CHAPTER 8
I was right—Grandma said the clown costume still had life in it, and she had nothing else to offer.
“But it’s so scratchy—and too small,” I complained when I tried it on.
Grandma inspected me from head to toe. “Does look like you’ve grown a foot, doesn’t it?” She clucked her tongue and cocked her head to one side as my hope grew that she was seeing my side of it for once. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. “But with wartime rations, we don’t have the material . . .”
Once Grandma starts talking wartime rations, I know I shouldn’t even try to argue. But I still do.
“Maybe you could cut up an old dress or something?”
Grandma gasped. “Oh, now I should put scissors to one of my dresses so you can wear it for one day? It’s not your wedding day, Prudence Ann; it’s just Halloween.” She shook her head. “And there’s no extra money right now.”
“What about the piggy bank?” I remembered the coffee can Daddy put in the kitchen last month, telling us it was now the farm’s piggy bank. “Could we use some of that money?”
“I reckon when your daddy said that was to be for improvements around here, he wasn’t talking about costumes.” She patted my shoulder, which was already itching under the too-tight costume. “This will do just fine.”
So on Halloween, there I was at school dressed as an itchy overgrown clown.
After lunch, there was a party in the gym with paper skeleton and pumpkin decorations and cookies and punch. I was sitting by myself eating a cookie when Rotten Ricky walked up to me. I’d managed to avoid him since that day in the closet, as he’d been absent for a couple weeks. When he returned to school, he seemed quieter—but I figured him to be still as rotten.
He was wearing his usual clothes. All around us stood ghosts and witches and cowboys and cats, but there he was, looking like it was just any old day of the year. I really couldn’t have cared less, but I had to ask: “Why aren’t you dressed up?”
Rotten Ricky blushed a bit and then puffed up his chest, reminding me of Teacher, before he answered, “Halloween stinks.”
I don’t know why that bothered me. What with Charlotte gone and my awful costume, I wasn’t feeling particularly fond of Halloween myself. But when Rotten Ricky said those very words, I felt myself bristling like he’d insulted my kin. “What do you mean—stinks?”
He shrugged. “Just does.”
“Well, maybe you stink.”
He sighed the way Grandma sighs sometimes. Then he looked away from me as he said, “I just come over to tell you Miss Beany says it’s our turn to help at the children’s table.”
I’d forgot we all had to take turns cutting out and coloring jack-o’-lanterns with the first and second graders. But how’d I forget I was assigned to help them with Rotten Ricky?
Miss Beany’d been nice enough to me the last week or so that I’d decided Granddaddy was right and stopped calling her Meany-Beany. But I hadn’t changed my mind about Ricky.
“Prudence . . . Ricky . . .” Miss Beany said. “You’ll have so much fun helping the children cut these darling jack-o’-lanterns!”
Before I could ask her why we might like that so much, Big-Mouth Berta practically danced over to the table in her perfect princess costume. “Miss Beany, do you want me to help? I’d be happy to help.”
“Berta, you are so thoughtful to ask,” Miss Beany told her. “But maybe you can go to the bobbing-for-apples bucket and help there. This year, we’re using blindfolds and letting the children use their hand to reach into the water, instead of the usual bobbing, since everyone’s worried about the threat of polio.” With that, Miss Beany put her hand over her mouth like she’d said a bad word. “Oh, I’m sorry, Prudence. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I-I’m okay,” I told her, even though my cheeks had started burning and I didn’t feel okay at all. Especially when Berta kept talking.
“How ’bout if Prudence helps over at the bobbing-for-apples bucket?” she said. “Seems to me her clown costume is better suited for that job than my princess one.”
As much as I didn’t want to be stuck with Rotten Ricky, even more I didn’t want Berta to get her way. I stepped closer to Ricky. Me and Big-Mouth Berta probably looked like two hunting dogs fighting over who cornered the raccoon. Not sure how long we stood like that, but it was long enough for Rotten Ricky’s cheeks to blush a deep shade of red.
Lucky for me, Miss Beany was as stubborn as Berta. “I’ll go with you to help you get settled over there, Berta,” she told her. “I’m sure your lovely princess dress will be fine.”
I tried not to smile too much as I watched Miss Beany lead her across the room. By the time I turned back to the table, a little girl dressed as a cat was hugging Ricky.
“Hey, Betsy! Or should I say, ‘Hey, kitty’?” he said, and with that, the little girl began meowing.
“Hey, clown, can you help me?” a voice behind me said.
I turned to find a first-grade boy holding a jack-o’-lantern scribbled with blue crayon.
“Tommy, right?”
He smiled at me remembering his name and nodded.
“Don’t you want your jack-o’-lantern to be orange like everyone else’s?”
“Why would I want it to look like everyone else’s?” Tommy asked, and I didn’t have a great answer for that.
As I sat with Tommy, helping him cut out his blue pumpkin, I listened to Rotten Ricky and Betsy, who I learned was his little sister. “Mama says she won’t take us into town to go trick-or-treating tonight, Ricky. But you’ll take me, right? I just gotta go trick-or-treatin’! I never been before. Oh, please, Ricky—there’s a party at church too. Please talk to Mama. Please!”
“Why won’t your mama take you trick-or-treating?” I asked Betsy.
“No reason,” Rotten Ricky mumbled.
But Betsy seemed to know a reason. “Mama’s been extra sad since Daddy left, and now that Billy’s in the—”
“Betsy, that’s enough. Don’t go telling our family business to everybody.”
Betsy stuck her bottom lip out in a pout. “I wasn’t tellin’ our family business—I was tellin’ my business. I can’t go trick-or-treating ’cause Mama’s sad about Daddy being gone and Billy being in the war. She never wants to do anything, and that’s not fair.” Tears started rolling down her face.
Rotten Ricky looked like he might be fighting back a few of his own tears, and so I felt the need to look away. But I could still hear him comforting his sister. “It’s okay . . . I promise . . .” Somehow in my head those words started mixing with Granddaddy’s words about not deciding who someone is before they have a chance to show you.
And at that moment, Ricky didn’t seem so rotten anymore.