“I never knew that about her,” she whispered.
There wasn’t anything to say. I knew about things that parents didn’t tell you . . . that they were sick and maybe weren’t getting better. They wrote poetry in books. They sang above the lilac bush. Who were they really? Parents thought you didn’t know things, though my mama said children knew everything. What was unreal? What was real?
“I don’t know,” said Evie.
I realized I had said “What was real?” out loud.
I shook my head, suddenly feeling tears at the corners of my eyes.
“Mama moved back home again,” said Evie. “Thomas is happy.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know,” said Evie. She turned to look at me.
“Will I ever know what will last? What is real? Like you said?”
The school bell rang and we went inside, where in one of the mysteries and surprises of everyday life—something that Sister Mary Grace Sassy DeMello might call a miracle—Ms. Mirabel was about to talk about real and unreal.
Ms. Mirabel was about to talk about words.
Ms. Mirabel wore white today. White skirt, white shirt, a white crocheted headband trying to keep back her hair. She moved around the room like a cloud, pinning up our writing on the walls around the room. Of course there were her shoes: bright, startling red. Magenta maybe?
“We have one more week,” said Ms. Mirabel. “Soon it will be summer and school will end. You have written poetry, many of you. And stories. And you have painted your own landscapes with stories. I’m leaving them up here so you can all read and reread them. And so your families can see them when they come for parents’ night.”
“So, what is next?” Russell blurted out.
Ms. Mirabel smiled.
“Real and unreal, truths and lies. Stories. And words,” said Ms. Mirabel. She said words with the same hushed voice she had used the first day she came to class.
Beside me, Evie sucked in her breath.
“The first day you came you said real and unreal are the same,” said Hen.
“I did,” said Ms. Mirabel, smiling at him.
“How can that be?” asked Russell. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Really?” said Ms. Mirabel slowly, as if she were about to catch Russell in a crab trap.
“Take Evie’s poem—you don’t mind if we talk about your poem, do you, Evie?”
Evie shook her head with an alarmed look on her face. Ms. Mirabel walked over to the wall in her colorful shoes. She unpinned a paper.
“‘Nothing is what you think,’” read Ms. Mirabel. “‘A square is round; a circle is square. The earth is flat. The grass grows down, the roots reaching for sunlight.’”
She stopped and looked at Russell. “Do you think that is real? The grass grows down?”
“Well,” said Russell, trying to figure out whether he should say yes or no. “No. The grass doesn’t grow down.”
“So, Evie is lying? Telling a nontruth?”
“No,” said Henry. “We know what she means. She’s using . . .” He paused. “She is using a figure of speech to make a point.”
“Like what?” asked Ms. Mirabel.
“Well, a metaphor . . . the grass growing down is like everything not working right, working opposite than what she wants.”
“And do you believe Evie in this poem?”
“Yes,” said Russell and Hen and May at the same time.
“So she has used something unreal to say something real,” said Ms. Mirabel. “Metaphor, good word. And have we learned what simile is?”
“Silly as slime,” said Russell, nodding his head up and down. Everyone laughed.
“Sharp as a . . . ,” said Ms. Mirabel.
“Cat’s stare!” said Evie.
“Soft as . . .”
“The moonlight,” said Hen.
Ms. Mirabel smiled at us.
“And what is the writer’s tool in all of this? Making people laugh, or cry, or be angry, or think?”
The class was silent, staring at Ms. Mirabel.
She waited.
Henry’s voice was soft in the room.
“Words,” he said.
Ms. Mirabel looked as if she might cry. Her eyes gleamed.
“Yes,” she said. “Magical words. Word after word . . .”
“After word,” we all finished together.
She walked over to the wall and pinned Evie’s poem on the wall again. She turned.
“Go home,” she said. “Go home and write me something about words.”
Ms. Mirabel turned and walked out of the class. I looked back and saw Miss Cash smiling slightly, staring at the space that Ms. Mirabel had just left.
Chapter 12
The morning was bright; rays of light sloping across the room, the dust motes in them sparkling like gems. We were quieter than before, almost as if we were silently counting out the days left with Ms. Mirabel. Only two left.
Ms. Mirabel came in with Miss Cash, Ms. Mirabel in her feathered jacket and earrings. She knew we noticed.
“I’m running out of outfits,” she told us. “It’s almost time for me to go home.”
No one spoke. Hen looked over at me and his eyes were sad, and I knew he thought of no more Ms. Mirabel, too.
Suddenly, the door opened and slammed shut, May leaning against it, out of breath. Her hair was rumpled, and her shirt was on inside out.
“May?” asked Ms. Mirabel. “Are you all right?”
May nodded.
“Baby’s here. It’s a boy. He’s ugly, just like I thought.”
Her words came in gasps. She looked at Russell and burst into tears.
Ms. Mirabel moved toward her, but Russell was faster. He put his arms around May, and she cried louder.
“You are crying because you are happy, not sad. Right?” he said.
May nodded.
“May, Ollie was so ugly when he was born that my mother said, ‘Oh, poor little thing. I hope he pretties up soon.’”
May stopped crying and stepped back and looked at Russell.
“His name is John Everett,” she said.
Russell smiled at her. “Everett. My dog.”
May nodded.
“My mother said I could pick the middle name.”
“My dog,” repeated Russell very softly.
“He’s ugly,” said May. She took a breath and blew it out. “But he’s okay.” She looked at us for a moment. Then she repeated, “He’s okay.”
It was quiet in the classroom then. We all bent down to look at the empty page of paper in front of us.
WORDS ARE
My mother’s wordless humming
The smell of lilacs—
Sweet
Fragrant
Perfume
The sky
Looking up through branches:
Lace.
Old leaves,
Crumbling,
Old earth,
My home.
—Henry
BEAN BABY
There are no words for you, little bean baby, little lima—Boston baked—coffee bean.
You have no form. You have no shape. There is no word for you but one—
Love.
—May
“Wonderful writing. But here is one more.” Ms. Mirabel picked up the paper and read:
“I am you
And you are me.
The only words that matter
Are the words that say
I am you
And you are me.
And we
Are.
“Is there someone here who wants to own this poem?” asked Ms. Mirabel.
It was quiet. Everyone looked around.
And then Miss Cash, at the back of the room, stood up.
“It is mine,” she said shyly. She shrugged her shoulders. “Mine.”
Chapter 13
It was the last hour of the last day of our last month with Ms. Mirabel. She wore a white blouse and blue
pleated skirt and loafers. Not the kind of clothes she usually wore. She couldn’t control her hair, however. It tumbled and surged over the collar of her blouse.
“This is what I used to wear when I was your age,” she said. “I am one of you today. I am you and you are me, as Miss Cash wrote in her poem.”
Miss Cash, at the back of the room, blushed.
Ms. Mirabel did look a little like us, except for the hair. There was no hair like Ms. Mirabel’s hair.
She looked around at the walls where our writings hung.
“Your families are coming shortly to see what you’ve done.”
“Ollie’s coming,” said Russell.
“And homely little John Everett,” said May. “My mother and father don’t like me to refer to him as ugly.”
“Your parents will like your Baby Bean piece, May,” Ms. Mirabel said.
“Sister Mary Grace is coming,” Evie whispered.
“Sassy?” whispered Hen, grinning.
We laughed then; and Ms. Mirabel, who had no idea what we were whispering about, laughed with us anyway.
“I suspect,” said Ms. Mirabel, “that your families will learn things about you they might not have known before when they read your writing. Perhaps they’ll learn things about themselves, too.”
She paused.
“Your writing is personal, and I hope you don’t mind sharing it with your families.”
“I mind a little,” I said. “I wrote things that my mother has never heard from me before. I found out that it is me that changed with writing. Not my life.”
“Yes,” said Ms. Mirabel.
“And writing about my dog, Everett, made it easier for me to remember him,” said Russell. “Kind of like you, Henry, writing things down to save them forever.”
Ms. Mirabel smiled.
“You’ve all learned a lot about writing. And a lot about yourselves.”
She turned to me.
“Do you want to take your poems down from the wall, Lucy? It is all right if you do,” said Ms. Mirabel.
I thought about my mother, her hair growing out in longer spikes now. She looked more like a porcupine than an ostrich. But she was not pale anymore. And she was back to walking two miles a day.
I took a deep breath.
“No,” I said. “I’m trying to be brave.”
“Remember this if you remember anything from our time together,” said Ms. Mirabel. “Writing . . . is . . . brave. You are brave.”
We looked at one another nervously, trying to feel brave.
“I will miss you all,” said Ms. Mirabel.
“We will miss you!” said Russell loudly.
We would miss her. What would we do without Ms. Mirabel? Would we write again? Would we ever talk again about things real and things unreal, things true and things that were lies? Would we ever be brave in our lives again?
It was like a daydream when our families came, bits of scenes and conversation drifting like smoke in a wind.
My mother cried when she read my poem about sadness.
“You never told me you were sad and scared,” she said.
“You were sick,” I told her.
“But you could have told me.”
“No. It was too hard to say. But I could write it,” I told her. “I finally wrote something that wasn’t about sadness.”
“Where is it?” asked Papa.
“Down there.” I pointed to the far end of the bulletin board.
May’s mother came with John Everett. Russell carried John Everett around and showed him people and desks and writing and Ms. Mirabel.
“How do you do, sweet thing?” said Ms. Mirabel. “You are beautiful. You don’t look like a bean at all.”
May’s mother and father laughed.
“He was a bean at the beginning,” she said. “May was right.”
“She was,” said May’s father.
Hen’s parents, Junie and Max, came, Junie wearing a colorful peasant skirt.
“I grew up in that house. I lived under that lilac just like Hen,” said Junie when she read Hen’s poem.
“You never told me that,” said Hen.
“I guess I didn’t think it was that important,” said Junie.
“Everything is important,” said Hen, sounding like an adult.
Junie burst into tears. Max grinned at Hen and put his arm around Junie. Was everyone going to cry?
“Ollie!”
Russell handed Bean Baby back to May and went to hold Ollie. Russell’s mother was very quiet when she read Russell’s poem about his dog. She was quiet for a long, long time.
“That is Everett’s voice,” she said at last.
“Don’t cry,” said Russell, alarmed.
“I won’t promise,” said his mother softly.
Sister Sassy, as Hen called her, and Evie’s mother and father stood reading the poems. Thomas held Evie’s hand.
“School,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” said Evie’s mother. “I was thoughtless and selfish.” She looked at Evie. “You are kind, and it is brave of you to write about saving your father.”
“Evie,” said Thomas to Ms. Mirabel.
“Yes,” said Ms. Mirabel. “Your sister, Evie.”
Thomas beamed at Ms. Mirabel.
“Evie is a good writer,” said Ms. Mirabel.
“Evie,” said Thomas.
“Evie.”
“Evie.”
Three times he said it to Ms. Mirabel, like in a fairy tale.
Papa read my last poem to Mama. I liked hearing his voice say my words. It made the poem more real for me; more important.
AWAY
Shut it away!
Sadness.
Lock the door after it!
Sadness.
Fold tears up and
Put them in a box
So they don’t see
Light
Laughter
Joy!
Send sadness far away
So that even if you
Send for it
It doesn’t hear you call.
—Lucy
It was warm under the lilac bush. Russell was late. As always, Junie was inside, humming something with no words. The smell of baking came out the window above our heads.
“Cookies?” I asked.
“Pie,” said Hen. “I bet on blueberry.”
“How do you know that?” asked Evie.
“I know lots of things,” said Hen.
“My mother cried,” I said.
“Mine, too,” said Hen.
“She sure did,” said May.
Hen smiled.
We heard the sound of running, and Russell slid under the bush.
“Pie,” he announced.
We laughed. Then it was quiet again.
“I wonder why it is the mothers who cry,” said May.
“Fathers cry, too,” said Evie. “I know that.”
“Ollie said ‘Mirabel,’” said Russell.
I smiled.
“He liked her,” I said.
“Of course,” said Hen in a soft voice.
“If this were a book,” I said, “it wouldn’t have an ending.”
Hen turned to stare at me.
“Maybe the ending is that it doesn’t end,” he said.
“It goes on,” said Russell cheerfully. “Thank you, Ms. Mirabel.”
Junie leaned out the window.
“Pie, lambs?” she called.
“What kind?” asked Hen.
“Blueberry!” said Junie.
Hen grinned.
“It goes on,” he said.
He raised his hand. I tapped it.
“It goes on,” I said.
Out of our writer mouths
Will come clouds
Rising to the sky
Dropping rain words below.
And when the clouds leave
The sun will shine down word
After word
After word
Plan
ting our stories in the earth.
—Russell
ALSO BY
Patricia MACLachlan
Sarah, Plain and Tall
Skylark
Caleb’s Story
More Perfect than the Moon
Grandfather’s Dance
Arthur, For the Very First Time
Through Grandpa’s Eyes
Cassie Binegar
Mama One, Mama Two
Seven Kisses in a Row
Unclaimed Treasures
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt
All the Places to Love
What You Know First
Three Names
Who Loves Me?
WRITTEN WITH
Emily MACLachlan Charest
Painting the Wind
Bittle
Once I Ate a Pie
Fiona Loves the Night
Author’s Note
Years ago I was asked if I would write a book about writing and what it was like to be a writer. When I sat down to write the book, I realized that this was a topic I talked about all the time with children, answering their questions in letters and visiting them in classrooms. I didn’t want to go over the same stories of my life—where stories came from; where they started, how they changed; how I felt when writing was too hard and I got stuck; how I felt when my writing worked!
Instead of writing a nonfiction book I decided to write Word After Word After Word, the story of a well-known writer who visits a fourth-grade classroom.
I am certainly in this book. I can see myself as a child writer, trying to figure out what I had to say. And I can see myself as Ms. Mirabel, with her bag of dirt carried in a plastic bag. I have several of these bags in my house, next to my bed, in my pocketbook, and next to my computer, reminding myself of where I began as a child and the stories I brought with me.
Sometimes a fiction story has “truths” for the writer as well as the reader. I enjoyed getting to know the children in this book, and both Ms. Mirabel and Ms. Cash. They all now feel like family to me.
—Patricia MacLachlan
Copyright
Word After Word After Word
Copyright © 2010 by Patricia MacLachlan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.