How High the Moon Page 7

  Teddy stared straight ahead, then sighed again. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, but… well, I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

  I could feel my heart thumping in my throat when I heard those words, and tears smarted my already stinging eyes. “What are you saying, Teddy? You gonna pack me up with a note pinned to me and ship me off to one of my mom’s mean brothers or sisters who will make me stay in bed all day? You aren’t going to do that, are you, Teddy?”

  Then suddenly I was bawling like a Jackson girl, and I ran off to my room to dig around on the floor until I found that Sunshine Sisters paper. I uncrumpled it and ran it back to where Teddy was still sitting, staring at nothing.

  “Look at this, Teddy,” I said. I shoved the paper in front of his face. “It’s a new program to help kids like me learn to be more respectable. This program is why I snuck into the Starlight. Really. Not to see a movie, but to ask Brenda Bloom to be my Sunshine Sister.

  “Okay… okay… so maybe that part isn’t exactly true,” I said. “I did sneak in to watch the movie, but something good came out of it anyway, because Brenda Bloom told me she’s going to be my Sunshine Sister.

  “I know I’ve got a lot of afflictions, Teddy,” I said as he looked over the mimeographed page, “but I don’t know what to do about them any more than you do. It’s not like I’m trying to be bad. Mrs. Carlton seems to think that the trouble is I don’t have enough ‘feminine influence.’ She thinks this program might help. And like she says, we’ve gotta use every resource we’ve got. Heck, Teddy. You know as well as I do, that there ain’t a girl more respectable in this whole town than Brenda Bloom, so maybe she’s just the influence I need. You’ll see, Teddy. It’ll work. I’ll make it work. With Brenda’s help, I’ll turn myself into a girl you can be proud of. Just don’t send me away. Please.”

  Teddy looked up at me with water-shiny eyes. He reached out and took my hand, giving it a squeeze and a slow shake. “Aw, Teaspoon,” he said in his most Jesusy-gentle voice. “I’d never send you away. You know that.”

  But I didn’t know that. So I promised myself, right then and there, that no matter how much I hated the thought of being part of that do-gooder program, I was going to do it. And I’d do my school make-up work by Monday, and stop fighting no matter how much those Jackson kids got on my nerves. I was going back to Sunday school, too. Even if that meant having to figure out how to put back the offering money that I’d been pocketing for penny candy and soda pop.

  I gave Teddy my word and wanted to spit-shake on it, but Teddy shook his head. “All I want is a promise in deeds,” he said. Then he told me that he thought he needed an ice cream sundae for supper, and off we went.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Yep, I was going to do better. That’s what I told myself when Charlie and I set out for Sunday school the next morning, both of us scrubbed clean, Charlie wearing a button-up shirt that I think must have belonged to his grandpa because it was gray and smelled like mothballs. And even if it was long enough to fit him like a dress, the buttons were stretched tight around his big belly like it was too small.

  It was Teddy’s idea that Charlie go to Sunday school with me. Mrs. Fry—who used to go to church when Teddy still had a car and could bring her there and pick her up, but who had to get her church from the radio on Sunday mornings after Teddy’s car was gone—thought it was a wonderful idea. Charlie didn’t look so sure, which kind of surprised me. He didn’t know diddly about God or Jesus, but you’d think he’d want to know the people his ma lived with. I tried to fill him in as we headed down the street.

  “So, first there was God. Got that? And He made everything you can see. The sky, the earth, the stars, even wood ticks—though I don’t know why He’d have bothered with that one. Anyway, He made the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. And in just seven days, too.”

  “Wha’d He make them out of?” Charlie asked as he looked up at the sky, his steps slowing until he was almost standing still.

  “These,” I said, and I swallowed two gulps of air and burped. “Gases. But probably like the ones we learned about in science class, not the burping kind.

  “I know for sure what He made the first lady, Eve, from, though. The rib from the first guy He made. Adam. I don’t know how He did that, but He’s sort of like a magician you could say. He didn’t make them clothes though, I can tell you that much. So they had to wear leaves. Their Garden of Eden must have been in the jungle, because those leaves were big. No trees around here have leaves big enough to cover up a lady’s balloons or a guy’s wee-er.” Charlie laughed again like I’d burped.

  “Anyway, the garden had apple trees in it and He told them not to eat the apples. I don’t know why. Maybe a witch poisoned them or something. But a snake told Adam to eat one—or was it Eve? Anyway, one way or another, that apple got ate, and now because of it, we all have afflictions and have to suffer, which is not exactly fair. Like when Mrs. Carlton made the whole class stay in at recess because somebody stuck a wad of chewed-up Bazooka on her chair. It made no sense, punishing us for what one kid did, just because she didn’t know who did it. It wasn’t like we all took turns chewing that wad of gum. But I suppose she figured that if God Himself could punish people for generations because Adam ate an apple he wasn’t supposed to, then she should be able to make a bunch of kids stay in at recess because one person stuck gum on her seat. Not that it mattered much to me, since I had to stay in that day anyway.

  “You walk too slow, Charlie. Pick up the pace or we’ll be late.” I tapped my plastic purse against my thigh in a rhythm, then sang a bit of “Jesus Loves Me” before I remembered that I was educating Charlie about God and Jesus.

  “So anyway, after about a bajillion years, all those descendants—which is what you’d call Adam and Eve’s kids and their kids and so on—got so naughty that God had to send His only begot son, Jesus, down to earth to straighten them out.”

  “What’s a begot son?”

  “One He got, I guess. Anyway, that’s where things get a little confusing. Jesus is God’s son, but He had a dad named Joe, too. But I suppose people can have two dads. I think a kid in my class does.”

  “Grandma G has a picture of Jesus above her dresser,” Charlie said. “He has nails in Him.”

  “Yeah, that’s because some bad people nailed Him to a cross and killed Him. But don’t worry, Charlie. God lifted Him back up to heaven and He’s okay now. Just like your ma.”

  I kicked a rock on the sidewalk, then hurried to catch up to it before it stopped rolling. I kicked it again. “Take a turn, Charlie,” I told him, “and don’t let it stop rolling before you do.” Charlie waddled to the rock and gave it a kick. He kicked it hard enough that I had to run to catch up to it.

  “I don’t know if we’re supposed to have a favorite,” I said as we ran and kicked, “but I sure do. I love Jesus best. He’s not as strict as God. He doesn’t care how much of a mess you are, He loves you anyway.” Then I sang Charlie a verse of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” as we played down the sidewalk. I even added a chorus of my own, just for Charlie and me: “…Fat or skinny, good or bad, Jesus loves you like a dad, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” After I got done with that one, I slipped right into “This Little Light of Mine,” which was my all-time favorite Sunday school song.

  Just singing that song and remembering that Jesus loves us even if we have afflictions made me happy. Happy, because I knew I was making Jesus as happy as I made Teddy when he saw me in my best dress that morning, damp curls plastered to my head with barrettes, the plastic purse he let me pick out from Ben Franklin on my last birthday dangling from my hand. “See, Teddy?” I’d said. “I’m showing you in deeds.” He gave me a hug then and said, “That you are, Teaspoon. That you are.” My whole insides felt good then, because I knew I had made a guy as good as Jesus Himself happy.

  I couldn’t show Teddy the money I had in my purse, because I didn’t want him to know that I’d spent my offering money in the f
irst place. Too bad, because he probably would have been impressed, knowing that I sold my jump rope and my marbles in order to get the money back.

  Well, not that I got all of the money I owed Jesus back. I was still fifteen cents short, but it wasn’t my fault those Jackson kids were such tightwads.

  “You don’t happen to have an extra fifteen cents on you, do you, Charlie?” I asked as I shoved him out of the way so I could kick the rock twice in a row, even though it was his turn.

  “No,” he said. “I only got a nickel… and it was my turn.”

  We were coming to the corner, and I had to be quick on my feet and kick the rock with the inside of my foot so it would turn down Lincoln Street. I kicked so hard that it skipped past the house on the corner and landed in front of the one next to it. The one with a lawn filled with tables heaped with junk. “Hey, Charlie, look. A sale! Come on, let’s see what they got.”

  I skipped past the stacks of yellowed tablecloths, stretched-out clothes, and shoes with more scuffs than Charlie’s head, looking for a table with something good on it. Jigsaw puzzles maybe, or a new board game that Teddy and me could play after supper, in case we ever got sick of Scrabble.

  I didn’t see anything in the way of toys other than some matted-looking stuffed animals, but as I was circling the table, my foot bumped into something hard. I lifted up the end of the plastic tablecloth and bent over to see what was tucked underneath. Good thing I did, too, or I would have missed the best thing anyone could ever hope to find at a yard sale—a scooter, apple red!

  “Holy cats, Charlie, look at this,” I said as I pulled it out, but Charlie hadn’t even reached the table yet.

  “Hey, lady,” I said to the woman behind a card table that was empty but for a cigar box, a tablet, and a pen. She was a bit on the bowlegged side, so her legs looked like two bananas in her yellow pants. “How much for this scooter?”

  She stopped to say hello to some ladies just coming into the yard before making her way over to where I was standing, the scooter tipped upside down as I spun the wheels to make sure they were in good working condition. The red paint was chipped here and there, but the wheels spun like tops.

  “Oh, fifty cents.”

  I picked up my plastic purse from the ground beside the scooter. “I only have twenty-five… maybe thirty,” I added, thinking of Charlie’s nickel. “Will you take that?”

  “I’m sorry,” the lady said. “The stuff at this table belongs to my sister, and she ran for change. She said fifty cents, so I can’t say differently.” Then she wandered away toward the group of ladies hovering over a table of bedding.

  “Man, Charlie,” I said when he reached me. “Look at this. I’ve always wanted a scooter.” I stepped on it and shoved off. “It even works good in the grass.”

  “Honey, don’t play with the toys if you don’t intend to buy them,” the lady called across the yard, even though the toys were played with already.

  “Are we gonna be late for Sunday school?” Charlie asked. “I don’t like getting to places late. Then everyone stares at you.”

  I propped the scooter against the table edge, then told Charlie, “Don’t let anybody buy this, okay?”

  I went over to the banana-legged lady, who was unfolding a quilt so an old lady with a hair on her chin as long as my pinkie could see the pattern. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but if I don’t, we’re going to be late for Sunday school. That scooter over there? Do you think I could make a down payment on it, and you could hold it for me until after I get out of my class and can run home and get you the other quarter?”

  The lady sighed. “Well, I don’t know… like I said…”

  “I’ll come back. Promise! In an hour and ten minutes, tops.”

  “Okay. I’ll hold it for you. But if my sister gets back before you and someone wants it, she’ll probably sell it. I’ll give you your quarter back if that happens. That’s the best I can do.”

  I dug the change out of my purse and dropped the two dimes and one nickel into her hand, then went and shoved the scooter so far under the table that even one of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs would have had to bend over to spot it.

  The Jesus-bells chimed down the street, so we had to get a move on. I grabbed Charlie by his grandpa shirt and hurried him along.

  “Did you just give that lady your Sunday school money?”

  Boy, that Charlie! He hardly ever talked, and then when he finally did open his yap, all that came out of it was something you didn’t want to hear.

  “Stop blabbing and run, Charlie. We’re late and everyone’s going to stare at us.”

  Course, they would have stared anyway, since I was bringing in a new kid. Not that I minded the stares. I wasn’t shy that way, which was a good thing because I was going to get gawked at plenty when I got famous. But Charlie minded. He turned tomato-red and tried to turtle-tuck his head into his collar—like that was going to happen, with the collar so tight that it was a miracle his eyes weren’t popping out of his head—when the kids sitting around the scuffed table looked up. Who could blame them for staring at Charlie, though?

  “Sorry we’re late,” I said to Miss Tuckle, who paused from handing out her lesson plan to look up.

  “Oh, you brought a friend,” she said, smiling. “How nice.”

  “He’s not my friend. He’s my neighbor. His name is Charlie Fry.”

  Susie Miller—as uppity as her dad, the Mr. Miller from the First National, the one who was always calling Teddy “Big Guy”—stifled a snicker. I knew she’d be laughing out loud at Charlie if Miss Tuckle wasn’t standing right next to her, so I glared at Susie until she wiped that smirk off her face. Maybe Charlie was only my neighbor, but I didn’t want anybody picking on him, his mom being an angel and his dad being in jail and all.

  “Well, welcome, Charlie,” Miss Tuckle said. She asked a couple of kids to scoot their chairs closer together, then pulled an extra chair to the table for him.

  Sunday school was the same as always: Miss Tuckle smiling for thirty minutes straight, Susie Miller almost throwing her arm out of its socket as she begged to read in my place once I reminded Miss Tuckle again that I couldn’t read because I needed glasses and we still didn’t have the money to buy them. Of course the minute I said this, Charlie looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was really half blind. But it’s not like I could tell Charlie the truth—that I could see like a hawk, but didn’t like reading out loud in Sunday school because the story always had those Bibley names in it that were fancier than mine, and when I fumbled on one of them, Susie always snickered.

  Too bad I didn’t have the chance to warn Charlie so he could have claimed to be half blind, too, because when it was his turn to read, boy, did he make a mess out of things. His paragraph didn’t even have any fancy names or those weird Bible words like thy and thou, either. Just simple words that even a first grader would know. Miss Tuckle had to help Charlie so much that she might as well have read it herself, so when Charlie was done reading, and Robert, the kid who smelled like a barn, was taking his turn, I leaned over to Charlie and said, “That’s why I pretend I’m blind as a bat.”

  I tried to listen to the lesson, but it wasn’t easy. Not when I had to figure out how I was going to get another quarter. I decided that maybe a loan from the Taxi Stand Ladies might be my best bet. Those ladies always seemed to have money, though I didn’t know how, since they didn’t have jobs, best I could tell. Course, they would have had more than the bit of money they did if Pop, the roly-poly guy who owned The Pop Shop, would stop swiping it.

  Pop was Ralph’s brother and they were both uncles to The Kenosha Kid. But Pop wasn’t a very nice uncle, because whenever Walking Doll or The Kenosha Kid went into his store to get a pack of Pall Malls or a bottle of Coca-Cola, and lay down a couple of bucks, even when what they were buying was way under one dollar, Pop just rolled the money up and stuffed it in his pocket without giving them any money back. Neither of them ladi
es ever asked for their change, either, but once when I followed them back out on the sidewalk, Walking Doll called Pop a “thieving bastard.”

  At least Ralph wasn’t lousy to the Taxi Stand Ladies, because I’d never seen him ask for a dime after taking them for one of their many daily spins. No jobs and a thieving uncle or not, those girls always seemed to have a bit of cash on them. And they liked me, too. So providing that the banana-legged lady’s sister moved as slow as Charlie, I’d have it made in the shade.

  When ten-till came, Susie got the box of broken crayons out so we could color the picture at the end of our lesson plan. While we colored, Miss Tuckle led the “God Is Good” prayer so we could thank God for our bounty of Kool-Aid. Then Susie got down the “offering plate,” as Miss Tuckle called it, even though it was nothing but an empty Folgers coffee can. Susie begged to carry it around to collect the offering like she did every Sunday. “That won’t be necessary,” Miss Tuckle said, like she did every Sunday, then she added, “But thank you for volunteering, Susie. Children, please put your offering in and pass the plate to your neighbor.”

  When it was almost my turn, I opened my purse and dug around like my offering was on the bottom and I was scooping it up.

  Susie made sure everyone saw her fifty-cent piece before she dumped it in, then she handed Charlie the can, instructing him—like Mrs. Fry buzzed off his ears along with his scalp so he couldn’t hear Miss Tuckle’s instructions—and as soon as he dropped his nickel in, she yanked the can out of his hand and reached it around him toward me. I glared at her. “I think Charlie can pass a can without your help,” I said.

  I pulled my hand out of my purse, keeping it balled into a fist like it was holding my tithing, and buried it deep in the can. When my knuckles touched the cool bottom, I swirled my fingertips to jingle the money already in it, to make the noise of “my” coins dropping in. Boy, it wasn’t easy, feeling those coins cool against my fingers—including Susie’s fifty-cent piece—knowing that I could easily lift out enough to pay for the rest of my scooter and save myself a whole bunch of time. But I couldn’t steal from Jesus, even if He’d forgive me as long as I was sorry enough afterward. Borrowing money from Him when I wasn’t coming to Sunday school anyway was one thing, but swiping money out of the offering plate was another.