Ghost Girl Read online

  While she worked on the fish stone, I walked up and down along the railing, gazing at her collection. Ever since she was a girl, Aunt Birdy had been collecting stones with wondrous shapes. She found them in streams like Mill Prong and Laurel Run, carved out by ages of running water. The first one she found worth keeping looked just like a crescent moon. Then came the egg in a nest, a little bitty footprint, and two perfect halves of a heart that fit together. And on and on. Lined up on Aunt Birdy’s railing, all those shiny black rocks glowed like jewels in a bracelet. I must have worn a rut walking up and down that porch so many times, forever stopping to pick up my favorites and hold them in my hand.

  I sat on the top step to watch Aunt Birdy for a while. She smiled and turned her head this way and that while she worked. You never would have guessed she was my Mama’s mother. Her real name was Bertha Lockley, but everybody called her Aunt Birdy—Birdy, I think, because she was small-boned and quick as a sparrow, always hopping from one chore to the next. Folks said I had her eyes, but I wasn’t so sure. Aunt Birdy’s eyes were blue jay blue. Mine were mostly gray, like two shallow pans of water.

  While we were sitting there, the sound of hammers started up again over the ridge. Aunt Birdy stopped rocking. Her tiny feet barely touched the ground. “I near forgot, Apry,” she said all in a rush. “I been wanting to ask if you heard about the schoolhouse they’re building up yonder.”

  I nodded, wishing I could cover up my ears to shut out that clanking.

  A faraway look wandered across Aunt Birdy’s face. “Shame your Grandpap Lockley’s not alive to see it. First the president of the United States moving next door and now us getting our own schoolhouse.” She shook her head. “Law! . . . Preacher Jessup says the school will be ready come New Year’s.”

  Then all at once Aunt Birdy fixed me with those sharp eyes of hers. “Aren’t you excited about the new school, Apry?”

  I swallowed hard, trying to push down the aching in my throat. “Mama don’t want me going,” I managed to say.

  “Why’s that?” Aunt Birdy asked. I didn’t look at her, but I could hear her voice bristling up.

  “She wants me home for chores.”

  “Did you tell her you could do your work ’fore school, then more when you get home?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, why not, honey?”

  I felt old suddenly, older than Aunt Birdy with her skin so brown and papery. It was all I could do to muster up words to try and tell how I’d been feeling. “I can’t scrap with Mama now, Aunt Birdy,” I finally said, sighing. “Least not since Riley died. She’s too sad still. Even Daddy tries not to cross her.”

  Riley. It was the first time I had let my brother’s name spill out in months. Mama wouldn’t even let us mention him since the accident, and sometimes I could see why. Just saying his name made me miss him even more—his flop of yellow hair and the new batch of freckles across his nose every summer. His steady breathing next to me at night and the way he always tried to carry things that were way too heavy for him.

  Maybe if I could have just remembered the good, happy times with my brother, it would have been all right, but I couldn’t stop there. Whenever I thought of Riley, that night came washing over me. I kept seeing it—the flames climbing up the tail of his nightshirt, the surprised look on his face after I had shoved him to the floor and wrapped him round and round in a quilt to put out the fire.

  “You better not, Apry,” he had cried, his blue eyes round as glass buttons. “That’s Mama’s best quilt.”

  “Hush,” I had scolded. “You just hush and lie still.”

  Aunt Birdy was watching me, shaking her head. “You still think you’re to blame, don’t you? You still think it never would have happened if you hadn’t gone out to fetch more wood?”

  I nodded, squenching my eyes tight to keep the tears in.

  “Well, that ain’t true, Apry Sloane,” Aunt Birdy went on. “It weren’t your fault. You only left for a minute! How were you supposed to know he’d go playing by that fire. We all thought he knew better than that . . . but the Lord works his mysteries, and sometimes there ain’t nothing we can do but hold tight and ride along. And I’m sorry to say it, but your mama’s not helping one bit with all of her grieving and keeping you shut up at home.”

  She sprang out of her rocker and came to stand beside me, so close that I could smell the wood smoke clinging to her old sweater with the calico patches. “Hold out your hand,” she said. Then she set the fish stone in my palm. It was beautiful, gleaming with wax and still warm from her polishing.

  “Now, you worry about finding a spot for that on my railing,” she said with her eyes blazing, “and I’ll worry about making sure you get up to that school.”

  I closed my fingers over the stone and thanked the Lord and all his mysteries for Aunt Birdy.

  Three

  Whenever I could slip away during the next few weeks, I rushed over to watch the schoolhouse going up. A giant old chestnut with peeling bark and gnarled roots had been left standing out front in the schoolyard. Even though it was dying of blight, the workmen hadn’t cut it down. Maybe it was plain too big or maybe they hadn’t had the heart. Either way, I was glad the chestnut was still there. It was perfect for leaning against, and from the nest of tree roots I had a clear view of the workmen high up on the roof of the schoolhouse, setting the stone in the chimney and laying the shingles around it.

  When I had too many chores or it was too bitter cold to sneak up to the school, I spent the day searching Mama’s face for signs that she had talked to Aunt Birdy and changed her mind. But there were none, and opening day kept getting closer. The double doors on the front of the schoolhouse had a fresh coat of paint now, white as the new snow on the ground, and more and more kids from the hollows were starting to poke around the schoolyard.

  Then Christmas Eve came. Daddy was down in the valley finishing a string of odd jobs, so Aunt Birdy invited Mama and me over for supper. Now! I kept thinking all the way through dinner. Ask her now. But still Aunt Birdy never said a word. After the brown-sugar ham, she served us thick slices of fried apple pie, then sat down to join us.

  “Apples dried up good this year,” she said, nodding to herself. “Almost taste fresh.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Mama said, but she stared off to the side of her plate like she wasn’t even tasting the special food she was chewing.

  With Christmas and all, I should have expected that Mama would be thinking of nothing but Riley. She hadn’t brushed her hair smooth in days, just kept wrenching it back tight in a rubber band. Used to be that every Saturday night she would wash her long straight hair with store-bought soap, then brush it dry by the fire. Daddy would come home late at night from work and lift up a hank of her blond hair and just stand there, breathing in the clean smell of it until Mama noticed Riley and me watching. Then she would shoo Daddy away, trying not to laugh.

  I squirmed in my seat. That was all hard to picture now, with nobody talking at Christmas Eve dinner and Mama staring at empty air with her mouth pulled down tight. Before long she was scraping her chair back. As she set to clearing dishes, I wanted to lay my head on the table, right in the middle of all the crumbs, and cry. It looked like I was never going to get past the old chestnut in the schoolyard.

  Then I felt Aunt Birdy’s shoe on top of my foot, gently pressing down. I stole a glance over at her, but she was eating her last bite of crust, smacking her lips like nothing had happened.

  “You gonna help clear, April?” Mama asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, jumping to my feet.

  Aunt Birdy set her fork on her plate with a loud clink. “Sit back down, you two,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”

  Mama looked surprised, but she sat anyway and watched as her mother reached into her sweater pocket and brought out a grubby, folded piece of heavy paper. Aunt Birdy laid it on the table and smoothed out the creases one by one. I recognized it right away—it was the sign from Taggart’s
that had been taped up on the cash register for as long as I could remember.

  Aunt Birdy held it up and pointed to the faded handwriting. “Tell me,” she said in a firm voice. “What does this say?”

  Mama leaned forward and squinted at the sign, then shook her head, looking impatient. “Why are you asking me, Mama? Where’d you get that, anyway?”

  Aunt Birdy’s old face turned sly. “Down at Taggart’s. And I’ll tell you what it says, ’cause I just asked Henry Taggart two days ago when I went down to buy more brown sugar. It says, ‘ROUND BACK. PLEASE RING FOR SERVICE.’” Aunt Birdy tapped each word with her finger.

  Mama stared with her mouth half open. “So?” she said.

  “So,” Aunt Birdy answered, her voice rising, “I’ve been going to that store for twenty years or more, and half the time Henry Taggart is nowhere in sight. He’s out back counting his money or checking his stock or swigging liquor or whatever he does back in that shed of his, and I stand by the counter, nice as you please, waiting around like an old cart mule. For twenty years this sign’s been staring me in the face, saying, ‘ROUND . . . BACK . . . PLEASE . . . RING . . . FOR . . . SERVICE,’” She jabbed the words again with her finger.

  “And I never even knew it,” she went on. “Never even saw the bell hiding in the middle of all those dusty papers he’s got spread over the counter there. . . . If I’da known, I would have rung the devil out of that bell every chance I got.”

  “Can you tell me why you’re bringing all this up now?” Mama asked.

  That’s when Aunt Birdy glanced over at me with her blue eyes glittering. “’Cause I want better for Apry. If there’s a sign up at Taggart’s that says, ‘Please Ring’ or ‘Two-headed Chickens for Sale,’ I want her to be able read it. And now she’s got a chance. Any day now, the president’s gonna be opening that school and—”

  Mama snorted. She sat back hard in her chair and crossed her arms. “So that’s what this is about. Did she put you up to this?”

  “No,” Aunt Birdy said. “I’ve been thinking of this on my own ever since I heard the hammers start up. It’s a school, Alma, right up the mountain from us.”

  Mama shook her head. That’s when I decided to slip out and fetch another bucket of wash water from the pump. I didn’t want to be there when she said no, when poor Aunt Birdy was pushed into begging and pleading with her own daughter. So I dawdled outside. At the pump I could feel my wet fingers sticking to the cold metal handle, but still I kept pumping, letting the water splash over the sides of the bucket. Finally, Aunt Birdy came out on the porch and called for me.

  When I stepped out of the shadows, she was waiting to meet me at the door, her face crinkling into a slow smile. “You’re going to school,” she whispered.

  “What?” I said, pushing my way around her to make sure it was true.

  Mama hardly looked up from the dishes. “If your chores fall off, you’ll have to quit.”

  That was all she said, but it was enough.

  On Christmas Day, Daddy didn’t show up till noon, bringing me only a crumpled sack of lemon drops. He brought Mama a new sewing basket with five tiny spools of thread, a set of needles, and a thimble fastened underneath the lid. But when he set the basket into Mama’s lap, she didn’t do much more than mumble “thank you.” She had spent most of the morning in her rocker, staring into the fire.

  For once, though, I didn’t mind so much. I sucked the sugar off my lemon drops till they turned sour, and dreamed about going to school, trying to imagine myself walking straight through those big double doors with their shiny coat of new paint.

  Four

  When opening day finally came, I was up at dawn, racing through the feeding and milking like I had hot coals in my boots. Aunt Birdy had loaned me Grandpap Lockley’s old pocket watch so I could get to school on time, and Mama had even let the hem out of my Sunday dress. It was blue with a lace collar and little rose-shaped buttons down the front, and even though the sleeves were too short to cover the bony knobs on my wrists, I still felt almost stylish heading off for the first day of school.

  “Preacher Jessup says school starts at nine o’clock sharp,” Aunt Birdy had told me.

  As I hiked along the frozen trail, I huddled in my sweater and kept my fists shoved down in the stretched pockets, pulling my hands out only long enough to flip open the case of Grandpap’s watch and check the time on the yellowed dial. I wanted to be there a half-hour early. Maybe I could even get settled in my new desk before the other kids showed up, before Dewey came in whistling and calling me names.

  I took a deep breath and scrambled up the last ridge, feeling my heart bumping against my ribs. Then I saw the schoolyard, and my heart bumped even harder.

  There were people everywhere, mostly men in dark overcoats, with hats pulled down over their eyes. They were clumped around the schoolhouse steps, talking loud and laughing, their breath making puffs of smoke in the shivery air.

  It was strange to see automobiles parked on the bare mountainside, turned every which way. More cars were pulling in, and I saw two marines in green uniforms splattered with mud trying to push another car out of the ditch. They yelled back and forth to each other, straining to be heard over the gunning engine.

  I was standing near the edge of the clearing deciding what to do next when I noticed a woman with her children coming up the trail from Big Meadows. It was Mrs. Woodard and her three wild red-haired boys all dressed in their Sunday best. Mrs. Woodard was carrying her new baby girl wrapped in an old sheepskin saddle blanket.

  All of a sudden, a few men in the crowd by the schoolhouse caught sight of the Woodards. The next thing I knew, the men were swooping down on them like hawks on a nest of baby field mice. Who were they? They were pushing too close and shouting questions. I could see Mrs. Woodard grab her baby tighter to her chest and the three boys edging back toward their ma, even though they weren’t the type to turn scared.

  Aunt Birdy would know what to do. I turned to head down the hill toward her place. But it was too late. One of the men looking out over the chestnuts and the foggy valley had already spotted me. He whistled to his partner, and before I could tell my legs to get moving, there they were, standing two steps away, wearing a pair of sugar-sweet smiles.

  “Hi, there,” said the first fellow. He had a round face, little round eyeglasses, and hair that was combed back flat and shiny against his head. I had never seen a man look so fancy. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?” he said.

  I didn’t answer. The two of them glanced at each other real quick. Then the taller one, with a cigarette dangling from his lip, spoke up. “You can get your picture in the Evening Star, sweetheart.” He patted the black case hanging round his neck. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? What’s your name, honey?”

  “April,” I told him. “April Sloane.”

  The swanky one pulled a little pad of writing paper from inside his coat and scribbled something down. “How old are you, April? About nine?” I could hear his pen scratching and smell his spicy hair tonic drifting over. “This your first time going to school?”

  “Eleven” was all I said. “I’m eleven.” I could feel them both looking me over.

  “What do you think about President Hoover building a school for all you children?” Mr. Swanky asked.

  Before I had a chance to think of an answer, he said, “Have you ever met the Hoovers before?”

  I shook my head.

  “What’d you have for breakfast this morning, honey?”

  I had never heard such a fool question, but I told them anyway. “Two ham biscuits with apple butter and milk.”

  They both looked sort of disappointed, but then Mr. Swanky’s eyes landed on my feet and he seemed to spark up again. “So Miss April, why don’t you smile real big now and let Hank here take your picture.” Then he poked Hank with his elbow and mumbled something out of the side of his mouth, thinking I couldn’t hear. But I did.

  “Make sure you get a good shot of those shoe
s,” he said.

  I looked down at my boots, feeling my face turn hot. What was he staring at? They were just an old pair of Mama’s. I had never thought much about them before. But now I could see they were just plain ugly, two sizes too big and full of cracks, like dried mud puddles. And my woolens had slipped down on one side, showing my frozen blue leg underneath.

  “Look up at me, sweetheart!” Hank was hollering. “Up here at the camera.”

  “Come on, April,” Mr. Swanky said. “Don’t you want your picture in the paper?” His voice was turning mean, but I couldn’t seem to lift up my head. I kept my eyes fixed on my boots and the frost on the ground underneath.

  Then I heard another voice. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” a woman said. “I’d like to get all the children inside now so that we can begin.”

  It was her, Miss Christine Vest, delivered to my side like a guardian angel. She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into her soft gray coat with the fur collar.

  The man with the camera stepped forward. “Wait a minute, Miss Vest. We just wanted to get a quick shot of this young lady before she goes inside.”

  “Sorry, gentlemen,” Miss Vest called over her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll have time for more photographs later.” Then she tightened her grip and started steering me toward the schoolhouse. “Now, don’t worry,” she said under her breath. “I’ll get you through these reporters. Just keep walking.”

  As soon as we got closer, the men—reporters, she called them—began shouting questions. In the crowd, I could see more cameras, and I flinched at the flashes of light and the popping sounds they made as we pushed our way through. A marine hurried over to clear a path for us.

  “Excuse us. . . . Pardon me,” Miss Vest said over and over again. She smiled and nodded when the reporters called her name but paid no mind to their questions. Before long, we were through the double doors, standing in a little hallway filled with rows of coat hooks.