On the morning I turned eleven I woke up feeling older. I got out of bed and stretched, sure I was taller than I’d been the day before. I wiggled my toes against the little rug by my bed, wondering if my feet had gotten longer. My best green dress even felt a little snugger. At least it seemed to fit tighter around my hips and shoulders. Not my chest, though, and that was all right by me. The last thing in the world I wanted was to grow in that way, not yet at least. I just thought I’d be embarrassed to have those things bumping out under the fabric of my dress.
I studied myself in the wood-framed mirror Daddy’d hung on my wall. Turning my head one direction and then the other, I studied my face, holding poses like the ones I’d seen women do in Mama’s magazines. Pinching at my cheeks brought up the color just like biting did to my lips.
I wondered if now that I was eleven years old I’d be expected to look more grown, more dainty and refined. If I was, Mama would be sure to tell me.
If there was anything in the whole world Mama wished for me it was that I’d be polite and genteel.
I watched my reflection sigh and stoop her shoulders. What Mama wanted would surely take all the fun out of my days. Being a lady was a whole lot like work.
Stepping away from the mirror, I opened my door. Right away I smelled the baking cake and my heart fluttered with excitement.
“You’ll have to figure out what you’re going to wish for,” Daddy had said the day before.
I didn’t have to figure anything out at all. I knew what I was going to wish for already. I’d known for a good month.
As far as I knew, Millard had been to every one of my birthday dinners. He was every bit as much a part of our family as I was. He wasn’t one to bring presents or to give a card, but that never mattered to me. It was enough for me to know that he’d be at my house, lending his scratchy singing voice to the happy birthday song, and that he’d want me to think long and hard about the wish I’d make when I blew out the candles.
“You don’t wanna wish for somethin’ piddly,” he’d say. “Always try for the biggest wish you can think up. You never know what might happen.”
I decided that my eleventh birthday wish would be for him. I’d wish that somehow he’d fold on his stubborn resolution to stay in Red River and pack his stuff, hopping on a train for Bliss that very day. It was the biggest and best wish I could think up.
He’d written us a letter just a couple days before, telling us the news from home, and I thought he was busier than ever with all the folks in and out of the Hooverville. He told of how they had better buildings for the people come to stay and how sometimes they’d have dances on a Friday night.
I bet Pastor didn’t like that one bit.
“They even got a couple flush toilets down there now,” he’d written. “Clean water out of the tap, too. Government’s got some of their folks there to be sure it’s all fine and good for the families. Real safe. Sometimes I wonder if that old Hooverville is the best place most of them ever lived in.”
In that letter he didn’t say so much as one word about leaving Red River.
I knew my wish would have to be mighty strong to pull him up out of the Oklahoma soil where he’d been rooted near all his life and bring him to us. I wasn’t even sure it’d be right, having him leave.
But he’d always been the one to tell me to wish big, and I intended to do just that.
Mama shooed me out of the house. She said she had to get my cake frosted and chicken fried and that she and Opal had a lot of work ahead of them to get the house ready. We were to have company for supper.
That and Mama had a couple surprises to put together for me.
“And I don’t need you sneaking peeks at me,” she said. “I’ve worked too hard for you to spoil it.”
I did as Mama said, not giving her one argument. I knew she’d scrimped and saved to have a good meal for my birthday. And she’d gone without sugar in her coffee for weeks so she had enough to bake a cake. It would have been the act of an ungrateful child to sass at Mama just then.
Besides, I liked surprises more than anything else, so I did as she said. I went out back to see if Ray wanted to go into the woods with me. He sat out behind the shed on an overturned bucket. When he saw me, he turned quick, hiding something under his shirt.
“Don’t look,” he hollered.
“What are you hiding?” I asked, stepping closer.
“Don’t ask questions on your birthday, Pearl.”
“Is it a present for me?”
“I ain’t sayin’. Don’t ask me no more questions,” he said. “Now shoo.” On any other day, his hollering at me like that would’ve hurt my feelings. Not on that day, though. I was happy to let him keep on carving on the piece of wood I saw peeking out from under the cotton of his white shirt. I turned right around and left him to it.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” he yelled at me as I went.
“Thanks,” I answered, not even looking over my shoulder at him.
I made my way to the library. It was a bright and sunny day and I was hoping to find another book to read. I’d read through the Oz book so many times I nearly had it committed to memory. I thought it might be good to find a different story for a change. Something from the shelf Aunt Carrie’d shown me.
As I went, a couple folks here and there called after me, wishing me a happy birthday. I wondered if Daddy’d told them to say that if they saw me. I didn’t mind so much. It sure felt good to have that kind of attention.
Seemed every day Bliss got to feeling more and more like home.
Still, something nagged at me whenever I got to thinking I was somewhere near happy. It made me think of a half-broken tooth Daddy had once. He’d forget it was sore until he chomped on something hard. Then it hurt him something awful.
After a week or two he had to get that tooth pulled so it’d stop paining him.
Making my way down the street to the library, I felt some kind of aching worry throbbing in the middle of my chest. It caught my breath and I gasped once, twice, and felt a flutter in my heart.
I put one foot in front of the other and kept moving forward. Bliss was home and I’d be happy there no matter how hard I had to try.
Mrs. Trask brightened up as soon as she saw me coming through the door. She eased herself up from her desk, moving slower than usual and wincing a little before she got straight as she was able.
“I have found just the book for you, Miss Spence,” she told me. She pointed off to a row of shelves. “It’s just over that way. Come along. We shall retrieve it together.”
Following behind her I worried about what kind of book she’d picked for me. All I’d been reading for months was the Oz book and I had hoped to find a story just as good as that one. Sighing, I tried to have faith she’d chosen a book I would like.
When I saw the one she pulled off the shelf for me I couldn’t help but smile. On the cover was an Indian man with a tomahawk in hand, his face stretched into a fierce battle cry.
Mrs. Trask winked at me and wished me a happy birthday.
I would have hugged her if I didn’t worry I’d break her in two.
Sitting in the window seat, the light warming me, I read that book, my eyes not leaving the page except when I needed to blink. There weren’t any battles, not in the first few chapters at least. But the words were such that I could about smell the Indian’s deer-skin vest and hear his horse neighing.
Wanting to save some of that story for later, I closed it, putting it under my arm before checking it out and heading home.
“How do you like it so far?” Mrs. Trask asked as she stamped the inside of the book. “Are you enjoying it?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I surely am.”
“I am delighted to hear that, my dear.”
I did believe she was.
If I could have been an Indian I would’ve wanted to be the kind that traveled all over. I’d be in the sort of tribe that planned according to the seasons and where the good hunting grounds were. A nomad, that’s what I’d be. North in the summer and south in the winter. West when the buffalo were good and stout. East for fishing. I supposed I’d have followed the chief, trusting him to know the best way to go.
But if I couldn’t have been born an Indian I might have been brought into the tribe somehow or another. With my light hair and eyes I wouldn’t look like them. That could be all right, though, I reckoned. Somebody had to be able to go into town to deal with the white man. I’d be sure they got a fair shake for the animal skins they wanted to trade and I’d never allow them to get into the fire water.
I could teach the Indian children English, maybe even how to read and write. And maybe they’d teach me how to speak in whatever tongue it was they had. We’d learn each other’s songs and stories and figure out that we were more the same than we’d ever realized before.
Turning the corner from Main to Magnolia I saw Daddy sitting on the front porch with Ray. They both leaned forward with elbows resting on knees, their faces serious. Daddy said a couple things to Ray and they both nodded.
Ray had his eyebrows pushed down over his eyes like he’d just heard bad news. He reached back and scratched at his neck. When he saw me coming he looked away fast.
I knew it wasn’t the kind of talk I wanted to hear, not on that day at least, so I went around back to go in the kitchen door.
I didn’t put my ear to the front door or sneak under an open window to eavesdrop on whatever it was they were talking about. I could already tell one thing. It was something I didn’t want to hear.
A girl didn’t want bad news on her birthday.