Harry Sue (22 page)

“Can I be Anna again?” she persisted. “I'm partial to it. That was my great-grandmother's name.”

I nodded. Whatever.

She disappeared back up the driveway. Baba waited for me to ask about Mrs. Mead again. He wouldn't say more if I didn't ask.

“Mrs. Mead?”

“She wrote to your mother about you. And told her she'd keep you safe.”

I wanted to know how old Mrs. Mead could keep me safe, but by now J-Cat was again back at the car, one of her kangaroo pockets squirming. Digging down, she pulled out the funniest-looking puppy dog I have ever seen, with black spots covering its stiff gray hair. Even though he was no bigger than a wood rat, his long tail poked up like the pieces of asparagus I watched coming up in Mrs. Mead's garden.

“Can he be Otto?” she asked, reaching through the window and plopping the dog in my lap. “I was going to be Otto, but then I turned up a girl. Otto was my great-grandfather's name.”

Baba looked back at me and smiled. “Can he be Otto?”

“Okay,” I said.

“That's a relief.” Anna got into the car and
slammed the door. “Wasn't I saying this very morning, Baba, what we need is a dog?”

“What do you need a dog for?” I couldn't help it. I bit.

“Why, to lick up Homer's tears. That's what for.”

There's only one piece of literature worth taking to the hole and that is
The Wizard of Oz.
If Louise Frank Baum were still alive, I'd write him a letter. That is some kind of story.

I hope someday you read that book and get educated, Fish. Because every time I do, I learn something new. I've had brains and lost them, tried to lose my heart but kept it, and hated those monkeys with a passion until I learned the backstory. They were under a spell.

All the while I was lying there in that hospital bed, my mind kept coming back to Dorothy. I know what the Tin Man was missing, and the Scarecrow and the Lion. I'd always figured what Dorothy was missing was Aunt Em, but it isn't true. In the end, I
figured out that Dorothy's problem was not about getting sprung from Oz.

You have to work harder to figure out Dorothy's mess. But there is a clue. It comes right after she meets Scarecrow and Tin Man. Dorothy listens to the two of them bumpin' their gums about whether it's better to have brains or a heart. After listening for a while, she thinks: “If she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains or the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted.”

I tell you, Fish, that just slayed me. What kind of a road dog did that make Dorothy? No kind, that's what.

But by the end of the book, you wouldn't catch Dorothy caring so little about her friends getting their deepest wish. Not after they saved her gingham-checked butt from witches, Quadlings, Kalidahs, wolves, bees, Winkies with spears, and what all.

We don't know what Dorothy got up to after she landed back in Kansas. But you can be sure she wasn't the same Dorothy who left in the eye of that storm. And whatever new road dogs she met up with, well, at least she'd know how to treat 'em.

There's a yellow line all around the edge of the exercise yard in the joint, and cons call it the “yellow brick road.” That's right. Unlike Dorothy and her crew, cons and conettes don't so much want to walk the yellow brick road as get beyond it to their new life on the outs. It helps some to know, finally, that my Mary Bell is not as far away as Oz is from Kansas. She's just beyond that yellow brick road.

It's late summer as I write this, and I'm still recovering, mostly here in Mrs. Mead's garden. Me and Moonie Pie got a little catching up to do in the brains department, so I bring the crumb snatchers down every day and we weed, and pick runner beans, and cut flowers to put into mason jars.

Homer's inventing a birdbath that cleans itself, so Baba props him up in a lawn chair on the edge of the garden to contemplate it. Once we got back from Gillikins, Anna kept Homer and Otto together night and day, so that pup won't go much farther than the pillow they tuck under Homer's right arm.

“You ever get the urge to be Christopher again?” I asked Homer, feeding him
koftah
, the little meatballs Baba had taught me to make that morning.

Otto was sitting up at attention, waiting for his share.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I just thought since J-Cat wanted to go back to being Anna …”

“But
she
didn't change, Harry Sue. She's Anna because
we
changed.”

“I don't follow.”

“She's always been Anna. We gave her that nick because we were doing time, not her.”

Otto's little face was turning this way and that, from my hand to Homer's mouth and back again. I pinched off a bit of meatball with my other hand and let him take it from my fingers.

“I can never be Christopher,” he said sadly. “There is no more Christopher.”

“But you're the same person on the inside,” I insisted. “You didn't change on the inside.”

“Yes, I did, dog. I sure did.”

And his eyes started to leak a little, and Otto
was on that like a duck on a June bug, as Mrs. Mead says, like he was born to the task of washing Homer's face and making him giggle like a crumb snatcher.

Homer's words got me thinking. I always was Harry Sue, wasn't I? On the inside and on the outs.

“Homer,” I said, “I got a favor to ask you.”

“Okay.”

And so I told him what had happened that very morning while I was cooking breakfast with Baba.

“Your mother gave me something for you during our visit, Harry Sue,” Baba told me. “But she asked me to wait until you had time …”

He broke off talking to pinch the
kisra
in the pan with his fingers and flip it over.

“Time for what?”

I could see he was searching for the right word.

“To reflect.”

It was a slim little book. A spiral-bound notepad. There was my kindergarten picture on the cover, and around it were designs, doodly hearts, and curlicues. Lots of them. And there was my name in fancy letters. Harry Sue.

“It is a book of poetry she wrote for you,” he said. “But also to remember you. Now she wants you to have it.”

I left Homer on the lawn then and went to get the little book. I got his breakfast tray, too, the one that let him turn the pages with his chin.

“You always did have my back, Homer. Now somebody's gotta read this book before me. Because I don't think my heart is strong enough to handle any more surprises.”

Homer nodded. “Better take Otto,” he said. But that was all he said. Because in a very deep way, Homer knew just what I was feeling.

I
have
changed, Fish, but I will never be Harriet Susan. Because in the eyes of the first person who really mattered, I was Harry Sue.

And I just had to make sure I still am.

But we didn't have time to talk about those deep things because, just after dinner, Mrs. Mead came to collect all of us: Baba, Anna, Homer, Otto, Mrs. Dinkins, and me.

“It's the time I was telling you about all the winter long, Harry Sue,” Mrs. Mead said. “Do you remember it?
Ipomoea alba?
”

She seemed so excited that I nodded yes, but I hadn't the faintest idea what she was on about. We sat on Mrs. Mead's back porch, making small talk while it got dark. Baba held Homer gently in his big arms. Anna kept jumping off the steps, trying to catch fireflies, and Otto ran around her feet, snapping at the little flashing lights.

“Anna,” Mrs. Mead said finally. “Settle. Now close your eyes, everyone, and sniff.”

We did.

“At night, the flowers have to rely on scent to attract their pollinators.”

Anna sniffed again. Loudly. “It's divine,” she said.

I smelled it, too, like someone had sprayed perfume in the air.

“Now look there.” Mrs. Mead pointed to a small clump by the step. With all the tramping I'd done up and down her stairs that summer, I don't know how I could have missed the beautiful white flowers whose blossoms were reflecting the moonlight.

“These are the moonflowers I was telling you about, Harry Sue.” She plucked a flower and handed it to me.

“All winter long I was telling you that some things require the dark night to bloom.”

I took the flower over to Homer and pressed the silky petals to his cheek before holding it out for him to see.

“Look, there's a star in it,” he said, and we both saw rays of a different shade of white peeling out from the center of the flower, forming the shape of a star.

Lighting up the night from below, just like a miracle.