a studio bed.” Edith liked her old bed upstairs very much. It was painted a creamy ivory color, like vanilla ice cream, and the headboard had wicker panels on each side and a wreath of wooden ivory roses with ivory leaves in the middle. And her magic box was under it. But she didn’t say anything. Her garret was scary now and she wanted to move downstairs.
She went outside and wandered out to the hollow by the uprooted maple where she had landed. She walked very slowly in ever wider circles, dragging her feet through the duff and looking at the ground. She really would be happy if she could find her missal again. But it was nowhere to be seen. Of course she didn’t really believe in God, but possibly he did not like little girls to steal his books.
The missal was lost, but at bedtime, when she looked under her new studio bed, fragrant of knotty pine, she was happy though not surprised to find her magic box had moved itself downstairs. As she pulled it out, it slid as easily along the floor as a little sled, its light-colored wood sweet-smelling and smooth to the touch. Its sides were about as high as the length from her wrist to her elbow. Edith lay down on her stomach, propped her head with her hands, and peered into the box. She watched a tiny tornado whirl across a tiny prairie and sweep a herd of grazing buffalo into the air, along with a redhaired cowgirl. Then she pushed the box back under the bed and got into her pajamas.
CHAPTER 2
LIFE AFTER BIRTH
If Edith woke up before her parents on Sunday mornings, she was allowed to go to Mass with her friend Daniel’s family, the DeMelos, who lived on the other side of Buck Hill Road. On a chilly May morning the month before the tornado, previous, Edith dressed in her flannel-lined jeans, her red sneakers, and a green hand-knit cardigan that Kitt had made for her. She crept down two flights of uneven stairs from her bedroom in the attic. Opening and closing the creaking south door carefully behind her, she trotted downhill on the gravel drive and crossed Buck Hill Road to the DeMelos’ ranch house.
It puzzled her a little that Kitt and Arthur let her go to Mass. They didn’t like churches. When Arthur read her the story of Spartacus last winter, where all the slaves who rebelled against their masters were crucified, she asked him if Jesus was also a revolutionary like Spartacus.
“Well, maybe he meant to be,” he answered gruffly, “but the Church today is an ally of Capital. It collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis too.”
As far as she knew, Arthur and Kitt had never set foot in a church, except possibly to go to a wedding. Their own wedding, they told her, was performed by the justice of the peace in Worcester. Arthur wore a red bandana around his neck, and Kitt wore a red dress.
Edith didn’t care much for Jesus herself. She couldn’t bear to look at him hanging bloodily from the nails in his hands and feet, and would get stabbing feelings in her own extremities when she had to see him. Usually she was able to find something nicer to look at in church, like winged angels. Sweet-faced Mary with the baby reminded her of Daniel’s pretty, gentle mother, Mrs. DeMelo, who liked Edith to call her Aunty Grace. Also, Edith loved to see the colored glass in the church’s arched windows, refracting the morning sunlight in small rainbows around the nave where the people sat. It felt like being in fairyland. Her heart swelled with the beautiful organ music old Mr. Szymanski played while the priest walked down the aisle. Father Bernard was as beautiful as a bride in his magnificent brocade dress, and she breathed in the spicy incense from the smoking golden censer.
Edith knew that on the Sundays when she went to church, Kitt gave her little brother Marcus, a spoonful of his terpinhydrate and codeine cough syrup, so he wouldn’t wake up. Then she’d go back to sleep in the big bed she shared with Arthur. Edith used her parents’ first names when she remembered to, since she believed that Mommyand Daddywere “bourgeois affectations”—a bad thing, in other words. Edith felt a little bit bad that, if she’d stayed home to play with him, Marcus could get up and wouldn’t have to take medicine when he didn’t even have a cough. She would miss the Sunday breakfast too. When Kitt and Arthur finally got up, they would relax in their bathrobes and drink Bloody Marys while Arthur made them something nice to eat—blueberry pancakes in the summer, jelly omelets or scrambled eggs with bacon and fried potatoes in any season. They didn’t believe in God, and they told Edith when the subject came up that religion was the opiate of the people. They would never have imagined that she could be stupid enough to take it seriously.
Daniel silently opened the door to Edith’s knock, still looking sleep-tousled in pajamas with rocketships on them. Daniel DeMelo had been her best friend since the DeMelos moved in across the road two years ago. Daniel was a boy, although a very short boy. Like Edith he was always at the front of the line when they lined up in size places at school. Like Edith, he loved to make up stories and play outside in the woods and fields at being pioneers or Indians or soldiers or Robin Hood or elves and fairies. They were both very good readers and loved to read, especially books that came in series. They were currently racing each other through the Little House books. They took the books out of the Whitby Town Library at the Commons where Kitt took them on Saturdays. They had just finished Farmer Boy.
This morning, though, Edith’s business was with the girls. Without a word, Edith pushed past Daniel and headed through the DeMelos’ messy kitchen straight to the girls’ bedroom, where she happily doffed her jeans and sweater and let Mary and Betsy, Daniel’s big sisters, dress her up for church and try to subdue the wild cloud of red hair that drove her mother to despair and threats. Betsy applied water and Alberto VO5, with excellent results.
“You really need to have it styled,” Betsy said ruefully. “Mommy could do it for you if your parents would give permission.”
They all knew Edith’s parents wouldn’t give permission. To smart people, fancy hairstyles were almost as stupid as church. Mary was taking her golden hair out of the rag curlers and combing it artfully into shining ringlets, like Shirley Temple’s but a less babyish style. Though unstyled, Edith’s red hair now gleamed in the light like Tonto’s hair on the Lone RangerTV show. It was shiny and lay smooth. She lacked Tonto’s nice beaded headband, but Betsy lent her rhinestone barrettes to hold her hair out of her face. It was only thanks to the DeMelos and their television set that Edith was familiar with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, as well as with Winky Dink, Shirley Temple, Roy Rogers, and Howdy Doody, not to mention the soap operas Search for Tomorrowand As the World Turns. Aunty Grace let the children watch TV after school as much as they wanted. She often joined them, curling her stockinged feet under her on the big sectional couch and sipping something amber from a big white mug. Edith’s parents didn’t approve of television. They would say things like “Only an imbecile would watch such nonsense.” Edith didn’t think Mrs. DeMelo was an imbecile. She was nice and she never yelled.
The big girls dressed her for church in Betsy’s last year’s Sunday best: a turquoise-and-orange plaid taffeta dress with knife-edge pleats and a little bolero jacket.
“I don’t think the orange looks too good with your red hair, but there’s lots of turquoise,” commented Betsy. Her hair, like Mary’s, was golden. “Lots of criminals have red hair, did you know that?” she asked. Betsy, who was nine,was a treasure house of astonishing information that she was eager to share. The two blond sisters tucked Edith’s freshly subdued locks under a round straw hat with a white grosgrain ribbon and slipped her feet into a pair of socks with lace edging and shiny patent leather Mary Janes. The shoes were a little too big.
“I’ll stuff Kleenex in the toes,” Mary said, pulling out a wad of tissues from the box on the dresser. Edith remembered, with a small inward cringe, the time she and Mary and Betsy stuffed Kleenex under their blouses to make boobies. All three girls wore stiff lace-trimmed crinolines under their skirts,which stuck out like ballerina tutus, so wide that they brushed the doorframe as they exited.
All the little boys—Daniel, James, and even tiny Baby Peter, wore navy-blue bow ties with white polka dots that matched the tie that Mr. DeMelo wore. These were the kind of bow ties that were sewn onto an elastic neckband so you didn’t need to bother with tying or untying. Beautiful Aunty Grace had Mr. DeMelo zip up her pale-blue crepe dress while she perched a tiny pink hat, festooned with a single fake rose, precariously atop her heavy golden chignon. A