Getting Near to Baby Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Early Morning

  Chapter 2 - Birds of a Feather

  Chapter 3 - The Trouble with Aunt Patty

  Chapter 4 - Don’t Do This, Don’t Do That

  Chapter 5 - A Tough Nut to Crack

  Chapter 6 - Forbidden Friends

  Chapter 7 - After Baby Died

  Chapter 8 - Seeing the Excavation

  Chapter 9 - Two Peas in a Pod

  Chapter 10 - Mrs. Wainwright’s Daughter

  Chapter 11 - Aunt Patty’s Great Idea

  Chapter 12 - A Day at Bible School

  Chapter 13 - The Way Things Sometimes Work Out

  Chapter 14 - The Piggly Wiggly Pickle

  Chapter 15 - Second Thoughts

  Chapter 16 - A Day at the Fair

  Chapter 17 - Until Milly Came

  Chapter 18 - Seeing Baby Off to Heaven

  Chapter 19 - Aunt Patty’s Arrival

  Chapter 20 - Uncle Hob

  Chapter 21 - The Last Straw

  Chapter 22 - Talking Things Over

  Chapter 23 - Aunt Patty Stands Alone

  Chapter 24 - Aunt Patty Sees the Light

  Chapter 25 - The End of a Long Wait

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Things don’t feel right here.

  I want to open my eyes in the morning to see my very own wallpaper with the tiny blue flowers and pink rosebuds. Aunt Patty does not believe in putting up wallpaper, not even in the bathroom. She says mold grows behind it.

  I want Mom to read to us for an hour before bedtime, all of us in a clump like alligators in the sun so we can all look at the pictures together. Aunt Patty tucks us into bed before it is even full dark. We want our mom. We’re worried about her having to sleep all alone. We worry that she doesn’t eat right, now that she doesn’t have us to feed. We miss her.

  I hear Aunt Patty’s bossy voice, rousing Uncle Hob out of his bed. She’s telling him he has to come outside to order us down. Or to plead with us, whichever he thinks will work. That sad feeling I have hardens into a mad feeling and I don’t think I’ll ever get down off this roof. I’ll stay here till kingdom comes.

  ■“Couloumbis’ first novel wears its heart on one sleeve and its humor on the other. Together, they make a splendid fit.”

  —Booklist, boxed review

  ◆“Willa Jo tells the tale in a nonlinear, back-and-forth fashion that not only prepares readers emotionally for her heartrending account of Baby’s death, but also artfully illuminates each character’s depths and foibles.... The author creates a cast founded on likable, real-seeming people who grow and change in response to tragedy.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, pointer review

  OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  Come Sing, Jimmy Jo Katherine Paterson

  Flip-Flop Girl Katherine Paterson

  The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods Ann Cameron

  The Summer of the Swans Betsy Byars

  Wish on a Unicorn Karen Hesse

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999

  Published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001

  10

  Copyright © Audrey Couloumbis, 1999

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Couloumbis, Audrey.

  Getting near to baby / Audrey Couloumbis.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Although thirteen-year-old Willa Jo and her Aunt Patty seem to be

  constantly at odds, staying with her and Uncle Hob help Willa Jo and her

  younger sister come to terms with the death of their family’s baby.

  [I. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Death—Fiction. 4. Aunts—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07619-4

  This edition 978-1-101-07619-4

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are some things a writer can be lucky enough to have, like friends who really want it to happen for her. And if she’s more than lucky, if she’s truly fortunate, she has a husband who never asks, “Why are you doing this?” He just pulls on his boots and trucks out into the snowy night for yet another ream of paper and a printer cartridge.

  There are some things a writer can work toward, learning to write to the best of your ability, and regarding criticism as a blessing far more valuable than any compliment, and letting the world’s finest children’s book agent (Jennifer Flannery) know you are out there. But there are some things only the mysterious workings of the universe can take credit for.

  Like the signs posted along the way. Like the teachers who arrive so unexpectedly. Like the way my editor (Kathy Dawson) turned out to be someone who could inhale a manuscript and, on the exhale, elicit not only the parts of the story I didn’t know I knew, but the very parts that helped to make this the very finest work I have ever done, and that just coincidentally were the very details that make the story whole and as near perfect as it could become.

  I am forever grateful to them all.

  Before Jennifer and Kathy, there were knowledgeable readers: Abby Williams Gese. Miriam, Stacy, Suzanne, Uma. Carol, Susan, Phyllis, and Stephen. Alix, Lee, Tina, Barbara, Miss Maris, Arline, and my husband, Akila. And there were my children, Nikki and Zac, strong supporters who’ve lived their whole lives with the Aunt Patty and the Willa Jo in me, which is no doubt how I came to know these characters so well. Thank you all for your patience and kindness.

  This book is dedicated to Mama Nicky’s memory.

  One of my most sustaining memories of her

  is that of my small children running before me.

  And the way she dropped whatever she was working on,

  the way she sat forward to meet them, the nearly

  straight line of her as her arms opened to welcome them.

  1

  Early Morning

  Aunt Patty is fed up with me.

  She told me so last night. When I got into bed, there was a sick feeling in my stomach that stayed with me through my sleep. I came out here to breathe deep of the fresh air but that sick feeling has not yet gone away.

  And then Mrs. Garber ran by. Who would think somebody fifty years old would be up and running down the road before daybreak? She ran by and then she ran back and stared at me from the road, her knees all the time pumping up and down. I didn’t say a word to her.

  She came up to the house and rang the doorbell. I heard the doorbell and I heard her sneakers on the flag-stone patio, pum, pum, pum. My stomach started to hurt.

  No answer.

  After a couple of minutes she rings the doorbell again. A light comes on. I see a pale yellow square in the grass, like a shadow in reverse. Pum, pum, pum. The front door opens. Aunt Patty’s voice breaks the silence of early morning.

  “Mrs. Garber, is there something wrong?�
�

  There are whispers. A squawk from Aunt Patty, and more whispers. I wrap my arms more tightly around my knees. Pretty soon Mrs. Garber is on her way down the road again. She does not look back once.

  The front door closes.

  My heart feels like there is a string tied around it, with something heavy hanging from the string. I don’t like it. But the sky has broken pink and is stretching pale lavender fingers toward heaven. So I make up my mind to watch those sky fingers fade to nothing, to be burned away by the sunrise.

  And here it comes.

  A thin rim of orange-red, so deep and strong my heart almost breaks with the fierceness of that color. Moment by moment, there is more of it to see. So hot and bright, I cannot look but at the edges. Even when I look away, look clear away to the waning edge of darkness, I can see that color in my mind’s eye, feel it beating in my very blood. I breathe color.

  All at once the neighborhood is waking up. A phone rings not too far away. It may even be Aunt Patty’s phone. Two pickup trucks come out from the piney woods, turn off in the direction that Mrs. Garber ran. A dog barks. Next door, Mrs. Biddle puts her cat out. Squeaky spring of her back door, slam. I hear an alarm clock go off. An old-timey miner’s clock that goes Braaaaaang.

  Below, the front door opens again. “Willa Jo Dean, what do you think you’re doing up there?”

  I think, Watching the sun rise.

  I came up on the roof to watch the sun rise and I just stayed, I could say.

  “I know Little Sister is up there with you,” Aunt Patty says, as if I was keeping it a secret. Little Sister is here because she follows me everywhere. Everyone knows that.

  “Willa Jo, don’t you act like you can just ignore me, now.”

  No one can ignore Aunt Patty, that’s part of the trouble. She has that kind of voice. There isn’t any hope of ignoring her.

  I take off my leather sandals and place them so the heels are caught on a ridge and they won’t slide down. Little Sister is already barefoot. I inch across the roof that feels like it has been sprinkled with coarse salt, liking the way the scratchy surface clutches at the fabric of my shorts, clings to my skin. I don’t like getting this close to the edge, all the time knowing what I’ll see. And then I do.

  I look down on my aunt Patty, who is looking up, her hair in pin curls. She’s short and wide, and wearing a brown terry bathrobe that is the sorriest thing. From two and a half stories up, she looks like a face on a stump.

  At her first glimpse of me, Aunt Patty shifts from annoyance to outright panic, her arms lift and wave like stubby branches in the wind. “Stop right there,” she screams.

  I do.

  I only meant to get to where I could see her anyway. I wouldn’t have to get this near the edge but for the fact that she won’t step off the patio in her slippers. She’s afraid of getting a slug stuck on her if she steps into the wet grass. She’s right, that probably would happen, there are an awful lot of slugs in Aunt Patty’s lawn. But so far as I know, nobody has yet died of getting a slug stuck on them.

  And then she makes like she’s in charge of roof-sitting today. “Don’t you come any closer. You’re likely to fall right off onto the patio and crack your head wide open.”

  Little Sister has been inching her way down right alongside me, and then a little bit in front of me, and now she leans forward to get a good view of Aunt Patty screeching up at us. Aunt Patty rewards her with another shrill cry.

  I have a handful of Little Sister’s nightgown, just in case, but she isn’t going anywhere. We’ve run down hill-sides steeper than this. It does give me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, though, being so close to the edge. Like this roof might roll over like a big dog and heave us into the air like fleas.

  “Little Sister,” Aunt Patty calls. Her tone has changed to sweet and wheedling. “Little Sister, you’ll listen to reason now, won’t you?”

  It’s no use her appealing to Little Sister, who only listens to me, anyway. Another reason, Little Sister don’t talk. She used to. But not now.

  2

  Birds of a Feather

  Little Sister hasn’t said word one since Baby died. At first I tried to make her want to talk. But nearly everything I asked of her could be answered with a shake of her head or a shrug. Then I did things, like tell her I planned to make sugar cookies with refrigerator dough, and I would pretend to forget. But Little Sister didn’t want sugar cookies bad enough, I guess.

  So I said I needed help counting how many zucchini to pick for our dinner, or counting out how many eggs the chickens laid in one day. Little Sister would stare at me like life was too serious for me to try to trick her into doing something she didn’t want to. I kept at her, though, for days on end. Finally Little Sister made up that one finger meant no, two fingers meant yes, a wagging of her flat hand meant maybe. She would hold up both hands, flashing her fingers for every ten of something so she could count up to a hundred if she had to. When she was emphatic, she would flash ten fingers, telling me “NO!” Or ten fingers twice, twenty fingers, for “YES!”

  Little Sister hasn’t done much of that since getting to Aunt Patty’s. It makes Aunt Patty nervous. She’s not mean about it, she just takes Little Sister’s hands in hers and holds them and keeps talking like she never noticed a thing. Or if somebody is around, she talks louder. She pulls Little Sister’s hands close and pushes them down, hoping nobody will notice.

  “What are the girls doing up there?” This is Mrs. Biddle, the neighbor. As sweet an old lady as you could ever hope to meet. Bakes good cookies, the homemade kind, and she’s real free with them, too.

  “You can see for yourself they’ve climbed out onto the roof,” Aunt Patty says.

  She shouldn’t speak to old Mrs. Biddle that way, it could hurt her feelings. But that’s Aunt Patty for you. If anybody ever told her she ought to have some respect for her elders, she put it right out of her mind. Little Sister scoots back far enough that Aunt Patty can’t see her anymore. Then she waves to Mrs. Biddle.

  “She is the sweetest child.” Mrs. Biddle sighs. She is just taken with Little Sister.

  “She is the spawn of the devil,” Aunt Patty says clearly, and even though only Little Sister and I were meant to hear, Mrs. Biddle hears her, too.

  Little Sister’s face is hidden from me by the way the curtain of her hair falls over one shoulder. “She means me, not you,” I whisper to her, just in case.

  As sweet as if she were offering a second helping, Mrs. Biddle says, “You don’t mean that, Patty.” She makes it seem that Aunt Patty isn’t meant to feel bad for saying such a terrible thing, she is only being given a chance to mend her ways. Mrs. Biddle makes me smile.

  But not Aunt Patty. She is still glaring up at me hard enough to make me want to pull back up to where she can’t see me. Or maybe her face has frozen that way.

  “Patty, now you don’t mean that,” Mrs. Biddle says, trying again. Mrs. Biddle probably has no idea how riled Aunt Patty can get when things don’t go her way, and worse, when she gets the idea she’s being criticized for it. “I do,” Aunt Patty says. “I really do. I have only had them for three weeks and they are driving me out of my only mind.”

  This takes me by surprise. I thought I was the only one counting the days. Well, me and Little Sister.

  Down below, Aunt Patty is going on at Mrs. Biddle in that shrill voice she gets when she is real upset. “How would you like to wake up one morning to Mrs. Garber telling you your nieces are up on the roof about to jump off?” These are fighting words for Aunt Patty. Mrs. Biddle might need me to come down and put a stop to this. “And Mrs. Potts calling first thing in the morning to say there are owls roosting up on my rooftop. Very funny. How would you like that?”

  Aunt Patty stamps back into the house.

  Mrs. Potts. I might have known. She’s such a busybody. Still, she has a fine imagination. I guess that’s one good thing about her. I’ve enjoyed some of the silly gossipy stories she comes up with. But Mrs. Garb
er. To think I would come up here to jump off, now that is a stretch. Anybody with eyes should be able to see. We have been here at Aunt Patty’s for three weeks now, and I have had it up to here with her. All the way up to here.

  3

  The Trouble with Aunt Patty

  The first thing Aunt Patty did when she got us here to Raleigh was take us shopping for new clothes. “Little outfits” was how she put it, like we were dolls. Mostly striped T-shirts and white cotton blouses was what she had in mind. And what she called camp shorts. Wide legs with narrow cuffs and lots of pockets.

  Little Sister and I didn’t get to say one thing about what we liked and what we didn’t. That is, we couldn’t say unless Aunt Patty asked because she paid for everything, and she never asked. Aunt Patty knew what she wanted us to wear.

  When she was done, we looked like smaller versions of Aunt Patty, right down to our ugly leather sandals. We came back here and she put all our other clothes into a cardboard box, and I mean everything. She left us standing in our underwear, and under orders to change that. Said much as if she suspected we’d been wearing the same underwear for a week or more. Then she shoved that box with our clothes in it onto a high shelf in a hall closet. And that was that.

  “Don’t you girls look cute as buttons,” Aunt Patty said when we came out dressed in our new duds.

  “Thank you, Aunt Patty,” I said, without so much as a smile. I knew I ought to try to work up some enthusiasm but I have never in my life wanted to be cute as a button. Besides, those sandals were already rubbing a blister on my little toe.

  “Don’t they look like new pennies, Hob?” Aunt Patty asked.

  And Uncle Hob looked up from his newspaper to say, “Like new pennies, yes, I guess they do, dumplin’.”