I had only planned to stop off at Donalee’s pasture for a little bit. What difference would a few minutes make? Mumma had taken us there just last week to see the new calf because Jacob still missed Bright and Lion, and he wouldn’t be quiet about it. We stood beside the fence and reached our arms out to the calf, but it kicked up its feet and ran away. If I went alone and was very quiet, I might get to touch it.
Along the path I saw some dandelions and stopped to pick them. I thought it might please Mumma if I brought some home to her. She always said they were her favourite. But when I stepped out of the ditch with a bouquet in my hands, someone was standing in the middle of the road. Even from a distance, I knew it was Jeff Peterson. A stampede of feet on the gravel road brought with it the rest of the Petersons, yelling for Jeff to wait up. He waved at me from where he was standing, but it wasn’t a friendly gesture. All day long he’d been pestering me. When he started walking toward me on the playground first thing in the morning, I was sure he was coming to settle the score for the broken windows. But when I saw the look that spread across his face, I knew it had nothing to do with what had happened that night, that he hadn’t guessed who was responsible.
“Do you know what I heard, Jewel MacKay?” he said, braced off in front of me. “I heard your mother’s been crazy all her life ever since her mother jumped in the ocean and drowned herself.” His words bruised me in a way I’d never experienced before. He was lying. How could he possibly know something about my family that even I didn’t know? There was a picture of a woman in Poppy’s living room, a pretty, small-framed woman with sad eyes, but Mumma never ever spoke about her even when I asked. “I was only five when she died,” she’d say. Not even Poppy would say anything about her.
“Tell us, Jewel MacKay, do you suppose craziness runs in families? Who knows, you could be next,” he said, jumping toward me. I flinched, thinking he was about to tackle me. His laugh was bitter, sharp around the edges. Running toward the schoolhouse, I felt a ball of fear pulse inside me. Mumma wasn’t like the other mothers in the Forties Settlement, but I thought it was a secret, something no one else knew.
It was foolish of me to have stopped to pick flowers, and I made a wish that I’d gone straight home instead, a wish I knew couldn’t possibly come true. In the distance, Jeff called out, “Loony Girl!” and I started to run. At recess, he’d locked me in the coat closet, but Mrs. Carver had caught him and given him a strapping. When he got out, he swore he’d get his revenge one way or another, so when he called at me from across the expanse, I knew he was coming to settle the score. A shortcut through Donalee’s pasture would bring me right behind Poppy’s barn. There was a path through the ditch and across a small wooded area a few feet from where I’d picked the dandelions. I hurried toward it. Still clutching fast to the flowers, I scrambled under the fence. They ended up ruined, their bright yellow heads squished into the ground. I dropped them but held fast to my lunchbox, pulling it beneath the fence with me. I didn’t dare come home without it. Springing to my feet, I willed my legs to carry me to safety.
There were no signs of the new calf or any of the other cattle as I raced through the pasture. I found a well-worn trail the cattle used and ran, praying I’d make it to Poppy’s in time. But the path was narrow and lined with rocks and bushes, difficult to manoeuvre around while running. My foot caught on a rock and I went down on my knees. The thumping of boots vibrated in my ears. Before I could scramble to my feet, Jeff knocked me down flat to the ground. My lunchbox went flying through the air. I wrapped my hands around my head, waiting for whatever was coming as Jeff pushed my face into the earth. I squirmed to get away, but he shoved his knee into my back. The pungent smell of green grass filled my mouth and lungs. I could barely breathe.
“Now, what were we talking about earlier, Loony Girl?” His breath was forced and filled with rage. The earth thumped with a stampede of running feet as the rest of the Peterson kids came to a halt, screaming at the top of their lungs. “Loony Girl, Loony Girl,” they sang, parroting Jeff. Instead of the flurry of fists I expected to come down on me, I felt Jeff grab me by the scruff of the neck and set me on my feet.
“What are you going to do with her?” Alice Peterson asked in a soft voice. “I don’t think you should hurt her.”
“She’s as loony as her mother,” Jeff had said to Alice the day he forbade her to ever talk to me again. “Don’t go near her with a ten-foot pole.” I’d catch Alice looking at me during the day. I thought she’d eventually come around, but she hadn’t spoken to me since.
Jeff circled me, tapping his chin in contemplation, as he decided what he’d do. “Can’t just let her off scot-free,” he said. “She got me a strapping. It was all her fault. And when you cross a Peterson, you’ve got to pay…the…price.” He poked me in the chest three times as he spoke. I stumbled backward, afraid he’d figured out who had broken the windows in his house. I was sure he’d kill me if he had. Legs trembling, I looked across the pasture. Poppy’s barn beckoned to me in the distance, too far away from where I stood.
“Give her a black eye,” said Greg. “A nice big shiner.”
“No!” yelled Alice, yanking on Jeff’s arm. He brushed her aside like a feather.
“Look, I ain’t hitting no girl,” said Jeff, pacing back and forth. I was relieved to hear him say this, although I was not completely convinced that he meant it.
“Make her eat a cow patty.”
“Tie her to the fence.”
“Take her shoes.”
The boys threw out suggestions, and each time Alice would shout, “No!”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Jeff finally said, ogling me for a few moments, his lopsided grin indicating it was something sinister. “Tell us your mother’s a loony bin and maybe then I’ll let you go.”
“No!” I squawked, lunging at him, swinging my fists with a bravery I didn’t know I possessed.
“Oh, I think you will,” he said, pushing against my forehead to hold me back, as I furiously swatted air. I’d tear him to pieces if I made contact. Quickly playing myself out, I stopped swinging, straining to catch my breath. Jeff stepped backward, releasing me from his hold. He nodded to Greg, who then twisted my arm behind my back.
“Let me go!” I squawked, pain jabbing my shoulder as Greg pulled up on my arm.
“There’s more where that came from, Loony Girl. Now say it. Say, ‘My mother belongs in the loony bin.’” I held tough, preparing for what was to come. Jeff nodded at Greg again. This time he twisted harder. I yelled out, trying to get away, but Greg’s hold was so strong. Alice yanked at Greg’s arm, but she was no match.
“Let go!” she screamed as I cried out again.
“All she has to say is, ‘My mother’s a loony bin,’” shouted Jeff. “We don’t go anywhere until she says that.”
Another wrench on my arm and I could stand it no longer. I screamed out the offending words. “Say it again,” Jeff shouted, and I did. Over and over. Jeff stood before me with a look of satisfaction. I kept screaming. I couldn’t make myself stop. Tears ran down my face. Greg let go, pushing me away from him. I fell into a blubbering heap, my shoulder and arm throbbing. Alice ran to my side but was pulled away.
“Come on, Alice. You stay away from Loony Girl there,” Jeff said. “She’s crazy just like her mother and her grandmother.” He booted me in the leg and walked away. As they hurried off, Alice stopped and turned back toward me. There was a haunting look in her eyes that burned a hole straight through me.
I didn’t move for a time. The cattle came up over the hill, the little brockle-face steer by its mother’s side. I wanted to stay on the ground and not move for a lifetime, but in the end I had to go home. Mumma would be wondering where I was. I gathered up my lunchbox and walked back toward the main road, my arms and legs weak. Climbing the pole fence, I jumped to the ground. The crumpled dandelions were waiting for me on the other side. I stepped on them and flattened them farther into the ground. Mumma wasn’t crazy, she was just Mumma. The same way she’d always been.
“There’s nothing you can do here,” said Daddy. There were dark rings around his eyes. I could tell he’d been up most of the night. “You might just as well be in school. Now eat your breakfast.”
I started to protest. School was the last place I wanted to be.
“She’ll be back,” he said, as I swallowed a spoonful of lumpy oatmeal. “It’s not for you to worry.”
Last night, lights had moved about the pasture and into the woods. From the window upstairs, me and Jacob had watched. Through the small crack of the opened window, I heard Daddy calling out to her.
“Where do you think she went?” Jacob said, his big brown eyes yearning for an answer I couldn’t give. I turned away to keep him from seeing my tears. If I hadn’t been late coming home from school yesterday, this never would have happened.
But then, Mumma was standing by the stove when I came through the door that afternoon, stirring a pot as if nothing had happened the day before, as if she hadn’t disappeared into the woods and spent the entire night alone in the dark. She looked perfectly fine, or as close to perfectly fine as Mumma ever came.
“Mumma!” I gasped, nearly dropping my lunchbox on the floor. At school I’d pushed her away and made myself stop thinking about how she was gone. I’d concentrated on the numbers in my mathematics book and imagined running barefoot down the road to Poppy’s house once summer came. I’d thought about Jacob and me burying more treasure down by the shore on our next trip to Uncle Dylan and Aunt Joan’s, and riding on Dusty’s back, nuzzling my face into her neck, taking her warmth just for me.
Mumma didn’t speak that evening and neither did Daddy, and whenever Jacob made a noise I told him to shush. I went to my room; Jacob followed. I took out the book of bedtime stories Poppy had given us a few weeks ago and started to read. “Talk louder,” Jacob said when we heard noises coming from downstairs. Later that evening, Mumma came into my room and crawled onto the bed beside me. Her body felt like a block of ice, and I lay there still as a stone, straining to hear if she was breathing.