How It Happened in Peach Hill (13 page)

“And who made our shoulders feel the sun after a day of labor?”

“He did!”

“Hallelujah!”

We were all with him now, warmed up, ready to go.

I’d heard that in most churches, the minister gave a sermon and the congregation sat as still as hymnbooks, listening to his mighty words, waiting to be transported to a holy place.

Here there were chairs, but once the service started, most people rose to their feet and stayed there, swaying, clapping, stomping, shouting and sweating, right along with the Reverend Wilky and possibly with the Lord above.

“Who sees that we are sinners?”

“He does!”

“Hallelujah! And who tells us how to punish the sins of our children?”

“He does!”

“Who tells us that to spare the rod is to spoil the child?”

“He does!”

“Hallelujah! He is here with us because we are all sinners! Because we are all spoiled and must face our punishment! Who is our only hope for salvation?”

“He is!”

“Hallelujah! And who here will accept His judgment? Who here will give whatever you have to follow our Lord to Heaven?”

“We will!”

“Hallelujah! Say it again!”

“We will!”

“Hallelujah!”

I knew the whole time it was a show. I was not persuaded
for a moment that God was listening in particular to Reverend Wilky of Peach Hill. But I was shouting and shaking and sweating. He was so good that I got to my feet and shimmied, nearly ready to stand up before the Lord along with the rest of them.

The ones who knew the routine shuffled their way to the front and dropped their money on a silver tray. They had the sweat wiped off their brows by the Reverend’s own handkerchief in the middle of a blessing. Each worshipper took a sip or two of Wilky’s Silk Revitalizing Elixir. More than one of them swooned right there on the floor and was dragged out of the aisle to be revitalized. I shuffled up with the rest of them and took a swig from the offered bottle. Wow! It scorched my throat and made my eyeballs hop. The man was serving straight-up alcohol, no doubt about it. The choir belted out music that grabbed the heart and tingled the soles of the feet; the tumult of salvation was overwhelming.

And then it was over. Reverend Wilky loped out the door. The chorus stopped and the singers gathered up their music sheets. Bodies flopped into chairs to recover, flapping prayer books like fans, noticing how hot the room had grown. Slowly, chatter took over from panting.

One of the choir members was staring at me. It took a whole minute to see that the pale, shining face with hair scraped back into a braid belonged to Helen Wilky, the wild girl. She’d surely undergone a Sunday transformation! I smiled in surprise, but she ignored me as soon as I recognized her, and she headed to the door.

The Reverend stood on the step outside with his family beside him, speaking with his flock as it dispersed.

“Greetings, sister.” He sounded as if he had a sore throat. “The Lord is always pleased to see a new face.”

“Greetings,” mumbled his wife without looking up. She held a basket full of little bottles, each with a hand-printed label stuck on:
WILKY’S SILK REVITALIZING ELIXIR
.

“My name is Annie.” I said it straight to the girl.

“Mmmm,” she said.

“This is my daughter, Helen,” said the Reverend. His fingers squeezed her shoulder and she winced. “A sinner, like the rest of us.”

Helen bobbed her head and glowered at the ground.

A rush of recognition yanked me to attention. The Reverend Wilky’s hand might as well have been holding the strings on a marionette. I’d been my mama’s puppet too long not to notice, not to feel the tug myself. I knew there was a bruise under that choir shawl.

But the next worshipper was waiting.

“How do you do?” I said, and stepped into the mud of the front yard and along the Way.

Needle Street was simmering with activity. People milled about, calling to each other, chattering and giddy, as if they were at a picnic just waiting for the fellow with the hot dogs to appear. I ducked quickly back into a doorway. I had a feeling that I was the fellow with the hot dogs.

“Annie?”

“Peg!”

“I heard at church!” cried Peg. “You’ve had another episode! Lexie and her mother were full of the news.”

“Oh,” I said. “That explains the circus.”

Peg’s main concern was to check my focus, to make sure
the convulsions had not turned me back into a wonky-eyed moron.

“I’m all right, Peg. But …” I looked past her to the gathering people.

“We’ve got to get you safe inside,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Walking.” Why mention the Wilkys’ church?

“Your mama is going to wonder, she sees this crowd.”

“My mama is going to fly off the handle, she sees this crowd. She doesn’t like it when I get the attention.”

“Maybe she’ll think it’s all for her?”

“We’re not usually too popular on Sunday,” I said. “Most people feel it’s sneaking behind the Lord’s back to seek solace from the dead on a Sunday.”

Peg poked her head around the corner. “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “We better go round by the alley.”

Mama was just emerging from her bedroom as we crept through the kitchen door.

“Peg? Is something the matter? What are you doing here on your day off?”

Peg’s eyes slid down the hall and back to me. “We met,” she said. “On the corner.”

Mama was too smart for that. She strode to the front door and opened it, ignoring Peg’s cry of “No! Ma’am!” and slammed it shut when the crowd hallooed.

“What’s happened?” She had me by the shoulders, her face three inches from mine. A muffled chant of “Annie! Annie!” rose outside.

“What have you done?”

“Gwendalen came back,” I mumbled. “At Lexie’s house.”

“Lexie Johns goes to St. Alphonse Church,” said Peg. “Her mother was telling the story up and down the pews, about the mutilated ghost that appeared on Lexie’s bed.”

Mama’s temper caught fire like a match factory, and she shook me hard. Someone knocked at the door.

“Ma’am! No! You don’t mean to be so fierce! The girl can’t help herself if these fits come over her like that. Can she?”

What could Mama say? That she’d taught me to lie and I could help myself perfectly well?

“A talent like yours was bound to be passed on,” Peg continued. “Your Annie seems to be gifted too. Isn’t that a blessing?”

There came another knocking on the door, longer this time. Mama let go of me.

“Thank you for stopping by, Peg.”

“Oh! You’re right! My father will be wanting his Sunday luncheon. I’d better scoot.” Peg left through the kitchen. Mama let loose.

“Do you plan to make a habit of treachery?”

“No, Mama! Please let me explain.”

“I am the clairvoyant, Annie, no matter how you sneak about trying to steal the spotlight. When you healed yourself on a whim, I told you that I would not tolerate being undermined.”

“I’m not undermining,” I said. “I’m enhancing. There’s a crowd of people out there, Mama. We can turn it straight into dollars. They think you healed me, so they expect me to be psychic as well.”

“Well, you’re not.” She sounded as if she wanted to bite me.

Knock, knock, knock
.

“But, Mama, don’t you see? I could be. I could be anything we want me to be. We only have to decide what. There are two of us. We could double our offerings and double our income.…”

She turned her eyes to the door and seemed to be looking right through it.

“I suppose you think you’re growing up,” she said finally.

“It had to happen, Mama.”

“Let them in,” she said. “Palms only.”

I opened the door.

“Palms only!” she called out. “We’ll read you two at a time.”

Mama took her lady into the front room, and I led a Mrs. Peers to the kitchen table. I held her hand in mine, noticing the polished nails, the gaudy bangles and the thin—meaning cheapskate husband—wedding band.

I took a moment, reminding myself: Heart Line, Head Line, Life Line, Mount of Saturn, and mounts of all the other planets.

“I see conflict under your roof,” I said softly.

“That’s my Bill,” she sighed. “Scolding me day and night.”

“Your heart line, here, shows an unhappy marriage,” I said.

Her eyes filled up at once. “He never stops nagging! I spend too much money, I’m not cute anymore, I can’t cook pork chops the way his mother does—”

“It’s only your first marriage,” I put in quickly. “There will be another, truer love.”

“What? Really?” Mrs. Peers sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her other hand. “Who is it? Tell me!”

“His name is not written on your palm,” I said. “But you will not travel to find him.”

“He’s a boy from town?”

“You may know him already,” I said, “but you have not yet recognized his special place in your life.” That would cover just about every possibility.

“What should I do?”

“While you’re waiting to discover this love—”

“Yeah?”

“You are not a naughty child. Don’t let your husband treat you like one. Remind your Bill that women now have the right to vote and you’re running him out of office.”

Miss Peers barked a surprised laugh. “You’re a doll! “You’re the cat’s pajamas. I’m telling him tonight: Back off, buster! I’ve got a mystery man to find. Did you say he was dark-haired?”

“Sure,” I said. “Dark.”

“Here’s your dollar,” said Miss Peers. “Hold on, I’m gonna give you two. And I’m coming back next week!”

She clattered away down the hall, giggling as she tugged on her hat.

Could it be so wrong to give a person hope?

On Monday, I was famous. Everyone had heard about me. Lexie, Jean and Ruthie waved at me as I came up School Street toward them, as if my footprints filled with rubies at every step. I even glanced back, imagining I’d missed an announcement and President Coolidge was arriving on my heels.

But really, I knew it was me they were waiting for. Gwendalen was the most amazing thing that had ever happened in Peach Hill. And for doing so little! Anyone who tried could convey messages from a lonely, tongueless medieval girl. They were simply too dull to bother. Mama always said that being dull was a far greater crime than being dishonest. I was escorted through the girls door as though I were an exotic bird being carried to the king. No one spoke to me directly, of course. They chittered and buzzed as they always had.

In the hallway, I became the victim of numerous accidental
collisions, as if my magic could rub off. Even teachers made excuses to speak to me. Lexie and her friends had taken care of telling the story, adding details and even chapters, until I hardly recognized my own creation: I had levitated off the bed and hovered near Lexie’s ceiling, speaking a language much like Arabic; I had become a human magnet, compelling hairpins and spoons to fly across the room and attach themselves to my limbs; I had actually vanished in the dim light and returned with a severed head held in my waxy, outstretched hands. Oh, if only!

But there were scoffers, too. Delia de Groot cornered me after lessons, while Sally Carlaw stood guard a few feet away.

“Apparently you now claim that you were possessed by some kind of bleeding demon. Well, you should be locked up. You’re as crazy as your mother. And you can tell her to keep her filthy Gypsy paws away from my father. He’d be better off arresting her than falling for whatever scheme she’s hatching.”

My hand itched to punch her pretty pink mouth. I pushed my fists deep into my jacket pockets and fiddled with the loose threads down there.

“I think you must be mistaken,” I said, unnerved by how closely she skimmed the truth. “My mother is a professional.”

Delia sneered. “And what exactly is her profession?”

I’d fallen into that one with my eyes wide open, letting her suggest that Mama was a whore.

“She helps people,” I said, my voice sounding strangled even to my own ears. “Lonely people. Or lost. She could help find your mother, maybe.”

“My mother is not lost,” Delia hissed at me. “Not that it’s
any of your beeswax. She’s dead, as far as you’re concerned, and don’t I wish it were yours instead!”

I spun away from Delia, and Sally’s smirking face next to hers. I ducked out the front door with my head down, not wanting anyone to see the tears splashing. I raced away from school, needing somewhere to hide.

I found sanctuary at the Peach Hill Public Library. The library had been a constant destination in other towns, but Mama had declared it off limits in Peach Hill because of my idiot disguise. She’d brought me books as part of my home learning, but I hadn’t had a chance to roam the shelves myself. I stood between the stacks, breathing in the dusty paper smell, fingering the gilt-lettered spines of other worlds. It occurred to me that my new creation could be more authentic with just a little reading.

I looked up the accurate term for Gwendalen’s punishment, dying to have it fall casually from my lips, if the pun can be excused. I devised that she had suffered an involuntary glossectomy (from the Greek
gloss
, meaning “tongue,” and
tome
, meaning “to cut”). Looking through that book, I wished I hadn’t killed her off quite so quickly; there were such lovely, grisly tortures that might have prolonged her ordeal and made for several dramatic sessions. I could have had the convent raided by barbarians or introduced the plague with its weeping sores.

At the desk, I ran smack into Mrs. Newman, waiting on line with Old Horse.

“Good afternoon, Annie!” she said. “I’d like to introduce my husband, Mr. Newman. Walter, this is young Annie Grackle, the girl I was telling you about.”

“Ma’am,” I said. “Sir.”

Sammy was right; the man’s teeth were enormous, the color of rancid butter.

I saw Mrs. Newman’s eyes sliding over my stack of books:
Domestic Life in the Middle Ages, Herbalists and Bone Setters: Medieval Medics
, and
Saints Be Praised! A Guide to Medieval Religion
.

Her gaze shifted back to meet mine and rested there just long enough to make me squirm. “Nice to see you’re getting interested in your studies.”