Home Free (2 page)

But Kathy pushed me again. I wish I could embellish this part. I wish I could tell you I pushed her back and she never bothered me again. But everyone knows what happened.

I stumbled back a bit and tripped and fell down. Kathy stood over me, staring, making fists like she was going to hit me. Then she just stopped, dropped her fists, and gave me the once-over.

“You changed your clothes. Why? Pee your pants?” Kathy laughed and everyone else laughed and I thought I did a good job laughing too, but I guess not. Kathy suddenly stopped laughing and gave a funny little smirk. (That's what my mother calls it when she doesn't like the way I'm smiling. “Wipe that smirk off your face,” she says.)

“That's it! You peed your pants. You
are
a baby. I was right.” Then she just turned and walked away. Linda White and Paula went with her, but Nancy and Susan helped me up.

“Don't listen to her. She's a witch.”

“I hate her. She's just mean.”

I watched Kathy go over and talk to other kids and point back at me.

All afternoon in class everyone made fun of me. We had spelling and whenever anyone had to spell a word with the letter P in it, they'd say P really slowly like Peeeeeeeeee and look at me, and everyone else would snicker.

Except David. That's why I'm pretty sure he knows he's going to marry me one day. You can't make fun of your future bride.

But the rest of them were horrible and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take my slate – of course, these are the Sixties and we don't use slates these days – and break it over someone's head, just like Anne Shirley did to Gilbert Blythe.

It wasn't fair. Kathy wasn't even in my class, but it didn't matter.

Then at recess the kids in Kathy's room said she talked about me. They were having novel discussion – they got to do
The Wind in the Willows
– and when they talked about
being bossy, Kathy said there was this girl named Lee Mets who was really bossy and stupid. They said she spoke about me as if I was some stranger nobody knew. The teacher told her that was enough and to sit down, but it was too late.

The only thing that helped was thinking Kathy was just like Josie Pye who tormented Anne Shirley. And I resolved to myself that Kathy would be my affliction to bear until the end of my days.

So I didn't tell anybody about my orphan after all. The orphan would be my special friend. Tough titties for everyone else! That's what Kathy used to say – tough titties! (Don't tell my mother.)

But this is not a story about Kathy. I shall speak her name no more.

Lots of kids live on my street. I usually don't play with most of them because they're heaps younger or older. But last June, when the sky stayed light forever, we all started getting together for hide-and-seek. It was fun with so many kids, but mostly I just liked being out till it finally got dark.

Sometimes I'd sneak away from the game and hide in my secret spot. It's in the corner of my backyard, between our cedar hedge and Mrs. Petovsky's bramble bushes and Mrs. Carol's fence, and there's a sort of little clearing in the middle of everything just big enough for me. I'd lie on the grass and look up through my “sky window” and see the stars and think about what our minister read from the Bible about the heavens and the earth and about dividing
the light from the dark. I'd get all shivery down my back just like the time I snuck into the Sanctuary when it was all dark and there wasn't anyone there. The Sanctuary with a capital S is the part of the church you go to on Sundays to sing and pray and listen to the minister. I snuck in one time when it wasn't for church, and I felt like I was full of electricity. And I just knew I wasn't alone in there, let me tell you! It was spooky, but not scary-spooky. That's how I felt looking at the stars.

I like the word
sanctuary
. Miss Gowdy says writers have to like words and I like this one because it sounds mysterious. I asked Miss Gowdy what it means, but this time she took a deep breath and said, “Look it up in the dictionary.” So I did, and it means “a holy place.” In a church it's the holy place around the altar, and that makes sense because if you look at the word, it has a T exactly in the middle, looking just like a cross. Sanctuary. Anyway, in olden days people could be protected from enemies if they could just get to the altar before being caught. From what I can figure, it was kind of like yelling “Home Free!” when you're playing hide-and-seek.

I was glad Miss Gowdy made me look up sanctuary. Now I look up lots of words all the time. If you ask a dictionary, you always get an answer. I wish adults were like dictionaries. I wish my mother would answer all the
questions I have to ask. Why couldn't she just tell me about Cassandra Jovanovich without me having to ask so many questions? She always makes me feel nosy, and I'm glad a dictionary doesn't.

Cassandra Jovanovich. “Cas-san-dra,” I said again, counting on my fingers. Three syllables. “Jo-van-o-vich.” Four syllables. It wasn't fair. I wondered if she called herself Cassandra. Or she might be Cass or Cassie or C.J. I am only Lee Mets. Two syllables. Of course, I am really Leanna, but nobody calls me that, not even if I ask. And I asked a lot after reading
Anne of Green Gables
, and I read
Anne of Green Gables
lots. I borrowed it from the bookmobile at least once a month. Anne Shirley really wanted to be called Cordelia Fitzgerald because she thought her own name didn't have much oomph to it. I thought about calling myself L.M., just like the writer L.M. Montgomery, but it sounded stupid, like I had got to the part in the alphabet where you go elemenopee. I tried it once when the school nurse asked my name. I said, “Ell Em,” and she thought I was saying “Ellen” with a stuffed-up nose.

And Cassandra Jovanovich was an orphan.

All of the best stories are about orphans. There's
Anne of Green Gables
and
Mary Lennox of the Secret Garden
. That last one isn't the real title, but it should be. Orphans always get to be
of
somewhere. I tried this out at school this year. I
told Mr. Morgan that I was Leanna of Westlawn Avenue, but he said, “Don't be stupid.” If I were an orphan, I'd like to be Leanna of the Castle or Leanna of Mountain Valley. I feel very sorry for Jane Eyre. She's an orphan with a name like mine and isn't
of
anything, either.

Sometimes I pretended I was an orphan and I was adopted. If my mother and father weren't my real parents then I could make up lots of stuff about who my real parents were. Even that they were still alive and rich and royal and would come to get me one day when it was safe. Like the Little Princess who turned out not to be an orphan. This is what I did at night when my parents (so-called) wouldn't let me read in bed and made me turn out the light. I made up stories about my real parents.

I hoped Cassandra Jovanovich would be like book orphans. I hoped she'd have lots of imagination. Maybe she'd even be a writer, like me. Maybe we could write books together and become each other's
muse
. That's another word Miss Gowdy told us. It's some sort of spirit that whispers good ideas in your ear.

I hoped we could be best friends because after Kathy did you-know-what, I didn't have a best friend anymore. But more than that, I hoped we could be kindred spirits. That's what Anne Shirley called some people, the people she just felt an instant connection to, as if there was some
electricity between them. Once Anne Shirley called her best friend her bosom friend, but I wouldn't want to do that. My mother won't let me say the word bosom and I don't want to get Cassandra Jovanovich and me in trouble.

I didn't have any kindred spirits my own age. I knew Miss Gowdy was one as soon as I met her, and I knew Mrs. McMillan, who teaches Sunday School, was a kindred spirit, too. But I wanted a kindred spirit who was a friend I could play with. I once had high hopes for Kathy, but that didn't work out.

I looked up the word
kindred
in the dictionary. At first, I was disappointed. It just meant “family” or “having the same blood.” I have lots of family that I don't want to be kindred spirits with, let me tell you! But I kept reading down the definition and it said kindred was the same as the word
congenial
. So I looked up congenial and it means, “being the same in spirit.” So I guess what I was looking for were spirits to be spirits with. Sometimes the dictionary is confusing.

I was still looking at the stars when my mother started calling for me to come in and I had to leave my secret place. Only from then on I called it my Sanctuary.

The next day, I told Miss Gowdy all about Cassandra Jovanovich.

“And she's an orphan, just like Anne Shirley and Jane Eyre and she's going to be my best friend, I just know it!” I said.

Miss Gowdy smiled at me and said, “Sit down Leanna.” (Miss Gowdy always called me Leanna after I asked her to.) Then she leaned forward and said, “You will have to be especially kind to Cassandra. And thoughtful.”

“I am always full of thoughts,” I said.

Miss Gowdy put her hand over her mouth, but I could see the smile behind it. I don't mind it when Miss Gowdy smiles at me. (Sorry Miss Gowdy, because I know you're
reading this.) Because you, I mean
she
, isn't laughing at me the way most adults do.

“You certainly are full of thoughts,” she agreed. “So what I should have said was you'll have to be considerate. Being an orphan in real life might not be quite as … as romantic as it is in books.”

Miss Gowdy is still quite new at our school. She is the librarian because Mrs. Humprey was old and quit. Miss Gowdy is young and pretty and smells like lily of the valley. She is just like Anne Shirley's Miss Muriel Stacy, the new teacher who was so much nicer than the old grumpy teacher. Mrs. Humprey was always kind of rumpled-up looking and smelled like the humbug mints my Uncle Bill gives me sometimes. I pretend to eat them, but I don't because they always have lint on them from being loose in his pocket.

I don't like my Uncle Bill. He always tries to give me a charley horse on my leg. He pushes my skirt out of the way and grabs my thigh high up and squeezes, and then he laughs – but I don't. A charley horse hurts. And I don't think Uncle Bill should go near my underpants. One day in kindergarten, I showed everyone my new underpants. They were really pretty, white and lacy with colored balloons on them. Miss Swora got mad at me. She said I did a bad thing. She said it was inappropriate. I looked up the word
inappropriate
in
the dictionary. Not when I was in kindergarten, but just this year. It means “not proper, not the right thing to do.” So the last time Uncle Bill tried to give me a charley horse up near my underpants, I told him it was inappropriate and smacked his hand. Everyone laughed at me. I thought that was inappropriate of everyone, and I stood up and said so. I got sent to my room. I don't know why.

Anyway, everyone likes Miss Gowdy, even the boys, and especially David. She reads to us every time our class has library day, and she says she reads books that we might not be able to read ourselves. She wants to stretch our minds, she says. The first book she read was called
The Pearl
and it was wonderful and sad and made me feel hurt inside when I listened. I wish I could write like that.

One day I told Kathy I wanted to be a writer.

“I'm going to be a model,” she said. Then she talked all about what models do and who her favorite model is, and we didn't talk about me at all.

Kathy could be a model. She could be a model for
Seventeen
magazine. She is the most beautiful girl in our grade. Or even in our whole school. And I don't mind saying so because I am a writer and writers want to get at the truth, Miss Gowdy says. (My mother always says, “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” but I don't know what that means.) So even though Kathy makes fun of me all the
time, and isn't a friend at all, I will tell the truth. She's taller than anyone, even the boys, and she has brown hair that curls and big brown eyes and a small nose and, well, she just is pretty. All the boys think so, too. And she already wears a brassiere. She laughs at all the rest of us girls because we still wear undershirts.

“Kathy wears a brassiere,” I told my mother one day. “Can I have one?”

My mother went all red. “Don't be silly,” she said.

I persevered. “But why? Why is it silly? Why can't I have a brassiere?”

“That's enough, Lee.”

And that was it.
Perseverance
means “to continue on despite difficulties,” but when my mother says “That's enough,” she means it. My mother refused to talk about it anymore. But maybe I didn't really mind because the boys pull on Kathy's brassiere strap and call it an over-the-shoulder boulder-holder. Kathy just laughs, but I think I'd die.

I think I just digressed. (And from now on, I won't talk about you-know-who anymore.)

Miss Gowdy started a Writing Club last year when I was in grade five because lots of us wanted to write books like the ones she reads to us. The club met twice a week after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays for one hour. And David
was in it. I could be with David two hours a week talking about books in earnest, and not just the way we do in class with people who don't care.
(Earnest
means “seriously zealous” and
zealous
means “passionate ardor” and
ardor
means “heat in the affections” and so it all works out because I have seriously zealous ardor about David and books.)

But my mother wouldn't let me join the Writing Club. She said reading fairy tales was a waste of time and writing them was even worse. She called all books fairy tales, even when they weren't about fairies. If they were madeup stories like
Anne of Green Gables
she called them fairy tales. She said I should just read my Bible instead. Or the
Presbyterian Register
, which is all about good religious Presbyterians doing good works, like going far away to be missionaries. My father said I always have my nose in a book. This is true because if I'm not wearing my glasses, I have to have my nose in the book to see. But that isn't what he meant. He always said “your nose in a book” as if I was doing something wrong. I don't know why.