I WAS GLAD TO go back to school. It was the only place that felt normal without Mama around. At school I could see my best friend, Emily, and go to art class, and I could even draw when Mrs. Maxwell wasn’t looking. And sometimes I got to fill up the bird feeders.
Daddy put up bird feeders at the school and said it would be good for the children to watch the birds and take responsibility for filling the feeders, but I knew why he really did it. He brought a big sack of feed every week to school, and we took turns filling up the feeders every Monday morning. Just before Thanksgiving I saw the redbird for the first time at school, just sitting on that limb all by herself, waiting for the sparrows and chickadees to clear off the feeder. That’s when I asked Mrs. Maxwell if I could move to a desk by the window. She let me. And since then I’d seen the redbird at the feeder almost every day.
Monday morning during math class, I was surprised when Laramie poked me with her pencil and pointed to the window. A redbird! My eyes stayed glued to that redbird perched on the feeder, ideas churning in my head.
Laramie poked me again. “You like cardinals, don’t you?” she whispered. Everyone else was bent over their math sheets, scribbling away.
“How did you know?”
“Kind of obvious.” Laramie pointed at my notebook covered in redbird stickers. “And you’re always staring out the window at them when they’re nearby.”
“Yeah. So?”
Then she turned her head, and I could tell Mrs. Maxwell was looking at us. So we started doing long division again and acted like we’d been working on our worksheets the whole time.
“Kate?”
I was looking at that redbird and thinking, so I didn’t hear Mrs. Maxwell the first time she called me.
“Katherine Joy? Are you drawing again when you’re supposed to be listening? I don’t want to have to call you the third time.” If Mrs. Maxwell had used her playground voice, I would have heard her, but I wasn’t sure she had one. She was so old I think it just wore out.
I looked up. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am, I’m not drawing.”
“Put your notebook away, and come get your papers, please.”
Mrs. Maxwell was still going through stacks of papers when I got to her desk. Eric was waiting too. He could annoy you just by looking at you. Mrs. Maxwell said his name more than anybody else’s in class, even Laramie’s.
“Look a here, Kate.” He picked up the snow globe on her desk, turned it over, and watched the snow falling on a little manger scene.
Mrs. Maxwell said, “Eric, put that down. You know better.”
I shook my head. Now why would a teacher put a snow globe on her desk and then not let anybody touch it? What good was a snow globe if you didn’t turn it over to make it snow?
Mrs. Maxwell found the papers before it stopped snowing over the manger. She handed my papers to me and told me to put them in my take-home folder.
I said, “Yes, ma’am,” and walked back to my desk. I put the papers away and got in line to go down the hall to the art room. Laramie was in front of me. I knew Emily didn’t like her, but I wanted to talk to her. “Where’d you get the name Laramie, by the way? I always wondered. It’s really pretty.”
Laramie smiled just a little when I said that. She had been my classmate since second grade, but because I always played with Emily I hadn’t gotten to know her very well.
“Oh, my mama and daddy were camping out in Laramie, Wyoming, when they thought it up.”
“I guess you’re lucky they weren’t camping in Louisville.”
She looked at me quick like she might be getting mad, but when she saw I was grinning, she smiled too. “Yep, real lucky.”
“I can’t wait to get to art class. Do you like art?”
Laramie turned around and smiled again. “It’s my favorite class.”
“Mine too, and I just love Miss Applegate.”
“Yep, she’s really nice, and she lets me do the kind of art I want to.”
“What kind of art do you like to do?”
Laramie’s face looked different, not like she was so mad like it did most of the time. “I really like to sew and make things out of fabric.”
“Cool. My mama liked to sew too, but I don’t know how. I just like to draw.” We were almost at the door. “Have fun making whatever it is you’re making.”
“You too.”
Miss Applegate was everybody’s favorite teacher. She was young and pretty, like a cheerleader, and she said I had real artistic talent. She’d been teaching me to draw after school. Uncle Luke, Daddy’s brother, liked her a lot. I saw them kissing last summer when we were all out at Granny’s for a fish fry, and she came with Uncle Luke to Mama’s funeral. I could call her Miss Lisa when she was with Uncle Luke, but I called her Miss Applegate at school.
When Daddy told Uncle Luke he should marry Miss Lisa before somebody else did, Uncle Luke said, “I need to finish medical school first. Then I’ll think about it.” I hoped he thought about it in a hurry. I’d like an Aunt Lisa.
When we got to art class, Miss Applegate already had the plastic containers with our names on them on the art table. I tugged at the lid to lift out what I made for my daddy. He liked anything to do with fishing, so I made him a bowl that looked like a fish. It could go on his dresser, and he could put his keys and change in it at night when he emptied his pockets. Miss Applegate showed me how to draw fish scales in the soft clay with a toothpick. And then she baked it so it would get hard and gave me some special paint to make the scales look shiny. She thought of everything, just like Mama.
After I finished Daddy’s gift, I put it aside and lifted up a small wooden box. I had planned to decorate the box for Granny Grace, but her talking about a gift for Baby Jesus had given me a new idea. I needed that box for something special. What, I didn’t know yet. But I would think of something.
First I painted it red. After I had carefully painted around the edges, I set the box on a piece of newspaper. When the paint was dry enough, I planned to put on some redbird stickers. After that Miss Applegate would spray it, and then it would be finished and ready for Christmas.
Eric sat across the table, painting a giraffe on a Christmas ornament. He pointed at the bowl I had made and mumbled, “I like that fish.”
“Thank you. It’s for my daddy.”
He pointed at my red box with his dripping paintbrush. “Who gets that?”
I nearly snatched the paintbrush right out of his hand before it dripped on my box. “It’s a special gift for somebody.”
“For the teacher?” Eric dabbed some more spots on his giraffe.
“For my mama,” I said.
“Your mama? You don’t have a mama. Everybody knows she’s dead.”
Eric’s words shoved me into a place where I didn’t want to be. I didn’t know whether to cry, or to run, or to just sock him in the nose. My mama had gone to heaven on September twenty-eighth, but no one had ever said out loud to me, “You don’t have a mama. She’s dead.”
Laramie heard what Eric said and came and sat down beside me. “Don’t listen to Eric. He’s a dumb toad.” Then she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “If you want me to, I’ll take care of him after school. I’ll make him sorry he ever said something like that.”
I just bit my lip and shook my head. I believed Laramie could take care of him all right, but I didn’t want her to get in trouble.
Laramie was as tall as Eric and the fastest runner in the class. She acted like a tomboy, but she didn’t look like one, with her green eyes and long blonde hair. She often got in trouble for sassing or for saying ugly words, but she could be nice sometimes. She was the only one in the class who ever told me how sorry she was about Mama dying. I think it was because her mama was gone too. But I wasn’t friends with her because my best friend Emily didn’t like her. Emily was prissy and all into girly things, and Laramie? Well, Laramie was different and mostly stuck to herself.
I didn’t talk to Eric or Laramie anymore. I just wanted to be quiet, put the redbird stickers on my box, and think about Mama. I finished, and Miss Applegate sealed the box and the lid with spray. When I wiped my face on the sleeve of my sweater and Eric started pointing at me, Miss Applegate told him the spray had made my eyes water.