So, that turtle had been hibernating after all, I thought to myself. I knew that Samson would be happy – as happy as his moody broody self ever got, that is. But why had that turtle picked that peculiar, persnickety moment to wake up: there before dawn on the morning of my most important birthday, with me in my nightgown, balancing frosted cereal on my knee? Watching the turtle, I tapped on the glass. Thinking about the turtle and remembering the unusual way Gypsy had woken up as I’d stepped out of bed, a shaky and suspicious feeling started to gnaw down deep in my bones, a feeling that stuck with me the rest of the morning and continued to grow like smoke from a grassfire.
At two o’clock, we all piled into Miss Rosemary’s van to head to the church in Hebron. Fish and I helped Grandpa into the front seat, reaching in to help him with the seat belt and to make sure the car radio was turned off. Ever since Grandma Dollop died, listening to the radio always made Grandpa sad.
With Grandpa settled in, Fish went back inside just long enough to find Samson and separate him from his now active, not-dead pet. Me and Miss Rosemary got Gypsy’s car seat wrestled into the back as the boys climbed in. I was wearing my new special-occasion dress, the one Poppa had picked out for me all by himself at a big department store in Salina.
‘I thought my little girl deserved something pretty and new to wear for her special birthday,’ he had said the night he handed me a big white box held closed by a thin, round strand of stretchy gold elastic. The dress inside the box was pale yellow with a high sashed waist and a full skirt that was sewn with deep pockets. Double rows of white rickrack zigzagged its way around the hem and around the seams in the short cap sleeves. But the very best part of the whole dress was the big purple flower made from soft silk ribbons that was pinned up high on the shoulder like a corsage.
‘I don’t know much about dresses,’ he’d admitted. ‘But I wasn’t about to give up on that account. I didn’t leave that store until I was sure I’d found just the right one.’ I pictured my poppa wandering through the store, looking for my perfect dress, and smiled.
Our Poppa had no savvy and no hair on his head either. Even so, Poppa was special: he was good and sweet and had wild black eyebrows that twisted like dancing beetle legs, and a faded tattoo from his navy days – a long-haired mermaid twisting around an anchor on his forearm, just above his heavy silver wristwatch. Poppa kept Miss Mermaid hidden under crisp white shirtsleeves when he went to work in that cement and plaster office in Salina during the week. But when he came home to us at night, Poppa had his sleeves rolled up and Miss Mermaid had her smile on. And we didn’t care that Poppa had no savvy, and he didn’t care that the rest of us did… or would.
The night he gave me the dress was the last time Poppa had come home to us from Salina, the last time we’d all been together.
‘Do you like it then?’ Poppa had asked, rubbing his knuckles against his jaw as he watched me pull the dress from the box.
‘I love it, Poppa!’ I’d said, dancing my dress around the living room twice before throwing my arms around him. ‘Thank you!’
I knew I had the best poppa in the world, and I knew my dress was a party dress to anyone who knew anything – even if my actual party wasn’t turning out the way I’d planned. Climbing up into the van, I could see Miss Rosemary eyeing the big purple flower pinned on my shoulder. I guessed she was wishing that she had a dress just like mine, instead of her straight and shapeless wear.
All buckled into the van, we bumped and jolted up the rutted road towards the highway, on our way to the church for my uninvited party. I pretended not to notice the way Fish and Grandpa kept looking at me like I was some kind of dynamite, ready to blow at the next jerk or jog of the van. I still hadn’t felt any spectacular, gut-wrenching thing grip me good and firm the way it had for my brothers, telling me exactly and truly what my savvy might be; I knew that my savvy was turning out to be something a bit quieter, a bit less earthshaking – yet something that would be far better for helping Poppa.
When Momma had called that morning to wish me a happy birthday, I’d asked her, ‘Did you kiss him, Momma?’
‘Yes, Mibs. I kissed Poppa,’ she answered softly.
‘Did he wake up?’
Momma exhaled a long, slow breath, like she was singing the last note of a lullaby, and my heart almost broke with the total sadness of it. ‘No, honey,’ she said at last, ‘Poppa didn’t wake up. Not yet at least. The doctors say – well, they say we’ll have to wait and see.’ After Momma’s call, I knew exactly what I had to do – I just hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to do it.
When we reached the church, it didn’t take me long to realize that God listened better to Miss Rosemary than He did to me. The parking lot was full and there were kids everywhere. This wasn’t just a little party. This was a full-on foofaraw.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Samson disappeared before the van even reached full stop, for as soon as we got out, he was gone. He’d turn up later, I knew, after spending the afternoon in some dusty hidey-hole, under the organ or with the mops in the storage closet. Grandpa Bomba just chewed his cheek and shook his head, mumbling to himself as Miss Rosemary led him and Gypsy towards the church, passing a school bus painted as pink as the bottoms of Gypsy’s feet and advertising the Heartland Bible Supply Company.
Fish grabbed me by the arm as soon as Miss Rosemary had her back turned and steered me away from the pink bus and away from the church.
‘You can’t do this thing here, Mibs,’ Fish said with a gust of wind that whipped at me like a scolding. ‘This is no place for you to be today. Y’know it’s not safe.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ I assured him. ‘I already know what my savvy is, Fish, and it’s not going to hurt anyone. In fact –’
‘You know?’ Fish cut me off before I could tell him more. He tightened his grip on my arm. My brother’s funk and squall of wind made me doubt myself for a second. But, no, I was sure I was sure.
‘Yes, Fish, I know. Just settle your storming.’
Fish was looking at me expectantly. I was about to explain that I had to be the one to go wake Poppa. My savvy was just that simple – my savvy was waking things up, just like Samson’s turtle. I was sure of it. I knew that a savvy wasn’t something you could make happen for wanting, but I already had proof that the means of waking up Poppa were already there and wrapped up in me, ready to burst out like Rocket’s sparks or Fish’s wind and rain – if I could just find my way to Salina. I was about to tell my brother all of this, but at that moment Will Junior found us.
‘Happy birthday, Mibs,’ he said, smiling. ‘Aren’t you coming in to the party?’
‘I’m coming,’ I said to Will, jerking my arm free from Fish’s tight grip.
Fish let me go, but he gave me a look like the sharp end of a stick and punctuated his meaning with a smattering of abrupt, uncontrolled raindrops from the clouds overhead. I gave Fish a look right back. Then I smiled my own smile at Will Junior and let him pull me into the church, straight into the catastrophe that was my thirteenth birthday party.
6
Stepping inside the open double doors of the church, I had the bad luck of running immediately into Ashley Bing and Emma Flint, both combed and brushed and dressed up pretty for the party. I had hoped I would never have to see either of those girls ever again after leaving Hebron Middle School for the last time. But that day, what I wanted and what I got were two very different things.
Ashley looked from me to Fish to Will Junior, resting her eyes on Will an extra-long time. Maybe it was because I was thirteen now or because Fish and Will were there next to me, but I felt braver than I’d been at school and I stood up tall in front of that snotty girl and her rubber-stamp sidekick.
‘Why are you even here?’ I said. I didn’t like the way Ashley kept staring at Will, or the way her staring at him bothered me.
‘My mother made me come, Missy-pissy,’ she said, without taking her eyes off Will.
‘Yeah, Missy-
pissy,’ echoed Emma.
Red-faced and mortified, I just stood there. I couldn’t believe those girls had just called me that horrible name in front of Will Junior. I felt like crawling under the stained brown carpet and staying there. Fish scowled at the two girls, and a burst of wind hit them so sharp and sudden that it sent them scurrying from the open doorway to check their hair and to fix up all their froufrou frippery. Not looking at me, Fish frowned deeper still, and I knew he hadn’t meant to let loose like that in front of everyone.
‘Friends of yours?’ asked Will with a sympathetic smile, paying little attention to Fish or the wind.
‘Hardly,’ I muttered, still feeling humiliated.
He nodded. ‘I have a feeling you’re better off without friends like that.’
After that, Will Junior kindly said nothing more about Ashley and Emma. He led us past the doors of the sanctuary and past the open door to his daddy’s office, where his smile faded as we paused for a moment, peeking in. I glimpsed Pastor Meeks, all tall and buttoned up, talking to some man and thumping a big pink Bible in his hands. The preacher didn’t look too happy. His yellow tie hung crooked and he was spitting as he spoke.
Running a finger inside his own starched collar, as though that top button might be making things a bit too tight, Will Junior moved us quickly past the door towards the party room. Red and orange crêpe-paper streamers hung sagging around the fellowship hall as though left over from another party. Aside from a large chocolate cake with no sugar roses and not a single candle, dripping or otherwise, and a small stack of hastily purchased gifts, the room was empty. Nearly everyone was still congregating outside, probably a little unsure who exactly they were there to celebrate.
Will removed a present from the stack on the table as we passed. ‘Happy birthday, Mibs,’ he repeated, handing me a small package wrapped up in colourful paper. ‘It’s a pen set.’ He nodded at the gift. ‘In case you were wondering.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, unsure if I were supposed to open it now that I knew what was inside. But Will didn’t give me the chance. Instead, he ushered us across the open room towards the kitchen, where Bobbi and two other church girls her age had been put to work making punch and peanut-butter sandwiches sliced into quarters with the crusts cut off. The girls were all wearing stylish jeans and shirts that showed their skin and their belly buttons. They had pink cheeks and lip gloss and attitude to go around, and it all seemed to be spilling into the punch.
Bobbi looked at the big purple flower on the shoulder of my dress and rolled her eyes. ‘Happy birthday,’ she said in a tone that sounded more like ‘Drop dead’. Then the other girls began to whisper and laugh as they mixed ginger ale and rainbow sherbet into pale yellow pineapple juice that was the same colour as my dress.
The church girls looked past me and Fish and Will, searching the doorway as though hoping someone else might appear.
‘No Rocket?’ the first wondered with a sigh. Even when he wasn’t there, Rocket’s dark good looks and mysterious reputation won him admirers; the second girl squealed with giggles at the mention of my brother, and the first pretended to swoon. Bobbi stirred the punch with the merest hint of a smile, quickly masking it again at the first teasing nudge from the other girls. Suddenly, as I looked at those teenaged girls in their teenaged clothes, I felt younger than twelve-turning-thirteen and my special-occasion dress felt not-so-special. I realized that I had just turned into a teenager myself and there were changes coming in my life that didn’t all have to do with my savvy.
Standing in that kitchen, fiddling uncomfortably with the ribbon flower on my dress, I heard a strange and sudden sound, a sound I couldn’t quite make out. But it was a sound that required my attention. Momentarily forgetting my dress and ignoring the other girls, I tilted my head, feeling ever so much like a dog listening for that whistle its owner can’t hear, or like Grandma Dollop listening for just the right radio wave for her collection.
A muffled singsong voice whispered behind my ears with a sound like water still stuck there after a long swim. I shook my head and twisted my fingers in my ears. For a minute, the sound stopped. I knew that Fish was looking at me again. Watching me. He was waiting – waiting for the dynamite to blow. But that wasn’t going to happen because I knew the way that things were going to be. I knew I was going down to Salina. I knew I was going to wake up Poppa the same way I’d woken up Gypsy and the same way I’d woken up Samson’s turtle.
Then I heard the same voice again and this time it sounded like it was right behind my eyeballs, like a headache – if a headache could be a sound. With my balance gone tipsy-topsy, I dropped my wrapped-up happy-birthday pen set and bumped right into Will Junior, knocking him hard into the tray of sandwiches. The tray fell to the floor with a crash, sending triangles of bread and peanut butter flying. Bobbi cussed like a trucker with three flat tyres and bent to pick up the tray. That was when I saw the picture on her skin. That was when I saw the colourful ink of Bobbi’s tattoo.
The preacher’s daughter had a small design on her lower back that only showed itself when she bent over in those fancy jeans. The tattoo was a picture of a little angel with a golden halo and outstretched wings, only this angel had a devilish grin and a pointed red tail to match. I couldn’t fathom how Bobbi had managed to get a tattoo. I knew that if Miss Rosemary, the woman with direct connections to heaven and the ability to get God Almighty to help her plan my birthday party, if she ever found out, Bobbi might not make it to her own next birthday party, nor up to heaven to get her very own halo either.
That was when that little angel turned its head, twirled its tail and said, ‘She’s really very lonely, you know…’
And that was when I fainted.
7
I woke up to the sounds of quarrelsome voices. My head still felt muddled and muzzy, and there was arguing going on from every direction. I was lying on the blue checked sofa in Pastor Meeks’s office. The pastor, holding tight to a large pink Bible, was bellowing at a man so thin he’d have to stand up twice to cast a shadow.
‘This –’ Pastor Meeks thumped a heavy hand against the large pink Bible – ‘This! This is not what I ordered!’
‘I’m nothing b-but the deliveryman, sir,’ the thin man stammered, his shoulders jerking. The deliveryman was wearing overalls with a button-down shirt and a stained pink tie. There was a wilted carnation pinned to the left strap of the man’s overalls and his thin hair was combed up and over his balding head like a blanket. He had a kind, sad face – like the face of a man who had just lost his dog – and he was holding a clipboard out in front of him like a shield. But neither the clipboard nor the man’s sorrowful face could defend him from the preacher’s hollering hoo-ha.
‘When I agreed to order Bibles, no one at Heartland Bible Supply told me they were going to be pink!’ spat Pastor Meeks. ‘What do you think we are? A church full of mollycoddled sissies?’
The deliveryman’s shoulders twitched again, like he was trying to keep the straps of his overalls from falling down. But all he could manage to say was ‘Well, sir…’ or ‘No, sir…’ or ‘If you’ll just sign here, sir…’ before the preacher cut him off again.
On the other side of the room, Fish was arguing with Miss Rosemary in front of the large oak desk while Grandpa Bomba sat across from them, nodding in the pastor’s big leather chair.
‘Mibs doesn’t need a doctor, Miss Rosemary,’ Fish kept saying as he grabbed for the telephone in the woman’s hand. ‘All she needs is to go home. To go home now!’ Fish’s wind whipped through the office, blowing papers off the desk and making people’s hair dance on top of their heads; the deliveryman’s thin hair snapped around like a bed sheet on a clothesline.
‘That is for an adult to decide, young man,’ Miss Rosemary insisted, trying to pry Fish’s fingers from the telephone. But, distracted by the flying papers and the unexplained wind lashing through the room, she had no real chance at getting the phone away from Fish.
‘Roger! Roger! Wi
ll you please forget those Bibles for one second and help me?’ Miss Rosemary shouted to her husband, but the man was still too wrapped up in his upset over the boxes of sissy Bibles to pay her any attention.
‘If you need an adult to decide, then let our grandpa have a say!’ Fish yelled. He finally managed to get the telephone away from the preacher’s wife and scrambled over the top of Pastor Meeks’s desk, knocking picture frames and paperweights on to the floor as he went. Fish stood next to Grandpa Bomba, where he sat, still hunched over in the leather chair. My brother raised the phone high above his head like he was daring Miss Rosemary to come and get it. ‘Tell her, Grandpa,’ said Fish.
Unfortunately, Grandpa Bomba, being as old as he was, had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. Miss Rosemary cocked her head triumphantly, resting her hands on her hips.
‘Roger! I need your help!’ The woman’s voice was growing shrill. I could tell things were going to get far worse for us Beaumont kids than they’d been that time that Fish and Rocket had spilled red punch all over the carpet in the fellowship hall.
I sat up on the sofa, still feeling dazed.
Then, as if two squabbles weren’t enough, a third ruckus overlapped the others from out of nowhere. From where I sat on the blue checked sofa, I couldn’t see where these other voices were coming from. But to my distress and dismay, the voices sounded pretty surely like they might be coming from inside my head. It felt like I had two cross and cranky gals trapped behind my eyeballs.
‘This is all your fault, Carlene, you know that, don’t you?’ said the first whining, nasal voice.
‘It’s not my fault your son’s dim-witted, Rhonda – you old bat,’ the second voice sniped back. This voice was lower, huskier and younger-sounding than the first. I looked around the room. I couldn’t see anyone else there. The voices bounced like pinballs inside my skull.