astronaut home from the moon would feel as welcome as I did. Leatherlungs was
cowed but surly, Mr. Cardinale’s shrill admonitions ringing in her brain like
Noel bells. But I had done my share of wrong, too, and I realized I ought to
admit it. So, on that day I returned, which was also the last day of school
before Christmas vacation, I raised my hand right after roll call and
Leatherlungs snapped, “What is it?”
I stood up. All eyes were on me, expecting another heroic gesture in this
grand campaign against injustice, inequality, and the banning of grape bubble
gum. “Mrs. Harper?” I said. I hesitated, my grandeur in the balance.
“Spit it out!” she said. “I can’t read your mind, you blockhead!”
Whatever Mr. Cardinale had told her, it obviously wasn’t enough to
persuade her to hang up her guns. But I went ahead anyway, because it was
right. “I shouldn’t have hit you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Oh, fallen heroes! Idols with feet of miserable clay! Mighty warriors,
laid low by flea bites between the cracks in their suits of armor! I knew how
they felt, in the groans and stunned gasps that rose around me like bitter
flowers. I had stepped from my pedestal and pooted as I hit a mudhole.
“You’re sorry?” Leatherlungs might have been the most stunned of the lot.
She took off her glasses and put them back on. “You’re apologizing to me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, I… I…” Words had fled from her. She was treading the unknown
waters of forgiveness, trying to find the bottom of it. “I don’t… know what
to…”
Grace beckoned her. Grace, with all its magic and wonder. The grace of a
moment, and I saw her face start to soften.
“…say, but…” She swallowed. Maybe there was a lump in her throat.
“…but… It’s high time you showed some common sense, you blockhead!” she
roared.
It had been a lump of nails, obviously. She was spitting them out.
“Sit down and get that math book open!”
Her face had not softened, I thought as I sighed and sat down. It had
just been luffing like a sail before its second wind.
In the hollering madhouse that was called lunch period, I noticed the
Demon sneaking out of the lunchroom as Leatherlungs was blasting some poor boy
about spending his lunch money on baseball cards. She returned about five
minutes later, sliding into her chair near the door before Leatherlungs knew
she was gone. I saw the Demon and the other girls at her table giggle and
grin. A plot was afoot.
When we were herded back to our room, Leatherlungs sat down at her desk
like a lioness curling around a meatbone. “Get those Alabama history books
open!” she said. “Chapter Ten! Reconstruction! Hurry it up!” She reached for
her own history book, and I heard her grunt.
Leatherlungs couldn’t lift the book up off the desktop. As everybody
watched, she wrenched at the book with both hands, her elbows planted against
the desk’s edge, but it wouldn’t budge. Somebody chortled. “Is it funny?” she
demanded, the fury leaping into her eyes. “Who thinks that it’s fun—” And then
she squawked, because her elbows wouldn’t leave the desk’s edge. Sensing
calamity, she tried to stand up. Her ample behind would not part with the
seat, and when she stood, the chair came with her. “What’s going on here!” she
shouted as the entire class began to yell with laughter, myself included.
Leatherlungs tried to shuffle to the door, but her face contorted as she
realized those clunky brown shoes were as good as nailed to the linoleum.
There she was, crouched over with her butt stuck to the chair’s seat, her
shoes mired in invisible iron, and her elbows stuck fast to the desk. She
looked as if she were bowing to us, though the expression of rage on her face
hardly approved of the courtesy.
“Help me!” Leatherlungs bawled, close to maddened tears. “Somebody help
me!” Her cries for assistance were directed at the door, but the way everybody
was hollering and laughing I doubted if even her foghorn voice could be heard
beyond the frosted glass. She ripped the cloth of one arm of her blouse away
as she got an elbow free, and then she made the mistake of placing that free
hand against the desktop for added leverage. The hand was free no longer.
“Help me!” she shouted. “Somebody get me out of this!”
The upshot of all this was that Mr. Dennis, the black custodian, had to
be summoned by Mr. Cardinale to free Leatherlungs. Mr. Dennis was forced to
use a hacksaw on the tough fibers of the substance that bound Leatherlungs so
firmly to desk, chair, and floor. Mr. Dennis’s hand unfortunately slipped
during the hacksawing, and a patch of Leatherlungs’ rear end was thereafter in
need of reconstruction.
I heard Mr. Dennis tell Mr. Cardinale, as the ambulance attendants
wheeled Leatherlungs away wheezing and gibbering along the holly-decked hall,
that it was the most godawesome glue he’d ever seen. The stuff, he said,
changed color depending on what it was smeared on. It was odorless but for the
faint smell of yeast. He said Leatherlungs—Mrs. Harper, he called her—was
mighty lucky she still had her hand connected to her wrist, the stuff was so
powerful. Mr. Cardinale was enraged, in his flighty way. But no jar or tube of
glue was found in the room, and Mr. Cardinale was stumped as to how any child
could’ve been cunning and devious enough to perform such trickery.
He did not know the Demon. I never found out for sure, but I assumed she
must’ve had the glue bottle hanging from a string outside the window and had
reeled it in while the rest of us were eating lunch. Then, when she was
through smearing all the necessary surfaces, the glue bottle had gone out the
window again to be collected after school. I’d never heard of such a strong
glue before. I learned later that the Demon had concocted it herself, using
ingredients that included Tecumseh riverbottom mud, Poulter Hill dirt, and her
mother’s recipe for angel food cake. If that were so, I would’ve hated to
taste Mrs. Sutley’s devil’s food. She called it Super Stuff, which made
perfect sense.
I knew there had to be a reason the Demon had skipped a grade. I’d had no
idea her real talent lay in the realm of chemistry.
Dad and I ventured out into the woods on a chilly afternoon. We found a
small pine that would do. We took it home with us, and that night Mom popped
corn and we strung the tree with popcorn, gold and silver tinsel, and the
scuffed decorations that nestled in a box in the closet except for one week of
the year.
Ben was learning his Christmas songs. I asked him whether Miss Green
Glass had a parrot, but he didn’t know. He’d never seen one, he said. But they
might have a green parrot in the back somewhere. Dad and I went in together
and bought Mom a new cake cookbook and a baking pan, and Mom and I went in
together and bought Dad some socks and underwear. Dad made a solitary purchase
of a small bottle of perfume from Woolworth’s for Mom while she bought him a
plaid muffler. I liked knowing what was inside those brightly wrapped packages
under the tree. Two packages were also there, though, that had my name on them
and I had no idea what they contained. One was small and one was larger: two
mysteries, waiting to be revealed.
I was snakebit about picking up the phone and calling the Glass sisters.
The last time I’d intended to, tragedy had struck. The green feather was never
far from my hand, though. One morning I woke up, after a dream of the four
black girls calling my name, and I rubbed my eyes in the winter sunlight and I
picked up the feather from where I’d left it on the bedside table and I knew I
had to. Not call them, but go see for myself.
Bundled up, I rode Rocket under the Zephyr tinsel to the gingerbread
house on Shantuck Street. I knocked at the door, the feather in my pocket.
Miss Blue Glass opened the door. It was still early, just past nine. Miss
Blue Glass wore an azure robe and quilted cyan slippers. Her whitish-blond
hair was piled high as usual, which must’ve been her first labor of the
morning. I was reminded of pictures I’d seen of the Matterhorn. She regarded
me through her thick black-framed glasses, dark hollows beneath her eyes.
“Cory Mackenson,” she said. Her voice was listless. “What can I do for you?”
“May I come in for a minute?”
“I am alone,” she said.
“Uh… I won’t take but a minute.”
“I am alone,” she repeated, and tears welled up behind her glasses. She
turned away from the door, leaving it open. I walked into the house, which was
the same museum of chintzy art it had been the night I was here for Ben’s
lesson. Still… something was missing.
“I am alone.” Miss Blue Glass crumpled down onto the spindly-legged sofa,
lowered her head, and began to sob.
I closed the door to keep out the cold. “Where’s Miss Gre—the other Miss
Glass?”
“No longer Miss Glass,” she said with the trace of a hurt sneer.
“Isn’t she here?”
“No. She’s in… heaven knows where she is by now.” She took off her
glasses to blot the tears with a blue lace hanky. I saw that without those
glasses and with her hair let down an altitude or two, she might not look
nearly so… I guess frightful’s the word.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What’s wrong,” she said, “is that my heart has been ripped out and
stomped! Just utterly stomped!” Fresh tears streaked down her face. “Oh, I can
hardly even think about it!”
“Did somebody do somethin’ bad?”
“I have been betrayed!” she said. “By my own flesh and blood!” She picked
up a piece of pale green paper from beside her and held it out to me. “Read
this for yourself!”
I took it. The words, a graceful script, were written in dark green ink.
Dearest Sonia, it began. When two hearts call to each other, what else
can one do but answer? I can no longer deny my feelings. My emotions burn. I
long to be joined in the raptures of true passion. Music is fine, dearest
sister, but the notes must fade. Love is a song that lives on. I must give
myself to that finer, deeper symphony. That is why I must go with him, Sonia.
I have no choice but to give myself to him, body and soul. By the time you
read this, we shall be…
“Married?” I must’ve shouted it, because Miss Blue Glass jumped.
“Married,” she said grimly.
…married, and we hope in time you will understand that we do not conduct
our own chorale in this life, but are conducted by the hand of the Master
Maestro. Love and Fond Farewell, Your Sister, Katharina.
“Isn’t that the damnedest thing?” Miss Blue Glass asked me. Her lower lip
began to tremble.
“Who did your sister run off with?”
Miss Blue Glass spoke the name, though speaking it seemed to crush her
all the more.
“You mean… your sister married… Mr. Cathcoate?”
“Owen,” Miss Blue Glass sobbed, “oh, my sweet Owen ran off with my own
sister!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only had Mr. Cathcoate gone
off and married Miss Green Glass, but he’d been catting with Miss Blue Glass,
too! I’d known he had parts of the Wild West in him, but I hadn’t imagined his
south parts were just as wild. I said, “Isn’t Mr. Cathcoate kind of old for
you ladies?” I put the letter back on the sofa beside her.
“Mr. Cathcoate has the heart of a boy,” she said, and her eyes got
dreamy. “Oh Lord, I’ll miss that man!”
“I have to ask you about somethin’,” I told her before her faucets turned
on again. “Does your sister have a parrot?”
Now it was her turn to look at me as if my senses had flown. “A parrot?”
“Yes ma’am. You had a blue parrot. Does your sister have a green one?”
“No,” Miss Blue Glass said. “I’m tellin’ you how my heart has been
broken, and you want to talk about parrots?”
“I’m sorry. I just had to ask.” I sighed and looked around the room. Some
of the knickknacks in the curio cabinet were gone. I didn’t think Miss Green
Glass was ever coming back, and I supposed that Miss Blue Glass knew it. A
bird, it seemed, had left its cage. I slid my right hand into my pocket and
put my fingers around the feather. “I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said, and
I walked to the door.
“Even my parrot has left me,” Miss Blue Glass moaned. “And my parrot was
so sweet and gentle…”
“Yes ma’am. I was sorry to hear about—”
“…not like that filthy, greedy parrot of Katharina’s!” she plowed on.
“Well, I should’ve known her true nature, shouldn’t I? I should’ve known she
had her cap set for Owen, all along!”
“Wait,” I said. “I thought you just told me your sister didn’t have a
parrot.”
“That’s not what I said. I said Katharina doesn’t have a parrot. When it
died, the devil ate a drumstick!”
I walked back to her, and as I did I brought my hand out of my pocket and
opened the fingers. My heart was going ninety miles a minute. “Was that the
color of your sister’s parrot, Miss Glass?”
She gave it one sniffy glance. “That’s it. Lord knows I’d recognize one
of his feathers, he was always flyin’ against his cage and flingin’ ’em out.
He was about bald when he died.” She caught herself. “Just a minute. What are
you doin’ with one of his feathers?”
“I found it. Somewhere.”
“That bird died back in… oh, when was it?”
I knew. “March,” I said.
“Yes, it was March. The buds were startin’ to show, and we were choosin’
our Easter music. But…” She frowned, her stomped heart forgotten for the
moment. “How did you know, Cory?”
“A little bird told me,” I said. “What did the parrot die of, Miss
Glass?”
“A brain fever. Same as my parrot. Dr. Lezander says it’s common among
tropical birds and when it happens there’s not much can be done.”
“Dr. Lezander.” The name left my lips like frozen breath.
“He loved my parrot. He said my parrot was the gentlest bird he’d ever
seen.” Her lips curled into a snarl. “But he hated that green one of
Katharina’s! I think he could’ve killed it the same as me, if I could’ve
gotten away with it!”
“He almost got away with it,” I said quietly.
“Got away with what?” she asked.
I let her question slide. “What happened to the green parrot after it
