How It Happened in Peach Hill (22 page)

It seemed that half the population of Peach Hill was gathered outside the old church. They shifted to let us through, but I felt hands patting me, grabbing, rubbing, poking the about-to-be miracle girl.

I squeezed my eyes tight shut to prevent any chance of tears. My toe hit the granite step and I stumbled as Sammy and Mama pulled me upward. I should just collapse, go into a keening fit and be done!

But we’d arrived at the top.

“How I have prayed!” cried Mama at once, not waiting to
risk another rebellion. Sammy was still holding my arm, but she waved him off.

“I have not stopped praying.” Mama’s clear voice rang out like the church bell itself. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders. “All night and all day and all night again, since this new affliction befell my dearest girl.”

She was doing something with her fingers around my head, not touching but making my scalp itch from the fluttering breeze.

“I am calling on the guardian spirits,” said Mama, “who mind us here on the earthly plain. I am pleading for the bright light of my child’s smile to be restored to us. Can we all do together what I once did alone?”

There was a ripple of noise, not quite a chorus, but friendly. Mama carried on, beginning to hum now. Sammy waved his arms, urging everyone to join her.

I saw Peg arrive at the back of the crowd, out to do her marketing. She waved and blew me a kiss. Mr. Poole stood by the church railing, his head bowed while he spoke to a man in a battered fedora. I felt a cold lump in my throat. Mr. Poole was the reason I was standing there like an idiot. When he moved, pointing up at Mama and me, I realized that the other fellow had a big camera slung around his neck on a strap.

I glanced back at Mama to see her arms outstretched and her face tipped up to the pale autumn sun, as if receiving a blessing from the Other Side.

Pop! A small flash as the first photograph was taken.

“No!” I shouted. Pop! “No!”

Mr. Poole had chosen exactly the wrong method of winning us over. Mama looked at me in panic.

“Go, Mama,” I said. “Go, now!” She reached out to me, but I was already lunging toward the photographer. People scattered, thinking I was a charging lunatic. Pop!

“No pictures!” I yelled, and then tripped, flailing for balance on the stone stairs. The audience gasped, but no one moved quickly enough. I teetered and fell, meeting the ground with a terrible whack!

Did I imagine an instant of vibrating silence, or was it real? The pain was real, attacking the same ankle as before and cutting like a cold knife through my forehead. I curled up as tightly as I could and lay on my side, wishing to be anywhere other than there—thinking, this is absolutely the last time, if I live to be ninety-seven, that I huddle on the ground for the benefit of someone else.

“Are you all right, Annie?” Sammy was on his knees next to me.

“Where’s Mama?” I said. Did she get away?

“Over there.” He pointed in the direction of Picker’s Lane and Needle Street. “She’s moving pretty fast for an older woman.”

“Let me in, that’s my girl lying there.” Peg pushed her way through, never minding the toes her whopping shoes were treading on. She crouched down, ready to cluck and coo. But one look at her dear, bony nose and springy hair, and I made up my mind.

“I’m all right, Peg! Better than all right!”

Her smile was big enough to have me laughing out loud.

“It worked!” Sammy stood up and shouted to the world.

“Annie is healed! The idiot is gone!”

With Sammy and Peg each under one elbow, I was
scooped up from the cobbles, head and ankle howling. The audience cheered. But it wasn’t over yet. This was only the first act.

“Wait here,” I said to Sammy. “Annie loves Peg,” I said to Peg. I limped to the top step and turned to face the crowd.

“Thank you,” I said, looking out across the square. Mama’s red coat flashed like an ember before she vanished. There was no sign of Mr. Poole or the photographer.

But Sammy was there, and Peg. I focused slowly on the other faces surrounding me. Clusters of schoolchildren and high schoolers; Lexie, Jean and Ruthie, with her mouth wide open; Sally and Delia, who looked more curious than hostile; Frankie Romero, next to his mother. The Peach Hill police department was watching from the sidelines. There were a dozen ladies or more who had spent time in our front room, including Miss Weather and Mildred, who had finally said farewell to her husband at Mr. Poole’s party. Mrs. Peers gave me a happy little wave from the front row.

“Thank you for coming here today. I have a confession to make.”

“That’s inside the church!” somebody called out.

I waited until the laughter faded. “Or perhaps not a confession exactly, but an explanation.”

So many of these people had told us secrets, and in return we had told them lies. But they didn’t know that. As far as they knew, we’d given hope and sympathy and maybe even wisdom. Would they despair if they were told the truth now? Mildred had been so grateful on Saturday, believing that Edmund’s spirit was watching over her. How could I say for certain that he wasn’t? Wouldn’t it be cruel of me to
announce to a grieving woman—to a dozen grieving women—that it had all been a trick?

“My mother has struggled to bring out the best in me,” I said, “like most mothers, I guess.”

If I destroyed Mama … I would rip apart the trust of all these other neighbors and customers.

But I wouldn’t tell another lie.

“Mama knew … that hiding somewhere was the child she longed for me to be. She did her best to reveal my true nature. Her powers have been put to.… a remarkable test.” Almost over. “In our case, the obstacle was … was greater than most. Now that she has released me, my mother will need to recover for an extended time. She will not be accepting clients for … for the foreseeable future.”

“What about you?” Mrs. Peers called out. “You do a bang-up job yourself.”

“I don’t think … well, that I’ve inherited the right traits from my mother, whatever it is that inspires her to do this work,” I said. “For now, I plan to be an ordinary girl. Thank you.” I waved. “My head hurts! I have to sit down. Thank you. Good-bye.”

There. Every word I’d said was true, without quite telling the true story.

Most of the kids had hightailed it off even before I’d finished talking; the drama was over, as far as they were concerned. I was just odd Annie Grackle; they were late for school, and Mrs. Newman was circling the crowd.

“Annie.” She cupped my face in her gloved hands and inspected me. “That’s a nasty bump you’ve got! You look like a
hoodlum! Though not as roughed up as Helen. Annie, your friend Helen has disappeared. You must tell me where she is. She shouldn’t be running about by herself. She was terribly hurt.”

“She’s gone, ma’am. There’s nothing we can do anymore.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Just gone,” I said. “She went on the train, but I don’t know which way.” It hurt to say it out loud.

Mrs. Newman sighed, as if she’d lost something too. “And what about you? That was a brave act just now, Annie Grey. It takes a great deal of courage to choose your own road.”

“Mmmm,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll get to school today, Mrs. Newman.”

Her eyebrow rose.

“But I’ll be there from now on.”

“Good girl.”

Peg decided it was the right time to interrupt. “Let’s get you home, missy, put some ice on that head.”

Did Peg realize what I’d been saying up there on the steps? If so, she didn’t let on. But I knew that if I arrived on Needle Street with Peg, Mama would be in a poisonous temper. “Peg, Mr. Poole must have hired that photographer without realizing that Mama hates to have her picture taken. She’s likely to be hopping mad. I don’t think you should come right now.”

“She’s not going to make your head feel right the way I will,” said Peg.

“I know, but also?” I pulled her close, to speak into her
ear, and her curls tickled my nose. “This boy, Sammy, said he’d walk me home. I’d kind of like …” I left it dangling.

“Off you go, honey,” said Peg, with a sly grin. “But you promise me you’ll put an ice pack on your head? And I’m coming over there first thing in the morning, come hell or high water.”

Probably both, I thought.

“That,” said Sammy, “was the most astounding phenomenon I’ll probably witness until I die, of course, and see the gates of Heaven.”

“Sammy.” I turned to face him. “I wish I—”

“You got healed, didn’t you? Before our very eyes.”

“Sammy. It wasn’t Mama praying or calling on spirits. It wasn’t falling down the stairs and giving myself a royal goose egg.” I looked into his eyes. “Sammy, here’s the truth. My mother and I—”

“Don’t say it,” said Sammy, shaking his head, closing his dear eyes. “You’re going to tell me something I don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I am.” I wished it were dark so we could kiss again. I was sure we were about to say good-bye. How awkward it would be to kiss in daylight! Maybe that was why people closed their eyes to kiss—to create their own night.

Sammy was waiting.

“Sammy, I’m not who you wish I was. I’m not a psychic and neither is my mother. She doesn’t tell fortunes—she tells people what they yearn to hear, what they want their future to hold. And sometimes, because they believe in what she says, they can make it happen for themselves.”

“But what about the spirits?” he asked. “She can talk to them, can’t she? That part is real, isn’t it?”

“No, Sam. That’s not true either. No spirits, no trances, no visions, no magic.”

“And the healing?” He was nearly whispering. “ ‘See the Idiot Restored to Reason’?”

“Sammy …” This was the hardest part. I would almost rather be an idiot than say it. “I never was an idiot. It was all an act. All of it.”

He blinked, the hope chased out of his face. Seconds,
minutes, maybe hours ticked by while Sammy tried to absorb the punches I’d thrown.

“Well, then,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re still the girl I kissed.”

My heart jumped.

“But that’s … that’s all.”

I didn’t deserve to care so much. I made myself keep looking straight at him.

“Are you leaving Peach Hill?”

“No,” I said. “My mother is leaving, but I’m staying on. For now, anyway.”

He pushed the dark hair off his forehead. “I suppose I’ll see you, then,” he said. “I kinda want to think about things.”

“Me too,” I said. “Let’s both think really hard.”

“I’d better go to school.” He touched my hand, just a tap, really, with his fingertips. “Bye, then.”

“Bye.”

The walk up Picker’s Lane to Needle Street seemed as far and lonely a journey as out to the Way. I stopped at the corner and ducked into a shadowed doorway. Mr. Poole’s motorcar was parked outside number sixty-two, with all four doors wide open. Our front door stood ajar as well. I crept closer. I could hear Mama’s voice but not her words. She must be somewhere in the back of the apartment. I poked my head into the hall, tempted to slide into the front room, to nestle at my listening post behind the red armchair.

“…   still don’t understand why it’s so urgent that you leave at once,” Mr. Poole was saying.

“A stay in jail is a great educator,” said Mama. “And inspires one to move more quickly next time the chance arises.”

She’d told him about jail? They were becoming intimate. I’d clearly missed the part where she’d thrown a fit about the photographer, though she still sounded pretty snappy. I retreated to the corner of Picker’s Lane. My head ached terribly. I wanted to lie down. I didn’t want to talk to Mama with Mr. Poole standing by.

The door banged open. Mr. Poole staggered out, carrying Mama’s trunk to the car. Perhaps I wouldn’t have a choice. Mama followed with the hatboxes, one of them full of money. Did he know that yet? He brought out the carpetbags and my own suitcase. Where was the sugar sack from the kitchen? Probably stuffed into one of the carpetbags. She couldn’t have found the two rolls of money I’d taken after Helen’s visit. They were too well hidden in my room.

Mr. Poole came outside and cranked up the car. He got into the driver’s seat, and Mama climbed up next to him. I stepped toward the car. Would she really leave without saying good-bye?

“Mama?” I leaned through the window next to her.

Her grin of triumph nearly knocked me over. “I knew you must be watching!” she cried. “I used your suitcase as bait. You see, Gregory? Just as I predicted. She saw us ready to go and here she is!”

My heart cracked in two as I realized that she’d used a trick even now at the end of things. Though I supposed she didn’t believe yet that it was the end.

“Gregory says he’ll take us as far as Nobel. We can stay
the night there and have a better choice of trains in the morning.”

“I’m not going with you, Mama. I’m staying in Peach Hill. I only came to say good-bye. And to wish you well.”

“Nonsense,” said Mama.

“Not nonsense,” I said.

She got down from the car. I reached in behind her and took out my case. She grasped it while I held the handle and we tussled for a moment. I let go and she staggered backward.

“Take it, then,” I said. “You can take all of it but me.”

Mama dropped the suitcase as if it burned her fingers. I heard Mr. Poole behind me, but she waved at him to shush.

“Let’s go inside,” she said. We went into the front room. She sat in her own chair, and I sat in the red armchair.

“We’ve been planning to leave anyway,” she said.

“Not me,” I said. “I don’t see why you’d want to trust Mr. Poole. He’s not rich, Mama. He’s been conning us all along.”

She smiled. “I’ll admit that he had me for a day or two,” she said, “but I had him first. It was quite a treat to find that there was more to him than I expected. You haven’t had a chance to learn this yet, Annie, but you will someday. There’s a certain appeal, a relief, even, in finding a companion who cares about who you really are.”