TWO

I ought to say something here about my own self and the way I was back home, before they dragged me off on that horrible, horrible journey.

My name is Ruby Clyde Henderson and I am not stupid. What’s more, I look like a boy, even at my age—I am skinny, and as my mother says, flat as a pancake. So when I want, I tell people my name is Clyde, and when I don’t want, it’s Ruby. Some don’t even believe I’m a girl, with my hair being so short. It’s funny, people tell you not to lie, but they hardly ever want to hear the truth. If you try to tell it, they call you a liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire. But if you lie, they believe you.

Back home there was this little blockheaded boy, new to school, and he actually pulled my pants down, wanting to prove that I was one of his kind. What he saw so surprised him that he laughed out loud, braying like a donkey. So I knocked him down—I’m good at that—and I sat on him. I’m good at that too. Then I snatched a sweat bee off the clover and shoved it in that boy’s mouth and pinched his puffy lips closed until he fainted flat out.

I was in trouble with Mr. Upchurch, who had been principal since before the school was built. That man gave me the willies. And, of course, we called him Mr. Upchuck behind his back. His eyeglasses caught and reflected light, so you couldn’t ever see his eyeballs. And what’s worse than a grown man with no visible eyes?

I took my place in his “bad child’s circle.” We never got to sit down in Mr. Upchuck’s office. He’d taped off a circle on the floor for us. It was supposed to make us feel squirmy. But I liked standing in the circle because I’d heard that if you put a rope around your tent when you were camping out, snakes couldn’t get to you. So I always imagined the masking tape was rope, and that it kept Mr. Upchuck from getting his fangs in me. I had to stand in that circle for an hour just for beating up the little blockhead, but I would have done it again.

You’d think I didn’t have any friends, after hearing a story like that. And I’m ashamed to tell it on myself—it makes me sound like a bully, which I’m not. Bullies pick on weak people. What fun is that? I only pick on bullies. Which means that most of my friends are weak people, which I like. They’re much more interesting. I mean, bullies are all alike, really. That’s why I beat them up.

What’s more, I have a gift and talent. I don’t know which it is, really—gift or talent—so I call it both. It is this: I am a healer. I do it with my hands. I haven’t cured any cancers or brain tumors, not yet. I haven’t cured any blindness or leprosies either. And to tell the truth, I haven’t even cured a common cold, not yet. But that doesn’t mean I won’t one day.

For now, though, I can make people stop crying. And that’s a God-given gift … and talent.

Whenever children back home got hurt on the playground, I’d lay my hands on them and they’d stop crying. The nurse was my friend, and she let me help her; told me I was her best student. (That’s why she asked the bee-stung bully boy if he wanted me to help. He hadn’t heard about that side of my personality, so you can imagine! When he heard my name, he flew up off her table and ran flat into the wall.)

But that didn’t change her good opinion of me. She gave me “Wordly Wizard” workbooks, bunches of them, and she taught me words like ointment and hypodermic. See, she knew I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up. Me, Nurse Henderson, with a little white hat, all starched and pleated; white dress, white legs, white shoes, white shoelaces. Like an angel, only a little more starched and without the wings.