Getting dressed in the morning seemed more complicated when considered as the first step toward the next kiss. I dithered and cussed, not knowing what to wear and only having the same things to put on anyway. After the fourteenth or eighteenth time I’d fixed my hair, I felt a shiver of fear. Was I letting my brain go soft after only one kiss? I put on a white blouse and my gray wool skirt, lovingly stitched by Peg.
“I thought you understood,” said Mama when I appeared in the hall. “We have work to do today. We’re making preparations for our new performance schedule. Gregory is already arranging things. There will be no time for you to attend school.”
“But Mama! I’ll be in deep trouble for truancy!”
I have to see Sammy!
“I have to go to school!”
“Not today, nor any day in the future that I can foresee,” she said. “And foreseeing the future is my business.” She graced me with a tight smile. “You can remove that ridiculous garment. Eat your porridge and spend an hour going over your Latin verbs. Begin with ‘to obey.’ ”
Pareo. I obey.
Parui. I have obeyed.
But not forever.
Fugio. I flee.
I needn’t have wasted the morning cursing my mother; Mrs. Newman arrived just after lunch, when it was obvious that I was not merely late for school. I heard the knocker thudding and crept to the bedroom door to hear my fate.
“It is the law, Madame,” I heard. “You have no choice. Unless your daughter has a letter from a physician, she must accompany me right now, or the police department will intervene.”
I suspect that Mama made her decision entirely to avoid an interview with Officer de Groot.
“Annie!” she called. “Put that dreadful skirt back on!”
“Mrs. Newman, it wasn’t my fault!” I trotted beside her, sneaking glances at the stern face, lips folded in and eyes glaring straight ahead. “I want to go to school! But my mother thinks that school is—is—”
“Yes, Miss Grackle?” Mrs. Newman stopped on the spot and scowled down at me. “What does your mother think?”
I bit my lip and looked away. “She thinks—she …”
What could I possibly say? My mother believes that school corrupts my loyalty and has forbidden me to waste time there. My mother has decided to sell my soul to a smarmy old man who will turn me into a performing monkey. My mother thinks that if I go to school, it will lead inevitably to her arrest and imprisonment.…
“I’m waiting, Miss Grackle.” Mrs. Newman’s fierce expression had not shifted.
“She is concerned for my health,” I said. “She worries that the long days will tire me.”
Mrs. Newman shook her head. “Utter nonsense. You are perfectly robust. I wish that you would tell me the facts of the matter, Annie. I am much better off with facts.” She put a gloved hand under my chin. “Are you in a troubled situation? Do you need help?”
Oh, the beckoning truth!
But I spoke quickly, before I could cry or fling myself against her, pleading.
“No, ma’am. Everything’s just fine. Shouldn’t we hurry, as I’ve missed so much today already?”
Mrs. Newman sighed and began to walk without the vigor of anger in her stride.
“It is my duty to punish you for missing the morning lessons,” she said in a flat voice. “You are assigned to detention and must report to the office after school today.”
She did not speak again.
I took my seat in room 305, with only an hour left of the afternoon. I prayed that my hair did not stand on end from the electric crackle between Sammy’s eyes and my heart. It was all I could do to keep my attention focused forward, especially as Delia’s scalloped collar was the nearest scenery. The teacher might have been speaking through a mouthful of buttons for all I understood. The glorious bell finally clanged to release us, though I pretended to hunt for a pencil in my desk, postponing the thrill of looking at Sammy.
“Miss Grackle?”
I jumped. I hadn’t realized that Mr. Fanshawe was still in the room. Thank goodness I’d managed not to pounce on Sammy! “Sir?”
“I understand you have a detention to address your poor punctuality?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then don’t be late.”
“No, sir.”
Sammy followed me.
“When will I see you?” he whispered.
“Miss Grackle has an appointment.” Mrs. Newman was waiting for me. My cheeks were surely scarlet.
“Yes, ma’am. G’bye, Annie.”
Mrs. Newman led me down a narrow set of unpainted steps, through the boiler room and into an alcove, where she opened a gray metal door. The dungeon.
I paused, but her face remained stony, so I went in. The door was shut and locked in the same instant when I saw that the little room was not empty. Helen Wilky sat in a chair behind the desk with her feet up on the blotter. She was wearing my old shoes.
I glared at Helen with my arms crossed over my chest and one heel kicking the door behind me. She was as stubborn as I was; we locked in eye-to-eye scowls while my heel went thump, thump, thump. Recalling my talent, I slowly crossed one eye. In reply, she grimaced like a chimpanzee. At last, we could only laugh.
“You ever been down here before?” she asked.
“No.”
“Cozy, ain’t it? Sorry I can’t offer you a chair.”
I slid down the wall until I was sitting. “I’m fine here, thanks,” I said, though the stone floor was gritty and cold.
“She’ll make us wait until we want to scream with boredom,” said Helen. “Until we beg to go to class.”
“But I want to go to class,” I said. “I told her that. It’s my mother who forbids it.”
“I might have guessed,” said Helen. “Newman sent a do-gooder in here to convert me.”
“Why do you hate school so much?”
“Waste of time,” said Helen.
“That’s what my mother says. You’d rather be stealing buns from the Blue Boy?”
“Why not?”
“ ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ” I said. “Aren’t you a preacher’s daughter?”
“That’s why I do it,” she said. “I steal as much as I can, whenever I can.” She glanced around the empty room, as if she might find an atlas or a pencil worth pocketing. Then she looked back at me. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I moved to Peach Hill in August. My name is Annie.”
“And your mother won’t let you—oh, wait a minute—your mother is the palm reader, ain’t she? I saw you pulling loony that day.” She started to laugh in funny short barks. “They’re all hepped up about you calling in spirits. I heard about that and all I could think was, Nice scam! That beats my daddy hands down. And I’ll bet you make money at it too, don’tcha?”
I was taken aback. I’d never met anyone so frank. I wasn’t used to operating that way, saying what I actually thought.
“So your mother won’t let you go to school. I’d have sworn my parents were the only crazies. Where’s your father? Is he against school too?”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Oh, the war?”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s a bit of a mystery.”
“My father is a raving lunatic,” said Helen, as if she’d said “He likes jam with his toast.” She added, “He brings the Lord into the living room in a frenzy of exultation twice each Sunday—well, you saw him—but he treats his family like worms under his boots.”
“Why do you go along with it?” I asked. If she’d asked me the same question, how would I have answered?
“He’s my daddy,” she said. She picked at a scab on her elbow. “He frightens me. And what if he’s right? What if Jesus Christ is watching our every move and our only chance to escape eternal damnation is to get saved every week? Like having a bath to scrub off the dirt?”
“That’s a chilling idea.” What if there really were an Other Side? What if the spirits were actually hovering nearby and ready to communicate? Not through my mother, of course, but through real sensitives, with true clairvoyant powers? Wouldn’t they be watching Mama and me with gathering scorn and perhaps even a plan for vengeance?
“One of these days, though,” mused Helen, “I’ll be gone and you won’t see me anymore.”
“I left a bundle of clothing under my chair,” I told her, blurting it out. “I thought you were the poor.”
“That was you?” said Helen.
“You didn’t have shoes. What did you do with Mrs. Newman’s shoes?”
“I liked those,” said Helen. “My mother snatched them. But I kept yours.” She waggled her feet in the air above the desk. “Dunno what she needs shoes for, she hardly gets out of bed most days.”
“Is she ill?”
“I’ll say this much,” said Helen, “she drinks her medicine every day. You’ve probably heard of the tonic my father makes? Wilky’s Silk Revitalizing Elixir?”
“Oh, Wilky’s Silky. Of course. Most popular drink in town.”
“My mother is our best customer.”
“But it’s alcohol, isn’t it?”
“Of course, what else would sell like that?”
“So—I don’t mean to be rude, but if he sells so much tonic, then why … well … it’s just that … what does he do with the money?”
“You mean why do we look like the poor?”
“I suppose that’s what I mean. My mama thinks if you smell of success, people will be more inclined to trust you.”
“My daddy’s got all his money hid, stacks of it, someplace I haven’t found yet.”
“That’s just like Mama!” I said. “Rolls of money, rolls and rolls. Only hers isn’t hidden, it’s tucked in every corner.”
Helen stared. “Why don’tcha take it, then? Take it and go?”
“Never occurred to me,” I said slowly, while I let it occur to me at last. “Would you really leave your family if you found the money? Where would you go?”
“I’d get on a train,” said Helen. “I’ve watched trains lots, and thought about them flying through a hundred places in an afternoon. I’d wait till I saw a world where I wanted to live, and that’s where I’d get off.”
“And then what?”
“I’d find a room somewhere, where I’d be alone, nobody bothering me. Or maybe I’d have a dog. We had a dog, but he run off and got hisself killed.”
“I used to know a dog,” I said. “Trixie, in the carnival where we lived when I was little. Tricks by Trixie, right after the fire-eater. A dog is nice. But what about money? How would you live?”
“I’d just take stuff. I don’t need much.”
“But don’t you want, well, to do something?”
“I … can’t really do anything. Except, maybe, well, I can sing all right. Even my daddy says I sing like an angel. Maybe I could sing,” she mumbled. “I just know what I don’t want to do. No people and no God.”
We heard the key grating in the lock. I stood up so that Mrs. Newman could open the door to come in. She stared without moving until Helen dragged her feet off the desk and stood up next to me.
“I hope your hour down here has reminded you both that time avoiding the classroom is wasted time indeed.”
“Mmmm,” said Helen.
“You don’t have to convince me, Mrs. Newman,” I said. Helen rolled her eyes and made a sucking noise.
Mrs. Newman did not bat an eye. “Every day that you’re not in school,” she said, “is another day that I track you down. Until you turn sixteen, the law insists that you attend school. For you, Miss Grackle, this is only a few days away. Miss Wilky, you have another year, and I will pursue you without rest. You are free to go. Good day.”
She stepped aside. Helen darted out ahead of me and up the stairs like a lizard seeking sunshine.
“One more thing.”
I looked back at Mrs. Newman.
“You’ll have a difficult decision to make on your birthday, Annie. I urge you to speak with me if you need guidance. But I can’t help you if you don’t ask.”
A train whistle echoed like an owl as I walked slowly toward Needle Street. Was this the world where I wanted to live? All these years of following Mama and never thinking about a life that might be different. Would it be braver to leave or to stay?