So B. It Read online

  “Uh-oh, Heidi,” she said.

  “I love you, Mama,” I said, and kissed her.

  Mama pulled away.

  “Tea, Heidi?” she said, looking at me expectantly.

  “No, Mama. No tea now.”

  “Ow, Dette,” she said, holding her head.

  “I know, Precious. I’ll tuck you back in when Heidi goes, and you can have more Jell-O,” Bernie told her. Then she turned to me. “You’ll call from every stop?”

  “Yes, from every stop,” I promised.

  “And I want you to call me the second you get to Liberty,” Bernie said, putting her hands on my shoulders, the way she always did when she wanted to make sure I was listening to her.

  “I will. I promise,” I told her.

  “You’ve got your sandwiches and the money I gave you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You remember the name of the cab company?” she asked.

  “Yes, Bernie. ABC.”

  She had called Liberty information and located a cab service right near the bus stop that could take me up to Hilltop Home. She tried to let them know at Hilltop that I was coming, but the woman who answered the phone there kept putting her on hold before Bernie could get it out.

  “You’ll call me when you get to Liberty and then again when you reach Hilltop.”

  “Yes, Bernie,” I told her again, “I promise.”

  “Don’t tell anyone that you’re traveling alone. You pretend to be with someone at all times. Someone who looks safe. A woman. Someone who could be your mother.”

  We’d been over these details countless times.

  “Once you’re at Hilltop, you get whatever answers there are to be gotten, Heidi, then climb right back on the bus and come home to us.”

  “I will,” I said. She was still holding me by the shoulders, and when I tried to pull away, she slid her hands down my arms and took both my hands in hers.

  “I have to go now, Bernie,” I said.

  Reluctantly Bernadette let go of my hands, and her arms fell heavily to her sides.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.

  “I’m not,” I lied, even though I’d promised never to do that to her again.

  “Heidi—” Bernie’s voice got thick and her eyes filled up again.

  “Don’t worry, Bernie. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re going now,” she said.

  It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact.

  When I got downstairs, I stood on the stoop and looked up. Bernadette and Mama were both standing at the window. Zander was sitting on the steps eating Devil Dogs. He handed me two unopened packs.

  “For the road,” he said.

  I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that, so instead I punched him in the arm. He grinned and punched me back, but not too hard.

  “See ya,” he said.

  I walked backward, my suitcase bumping against my leg, the box from Bernie tucked under my arm, waving to Mama and Bernie and Zander until I had to turn the corner. As I waited for the Number Five, I set my suitcase and the box down on the curb. I was really doing this. I was going to New York by myself. I felt a strange hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach and my mouth tasted funny, metallic like the water from the drinking fountain at the library. I swallowed hard and looked up at the clear blue sky. It was comforting to know that a piece of that very same sky would be hanging over Liberty when I finally got there. Bernadette had been right, I was going to Liberty to chase down a four-letter word—s-o-o-f.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Go

  I got to the bus station with plenty of time to spare. I had planned to use the time to do what Bernie and I had agreed on, scout around for a woman sitting near my departure gate who I could get on the bus with. Once I got there, though, for some reason, that didn’t feel right. There were plenty of women around, all shapes and colors and sizes, and a lot of them looked pretty friendly, but instead of picking one out, I found a seat on an empty bench and sat down. I sat there for almost forty-five minutes with my suitcase clamped between my knees, waiting. I don’t know how to explain it—it was just a feeling I had that the right person would come along and find me instead of the other way around.

  About fifteen minutes before my bus was due to leave, a woman in a long green raincoat came and sat down beside me. She had a little soft-sided suitcase with netting on the ends. Inside were five kittens, all different colors and patterns. They were mewing up a storm, so she was clicking her tongue and whispering to them to be quiet.

  “They’re scared is all, poor babies. It’s the first time they’ve been away from their mama,” she told me.

  Her name was Alice Wilinsky, and she was on her way to a big family reunion in Salt Lake City. She was bringing the kittens along to give them away to some of her cousins, since she already had three cats at home, including the mama cat, Bebe. We started talking about cats and I told her about Cookie Dough and Clara Barton, and before I knew it they announced our bus and we got on together. Just as easy as that.

  The first hour I was on the bus, Alice kept up a steady stream of chatter while I kept eyeing the box that Bernie had given me. I wanted to know what was inside. I didn’t want to open it in front of Alice, though, in case it was something embarrassing. Finally nature called and she made her way to the rear of the bus to use the bathroom. I quickly untied the yarn and opened the box.

  Inside was the red sweater. The one I’d found wadded up in the back of the closet. Bernie had washed and blocked it and carefully mended all the moth holes with matching red yarn. I’d had no idea she’d been working on it; she must have been doing it in her room at night after I’d gone to sleep. I slipped the sweater over my head and double rolled the sleeves up. It was much too big for me, but I didn’t care. It was perfect. Soft and warm, and smelling wonderfully of home.

  Home. I didn’t dare let myself think about it. I was afraid that if I did, the hollow feeling that had taken hold in my stomach earlier would take over the rest of my insides and turn me wrong side out. To keep my mind off things, I got out my notebook and started a new list.

  Things I Have Never Seen Before

  cows

  seats with footrests

  roadkill 1) dead deer

  2) dead raccoon

  3) dead skunk

  4) mystery fur

  Alice came back from the bathroom, and for a change she didn’t seem to feel like talking. Instead she put up her footrest and pushed her seat back as far as it would go so she could nap. I wasn’t tired yet, so I sat there working on my list for a while longer. I added three more things:

  tollbooths

  someone changing a flat tire

  hitchhikers

  The kittens were asleep in their bag tucked under Alice’s seat, but after a while one of them woke up and began to cry. I got down and crouched between the seats, peering through the net at its tiny face.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “We’ll be there soon.”

  We made our first stop at about seven o’clock that night in Fernley, Nevada. Alice didn’t wake up, so I climbed over her, got off by myself, and called Bernie collect according to the plan. She cried when she heard my voice. I thanked her over and over for the sweater and quickly told her about the bus and about Alice and the kittens and everything else I could squeeze into our brief conversation. We’d agreed beforehand to set Bernie’s egg timer each time I called to keep the calls down to five minutes; that way the bill wouldn’t mount up too high.

  She told me what she and Mama had been doing.

  “We dusted today, Heidi. You know how your mama loves dusting.”

  Mama and Bernadette would always tickle each other with the feather dusters, so it was more of a game than a household chore, although I never noticed any dust around so I guess it accomplished more than just entertaining Mama.

  “How’s her head?” I asked.

  “She lay down for a couple of hours this afternoon a
fter you left,” she said, “and she’s been fine since then. Are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

  Bernie had put the map up in the kitchen next to the phone, and she stuck in the first pushpin, a blue one on Fernley. The timer dinged just as they announced my bus.

  “Call me from your next stop,” Bernie said. “That will be Lovelock.”

  “It’s going to be pretty late,” I said.

  “I’ll be up,” she told me.

  Bernie had given me fifty dollars before I left—it was all she could spare. I had the bills (which she had washed, of course) in my backpack. We knew that the cab to Hilltop would be fifteen dollars each way, so that meant I had only twenty dollars extra to buy food or anything else I might need along the way. Bernie was afraid that it wouldn’t be enough, but I wasn’t worried. If I needed money, I was sure I could find a way to get some.

  I was hungry, but I didn’t want to waste money on the food in the bus station, so when I got back on the bus, I ate one of the ham sandwiches Bernie had packed, and afterward a package of Zander’s chocolate Devil Dogs. The food stopped my stomach from growling, but I still had that uncomfortable hollow feeling deep down inside. Alice woke up from her nap refreshed and feeling talkative again. She was more of a teller than an asker, but I didn’t mind. Her chatter helped keep my mind off other things.

  She talked on and on into the night about the reunion in Salt Lake. One way or another, fifty-two Wilinskys were making their way there. Her clan, she called them. Some, she explained, she got along with “famously” and others she could have “done without.”

  When she started talking about the feud she was having with her sister, Ellen, over who had given better Christmas presents the year before, I got sleepy. In fact, I fell so sound asleep, I slept right through the stop in Lovelock. It was the first time in my life Bernie and I hadn’t said good night to each other.

  I slept straight through till the next morning. When I woke up, my neck was stiff and the kittens were making a pitiful racket under the seat. Alice put her finger to her lips and then, making sure the driver didn’t see, she took them out of the bag one by one, handing two of them to me to hide under my sweater, where they settled right down.

  “Do you have a big family, Heidi?” Alice asked me.

  I waited without answering. I’d learned that Alice had a way of asking questions that she didn’t really mean for you to answer. Besides, I didn’t feel like telling Alice about my family. Listening to her go on and on about the ins and outs of her own family had begun to make me feel even more acutely aware of all the things I didn’t know about mine. Alice looked at me expectantly. Apparently this time she did want an answer.

  “There’s Mama and Bernie and me,” I said. “And I’ve got a grammy, too.”

  It felt strangely exciting to come right out and say I had a grandmother like that even though I didn’t know it yet for sure. Alice didn’t question it, though. Why would she? Fifty-two Wilinskys were gathering in Salt Lake City; it probably seemed only fair for me to have one measly grandmother.

  “My grammy gave me this sweater as a going-away present,” I added boldly.

  When I’d lied to Bernie about going to buy my ticket, I had felt guilty the whole time. This was different. Easy. And I didn’t feel guilty, more like giddy. Alice didn’t know me. I could tell her anything I wanted to about me or my family, and she wouldn’t know if I was making it up or not.

  “My grammy lives with us and she gives me presents all the time,” I said. “Hundreds of them.”

  “Mine taught me how to make pie,” Alice said, turning the conversation away from me and back to herself. “The secret is in the lard. People turn their noses up at lard these days, but it’s the only way to guarantee a flaky crust. Tell you what, Heidi,” she said as she got up and carefully pulled a shopping bag down from the overhead baggage compartment. “I was going to bring this to the reunion, but Lord knows with all the jouncing around it’ll be the worse for wear by the time I get there. How would you like to sample my strawberry rhubarb right here and now?” She pulled an aluminum pie tin out of the bag. “Who says pie’s not for breakfast?”

  I was hungry and I had never tasted homemade pie in my life. Bernadette wasn’t a baker. She wasn’t a fryer or a broiler, either. She made decent scrambled eggs, but other than that and coffee and Jell-O, I don’t remember her making anything much from scratch. We ate mostly frozen or canned things heated up. Alice’s pie had little strips of dough woven like a basket across the top, and the edges were pinched up in perfect, even little waves all the way around. It was beautiful.

  “My grandmother was in the 4-H,” she explained as she watched me lift a forkful of pie into my mouth. “She won ribbons for her pies, and she passed on all her secrets to me because I’m her favorite grandchild.”

  I didn’t know the first thing about baking pies, but for reasons I couldn’t understand, all of a sudden those secrets Alice’s grandmother had passed on to her made me so jealous it hurt.

  “My grammy bakes too,” I said. “She’s the best baker in the world. But she doesn’t bake pies. Just cakes—the kind with lots of layers with frosting in between and pink roses on top. We’re big cake eaters in my family. All of us.”

  As I talked, I ate pie. Bite after bite, unable to stop myself, just like the lying.

  “Cake, cake, cake, that’s all anybody ever thinks about at my house,” I said through a mouthful of pie.

  Alice watched as I boll-weeviled my way through that whole pie. When I finally pressed my fork down on the last bite in the bottom of the tin pie plate, she smiled and said proudly, “Did you ever taste a flakier crust, Heidi?”

  I shook my head and licked the fork clean. I felt sick.

  The kittens under my sweater had grown restless, and their little claws were catching at the stitches in my sweater as they squirmed, so I took them out and put them back in the bag. Alice had a thermos of milk with her; she poured some in a little dish and put it in the bag for them. I was thirsty and wished she would offer me some too, but she’d brought it for the kittens, so I kept quiet.

  “When’s your birthday?” Alice asked me once she had resettled in her seat. This time she didn’t wait for an answer. “Mine’s October second,” she said. Then, ticking off on her fingers, she continued, “My mother’s is October tenth, my sister’s is the thirteenth, my brother’s is the eighteenth, and Daddy’s is the twenty-seventh. We’re all five of us October Wilinskys.”

  October Wilinskys. I felt another jealous pang. I looked at Alice and wondered—would she understand if I told her about my birthday? Did she know anyone else who had to guess about when they were born? How could an October Wilinsky possibly understand about that?

  “Who named you Alice?” I asked, and braced myself for another pang because I was sure she would know.

  “It’s a Wilinsky tradition,” she began. “The name Alice has been in the family for generations. There are scads of us. My grandmother and my great-grandmother on my father’s side were Alices, and there are two uncles who married Alices, and gosh, there must be at least three other Alices I can’t think of right now.”

  The thought of all those Wilinskys, running around happily naming their babies after each other, made me antsy, and again I felt driven to bend the truth like a soft twig.

  “I was named after the movie,” I told her. “The one with Shirley Temple in it.”

  “Really? Oh, I love Shirley Temple,” Alice said, clasping her hands together with delight. “All those wonderful curls, and that cute little pout. I’m a big fan.”

  “My grammy knows her,” I went on, trying my best to make it sound like that was no big deal, just one of many interesting things about me.

  “She knows Shirley Temple? You mean personally?” Alice asked.

  My chest swelled with pride. I was discovering something else about lying. When people believe what you say, sometimes you forget you’re not telling the truth.

  “Shirley Temp
le’s the one who taught my grammy how to bake cakes. She’s a very good baker,” I said.

  Alice looked at me for a minute.

  “The Shirley Temple we’re talking about? The movie star? She taught your grandmother how to bake?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “She comes over and bakes at our house all the time,” I said.

  “Shirley Temple comes to your house?” Alice said.

  “Yes. She says she likes our oven better than hers,” I said.

  “I see,” Alice said, nodding and pulling a loose thread on her sleeve. “You must have a very nice oven at your house.”

  “Yep,” I said. “Shirley Temple comes over all the time to use it, and after she and my grammy bake cakes, they decorate them and stick candles in them, and then we all sit around together and pretend it’s somebody’s birthday.”

  “And she comes over to do this pretty often, does she? Bake cake in your oven?” asked Alice.

  “Very often,” I said. “All the time, really. Except of course when she’s busy in Hollywood making movies.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Tell me something, Heidi—when Shirley Temple comes over to bake with your grammy, does she ever tap-dance for you, show you the steps she’s working on for her next movie maybe?”

  “Sometimes she does,” I said. “Sometimes she dances.”

  “In your kitchen?” asked Alice.

  “Or in the living room,” I said.

  “And does she sing sometimes too?” Alice asked.

  “Sometimes,” I told her. “If she’s in the mood.”

  Alice laughed. Then she looked down at her lap and didn’t say anything for a minute, and I knew something was wrong.

  “Heidi,” she finally said, “like I told you, I’m a big Shirley Temple fan. I think I’ve seen every one of her movies at least a dozen times, which is why I happen to know she hasn’t made a new one since A Kiss for Corliss, back in the late 1940s. She’s an old lady now, almost eighty years old. Into politics. A staunch Republican. She doesn’t tap-dance in your kitchen any more than I do.”