The Curious World Of Calpurnia Tate Part 13

The doorbell rang, signaling a reprieve from my labors. I sprang to my feet, crying, "I'll get it." It was my teacher, Miss Harbottle, come to discuss matters with Aggie and Mother. I took her soaked pelisse and dripping umbrella and parked them in the hall tree. With her plain black clothes and bedraggled hat, she displayed all the charm of a wet crow.

"Are you keeping well, Calpurnia?"

"Very well, thank you, Miss Harbottle," I said, dropping a small curtsy, which seemed to please her. "And yourself?"

We exchanged the usual pleasantries. For someone such as myself, who was often accused of being pert at school (and who spent an inordinate amount of time in the Corner of Shame as a consequence), I felt oddly shy around my teacher outside of school. School was her natural environment, and I always experienced a mild shock of discomfort running across her in "the outside world." It felt a bit like finding a snake in my chest of drawers or an armadillo in Travis's bedroom.

I escorted her into the parlor, where Mother and Aggie rose to shake her hand and make polite inquiries about her health. Mother turned to me, saying, "Callie, please ask Viola to bring us tea and refreshments."

I skipped to the kitchen with a light heart. Refreshments for such an important visitor would no doubt include Viola's chocolate layer cake, a sublime confection surpa.s.sing all others, and normally available to us children only on special occasions. I figured I could cadge a slice by sticking around to pa.s.s the teacups (and cake), and generally imitating a model child.

I interrupted Viola, who was peeling-what else?-spuds.

"Mother says tea. Oh, and chocolate cake for four." I didn't include J.B. That would be pus.h.i.+ng it, and besides, I could probably keep him quiet with a single forkful of mine.

Viola paused in her labors and squinted at me. "The good china?"

"Yep, it's Miss Harbottle."

Viola changed into a clean ap.r.o.n and got down the tea tray. I left her to it and returned to my ha.s.sock in the parlor.

The conversation meandered through various topics that did not much interest me-who was ill and who was well, who had married, who had died. The talk was ... desultory. Yes, that was a good word, one of my new ones. I'd have to teach it to Travis.

Viola bustled in with the tea tray. I sprang up to help her and count the slices of cake. She retreated to the kitchen, Mother poured, and I pa.s.sed around the plates and cups. We were about to tuck in when Miss Harbottle arrived at the point of the visit.

Looking first at Mother, she said, "I wonder if Agatha would like to be an a.s.sistant at the school? Since she has her diploma, she could be a great help in teaching the little ones their ABCs."

I took my first mouthful of the miraculous cake. Oh, heaven. I chewed slowly, determined to extract every molecule of pleasure. So entranced was I, so busy concentrating on my treat, that at first I did not notice something amiss.

But what?

The murmuring ebb and flow of conversation had stopped. Silence reigned. Then lengthened. I glanced at Mother, who was regarding Aggie with an encouraging expression, the kind of look a mother gives a baby to get her to eat her peas. Aggie in turn ate her cake thoughtfully. What had I missed? The silence lengthened some more. Even J.B. looked up from his blocks.

Mother said, "Aggie, did you not hear what Miss Harbottle said?"

"Oh, I heard," said Aggie. "I was just waiting to hear about the pay."

"Pay?" said Mother, as if she were unfamiliar with the word. "Pay?"

I'd always been taught it was a dreadful faux pas for a lady to discuss money matters in public. Things were getting really interesting.

Miss Harbottle looked shocked and then miffed. "Well, I don't know about that. We were hoping for a volunteer. But I suppose I could go to the school trustees and ask them to pay you a salary of, say, twenty cents an hour."

I did the arithmetic rapidly in my head: six hours a day, times five days a week, times twenty cents an hour, came to ... six whole dollars. A magnificent sum. I looked at Aggie with new admiration. I guess it hadn't occurred to any of us that she would expect payment for her labor, but the more I thought about it, why not? After all, it was a new century, and surely a girl's labor should now count as much as a boy's. Why, during the last cotton harvest, I'd sulked until Father gave me a nickel to look after the colored children while their parents toiled in the fields. A whole nickel for a whole day. And I'd been thrilled to get it.

Then Aggie did something that flat-out amazed us all. She put down her fork, genteelly dabbed her lips with her napkin, and uttered three words I'd never heard before from girl child, young woman, or grown lady: "It's not enough."

Goodness! Our mouths flopped open at her audacity. Not simply mentioning money but asking for more! What a fascinating development. The atmosphere was electric. Mother flushed a bright red; Miss Harbottle spluttered and coughed, apparently having inhaled a crumb down the wrong pipe in shock. I ran to the kitchen and pumped her a gla.s.s of water, which she gulped down in relief, alternately fanning herself with her hankie and patting her bosom.

Aggie sipped her tea, cooler than any cuc.u.mber. "I will need thirty cents an hour."

"Well, I never," huffed Miss Harbottle.

"I do have my diploma, you know. That should be worth another ten cents an hour."

Mother said, "Agatha, you leave me speechless. Where does this mercenary att.i.tude come from? Why this talk of payment? It would be an honor for our family to have you volunteer to teach. Do we not provide adequately for you?"

"You do, Aunt Margaret, and I'm terribly grateful. But I have to do my part to help rebuild our house in Galveston. I want to send money home to Momma and Poppa, you see."

"Oh," said Mother. "Of course. Of course you do."

"Ah," said Miss Harbottle. "I see. A laudable goal, my dear. In that case, I will see what I can do."

And just like that, the weather in the room swung from stormy to fine.

A week later, Aggie found herself the newest employee of the Caldwell County School District at the princely sum of thirty cents per hour. Nine dollars per week. Her temperament-at least at home-improved even more.

School, however, was a different matter, and there she pretended we weren't related and would not return my smile when our paths crossed. We even had to address her as Miss Finch until we got home. She turned out to be a humorless teacher and a firm disciplinarian (not much of a surprise there), and her pupils learned quickly not to misbehave. She taught the ABCs to the young ones, guiding them as they stumbled their way through the tedium of the McGuffey Reader with such exciting tales as this one: "The cat. The mat. Is the cat on the mat? The cat is on the mat." Not much of a story, but I suppose we all had to start somewhere.

WATCHING AGGIE COLLECT her weekly pay, I began to think that saving money might be a good idea, although I didn't have any particular goal in mind. Maybe one day I'd have enough to buy train tickets for me and Granddaddy to go to Austin. Maybe one day I could buy my own microscope. Beyond that, I had no real plan. Exercising supreme willpower, I allowed myself to spend only one penny per week on candy, trading with my brothers to achieve a nice, balanced a.s.sortment. After receiving my allowance each Friday afternoon, I indulged in the small but satisfying ritual of counting my pennies and nickels and admiring my gold piece before rewrapping it in its bed of tissue paper and replacing the box under the bed. I was up to the remarkable sum of $5.42.

On this particular Friday, I thanked Father for my nickel and raced to my room. I opened the cigar box. The moment I touched the wad of tissue, I knew that something was wrong. I unwrapped it in disbelief.

Gone.

My world tilted and spun. Miss Liberty, my favorite coin, with her sunny complexion, rea.s.suring heft, and promise of the future, was gone. Stunned, I scrabbled through the contents of the box-the lesser coins, the smaller treasures, the sc.r.a.ps of paper-knowing, even as I did so, that I would not find it.

Gone.

All right then, gone. Time to get a grip and accept it. Time to apply my superior brain power to getting it back. I inspected the box. One of the corners was frayed as if something had nibbled at it, but it looked too small to squeeze the coin through. Who or what had been under my bed? Mice, for sure. The snake, probably. Had it been attracted like a magpie to the coin's s.h.i.+ny surface and taken it off behind the baseboards? No, that struck me as too far-fetched. Sir Isaac Newton had been under the bed; I had found him there before encrusted with dust. But I checked and he was floating in his dish, inert, the wire cover anch.o.r.ed with a rock.

I moved on to human suspects. One of my brothers? Father would kill them if he found out. None of them would dare, although Lamar might be a possibility. How about SanJuanna, our maid of long standing? Trustworthy as the day is long, I'd heard Mother once describe her. And Viola, who had been with us since before Harry was born? Unthinkable. So that left ... Aggie.

Of course, the most obvious of all. Grasping, driven by money, she had the means, the motive, and the opportunity. And she was no sibling, no sister, no "first-degree" relation. Our attenuated blood ties might allow her conscience to steal from me. Thinking like Sherlock Holmes, I felt it all click into place. It had to be her.

And right at that moment, "her" came in, tossing me-the wronged individual, the wounded party-the coolest of glances.

"What are you doing?" she said casually without any trace of guilt. Oh, ice water ran in her veins, all right. She sat in the dresser chair, took off her hat, and smoothed her hair.

And that's when I charged her and pushed her from the chair. She yelped and sprawled on the floor in a most unbecoming posture, her skirt hiked up to show her petticoat.

"Are you crazy?" she said.

I stood over her, panting, my hands clawed in rage, and although she was four years older and a foot taller, fear flickered in her thieving eyes. She clambered awkwardly to her feet, her clothes and hair in disarray.

"Give it back," I choked.

"What's wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?"

I advanced on her, and she backed into the corner.

"Give. It. Back."

"What are you talking about?"

"My money. Give it back."

"Don't come any closer." She held up both hands to stiff-arm me away. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Her expression was so wholly incredulous that a glimmer of uncertainty arose within me. It also occurred to me that if she wanted to, she could probably best me in a fight. I stopped advancing on her and said as calmly as I could, "My coin. The five-dollar gold piece you took from me."

"I took nothing from you. You're crazy."

And this time I believed her. She shoved past me and ran downstairs, leaving me to slowly deflate like a sad balloon. Now I was in for it.

Sure enough, one minute later, Mother's voice rose from the bottom of the stairs, angrier than I'd ever heard her: "Calpurnia! Come down here at once."

I knew that the loss of my money was nothing compared to the trouble I'd made for myself by a.s.saulting my cousin. Ach. I trudged down the stairs, trying to concoct some kind of defense, but I knew I had none.

I entered the parlor and took the place on the Turkey carpet traditionally reserved for children in trouble. I'd stood there many a time before, head bowed, so I was well familiar with the intricate pattern.

"Well?" demanded Mother. "Is it true? That you attacked Aggie and pushed her to the floor? Tell me it can't be true."

This seemed an odd way to put it. Was it an invitation to lie? I peeked at her and quickly looked away. I'd never seen her so furious.

"Sorry, Mother," I whispered, meek as a mouse.

"What was that? Speak up!"

"Sorry, Mother," louder this time.

"It's Aggie you should be apologizing to, not me."

"Sorry, Aggie." I ground my toe into the small bare spot in the pattern, the bare spot I'd helped my brothers wear away over the years.

Mother shrilled, "Look her in the eye when you say it!"

"I am sorry, Aggie, truly," spoken this time in heartfelt tones. "I ... I thought you'd stolen my gold coin."

"Hmpf," Aggie sneered.

Offering up my excuse did not have the desired effect of calming Mother down. Her voice grew louder and shriller. "The gold your father gave you? You've lost it? How could you be so careless?"

"I didn't lose it. Someone stole it."

"Nonsense! No one under this roof would do such a thing. Father gives you a ten-dollar gold piece, and what do you do? You lose it of your own carelessness."

I blinked at her in confusion. "Uh, you mean a five-dollar piece, right?"

She stared at me in equal incomprehension. "Ten dollars, not five. Is this another example of your ingrat.i.tude, you wretched girl?"

Incipient hives p.r.i.c.kled my neck. "I ... I don't-"

She snapped, "The ten dollars Father gave you. And now you've lost it. Out of my sight. Go to your room. No, wait, go outside. Allow Aggie some peace and quiet. You're to stay out of your room until bedtime, understand?"

"But I-"

"Understand?"

"Yes, Mother. And I truly am sorry, Aggie. I hope you'll forgive me."

She said only, "Hmm ... well."

I went out the front door and stood on the porch, scratched at a hive or two, and promptly burst into tears of rage and confusion. What was going on? What could she be talking about? Sam Houston and Travis appeared at the far end of the drive, but rather than allowing them to view my humiliation, I dashed into the scrub and headed for the river.

Arriving at the inlet, I sat down on the bank and cried over the injustice of it all. And my own stupidity. I had violated Granddaddy's instructions in observation, a.n.a.lysis, and judgment. I had jumped to a conclusion without a proper foundation, and look where it had landed me: in record-setting trouble, probably for the rest of my life. And I was no closer to solving the theft. I dipped my hankie in the cool water and bathed my face, never mind that I was applying untold numbers of Volvox and Paramecia to my skin. As my complexion gradually cooled, so did my temper. Could I have misplaced the money? It didn't seem possible. Thinking about where it might have gone made my head hurt. Instead, I concentrated on applying my vaunted intellect to the question of five dollars versus ten. Either Mother was mistaken or she was correct. There was no way I'd approach either her or Father to ask, so I'd have to figure it out. Well, the older boys got a dime allowance; the younger boys and I only got a nickel. Father, using the same reasoning, must have given the older children ten dollars and the younger ones five dollars. But I did not know this for a fact. Which of the older boys would tell me? Perhaps Harry would know, even though I didn't remember him lining up in the hall that day. Approaching Lamar, with his maddening superior ways (for which I could see no justification) would be my last resort. So that left Sam Houston, and he seemed like a pretty good candidate. We mostly got along all right, except for those times when he fell under Lamar's sway. Sam it would be.

I heard Viola ring her bell on the back porch to signal dinner. I dried my face and hands and headed home with my plan in place.

Dinner was a tense affair. Mother was quiet; Father regarded me with consternation; Harry looked at me as if I were some kind of species he'd never seen before; Aggie's expression was studiously blank. My brothers, who had obviously heard the news, cut sideways glances at me as they spooned up their soup. I spoke not a word and mostly kept my head down, peeking up every now and then like a turtle in its sh.e.l.l. Travis telegraphed silent sympathy by waggling his eyebrows. Only Granddaddy and the baby seemed oblivious to the stormy atmosphere in the dining room. J.B. filled up the unaccustomed void in conversation by prattling on about his good Confederate toy soldiers and how they'd killed all the bad Yankee soldiers and how he'd fired his pop gun, and how he'd learned how to spell dog: D-O-O-G.

Mother in her distraction murmured, "That's nice, dear."

SanJuanna cleared the main course and spooned out bowls of cherry cobbler drizzled with fresh cream. She placed a bowl in front of me, causing Mother to come awake with a sharp, "No dessert for Calpurnia. And none for the next two-no, make it three-weeks."

There was a sharp intake of breath around the table at this unprecedented punishment, and although draconian in the extreme, I was in no position to protest.

Travis murmured, "You can have some of mine, Callie," to which Mother posted the immediate addendum: "And no one is to share with her!"

I sat with my hands in my lap while Lamar ostentatiously smacked his lips and said, "Gosh, this is the best cobbler ever."

So like him.

On the way upstairs to bed, I ran into Travis and Sam Houston on the landing. Good. An older brother and a younger one.

"Sam," I said, keeping my voice low, "when Father came home from Galveston and he gave us all some money, how much did he give you?"

"Ten dollars in gold. Why?"

"I just wondered." Then I turned to Travis and said, "He gave you five, right?"

My younger brother looked puzzled and spoke the few words that would break my heart. "No. He gave me ten, but he said not to talk about it. He gave each of us ten."

"Each of us ten," I repeated dully. So ten for the older boys and ten for the younger boys. But not for me. I pushed past them and ran to my room, where I flung myself on my pallet and let loose another torrent of bitter tears. I cried over my lost fortune and the unfairness of being blamed for it. I cried over my future. I cried over my prospects, shrinking rather than expanding as the years slipped by, hemmed in on all sides by the dismal expectations of others.

Aggie came in to prepare for bed. She ignored me and lit the lamp and changed into her nightgown. She brushed and braided her hair, continuing to ignore me.