I packed my suitcase with a bubble of glee rising in my throat. Don’t be too excited, I warned myself; these are silly girls. But I was eager to study the ceremonies of friendship close up.
I wished I had a new nightdress instead of old flannel pajamas from the boys’ department at the F. W. Woolworth Co. in Hawley. I slipped into Mama’s room and rifled her drawers.
Almost at once I uncovered a stash of paper money, rolled in bundles an inch thick and tied with narrow blue ribbon. All our customers paid in cash, of course, to hear their futures told. Like a squirrel who hides nuts in more than one tree, Mama kept her money in several secret places. She knew there were occasions when a speedy departure could not wait for banking hours. There were eight bundles here in the drawer, and more in the muslin sugar sack in the pantry, and in a hatbox on the shelf in the hall closet, and lying in the false bottom of our trunk. Each bundle held twenty twenty-dollar bills. Four hundred dollars, multiplied by how many bundles altogether? A lot of money. Enough to buy a house?
But I was not looking for money at the moment.
I touched the silk pouches that held Mama’s necklaces and rings, and two photographs in gilded leather frames. One was of me, when I was five years old, sitting on the step of our Lenny’s Famous caravan, wearing the biggest hair bow you ever saw. The other picture was slightly out of focus, and though I’d never told Mama I’d seen it, let alone had her show it to me, I liked to think it was my father.
Mama said my father had died in the Great War, but I didn’t believe her. I thought she didn’t know where my father was and didn’t like to admit it. She’d made up a good story over the years, but I’d been paying attention and the details changed quite a bit from telling to telling.
I was pretty sure his name was William because usually she referred to him as Will, except the once when he was Henry. Where they met was either at a dance or at a party at a friend’s house, or one time she said a museum in New York City. They might have been married or they might not, but I suspected not.
“Was his name William Grey?” I’d asked, and she’d laughed before realizing I might really care to know. And then she said, “No, no, it wasn’t. I used my maiden name professionally and it was best to keep it that way.”
Whoever he was, he was gone now.
I found a silk shift, never worn in my company, folded in tissue paper beneath Mama’s personal garments. Oh, it was lovely, the way it rippled over my fingers almost like water. I rolled it into the bottom of my suitcase, with a change of underclothing and a fresh blouse. I put in my hairbrush and my toothbrush. What else? I wanted my suitcase to be full to the brim. It seemed like a momentous expedition—as if I were making a journey as far as the Pacific Ocean or the Baltic Sea. But I was only going to Lexie’s house, so I shut the lid and snapped closed the catches. No one had to know it was my first night away from the home of my mother, aside from those grim hours on a cot at the sheriff’s house in Carling. No one except my mother knew about that.
My stomach was in knots during supper. I moved the food around, spread out the peas, chopped up the chicken into tiny pieces. I didn’t want Mama using a poor appetite as an excuse to cancel the evening. Peg stayed to tidy and then handed me a waxed-paper packet.
“I made some raspberry jumbles for your little party tonight,” she said. “A surefire path to popularity is to arrive with raspberry jumbles.”
“Oh, thank you, Peg!” I clasped her in my arms and kissed her on the cheek. “How would I know anything without you?”
I heard Mama snort but chose to ignore her. I looked at her only once more, when I waved from the door and stepped out into the navy blue night.
As Peg had said, Lexie lived in one of the “grand houses” of Peach Hill, one street over from Mr. Poole’s. The wide front porch overlooked a front lawn nearly the size of the town square. The other girls were there already, all piled into a porch swing that hung from the rafters like a cradle. It creaked and groaned under the weight of three giggling, writhing bodies. The handle of my suitcase got slippery, I was clutching it so tightly. At last their giddiness faded and they noticed that I was there.
“You’ve come!”
“Come in, we’ve been waiting!”
“Annie’s here!”
The swing squawked as they all jumped off.
“Come in, come in, we’ve had the best idea!” They dragged me inside, where Lexie’s mother appeared, summoned by the noise. She was wearing a soft blue suit and had her hair bobbed, like a lady in a magazine.
“Hello, darlings!”
Lexie kissed her mother and clasped her hand.
“Hello, Mummy. This is Annie. Remember? I told you?”
The weight of that “told” swung like an ominous tree branch above my head. “Told” meant all the rumors, all the dirt: “I’m bringing home the town oddball, be polite!”
“Ah, yes! Annie! How nice that you could come tonight.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Johns,” I said.
“I’ll send Alice up shortly with snacks for you girls.”
“I brought raspberry jumbles.”
“Oohh!” squeaked the girls.
“Why, Annie, that’s lovely of you. Would you all like lemonade to go with your treats?”
Her niceness made me dizzy.
I was hauled up the stairs, into Lexie’s bedroom. They spun me around so I could see the enormous princess beds with gauzy canopies, the thick rug, the flounced curtains, the vanity table lit up on both sides of the mirror with twinkling lights.
“Look what Lexie has!” Ruthie thrust something at me.
“It’s a Ouija board!” they cried, bubbling over. “Everybody has one now!”
“And we thought—” said Lexie.
“We thought,” said Ruthie, “since you have a natural ability—”
“—you could probably summon the dead,” said Jean, “or contact that spirit girl you mentioned and—”
“—bring her ghost here! To my bedroom!”
What could I do? This was exactly what my mother had feared, that silly girls all over the country were joining the craze for spirit calling and would stop paying the professionals. But silly girls couldn’t do it right. Only clever ones could.
“Have you seen a Ouija board before?” asked Lexie when I hesitated.
“Uh, yes. Yes, of course,” I said. “I was only thinking. To do this properly, we should make some preparations.”
More squeals and clapping hands and jumping up and down.
“Do you have any candles?”
“I wouldn’t be allowed candles in my bedroom,” said Lexie.
Jean and Ruthie pouted. “Come on, Lexie, can’t you sneak them?”
“We don’t need them,” I said quickly, seeing Lexie’s doubt. “Look, there’s a moon. It’ll be high enough in no time. We’ll use that.” I pulled apart the frothy curtains. Lexie turned off the row of lights above her vanity and the lamp in the ceiling. Moonlight trickled across the floor and Lexie’s bed in a weak stripe. The darker the better, for my purposes.
“My mother always says the moon draws out secrets,” I said, making up my patter on the spot. “The same way it rules the tides.”
“Ooh.”
“What’s it like to have your mother?” asked Jean.
“She’s the only one I have, so it’s normal to me.”
“She’s very pretty,” said Ruthie, as if she were handing me a present.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Do you think she’ll get married again?” asked Jean. “My parents saw her driving out with Mr. Poole. Father was saying a fellow couldn’t be blamed for going into debt over a filly like that.”
“Jean!”
“I’m only saying what my father said.”
“Couldn’t your mother go into a trance and find out if she’s going to fall in love?” asked Lexie.
“Ooh, think of that!” cried Ruthie. “Does she have a crystal ball?”
How did I get myself here? I wondered. What pathetic, lonely part of me thought this would be fun?
“A clairvoyant doesn’t necessarily see what will happen,” I explained. “She is sensitive to likelihood. She sees what probably will happen.”
“Oh.”
“But seeing into the future is quite different from talking to a spirit who has passed to the Other Side,” I said.
“Let’s try the Ouija board,” said Ruthie.
“We have paper,” said Jean. “In case your ghost girl shows up.”
“Good idea,” I said. “May we sit on your bed, Lexie? And put the Ouija board directly in the moonlight? That will rouse the spirits and make them more receptive.”
“Ooh!”
They scrambled to remove their shoes, as did I, since that was the point of the suggestion. We settled more or less in a circle on the billowy eiderdown. I tucked my left foot—always the best cracker—neatly under the Ouija board, which rested on our knees.
I showed them how to place their fingers lightly on the planchette so that it could move easily from letter to letter while the spirits spelled out answers.
“Let’s take turns asking,” said Lexie. “Me first because it’s my Ouija board.” No one could argue with that.
“Oh, Great Ouija!” Lexie intoned. “Come to us and share your wisdom! Come unto us, O spirit!”
I cracked my toe.
The girls screamed loudly enough to break glass. It was a wonder Lexie’s mother didn’t rush in with bandages.
“The spirit is here!” I whispered. “What do you want to know?”
“Will Terence Price invite me to the Christmas dance?” asked Lexie.
For cat’s sake! I thought. The planchette slid to YES, obviously guided by three eager spiritualists.
“Yes! Ouija said yes!”
This was too dumb. Time to jazz things up. I uttered a terrified moan and went rigid, with my legs jerking into stiff rods. I tipped the board over while my head flipped back and my chest arched forward.
“Hey! What are you doing?” The girls bounced out of the way of my kicking feet.
“What’s wrong with her? Oh my God, she’s having a seizure!”
“Get your mother, Lexie, this is scary!”
“No,” said Lexie, “I think it’s the spirit she told us about.”
“Give her the paper!”
“Find a pencil!”
“OhmygoodnessgraciousMarymotherofGod!”
The girls jabbered like ninnies.
I kept twitching and whimpering like an ailing goat.
Lexie put a pencil in my hand and adjusted the Ouija board so that I could use it as a desk. I could hardly see in the dark, but I began to scrawl while they leaned over me, as entranced as if I were the reincarnation of William Shakespeare.
My name is Gwendalen of Stone House, I wrote. I am daughter to Arne the Vast and Elbecca of Tune. I have found a willing vessel in the form of Annie Grackle and in this way must tell my tale.
“What is she doing?” asked Ruthie in a whisper.
“She’s been possessed,” hissed Lexie.
“Is this a sin?” asked Jean.
“Shhh.”
My father tried to have me wed more times than I can count, but the price was always higher than he cared to pay. He preferred to keep me out of sight during all encounters with the prospective bridegrooms. I confess that I was not a lovely maid. I have a wide, turned-up nose. My brothers called me Piggy. The dowry could never be high enough.
“Oh, how sad,” whispered Jean. Lexie pushed a new sheet of paper under my pencil.
My family’s wish to have me gone from home was understandable. The nuns of Saint Lucy’s welcomed me, realizing I would have no place in the world other than what they offered me. They were not to know how brief my time with them would be.
My hand was getting tired. I paused to give it a shake.
“How did you die?” asked Jean.
My father discovered that I had—what was that word? Ah—besmirched his name with disparaging words, I wrote. The consequence was to have my tongue removed at the roots.
“Aaaaahhh!” They all screamed together, making my hand wobble.
Some girls have been known to live after such a surgery, but alas, I was not one of them. I bled without cease, no matter what poultice was applied to staunch the flow. Eventually I choked to death on my own blood.
“Eewww!”
That seemed a fitting ending. I tossed my head back and gurgled while my throat stretched toward the ceiling. The girls gasped, deliciously thrilled and horrified. Because we were seated on the bed, my forehead was spared collision when I threw myself forward. I merely sat hunched over, hiding my grin while their commotion buzzed above my head.