How High the Moon (11 page)

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” I told her.

“Good,” Brenda said.

“I hope to learn how to behave so I don’t have to be a flunky, and so that Teddy doesn’t throw my butt on the Greyhound bus. Is
butt
a swear word, do you know? I hope not, because I gave up swearing. Anyway, I hope you can teach me how to be better and do better so I can become more respectable. Past that, all I’m looking for is money.”

“Money?” Brenda said, her eyes going Bette-Davis-big.

“Yeah. But not a handout, because Teddy says there’s no pride in handouts. I’m not looking for a loan, either, because, well, you could say that’s what got me in trouble in the first place.

“I can’t explain why I need the money, but trust me, if you really want to help me be a better person, what you can give me is a job. I don’t care what. I’d work real cheap, as long as I can make thirty-five cents. That’s what I really need most right now. Well, that, and probably a lesson or two on keeping my yap shut when I should.”

“Isabella—” she said, and I stopped her.

“Look, if we’re supposed to be like real Sunshine Sisters—whatever that’s supposed to mean, but I’m guessing all
sunny
with each other—then you’re going to have to call me Teaspoon.”

“Okay, Teaspoon. But this isn’t a work program. It’s a mentorship program.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a pretty fancy word. I like learning new fancy words. You never know when you’re going to have to read one of them out loud, or when you can use one to score big in Scrabble. In school this year, Mrs. Carlton let us choose from the regular spelling lists in our book, or the Spelling Challenge lists she made up herself. Those are the hard ones, and that’s the lists I chose. I learned
affliction
, and
contradiction
not long ago, but
mentorship
? Hmm. Don’t think we’ve had that one yet.”

“Well,” Brenda said. “A mentor is someone who guides you by giving you advice. Someone usually older and more experienced than you.
Mentorship
is a word to describe the relationship itself.”

“Wow, you’re smart. But I suppose you’d have to be or you wouldn’t be the Sweetheart of Mill Town.” Brenda looked down and cleared her throat a little, even though it was hard to believe that a girl like her ever got gunk in her throat.

“Meeting location…,” she read. “Would you like to meet at the Starlight?”

“You’re kidding me, right? That’s my favorite place in the whole world! Of course I’d like to meet there.”

“Good. We’ll have our first meeting the Monday after school lets out. May twenty-third.”

“
After
school lets out?” I almost yelled. “You mean I have to wait until school lets out?”

“Yes, that’s when the program officially begins. Most of us girls
have too much going on until then, with graduation.” I groaned, and Brenda added, “But I’m glad to see you’re eager to get started. You’ve had quite a change of heart since the last time I saw you.”

“Oh, I didn’t have a change of heart,” I told her, only because the night before I promised Jesus and Teddy I’d try to stop being such a fibber-face. “It’s just that I got myself into a bit of trouble, and I need a job and thirty-five cents to bail me out. Pronto.”

I sure wished Brenda would stop grinning like I was Lucille-and-Ethel-funny. I wasn’t trying to be.

Brenda grabbed her purse from the back of her chair and took out a wallet made of shoe leather, not plastic like mine. When I saw her take a quarter and a dime out, I stopped her. “Hey, didn’t I just say that I can’t take handouts?”

“It’s not a handout,” she said. “It’s an advance.”

“An advance?”

“Yes.” She put the money on the table in front of me. “An early payment for a job you’re going to do. I give you thirty-five cents in advance, and when we meet, you can stock candy for me at the Starlight to work it off. How’s that?”

“Well, if it’s not a handout, then I guess I can take it.” I scarfed up the coins and shoved them in my purse, and whew, just whew!

Mrs. Pines, the cafeteria lady—the one who doesn’t care if juice from your canned corn leaks into your mashed potatoes—walked around with a tray while we were all settling on private meeting times, and she put a Dixie cup of apple juice and a flower-shaped sugar cookie sitting on a napkin in front of each girl. We were ordered by bossy Mrs. Gaylor not to touch them, though, until everyone was served, even though our after-school bellies were grumbling. Since we had to wait, and Brenda and me had our business taken care of, I decided to make good use of the rest of the time I was stuck there, and I asked Brenda if she’d like to tell me a little story while we waited.

“You like being told stories?” Brenda asked.

“Only if the story is the story of Moby-Dick,” I said. And
wouldn’t you know it? Brenda knew that story and told it to me. Well, at least enough of the story for me to fill one page in my notebook if I printed big enough.

When the last table was served, I thought we would be able to gobble up our snack and get out of there, but no dice. We had to wait until Mrs. Gaylor gave us a talk on how to eat in public—like we’d never done
that
before!—and while she yammered, everyone had to watch Brenda demonstrate what Mrs. Gaylor was saying.

It was all a bunch of twaddle, if you asked me, taking such little bites that a mouse would have starved to death before that cookie was gone. And putting our napkins on our laps to catch crumbs, even though when we picked it up to dab our mouths now and then—as Mrs. Gaylor said we were supposed to—every crumb we caught was going to get dumped on our laps or on the floor anyway.

By the time Mrs. Gaylor’s lesson and Brenda’s demonstration were over, our apple juice was warm as pee, and my belly was so hungry that I didn’t care who didn’t approve, I broke the cookie in half and shoved a whole half into my mouth. Brenda didn’t yell at me, though. In fact, she looked like she wanted to laugh, same way Charlie laughed when I burped.

I thought we could leave right after we ate, but no dice again. We couldn’t go until the Big Sisters stood up and recited something that was supposed to be the “code” of the Sunshine Sisters that we were all supposed to memorize. It was about being well behaved so that we could be proud of ourselves, and our families and our community could be proud of us, too. Something like that, anyway.

“Would you like me to jot the day and time of our first meeting down for you so you don’t forget?” Brenda asked when our meeting was over for real.

“No. I can remember anything that I make into a little song.” I tossed the time and date into a little ditty and sang it back to Brenda. “See? That’s how I remember important things.”

Humpty-Dumpty Charlie was waiting for me on the brick ledge where he still spent his recesses, my scooter propped against the bricks. “Thanks for watching my scooter. Did you take it for a spin?” Charlie shook his head. “Why not? I told you you could.” But he didn’t answer.

I handed Charlie my schoolbooks so I could use both hands to steer and off we went, Charlie walking so slow that I had to ride in circles around him or I would have tipped over.

“Why do you have to go to those meetings, anyway?” Charlie asked.

“Because I’ve got afflictions and no ma in my house,” I told him.

“I don’t have a ma, but I don’t have to go.”

“That’s because you’re a boy. This is just for girls.”

“Do I got afflictions?” Charlie asked.

“You’ve got plenty of them,” I told him, and poor Charlie grinned like having them was something to be proud of.

In one week’s time
, I made good with Mrs. Carlton
and
with Jesus. I turned in my make-up work, including my paper on Moby-Dick. Okay, so maybe the most words I had on one blue line was six, as Mrs. Carlton pointed out, but it was enough to get me promoted to sixth grade. And I put the quarter Miss Tuckle gave me in the offering plate (holding it out first so that Miss Tuckle and Susie Miller could see me doing it), and left the other dime I owed Him on the altar upstairs, holding it out first so He’d see me doing it and know that we were squared up.

That week I had another Sunshine Sister meeting with Brenda, too. Charlie tagged along, just to wait outside and keep an eye on my scooter for me.

Boy, that Starlight! It didn’t matter how eager I was to learn how to be respectable, I forgot about everything but how much I loved that place the second I stepped inside.

Brenda led the way to the first concession stand while I followed behind her like a Charlie, my head gawking all over. “Ain’t this place something, Brenda? I’ll bet every time you step in here, you feel like somebody stole your breath all over again. That sure is how I feel.”

Brenda looked up for a second, like she was thinking on what I said and checking out the place at the same time, and then she
said, “It
is
a cool place, isn’t it? I suppose sometimes I forget to really look at it because I’m so used to it.”

“I don’t think I’d
ever
get so used to the Starlight that I couldn’t see the magic in it anymore,” I said. And Brenda said that, somehow, she believed that was true.

The Starlight didn’t have matinees every week, and they weren’t going to have one this weekend. In fact, after the show that night, they weren’t going to have any shows for a long time, because they were converting the theater to one that showed movies some times, and live shows other times. “Wow, Brenda,” I said when she told me. “You mean with real first-class acts?”

“Yes,” Brenda said. “That’s what we’re hoping for.” Then Brenda explained how they were going to rip out some seats in the front row and build a big stage for the acts, and an orchestra pit for the musicians. Mrs. Bloom had bought the old furniture store next to the Starlight, so that when the live bands came, they’d have dressing rooms and a big room for dancers to warm up in. Wouldn’t you know it! I finally get an “in” to see some movies legal, and they were closing for what might be the whole summer. Still, Brenda and I needed to make the concession stand ready for the seven o’clock show that night.

I thought it would be a good idea to line the candy up according to how good they tasted. Like start with the Jujubes and the Good & Plenty on the best end, the candy bars in the middle, Big Hunk leading the way, and then the Milk Duds and Boston Baked Beans on the other end, because if you asked me, they were both duds. Brenda said that while that was a good idea, it would mess up the workers, who were used to the order the candy was in already and would be grabbing the wrong things when it got busy before the movie and at intermission, so I had to keep the same lineup.

While I sat on my knees putting candy away, Brenda opened a box filled with striped popcorn boxes, flat as envelopes. I got to my
feet and picked one up. “I didn’t know these things came flat and you had to put them together. Look at that, they got tabs on them, just like paper dolls. Where does this one go?”

We talked about the movies we liked best as we made boxes. Brenda saw way more than me, so she mentioned ones I never saw, but highest on her list was
The Wild One
. “I heard about that movie. And I saw Mrs. Delaney and Mrs. Perkins gawking at Marlon Brando like he was as gorgeous as James Dean. Pop yells at me if I page through the magazines, even if I’m careful not to wrinkle the pages, but he didn’t yell at them.

“Holy cow, is James Dean dreamy or what? I’ll bet you’re in love with James Dean, too. Well, maybe not, because you’re in love with Leonard Gaylor, and I don’t think people can be in love with two people at one time, can they? To folks here in Mill Town, you and Leonard Gaylor are as famous of a couple as Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando all rolled into one—which must mean that he’s every bit as movie-star handsome as you are movie-star pretty. They talk highly about Leonard all the time,” I said. “Him having been the number one smartest person in his whole high school class, just like you, and the most valuable person on the basketball team, the debate team, and about every other team there is.” Brenda dropped her popcorn box and I picked it up because I was closer to the floor.

“Oh, I like Marlon Brando,” she said.

And I said, “He’s okay, but he’s not as dreamy as James Dean.”

That reminded me. “Hey,” I said, “do you remember last Christmas when you guys had a free matinee for kids and a Santa afterward who gave out free goodybags? Popcorn, peanuts in their shells, and that hard candy that looks like frozen ribbons? I didn’t get to go to that movie because you had to go with an adult, like always, and Teddy was working. My neighbors went, though. Jack—the meanest of the bunch—was first in line, and as soon as he got his goodybag, he slipped back in line behind his sister so he could
con two bags out of Santa. I was at their house waiting for Jennifer and Jolene when they got back from the picture show, and when they were all bragging about getting those free bags, dumb Jack, who’s never been able to keep his yap shut, unzipped his coat and took that second bag out so he could brag about how he’d gotten two and I didn’t even get one. His big brother Johnny came in the kitchen then and grabbed his cheater bag. He pulled a handful of popcorn out of it and said ‘Thanks, little brother,’ and Jack cussed, like he does when his ma isn’t around.