How It Happened in Peach Hill (5 page)

Now, finally, there was consternation from the onlookers. Someone scolded Howie for attacking me. Through half-closed eyes, I watched the group of boys creep backward and disappear, the cowards. My hair fell in a tangled curtain over my face. Someone produced a handkerchief; my face was wiped, my hair smoothed. I was fine, only shaking with fury, figuring out how to slink away. But then I heard a familiar voice.

“The fortune-teller’s daughter?” It was Mr. Poole! “Is she ill?”

“She’s an idiot, sir,” said a child.

“She is sadly afflicted,” confirmed a woman. “Generally, she’s harmless, but that boy was riling her something dreadful.”

“I’ll see her home,” said Mr. Poole.

“No!” I moaned, and rolled my eyeball so I could see.

Mr. Poole was inches away, with a stern gaze of concern. He had removed his fedora to fan my face and I caught a waft of coconuts.

“Do you remember me, Annie? I’m Mr. Poole.”

Don’t you dare marry my mother
, I wanted to shout.

“No men!” I said. “No men!”

The circle of housewives laughed.

“No men, she said, the daft cluck!”

“Her mother’s taught her right!”

“No men! Whatever next?”

“Nonetheless,” insisted Mr. Poole.

“No!”
I tugged myself out from under their hands and began to limp away, biting my lip against the pain in my ankle. Suddenly Delia bumped against me.

“This’ll teach you,” she whispered. “Stop coming near us. We don’t want you around.”

Mr. Poole caught up to us, and Delia slid away. I could feel my ankle swelling up; my knees and palms were raw and smarting; I was suddenly very cold. I hobbled toward home with Mr. Poole lurking behind. I was shaking with leftover sobs. As we arrived on Needle Street, he hurried ahead and had summoned Peg by the time I reached the door.

“Oh, Lordy,” said Peg. “I could punch that boy right in the snout.” She wrapped her arms around me, warm as a
blanket, making me cry all over again. Peg loved me, not knowing I was smarter than she was. She loved me the way a mother was meant to love a child.

Mr. Poole followed us all the way into the kitchen.

Peg sat me down and unlaced my boot. Oh, oh, oh! The pain swelled to fill the room! I winced as I propped up my leg on another chair.

“Shouldn’t she go to bed?” asked Mr. Poole.

“First I’ll fix her some sweet tea.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “for the shock.”

His voice brought Mama running.

“Whatever has happened?” Mama took in the scene in an instant. “My baby’s been hurt?”

She fluttered like an upset chicken and tried to stroke my hair. She knew how appealing a mother’s worry could be. I jerked away, not willing to perform just then. Mr. Poole was telling Mama what he’d seen.

“Bullies! Tormenting a kitten!”

Peg put ice in a stocking to lay across my foot. She found me a woolly shawl and set the cookie jar next to my elbow.

“You rescued my darling heart!” cried Mama. I snarled.

“Help me pray!” She stood behind me, her hands like bricks on my shoulders. “Take away the pain from my little girl! Pray with me, Mr. Poole.” I tried to shrug her off again.

“Perhaps you should let the child settle down,” suggested Peg.

Mama led Mr. Poole out of the kitchen. “You’ve done a marvelous good deed today,” I heard her say, her voice trembling but full of admiration. The door swung shut and I could
hear only mumbles and whispers in the hallway. I held my breath, trying to decipher the actual words. Peg clanged about, making the tea, placing the cups just so on the tray.

“Do you think she’ll want the tea in here, or will she make you move to serve it nice for him?”

“The ice is too cold, Peg,” I said, shifting my foot.

I nudged the ice bag to the floor and leaned over to pick it up, pushing the door ajar while I was down there.

I saw what I was afraid I’d see: Mama pressed against Mr. Poole in the dim corridor, her cheek nestled against his chest, while he stroked her back with his large, comforting hand.

I screamed. Peg dropped the teapot and it smashed. I screamed again. And then the chance for freedom flashed like sheet lightning across my brain.

I threw myself to the floor, ignoring the shards of broken china and the puddle of scalding tea. I closed my eyes and screamed again. I stopped moving and stopped breathing. My ankle throbbed as if it would split open.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Peg’s voice was hardly a whisper. “She said the ice was too cold and then she begun that screaming and fell to the floor like a sack of sugar.”

“Let’s get her up out of this mess,” said Mr. Poole.

I tensed all my muscles. Mr. Poole, Mama and Peg gasped. An excellent reaction. I took in a long, juddering breath. I flopped loosely on the floor, exhaled and lifted my eyelids. I gazed up at them calmly, with both my eyes. Peg was the first to realize.

“Annie?” She waved her fingers in front of my face, checking my focus.

“Hello, Peg,” I said. No sloppy tongue, no waver, no twitch. “My ankle hurts like the devil and I seem to be sopping wet.”

“Annie?” said Mama.

I kept looking at Peg, not wanting to risk Mama’s gaze just yet.

“What’s happened?” cried Peg, but answered herself at once. “She’s cured, ma’am! I can tell by her eyes!”

I gave her my loveliest closed-mouth smile.

“Oh, ma’am!” cried Peg. “It’s a miracle!”

“It’s not a miracle,” scoffed my mother. “Miracles don’t happen like that, without saints and prayers and rolling thunder.”

“But you did pray, Caterina,” said Mr. Poole. “You laid your hands on her and begged that she be healed. This … this may be your doing.…” His voice dwindled in amazement.

But Peg began to squeal. “Stand up, Annie! Can you walk all right? Annie, stand up! It’s a miracle, ma’am! You’ve worked a miracle!” Peg picked me up and spun me around, or tried, anyway. She started to laugh and so did I, giddy and jubilant.

Mr. Poole stood next to Mama, staring at me, adjusting his glasses. Mama’s eyes locked with mine. I was certain she was calculating her options. But I had her. I watched her inhale and speak the opening lines of a new play.

“I suppose,” she said, putting on a modest glow, “that with help from the stars above, it is possible that I have saved my precious daughter.” She stretched out her hands, staring at them as if amazed by what they had done.

I had never written the script before, and here was Mama, following my lead! I was nearly dizzy with triumph. Peg squealed again and squeezed me. Mr. Poole squeezed Mama. Mama blushed, but she was watching me. I smiled. Deception ran in the family, after all. Mama had taught me to lie. She should be proud of me.

“I’m a bit tired,” I confessed.

“Oh, my dear! It’s straight to bed with supper on a tray!” Peg hustled me off to have a bath and snuggle under the quilt, where she brought me a soft-boiled egg and sugary tea.

When Mama had finally said good-night to Mr. Poole and came in to see me, I was asleep. Faking sleep was nothing after faking daft.

But she was sitting on the end of my bed in the morning.

“Aren’t you the clever one,” she said.

“Good morning to you, too,” I said, sitting up, cramming the pillow behind my back, certain I was in for a long talk. But suddenly I was grinning, silly almost, knowing I had changed the world.

“Isn’t it the most marvelous day?” I edged my ankle out from under the blanket. It was stiff and still quite puffy.

“The healing was an admirable idea, Annie, but clumsily executed and badly timed.”

“Ah, Mama, can’t you for once admit that I was clever? It worked brilliantly! Mr. Poole was astounded. Peg nearly died of happiness.”

“It was not clever to waste a phenomenon on such a small audience! Naturally, I’d had the same idea,” Mama said. Naturally, I thought. “But I was waiting to heal you when
it would work to our best advantage. This way, how do we benefit?”

“We benefit, Mama, because I can now be as clever as I am. I was tired of being stupid and ugly, especially if you plan to stick around here for a while.”

She considered me. “You have overstepped yourself,” she said, very quietly. “You are not to make any further decisions without consulting me.”

“It was a spontaneous inspiration,” I protested.

“There is no room for spontaneity in our lives, Annie. I’m surprised at you. Have you forgotten what happened in Carling?”

Meanwhile, Peg had been a gossip marvel. When I stepped outside with my hair brushed and my lips shiny with petroleum jelly, there was a gaggle of ladies already waiting to see Madame Caterina. We were suddenly the most popular attraction in all of Peach Hill. Every lady would be contributing to our house fund, and they all were watching me.

“It’s her!”

“She’s the one!”

“Look, two good eyes!”

I felt radiant, and then I choked. Sammy Sloane was leaning against the side of the building, scooter rocking under his left foot.

“Hey,” he said. “I heard about you.”

Oh, please let my voice sound calm! I thought. I will never have this chance again.

“Yup,” I said. “It’s a miracle.”

“I always thought you were kind of pretty for an idiot,” said Sammy, knocking the smile right off my face. This boy was fresh, maybe thinking he could take advantage, with me being so innocent. I glanced at the row of women waiting on line, all straining their ears to hear what I’d say.

“Whoa,” I said. “My mama is a tough one and she won’t like me talking to boys.”

“She better get used to it,” said Sammy. My grin crept back and nearly cracked my jawbone.

“Do you mind me asking,” he said, “what it feels like?”

“What what feels like?”

“Being inside a miracle? Having actual contact with the spirit world? I’ve been thinking about you all night since my mother arrived home with the news. I think it’s the most amazing thing I ever heard of!”

“Oh,” I said. He’d been thinking about me? All night? He thought I was amazing? Or, at least, part of something amazing?

“Well,” I said. “It’s all so … so … overwhelming. I’m still trying to orient myself. I’ll be happy to talk more the next time I see you.”

“You’ll be going to school now, won’t you?” He might as well have poured ice down the neck of my blouse.

“School?” Oh, no! School!

“You know what school is?” he asked. “How much do you know about anything?”

“Not much,” I said, taking the easy way out. “But I intend to be a fast learner. Why don’t you tell me about school?”

“School is the place where kids have to go all day. They lock us in and drill us about numbers and the capital cities of places you’re never going to go and dead people writing in books. And you sit at a hard little desk with scratch marks all over it made by the penknives of all the prisoners before you. And the teachers have special training with leather straps and hickory canes so they can whiz them through the air and make your heart jump and your palms sweat even if it’s not you who forgot to memorize a poem about bluebells swaying in the breeze.”

“Well,” I said. “You make it sound awfully nice, but I don’t think I’ll be able to join you.”

“That’s what you think,” said Sammy. “Wait till you meet Mrs. Newman and see if you’re not begging to come to school.”

“Mrs. Newman?”

“She’s a truant officer with the nose of a shark on the scent of fresh blood. Her husband—”

“Mr. Newman?”

“Well, we call him Old Horse, actually, thanks to his teeth being the size and color of—”

“I get it,” I said. “I’ve seen a horse.”

“He’s the janitor at Peach Hill Secondary and he’s got this little dungeon down there in the cellar where Mrs. Newman puts the children who are trying to shirk school.”

“She’ll have to find me first,” I boasted, heart galloping. We’d been talking for at least ten minutes and I hadn’t stammered yet!

“Oh, shoot,” said Sammy. The bells of St. Alphonse Church clanged across the square. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” He pushed off on the scooter as if the hounds of hell were chomping at his heels. The bell rang nine times. Sammy was late for school.

And I was left with a crowd of eyes looking my way. Did it show? Could they tell I was wild for that boy?

“Good morning,” I said.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” said an old woman wearing a violet headscarf. “You’ve been healed.”

I nodded.

“Your mother did that?”

“So it seems,” I said.

“Can she cure my arthritis?” The woman held up hands like the claws of a crow, twisted over each other, bumpy and frail.

Oh, dear. I flinched. This was my fault. Real pain was something I didn’t like to think about. But I’d turned Mama into a healer and here was a line of women with swollen joints and sore necks and aches in unmentionable regions.
They were maybe truly sick and should be consulting a doctor. We were about to exploit physical anguish instead of just foolishness and greed. Mama was suddenly a new hope, perhaps a last hope, for all these people and doubtless many more.

“I just want my pain to stop.”

No! I wanted to shout,
No! Go away!
Taking money from someone who needed real medicine didn’t seem right. But I swallowed. Loyalty. Loyalty to Mama.

I clasped my hands with a fervent sigh. “I pray that my mama can cure you as she has cured me! Perhaps I am a sign of many healings to come. But”—I lowered my voice—“as undeserving as I am, I may be the single chosen one. Perhaps only her great love for me and her years of prayer have made this happen.”

The woman clutched at me with fingers like wintry twigs.

“I’ll take the chance,” she said. “I know that yesterday you were a babbling, cockeyed fool, falling down like a drunkard and making a scene. I’m a believer, hearing you now.” She patted her handbag. “I’ve brought my savings,” she said. “I’ll give you whatever it takes.”