Savvy (4 page)

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 us all 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 toward the party room. Red and orange crepe 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. Most everyone was congregating outside, probably still 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 colorful paper. “It’s a pen set.” He nodded at the gift. “In case you were wondering.”

“Thanks,” I said, unsure if I was 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 toward 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 color 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 after a 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 have anything 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 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 tires and bent to pick up the tray. That was when I saw the picture on her skin. That was when I saw the colorful 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.

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 plaid 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 necktie. 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 a 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 atop their heads; the deliveryman’s thin hair snapped around like a bedsheet 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! Will 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 onto 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 plaid 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.

“No, you’re just the one who got him delivering Bibles for your cousin Larry instead of taking that job selling coffee at the bus station. Coffee’s something people will buy.”

“And Bibles ain’t?”

“Not pink ones!”

My head swam with the voices that seemed to belong to no one. Still sitting on the sofa, I held my head in my hands, wondering what was wrong with me. I remembered going into the church kitchen and seeing Bobbi’s tattoo. Seeing Bobbi’s tattoo
move
. Hearing Bobbi’s tattoo speak. What had it said?

“She’s really very lonely you know …”

I tried to think over the noise of so many bickering voices both inside and outside of my head. I couldn’t understand any of it. Nothing about what was happening felt right. What had happened to my savvy? Grandpa was asleep and I was hearing voices. With rising panic, I stared hard at Grandpa Bomba dozing in the preacher’s chair. With every ounce of concentration I willed my grandpa to wake up. But the noise in the room was too much for me and I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think. Maybe if everyone would just shut up, I might be able to make my savvy work.

I covered my ears, trying uselessly to block out all the noise. I needed to get away. I needed to get to Salina Hope Hospital. I needed to go find my poppa so that my savvy would clock in and start working right. Poppa needed me.

No one in the room had noticed that I was awake. Pastor Meeks had his back to me. He was throwing pink Bibles into cardboard boxes and shoving them across the floor toward the deliveryman. Miss Rosemary and Fish were going round and round the preacher’s desk, still fighting over the telephone. And the women’s voices in my head were playing an endless tennis match of blame, blame, blame that pounded like blood in my ears.

Will Junior peeked through the crack in the door. When he saw that I was awake, he smiled, looking relieved. All I wanted to do was to get out of that room. To run away.

I waited for just the right moment for my escape, waited until I was positive no one would see me jump up quick and duck out of the pastor’s office, leaving all of the arguing behind me. As I fled the room, I was thankful to find the voices of Carlene and Rhonda, the two invisible ladies, fading away. Whoever they were—
whatever
they were—they weren’t following me. Outside the door, Will Junior put his hand on my shoulder again; but this time it didn’t feel so strange. He’d unbuttoned the topmost button of his shirt, which made him look less grown-up and more like a fourteen-year-old boy. He was holding the wrapped-up happy birthday pen set I’d dropped when I fainted.

“You okay, Mibs?” he asked, his dark eyes filled with worry.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, desperate. “You have to help me get out of here.”

“I
have to get to Salina, will.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Mibs?” he asked again, his hand still resting on my shoulder. “You just fainted, you know? You might be a little mixed up.”

I looked Will Junior in the eye. “Please, Will. I’m not mixed up. Just help me get out of here. I need to get down to Salina.”

Will Junior looked at me sadly and squeezed my shoulder. “You must miss your mom and dad a lot today, since it’s your birthday and all.”

I pushed his hand away and turned in the direction of the door. “I have to get to Salina,” I repeated.