I just don’t understand it,” Christy said at dinner Saturday night.
“Give them time, Christy,” Miss Alice advised as she reached for a biscuit. “Rule number one here in the Cove—everything takes time.”
“Sometimes centuries,” joked David Grantland.
All the workers at the mission gathered in the main house for dinner each evening. Although Christy had only been there a few days, she was already beginning to feel at home. Miss Alice, of course, made that easy, and so did David, who had only been there a short time himself. David’s sister, Ida, was more difficult—a crotchety, no-nonsense sort. And then there was Ruby Mae Morrison, who was staying at the mission temporarily because she was not getting along with her family. Ruby Mae seemed to have appointed herself as Christy’s official shadow. She followed Christy everywhere.
“But why would Granny O’Teale react that way to me?” Christy asked for what seemed like the millionth time. “I understand that she was upset about her great-granddaughter. And maybe she was right. I do need to find a better way to keep an eye on the children at all times.”
“Sixty-seven children, Christy,” David said. “Nobody can keep track of all of them every minute. Trust me, I know.” David helped out with Bible and arithmetic classes in the afternoon.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about Granny, Christy. Her reaction isn’t unusual,” Miss Alice said. “These mountain people are proud of their heritage, and stubborn, too. It’s going to take them a while, maybe even a long while, to accept you. It’s taken me years to be accepted.”
“But she sounded so . . . so angry,” Christy said. “As if she blamed me for Bob Allen’s accident. She said she saw signs that I was cursed.”
Ruby Mae dropped her fork. “Granny knows all about signs and such,” she said nervously.
“Come on, Ruby Mae,” David scoffed.
“No, I swear, it’s true,” Ruby Mae cried, pushing her long red hair out of her eyes.
“Give me one example,” David challenged.
“How about the time Granny O’Teale was charming a wart off her finger, when along comes Mr. McHone. He laughs at her, and Granny warns him, says, ‘you’ll be sorry for laughin’.’ And sure enough, the next day, Mr. McHone’s got a hundred warts growing on his finger in the exact same spot!” Ruby Mae shook her head. “She’s powerful, Granny is. And smart, to boot.”
“Powerful silly, is more like it,” David said. “I—”
He was interrupted by a loud knock at the front door. Miss Ida went to answer it.
“Doctor MacNeill,” she said, “come on in out of that cold. Would you like a bite to eat?”
The doctor, a big, handsome man with unkempt red hair and deep lines around his eyes, came inside. “Thanks, Miss Ida,” he said, “but I’ve eaten already. I’m on my way home and just thought I’d do myself a favor and thaw out a bit, if you don’t mind.” He took off his gloves. “Strangest weather I’ve seen in a long while. Snow yesterday, hail today—” His eyes fell on Christy. “Well, if it isn’t Florence Nightingale,” he said, breaking into a broad grin. “Did Miss Huddleston tell you how she helped with Bob Allen’s surgery?” he asked the rest of the group. “She turned the nicest shade of green you’ve ever seen.” He winked at Christy.
She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. The doctor placed a hand on her shoulder. “Actually, she was a godsend,” he said. “Don’t know what I would have done without her.”
“Granny O’Teale seems to think I’m the cause of Bob’s accident,” Christy said.
The doctor laughed as he pulled up a chair near Christy. “Don’t take it to heart.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Christy muttered.
“So how goes the first official week as teacher?” the doctor asked.
Christy shrugged. “It’s hard for me to say. There are so many children, and we need so many supplies. . . . I guess I’ll find a way to handle it all.”
“She’s doing great,” David said. “We’re very proud of her.”
Miss Ida cleared her throat loudly. “Well, I think I’ll be getting these dirty dishes to the kitchen.”
“Let me help, Miss Ida,” Christy said, pushing back her chair.
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary,” Miss Ida said. She cast a glance from the doctor to her brother. “You’ve obviously got your hands full. Ruby Mae can help.”
Ruby Mae grabbed a dish and followed Miss Ida. “Do you think Miz Christy’s got two suitors already?” she asked loudly.
Christy covered her eyes. She needed to have a talk with Ruby Mae about learning to whisper. “Ruby Mae’s very, uh . . . imaginative,” she said.
“Quite a talker, that one,” Miss Alice agreed, smiling at Christy’s discomfort.
“Doctor MacNeill, I was wondering about something—someone, actually,” Christy said, anxious to change the subject. “Is there anything that can be done for Mountie O’Teale? She barely speaks, and when she does, it’s so garbled she sounds like a frightened animal. It breaks my heart.”
The doctor shook his head. “Swannie tells me she’s been like that for years.”
“Swannie?”
“Mountie’s mother,” Doctor MacNeill explained. “My guess is it’s more emotional than physical, but I can’t even be sure of that. As far as I know, Mountie won’t communicate with anyone.”
“She’s been that way as long as I’ve been at the mission,” Miss Alice said.
Ruby Mae returned for more dishes. “Maybe she’s got a spell on her,” she suggested.
“Ruby Mae!” Christy exclaimed.
“It happens!” Ruby Mae insisted. “I heard tell of a boy over in Cataleechie. He had a spell on him so’s all he could do was mew like a kitten. Lasted two whole months. Even when that spell was took off him, he never did drink milk normal after that. Always had to lap it out of a bowl.”
Christy smiled sadly. “I almost wish that there was such a thing as spells and that that was the cause of Mountie’s problem, Ruby Mae,” she said. “Then we could just look for a way to break the spell.”
When the doctor, David, and Miss Alice had left for the evening, Christy went up to her room. Miss Alice had her own cabin, and David lived in a nearby bunkhouse. That left Christy, Miss Ida, and Ruby Mae in the main house, a white three-story frame building with a screened porch on each side. Compared to Christy’s home back in Asheville, North Carolina, it was very plain. It had no telephone, no electricity, and only the barest of furnishings. She often missed the polished mahogany dining room table back home, the thick Oriental rugs, the lace curtains—not to mention the indoor plumbing.
Still, Christy was growing accustomed to her simple room at the mission. It was a stark contrast to the frills and pastels of her old bedroom— just a washstand with a white china pitcher and bowl, an old bed and a dresser with a cracked mirror, a couple of straight chairs, and two cotton rag rugs on the cold bare floor.
But this room offered something her old room could not—a view so breathtaking that each time she looked out her window at the haze-covered peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, she felt a little closer to God. Mountain ranges folded one into the other, touching the clouds, a sight so peaceful and calming that already Christy had begun to think of it as her view, a source of hope and strength. Even to- night, with the wind whipping fiercely and the moon and stars hidden, she could see those peaks in her imagination with perfect clarity.
Christy reached into the top drawer of her dresser. Underneath a neatly folded, white blouse was her black leather-covered diary. She had brought it with her from Asheville, promising herself she would write down everything that happened to her at the mission—the good and the bad. This was, after all, the greatest adventure of her life, and she wanted to record every moment of it.
She’d had to argue long and hard to convince her parents that a nineteen-year-old girl should venture off to a remote mountain cove to teach. Christy had first heard about the mission and its desperate need for teachers at a church retreat last summer. Somehow, she had known in her heart that she was supposed to go teach in this mountain mission school. There was so much less here materially, but in many ways life in Cutter Gap was much richer than her old life in North Carolina, filled with tea parties and dress fittings and picnics.
Christy climbed onto her bed. Propping the diary on her knees, she uncapped her pen, tapping it thoughtfully against her chin. Where to begin? It had been two days since she’d written.
Saturday, January 20, 1912
My first week of school completed! Hooray!
I have put up with freezing temperatures, vicious bullies, and raccoons in desks, and still I’ve survived to tell the tale. Perhaps I will make a good teacher yet.
David and Miss Alice are encouraging but realistic. “You cannot change the world overnight,” Miss Alice keeps saying.
I can’t admit this yet, not to them, not to anyone. . . . It’s even hard for me to write this down in my own private diary. But the truth is, I feel like such an outsider here. David seems to feel like an outsider, too. Even Miss Alice says it took her years to be accepted by the mountain people. But the littlest things make me feel I’ll never really belong here.
I came to school my first day in my fancy leather shoes, only to see practically all the children barefoot in the January snow. When I talk, they still giggle and whisper. (David says this is because my “city accent” is as strange to their ears as their way of talking is to me.) And when someone like Ruby Mae Morrison (my very own personal shadow, it seems!) talks constantly about the strangest things, I sometimes wonder if we aren’t from different worlds.
Ruby Mae’s non-stop chattering has me seriously considering making cotton plugs for my ears. Miss Alice has a Quaker saying she often uses—“Such-and-such a person is meant to be my bundle.” Well, like it or not, Ruby Mae is clearly going to be my bundle.
Sometimes, I think I am beginning to make progress. Yesterday, Mary O’Teale and Ruby Mae and some others were telling each other “haunt tales” about an old witch, and when I tried to reassure them not to be frightened of the dark, I think I actually managed to reach them. Of course, that was easy for me to understand— I had the same fears as a child.(When I remember the ghost stories George and I used to tell each other, I still get the shivers!)
But later, when Lundy Taylor (another big problem) tripped little Mary and sent her falling down the icy mountain slide the boys had made, Mary’s great-grandmother blamed me. It wasn’t just that Mary had been hurt, it was something more—some deep fear and resentment for anyone not from the Cove. Try as I might, I’m certain that in a million years, Granny O’Teale will never like me.
Time. Maybe that’s all it will take. I’ll make friends with these people, I’ll come to understand them, and maybe as I do, I’ll come to understand my purpose in the world.
A loud knock at her door interrupted Christy. She slipped the diary under her pillow and capped her pen. “Yes?”
“It’s me, Ruby Mae.”
Christy sighed. “Just a second, Ruby Mae.”
When Christy opened the door, Ruby Mae burst into the room as if it were her own. “I was thinkin’ you might like some company.”
“Actually, I was about to get ready for bed.”
Ruby Mae examined her reflection in Christy’s cracked mirror. “I think the preacher and the doctor, they both got a hankerin’ for you, Miz Christy.”
Christy laughed. “Ruby Mae Morrison,” she said, “what am I going to do with you?”
“You never know,” Ruby Mae said with a grin. She ran a hand through her snarled, shoulder-length red hair. Halfway down, she winced.
“How long has it been since you combed your hair, Ruby Mae?” Christy asked. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Factually, I lost my comb. Disremember when. Onliest comb ever I had, too.”
“There are some bad tangles,” Christy said. “Come, sit here on my bed.” She retrieved her own comb from her dresser.
Ruby Mae plopped down on the bed. “I’ll try not to holler when you hit them mouse-nests,” she vowed.
Christy started, gently pulling the comb down.
“Ohoo-weeee!” Ruby Mae cried.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t matter. What do you aim to do when you get it all combed out?”
“How about nice long braids? Like Miss Alice’s?”
“Be tickled to death with braids. But you’ll have to learn me how.”
“Braiding’s easy. I’ll teach you.”
Braiding hair was not the only thing she would have to teach Ruby Mae, Christy thought as she tried to unravel the snarls. Ruby Mae’s sole idea of cleanliness was to wash her face and hands a few times a week—never a full bath. It was not pleasant to be near her. And it wasn’t just Ruby Mae—it was all the children. After the hair combing, maybe Christy would suggest a bath to Ruby Mae in the portable tin tub, and then make her a gift of a can of scented talcum powder.
“I’m going to have to yank a little, Ruby Mae,” Christy said when she reached a particularly stubborn snarl. She pulled as gently as she could, but Ruby Mae leapt back against Christy’s pillow, howling.
“I’m really sorry, Ruby Mae,” Christy apologized.
“What’s this?” Ruby Mae asked, pulling at the corner of the diary Christy had pushed beneath her pillow.
“Oh, that? Nothing. It’s private,” Christy said quickly.
Ruby Mae frowned. “I just mean,” Christy continued, “it’s a place where I write down things.”
“What sorts o’ things?”
“Feelings, dreams, hopes. What happened today. People I meet, places I go. Diary things.”
“Am I in there?”
Christy smiled. “The special thing about a diary is that it’s private.”
“What’s private?”
“Secret. Things you keep to yourself.”
Even as she tried to explain, Christy recalled her visit to the Spencers’ cabin—seven people, living in two tiny rooms and a sleeping loft. How could she expect these children to understand privacy? It was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Christy divided Ruby Mae’s hair into strands and began to braid. When Christy was done, Ruby Mae gazed at her reflection in amazement. “Lordamercy, Miz Christy, you done worked a miracle!” she cried. “I look as purty as a picture, if I do say so myself.”
Christy smiled. “You do indeed.”
She watched as Ruby scampered off, talcum powder in hand, on her way to take a full bath.
Christy closed the door and pulled out her diary.
A small victory, just now with Ruby Mae.No more snarls!
Is this why I came all this way? To braid a tangle of red hair? To pass out scented powder?
Maybe so. Miss Alice says that if we let God, He can use even our annoyances (take Ruby Mae, for example) to bring us unexpected blessings.
Today, braids. Tomorrow, the world!