Ghost Girl (14 page)

Miss Vest cocked her head back, squinting closer at the boards. Then she rolled over on her stomach and stopped. “What's that?”

She had seen them. The rolled-up pieces of paper I had lodged into the cracks near my pillow. Miss Vest sat up and reached for the lamp beside the bed. She held it up, letting the light slide across the boards. I hadn't realized until then how many slips of paper I had curled and stuffed into every nook and cranny. There were lots of them. A whole summer's worth.

“Those are my wish lists,” I said softly.

She turned to look at me. “You mean you really made them?” she asked. “Can I see?”

I could feel myself blushing as I leaned across her and pulled the closest roll of paper from the wall. I gave it to her, and she set the lamp at her feet and smoothed out the strip of paper on her knee.

“April,” she whispered, “you did this on your own?
Look.
‘Fur Collar. Cuffs. Cast-Iron Range. Christmas Tree Tinsel.' . . . Can you really read these?”

“Uh-huh. I worked on them every day this summer, and this fall, too.” I reached for another list and unrolled it on the bed. “Here's one I made with prices.” I followed the words with my finger and slowly said them out loud, “Jewel Box . . . one dollar ninety-eight cents. . . . Lace Drapes . . . three dollars. . . . All-Silk Umbrella . . . five dollars ninety-five cents.”

Miss Vest listened with her mouth open, and I wanted to burst with how proud I felt each time she pulled down a new list from the wall. There were all kinds of lists—some with only
B
things like “Bungalow” and “Butterfly Book” and “Baby Buggy” and others with just
K
or
L
words. Some were dream lists for Aunt Birdy and some for Daddy. On one list I had written down “Rain Bonnet,” then changed my mind and erased “Bonnet,” thinking how nice it would be just to have the Rain. I waited for Miss Vest to get tired of hearing me read, but she just kept pulling the lists down until we had a whole pile of curly papers in the middle of the bed.

There were only a few lists left in the cracks when she handed me one that I didn't want her to see. But before I could sneak it into the pile, she leaned over to find out what had made me turn quiet.

“You only wrote one word on that one,” Miss Vest said, peering over my shoulder. “Phonograph. But why'd you cross it out? Did you decide you don't want a phonograph after all?”

“I don't know why I wrote that,” I mumbled. “Anyhow, we used to have one.”

Miss Vest looked surprised. “You had a phonograph?”

I nodded. “A Victrola. I reckon I saw the picture in the catalog and it got me thinking. . . . But I wouldn't want another one.”

“Why not? What happened to it?”

I stared down at the smudged letters on the scrap of paper in my lap. “We sold it to the Jessups,” I said finally. “When Riley died. He was crazy about that Victrola and seeing it sit there quiet day after day just reminded Mama too much. So Daddy sold it.”

Miss Vest reached over and took my hand. “I'm sorry,” she said. We sat for a while without saying anything, and I didn't take my hand away. Then Miss Vest smiled and started to push herself up from the bed. “We'd better get down to the party.”

“It was playing when it happened,” I whispered.

Miss Vest turned around. “What'd you say, April?”

I swallowed hard. “You know that song ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart'?”

Miss Vest sat down again. “Yes.”

“That was the one playing.”

My heart fluttered up in my chest. I hadn't meant to tell. I had never told anyone before. But somehow before I could stop myself, Miss Vest was nodding and holding my hand again and I was saying more. “That was our favorite song. Riley and me used to play it over and over again when Mama and Daddy weren't home. We were trying to learn how to waltz, like they had showed us once. We wanted to surprise Mama. But that night, the night it happened, Riley was tired and wanted to stop, but I didn't want to, not until we got it perfect. So I just kept cranking up the Victrola and pulling him around the room.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, everything was blurry with tears like I was looking at Miss Vest through a piece of thick glass. “Riley started whining a little and it made me mad. I remember saying, ‘Don't you want to surprise Mama? You're her favorite, aren't you? Aren't you her favorite?'” I swiped the tears out of my eyes. “Wasn't that an awful thing to say to a little boy, Miss Vest?”

“April, we all say things we don't mean when we're angry.”

I closed my eyes again and shook my head back and forth. “I was dancing him around so fast, I didn't even see it happen. . . . But we must have moved too close to the fire and his nightshirt caught—”

I heard Miss Vest suck in her breath. She squeezed my hand tighter.

“And all of a sudden, it was on fire. And I just froze. . . .
I just stood there
. . . . I was too scared to run for water or push him out in the snow, and he was tearing around the room. . . .”

“Oh, April,” Miss Vest whispered. For a minute I sank against her, letting the tears drip down. She rocked me back and forth a little and said, “Shh, shh.” Finally, I reached up to wipe my nose with the back of my hand and all at once, I remembered Little Elton's washrag and all the people downstairs.

I jerked up straight. “Miss Vest,” I said in a panic, “
you can't ever tell Mama.
She and Daddy don't know. I told them Riley got burned when I was out fetching wood . . . and—and all this time, they believed me. They figure Riley was playing in the fire or something, but that's not true. He never would have done that. . . .
Never.
He knew better. But I can't tell Mama it was all my fault, I can't—”

But Miss Vest wasn't even looking at me. She was looking over my shoulder. Then I heard the creak. When I turned around, Mama was standing on the ladder, staring at us, with just her head and shoulders poking through the opening to the loft. She climbed another step, rising up just like the genie from the bottle in Miss Vest's book of fairy tales.

Then she stopped. Even in the shadows, I could see the hurt burning in her eyes. “You don't need to tell me nothing, either one of you. I heard it all.”

Her voice was shaking. I could see it took all her strength just to hang on to the ladder and keep from screaming at us.

Miss Vest tried to push herself up from my bed. “Mrs. Sloane—”

But as soon as Miss Vest spoke, Mama let go. “All this time, April, you been lying to me!” she shrieked, dragging herself up into the loft. “If it weren't for you, he'd still be here!”

Miss Vest stepped in front of Mama, blocking her from bearing down on me. “Mrs. Sloane!” she cried. “It was an accident, a terrible accident, but April—”

Mama turned on her, her face twisting with fury. “
Get away from me!
You think you know everything there is to know about April, don't you? All this time you been wanting her back at school so bad.
Well, go ahead, then!
You got what you came for, didn't you? Take her with you when you go. I can't stand the sight of her anymore.”

Then without giving me another look, Mama disappeared down the ladder, leaving her words splitting through the air.

I stayed huddled up on my bed while Miss Vest hurried down to try and make things right again. I could hear the front door squeaking open and closed, then all the guests saying their goodbyes. Later I could hear Miss Vest's gentle voice humming on and on, then Daddy's and Aunt Birdy's voices, all coaxing and pleading with Mama to please, please come to her senses. I leaned forward, listening hard for Mama's answer, but there wasn't one word from her, not one.

I could picture her sitting at the table in the kitchen with her hands locked in a fist in her lap and her face full of bitterness. She was probably staring across at the fireplace in the front room, going over in her head what I had done to Riley.

After a while, I couldn't stand the waiting anymore. I packed my clothes and my wish lists into a bundle and climbed down the ladder. Aunt Birdy and Daddy and Miss Vest were standing around Mama, who was leaning into the sideboard scrubbing at the wood with a rag even though it was probably already clean. They all stopped when they saw me, and Mama turned. But I let my eyes brush past her hard stare. Then I walked outside and headed toward the fire pit where we had roasted the chestnuts.

It didn't take more than a minute for my wish lists to catch on the coals and burn down to ash. By the time Aunt Birdy came scurrying outside to find me, they were gone. I pretended to be warming my hands over the fire.

She stood beside me for a little bit, staring into the coals. “Why didn't you tell me, Apry?” she finally asked. “Why'd you keep such a thing locked up inside all this time?”

“It was all my fault. I didn't think you could forgive me if you knew the truth.”

Aunt Birdy put her arm around my shoulders. “There's no forgiving to it, honey. It was an accident, plain and simple. You never meant for such an awful thing to happen. We all know how much you loved Riley.”

I turned and buried my head in her old wool sweater. She wrapped her little arms around me and held on tight.

“Apry, honey, why don't you come stay with me till your mama's thinking clearer?”

I shook my head against her shoulder, trying not to start crying again. “Miss Vest says I can stay with her for a while.”

“But you should be with your kin right now, Apry.”

I sighed and pulled away. “She'd hold it against you if you take me in, Aunt Birdy. I'll just stay with Miss Vest for now till Mama . . . till she changes her mind.”

Daddy couldn't make things right, either. “It won't be long, April,” he said after joining me by the fire. “I bet your mama's gonna wake up tomorrow and be ready to talk this out. . . .”

I didn't hear the rest of what he said. All I could think of was his lady's-slipper story, about the little Indian girl lost forever in the snow. Daddy's eyes looked so sad. Would I be his Indian girl?

In the end, there was nothing for him to do but hitch up the wagon and drive me and Miss Vest to the schoolhouse in the dark. He helped me carry my things to the yellow room at the top of the stairs. I sat down on the bed, feeling numb all over. Then Daddy kissed me on the top of the head and told me he and Mama would come back for me soon.

One Sunday, not long after
my fourteenth birthday, we had a flag-raising ceremony at the schoolhouse. Mr. Jessup had put in a new flagpole out front overlooking the valley, and for weeks Wit had been helping our class learn the national anthem and some other patriotic songs to sing for the congregation once we raised the flag.

Everybody's parents were there but mine. A year before, I might have searched the crowd, praying to see Mama or Daddy somewhere in the wall of faces. “Today's the day,” I told myself at every school function. “Today's the day they'll come to take me home.” But I had given up hoping months ago—after the first Christmas passed without a word, then my thirteenth birthday, then the second Christmas.

Miss Vest and Aunt Birdy were my family now. Aunt Birdy never missed a chance to come to the schoolhouse. For the flag raising, she was wearing a little blue straw hat that I had never seen before. Even though it was old and had a sprig of tired silk daisies drooping off one side, the color brought out the blue in her eyes.

“So you're gonna be the one to raise the flag, Apry?” she asked me as we stood waiting for the ceremony to start. “How come you get to do it?”

“The kids in the class voted and picked me,” I told her, trying not to smile too wide.

“They did?” She gasped. “All of 'em voted for you? Even
you know who
?”