Beholding Bee (24 page)

“Why don’t you eat? You won’t last long if you don’t eat.”

“I just need a little nap.” There is a long pause while Mrs. Swift stirs her hot water.

“You’re not going, are you?” I reach for Mrs. Potter’s cake and take a bite.

“That’s right. We’re not going to that meeting, Bee.” Mrs. Potter sips her tea.

“Why not this once? Why can’t you be there for me when I need you?” I finish the cake. Mrs. Potter looks down at her tea. I jump up. “Why do you hide here all the time
and never let anyone see you? Why don’t you at least show yourself to Mrs. Marsh? You know she’s the cause of this whole thing. She was at my school the other day!”

“We came for you, Beatrice. Not for anyone else.” Mrs. Swift sips at her hot water. “And we won’t be here forever, just until you can stand on your own feet.”

They’ve been talking like this lately, and each time they do I feel a bear gnawing at the bottom of my belly. “Where are you going?” I have to reach out and touch Mrs. Potter to make sure I can still feel the warmth in her arm. Already she is fading so I can hardly see her.

“We will not leave until everything is set.” Mrs. Swift looks up at me. Her eyes are thin pools of violet.

“Until what’s set?”

“Soon enough, my dear, we’ll explain everything.” Mrs. Swift stands up and takes Mrs. Potter by the arm and they help each other walk to the library for another nap.

“Oh, would you look up the word
prevaricate
for me, Beatrice? I have a feeling it is going to make me very angry, but I do need to know.”

107

“Where are your guardians?” the principal wants to know when I get called to the office.

“My aunts?”

“Yes, they were supposed to attend this meeting. They are already half an hour late.”

“Oh,” I say, whispering, “they are ill.”

The principal sits forward. “I don’t care whether they are feeling well or not. They must be present at this meeting. We need to discuss your situation. You are not supposed to be here. They are.”

Lordy. I tap my foot. My face is hot. My diamond must be blood-red by now. “They are so old, they do get terribly tired,” I whisper. I look at the floor.

The principal sits back and looks at me for a while. I want to cover my diamond because I know it is being looked at, but I sit on my hands instead.

In a few minutes, Mrs. Marsh knocks on the door and wants to come in and the principal tells her to have a seat, like they have this all arranged.

She sits forward and looks over at me. “I tell you there are no aunts. She is in that house herself.”

And then Ruth Ellen’s mama is here, wanting to come in. “May I have a word?” She is tapping at the door. “It is about this child.”

The principal sits back and says how this is very odd,
that Ruth Ellen’s mama has not been invited, but since there is no one else who will speak for me, yes, she can come in. I hear her tell Sammy he must sit quietly in the hall with his book.

Then she comes into the office. She is surprised as I am to see Mrs. Marsh, but she is quiet about it as she sits beside me on the sofa and takes my hand. I thank her with my eyes for coming. I told her yesterday I didn’t think my aunts would come.

“Her aunts are feeling poorly and are wondering if I could speak for them? They are quite aged. I have never seen a child better cared for, if that helps.”

“This is highly unusual,” the principal says. “I don’t know.”

Mrs. Marsh stands up. “I keep telling you, there are no aunts.”

“How can you say that?” says Ruth Ellen’s mama. “Why, I just had tea with them this morning.”

“I thought you said they were feeling poorly,” says Mrs. Marsh. She has narrowed her eyes.

“I brought ginger tea to them. Beatrice told me yesterday that they have been feeling poorly and probably wouldn’t be able to attend this meeting.”

I know Ruth Ellen’s mama is making everything up. She gives Mrs. Marsh a sharp look and turns toward the principal.

“The house is clean and polished and cared for. The ladies love their niece dearly. And they said to tell you her older cousin Pauline is coming back to live with them. She’s twenty-four and is surely old enough to be Bee’s guardian as the aunts are growing older.”

I look up quickly. Ruth Ellen’s mama winks very slowly and carefully so no one else can see.

“This is a lie,” says Mrs. Marsh. Her face is red, darker than my diamond. “I have been watching over the house she is living in for several years. The gentleman who owned it has recently passed and now it is in probate while ownership is determined.”

“What do you have against this child, ma’am?” Ruth Ellen’s mama asks. “Don’t you know she is the heir?”

And then everyone is looking at Mrs. Marsh, which is a very nice change.

The principal clears his throat and turns to Mrs. Marsh. “Do you have proof that the child is living alone?”

Mrs. Marsh is losing ground. “Well, no,” she sputters. “Except no one is ever there.”

“Maybe they’re out a lot,” snaps the principal, “taking walks or napping or doing things old ladies like to do.”

He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest and watches me for a minute. Then he sits up. “Okay, we will proceed as before. Back to class, Beatrice.”

Ruth Ellen’s mama sits up. “Sir, when you suggested this class, it sounded like a nice safe place for Ruth Ellen because she was being teased so much about her leg. Now I see it is something much different. I do not think these children should be hidden away to make things easier for them. It embarrasses them and makes them different, and they will never learn to be part of anything. Perhaps if anyone needs a special class like this it is all the poor-mannered children you have around here.”

And that’s how all the attention flies off me. Ruth Ellen’s mama has given me a present, tied with a bow. Thank
you, I say with just my eyes, and she smiles back, and I am proud of her speaking up like this.

“I shall pursue this,” Ruth Ellen’s mama says. “There is a great deal of discussion about this over at the university among the professors and their students. I attended a meeting last week. They call themselves progressive.”

The principal sputters. “I don’t know,” he says. “Children like this need to be separated in a class by themselves. They need the care and attention that can only be provided when they are separate.”

“They need to be included,” says Ruth Ellen’s mama, standing up and getting ready to walk out. “They don’t need to be looked at.”

I am glowing so much over Ruth Ellen’s mama’s accomplishment, and then I realize what is so funny about what the principal is saying.

I let my head fill with the pictures of Robert and Thomas dive-bombing and Susan climbing all over Ruth Ellen, and Ruth Ellen letting her, and then of Susan falling and me losing the race and Jonathan coming up and patting my back.

“You’re right,” I say, grinning more and more and more until my smile stretches across my diamond. “We are in a class by ourselves.”

And then I laugh out loud.

108

Miss Healy wants to know all about the meeting when I get back to class. She brings me over to the rocking chair, where we can talk privately.

“There has been some speculation here that you may be living in some unusual circumstances. Is there any truth to what I am hearing?”

She takes my hand and squeezes it. She looks at me kindly. I know she wants the best for me.

“My aunts love me very much,” I tell her. “I am fine.”

Miss Healy nods. I go over to our table and Susan wraps her arms around me and Ruth Ellen asks where I have been. I look at the arithmetic paper in front of me. The numbers swim around like they don’t know where they belong. I rub my eyes. My stomach rumbles.

After a while, Miss Healy comes over and kneels beside me. “Why don’t you go out and sit under that tree, Beatrice, and work on your basket for a while. When you get some of those loose ends all woven together, you can come back in and make another start.” She hands me a piece of banana bread. “You might be hungry.”

I think maybe she is right about things. I put on my coat and go out and sit in the sun and wonder about how sometimes things fall apart and how sometimes, if you work on it, they get put back together. And then I set the basket in my
lap and begin weaving, stopping every so often for another bite of banana bread.

At supper that night I tell Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Swift about the meeting and about what Miss Healy asked about them. They have not touched the molasses cake I put on the table.

Mrs. Swift looks over at Mrs. Potter and clears her throat, a thin, fleeting sound, and Mrs. Potter turns to me. “I think, dear, it is time to get Pauline.”

Maybe so, I think, my heart breaking all over again as I try to block out the last time I saw her, when Arthur was pulling her away.

109

The next afternoon while we are sitting around Ruth Ellen’s table eating spice cake, her mama wants to know if I would like to learn how to make shepherd’s pie.

My mouth is so stuffed I have to wait a minute to answer, but I nod right away and I think she gets the idea. “Peabody would love it,” I say.

While we are browning the hamburger, Ruth Ellen takes Sammy out for some fresh air so Ruth Ellen’s mama can help me cook. She has been telling me it is very relaxing to be chopping and measuring and sautéing and mixing. “It is nice to keep your mind concentrated on something and not on your troubles.”

Yes, I know all about needing to do that, I tell her while I am watching her mince garlic. I wonder if she chops and minces to help her forget they haven’t heard from Ruth Ellen’s papa in so long. She hands me another clove and shows me how to smash it with the side of the knife so the skin falls off. Then she shows me how to chop in a fine mince. “You kind of roll the knife, see?”

Then we chop onions. I am very good at this and I show her how I do it.

“Why, that’s the best onion dice I’ve ever seen!” Ruth Ellen’s mama starts giggling because she knows how much experience I’ve had with chopping onions.

It is relaxing to be cooking with Ruth Ellen’s mama. I forget all about the meeting in the principal’s office and start daydreaming about how I would like to bake a birthday cake
for myself with real sugar and real buttercream frosting. I do like buttercream very much.

“You can take half of this shepherd’s pie home to your aunts for supper. Do you think they will like it?” Ruth Ellen’s mama is hunting through the cabinet for a big enough pan to bake everything in.

I think so. I tell her all about how they don’t eat much and I am quite worried about them.

“Tell me more about your aunts, Bee. I haven’t gotten to meet them yet.”

I chop celery and think about how to describe Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Swift. “Well, they are awfully aggravating sometimes because they do not let anyone get to meet them. They do not like Mrs. Marsh at all.”

“No,” agrees Ruth Ellen’s mama. “I can see why.”

She giggles and then I do, too. I reach for another stalk of celery. She peels and washes six potatoes and hands them to me. “We need these in small bite-sized pieces.”

She starts peeling and chopping carrots. “Bee, your aunts are really real and you’re not just making them up so you can have a place to live? Because you know you could live with us anytime you want.”

I look at her and my eyes start filling up and I do not know if it is the onions or the kindness she just said.

“They are real,” I tell her. “Peabody loves them, too.”

“Well,” she says slowly, “I guess you cannot fool a dog.” And then Ruth Ellen’s mama, being the way she is, so good about children and what they feel and what they have to say, says she believes me.

But she tells me that perhaps it is time to go get Pauline.

“Funny,” I say. “That’s just what my aunts said.”

110

We have to wait for spring. Even a stay-put show like the one Ellis set up in Poughkeepsie has to close for winter.

I use the time to write to
The Billboard
and get a subscription. Bobby told me he won’t try and find me until the war is over and he is done building bombers but I want to be ready. So I stuff some money in an envelope and carefully write the address on the front and mail it, hoping I have done everything right.

One day in late February, the postman drops my first copy of
The Billboard
in our mailbox. Without even telling Mrs. Potter or Mrs. Swift, I grab it and race up to my room and stretch out on my bed, with Peabody beside me. There is a picture of Lawrence Welk on the cover and a “Gone to War” ad from Wurlitzer on the back. It seems all the people who make pianos, accordions, and phonographs have stopped making music and are now working on the war effort until we get our victory. “Work faster,” I whisper.

I flip open the pages and look around for an advertisement that says “Anyone knowing whereabouts of Robert Benson.” I look at each inch of print. A traveling show in Norfolk is looking for a tattooed man and a carnival in Little Rock wants someone to run a penny pitch and a fun house. A show in Baton Rouge will pay a merry-go-round foreman twenty-five dollars a week.

There’s a “Hotzi Notzi” pincushion for sale where you
get to stick your sewing pins in Hitler’s behind, and a story about greeting cards being a big seller during wartime, especially Valentine’s Day cards. There are money belts and boxes of paper shamrocks for sale and oodles of fortune-telling cards. I search through the entire issue twice, but there is no mention of Robert Benson. Peabody is wondering if I am going to look through everything again. No, I am not, I tell him, tucking the magazine under my pillow. Reading the whole thing again won’t make me feel any better, but I know what will.

“Come on,” I say, and we go take the compost bucket full of scraps out to Cordelia. I have never known anyone who loves getting their back scratched as much as my pig does, so while she is rooting around the apple peels and the squash seeds and the stale bits of bread stuck in the snow, I spend a good long while getting all the spots itched that need itching. She is getting so huge she doesn’t want to run anymore. I don’t care too much. I love her anyway.