’s eyes are narrowed, as if the sunburn is all my fault.
That Cassie.
My face is so stiff now, I can hardly open my mouth. I push my plate away and go into the living room to ease myself down on the mattress. The pain is worse every minute.
Joey comes in with thick white paste in a small bowl. “Baking powder and water,” he says. “It’s old and wormy, though. I found it in the cupboard.”
I try to smile at him. I know he was remembering last summer after a hot day swimming. Pop made the paste and spent the night slathering the three of us with it.
I don’t care that Joey’s paste is old, or even that it’s wormy. I sit up and smear it over my face. It’s cool and it helps. I dab some on the back of my neck, and so what that it’s in my hair?
Then I sleep through until the next morning. I wake up as soon as it’s light and roll off the mattress, easing myself up. As sunburned as I am, I can’t wait to get outside to work on the garden. I can see the square of deep brown earth. I’ll rake it until it’s smooth and ready to plant.
The green plants will come up, and then we’ll have vegetables!
Dear Miss Mitzi,
Today Cassie was crying in the kitchen. She says something must have happened to Pop, because he still hasn’t written to us. I reminded her that he said it might be a while, even though I’m uneasy, too.
But Joey said maybe she’s worried about something else. I asked him why he thought that, but he just raised his shoulders in the air.
I keep remembering her crying and how much I loved her when we were little. I don’t know what happened to us. Cassie is mean; but I’m mean, too.
I tried to say something friendly. I began telling her about my Rebecca book.
After two minutes, she slammed down a plate. “If you cared so much about a book, you wouldn’t be leaving it in the kitchen to get ruined.”
“I do not. I certainly—”
She cut right in. “You like books better than me, anyway.”
Joey put his finger to his lips, warning me not to say anything I’d be sorry about.
I tried something else. “How is your p
ainting going?”
She burst into tears, went upstairs, and banged her bedroom door shut.
Maybe gold isn’t such a hot color for an orange girl.
Love,
Rachel
Dear Pop,
I’ve been working on the garden. The earth is a wonderful chocolate brown. I used the rest of my birthday money to buy vegetable seeds and planted all of them. Afterward I made paper markers so I can tell what everything is—and where everything is. I even drew pictures with pink and purple pastels that were left on the secret stairs: wiggly drawings of radishes and carrots.
We’re still sleeping in the living room. Xenia, the goat, is sleeping with us. We all love Xenia, especially Cassie. But Xenia loves chewing on the end of the mattress. She’s made a hole in Joey’s. The stuffing is coming out.
The chicks are in the kitchen. We have to be careful not to step on them. They skitter from one end to the other. They’ve lost their yellow Easter look and I have to say they’re a little ugly, poor things.
Listen, Pop. Try to write when you can. I haven’t spent any more of the money you left. It’s in the kitchen cabinet. But I know we’ll have to pay the rent, and we’ll need food really soon. I’m a little worried, because that will be the last of the money.
Love,
Rachel
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It’s usually hard to keep track of time, but one thing I’m sure of. I’ll have to go to town on Tuesday and pay the rent. It will take almost every cent of what we have saved in the kitchen cabinet.
Two more days!
On my way downstairs, I pass Cassie’s bedroom. She’s up, painting; her room is almost finished.
In the living room, Xenia stands at the curtains—bile-green ones, Miss Mitzi would say. They were left by the old owners.
Xenia doesn’t mind bile-green. She’s eaten one curtain up as far as she can reach, and started on the next one.
“Hey,” I say.
She turns, chewing thoughtfully, staring at me with those watery green eyes.
How can all that fabric be in her stomach?
I clap my hands at her. “You’re going to the barn, lonely or not, as soon as I have time to make a place for you.”
Outside, I breathe in the warm air and smile at my plants, pale strings that soon will be vegetables. I’ve planted the marigolds in the corners. Everything looks spectacular.