No novel comes into being without the help of many people, and this one evolved over many years. I would like to thank members of several writing groups in Edmonton, North Vancouver and Burnaby, Canada, for their astute observations and suggestions. Thank you to Myrna Kostash long ago in Edmonton for opening my eyes to the concept of creative nonfiction, which somehow evolved into my finding exactly the voice I needed to narrate this novel. Thank you to Pauline Gedge, who did an Alberta manuscript workshop with me, and assisted me in structure. Much thanks goes to editor Joyce Gram for the final revisions and edit of this manuscript, and to Clélie Rich, who helped with an earlier one. Thanks to friends who served as readers, among the earliest, Marsha Padfield, and the latest, Carolyn and Brenna Turvey. I also thank my mother, former English professor Dr. Katherine Speegle, for wonderful encouragement and ever-present love.
Although it sounds absurd, sometimes writing the novel is the easiest part. Marketing it can be a long and frustrating process. In particular three people have given me the dream and the confidence to self-publish Conversations with Amelia: Julie Ferguson, whose Bowen Island workshop I took on electronic publishing and whose counsel I sought; Magdalen Bowyer, who gave friendship and counsel on the soul-journey of the writer; and my friend and colleague Perry Wilson, writer and publisher.
I would like to cite the books I read about Amelia Earhart, whose wonderful courage and charm mentors the people, both female and male, of North America. Unfortunately, the titles and authors of these books have disappeared into storage in the form of discs no longer suited to my current computer, and I am not sure they are technically possible to redeem—but I do thank those authors for wonderful stories about an amazing woman. Along with many others, I thank Amelia Earhart herself, for giving the world the model of a woman of adventure and personal strength.
My deep and abiding thanks go to my spouse Ed and our children Karl and Ursula for tolerating and eventually actively encouraging the writing of this novel, among my many other projects.
Kathleen Schmitt grew up in 1950s Texas and writes fiction, poetry and articles. She has published three books of Christian feminist prayers (Crossroads, New York, 1993, 1994, 1995). Conversations with Amelia is her first published novel.
“How many real-live pilots did you know back in World War One, Amelia?” Hannah asks. She is lying on her tummy in the garden looking at her favorite book, The Glorious Adventures of Amelia Earhart, by W. S. Woody. The cover is so worn that if she didn’t know its name by heart, she wouldn’t even be able to read the words.
Below the title, a photo of Amelia looks out at Hannah. Sporting a jaunty leather flying suit, dangling her goggled cap by its strap from her left hand, she rests her right fondly on the metal body of the Lockheed 10-E Electra. That was the plane Amelia was flying around the equator when she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in July of 1937. Even now in 1951, no one has succeeded in going around the world along the equator.
I knew trainers mostly, says Amelia, out at Armour Heights flying field. That was in Canada. When I watched those guys practice, I got so close that the propellers slung snow into my face. But none of the men stayed around long. Once they could get up and down and turn a few flips in the air, they were sent off to the war. Sometimes a pilot got wounded and would come back to the Spadina Military Hospital where I worked as a nurse’s aide. That was sad. Guess I knew more wounded pilots than active ones.
“I know a pilot,” says Hannah. “Not from World War One, though. From World War Two. I don’t think he ever got shot, not bad enough to go to a hospital, anyway. But he won two silver stars for gallantry in action.”
Sounds impressive, Hannah, Amelia says. Not that I would know. I wasn’t around during World War Two.
“You would be amazed, Amelia. We made some pretty snazzy planes in World War Two. The B-36 (that was a bomber) was the cat’s paw, and the P-51 Mustang was not a bad little fighter. That’s what my uncle Andrew flew. He was a squadron commander.”
I never liked war, Hannah. Seemed a waste, all that bombing and killing. Does your uncle still fly planes, now that the war is over?
“Not anymore. Don’t know what got into him. He’s gone off and studied to be a Presbyterian preacher like Grandpapa Gosslin.”
Things happen to people in the war, Amelia says. They see terrible pain and agony. Even men who don’t believe in God may call on him in the end.
“I guess so. But why couldn’t Uncle Andrew become a Pan Am pilot like your navigator on your last Pacific flight, Fred Noonan?”
Takes all kinds, Hannah. Maybe with all those fliers who came back from the war, there weren’t enough jobs to go around.
“Maybe not, Amelia, but Uncle Andrew was good. If he had kept his hand in, why, he could be on the Korean front right now.”
A mixed blessing, Hannah. In my opinion, seeing one war is more than enough for a lifetime, and I didn’t even go to the front.
“Papa didn’t make it to the front either,” Hannah says, “at least, not that we know of. He shipped overseas and then got lost. That was when I was three.”
That’s sad too. When my younger sister Muriel, who we called Pidge, and I were little, our father was very special. He took us fishing and played ball with us. Sometimes during vacations we even played cowboys and Indians together. I would hate to have missed knowing him back then.
“I wish I could know my father,” Hannah says. “I miss him even though I never knew him. Not that we talk about him much. If we do, Mama cries. I wonder if he would have liked me.”
Sure he would, Hannah. How could anyone not like you?
Hannah thinks for a minute. “I don’t know, Amelia, but I don’t think Mama does.”
Hannah gets to her feet and looks up into the trees in the garden. Already the leaves are beginning to darken, exchanging the mossy shades of spring for the shadowy greens of late summer.
“Know what, Amelia? My uncle Andrew gave me this book about you. Listen.” Hannah opens the cover and reads from the flyleaf: “Richmond, Virginia, Christmas 1949. To Hannah with love from Uncle Andrew.”
Sounds like a nice guy, Amelia says.
“Uh-huh. He’s coming today. Might be here almost anytime now. Why, Amelia, if we were up in a plane, soaring among the clouds, we could watch him and Mama driving up the hill.”
Soaring, Hannah thinks. She looks up at her garden friends, the trees, one by one: Easy Tree, the low cedar, its gnarled branches almost touching the ground so that she can step into its octopus arms; Hard Tree, the pine with its tall, straight trunk that she’s shinnied up too often, shredding T-shirts and earning the flat side of Mama’s inlaid-pearl hairbrush to her bottom; Swinging Tree, a mountain ash with its low, mobile branches and its clusters of red berries. And the tree that is forbidden: a canoe birch that stretches toward the sky above her with shining white trunk, its fine symmetrical branches beginning just beyond her reach. Hannah calls it Sublime Tree.
“Amelia, which of these trees is the tallest?”
Sublime Tree, of course.
“That’s what I think too. I guess today’s the day.”
The day for what?
“Climbing the Sublime. I’ve always meant to climb it one day but I needed a special reason, like getting to see Mama driving Uncle Andrew up the hill in her little red MG.”
Hannah peers about but sees no one. Peeping around the corner of the big house, she spies her sister, Cynthia, sitting in a canvas lawn chair, the rippled fabric of her checkered skirt spilling gracefully around her like drifting rose petals, her curling blond hair settling in demure fashion over soft, round shoulders. Lovely as a cover photo on Seventeen, Hannah thinks. Ripe to be plucked by a handsome prince and live happily ever after.
Hannah runs to Cynthia. “Cyn!”
Cynthia looks up from the magazine she’s reading and says, “What?”
“I need a boost. Will you help me?”
“A boost where?” Cynthia asks.
“Sublime Tree.”
“Hannah Rebecca, you know perfectly well what Grandmama says about that tree!”
“What are you reading?” Hannah asks.
“Harper’s Bazaar.” Cynthia holds up the magazine.
Hannah snatches at it. When Cynthia jerks it back, another magazine falls on the soft grass. Hannah picks it up. “That’s what I thought. True Romances. You know perfectly well what Mama says …”
“Oh, all right, I’ll give you a boost.” Cynthia shakes out her skirts as she stands up. “Clean off your shoe, Hannah. I don’t want to get my hands dirty.”
A minute later Hannah is picking her way upward. She can see why Grandmama doesn’t want her to climb the Sublime: the branches, though abundant, are thin and brittle. She has to put her weight on several at a time to keep from breaking them, and if she kicks the trunk, the toe of her sneaker leaves a blemish on the white bark.
“Worth the effort, though, Amelia! Of course, if you were real and not just an imaginary friend, we could be looking down from high in the sky in your little yellow Kinner Airster biplane that you call your Canary.” Hannah gazes past the white-rail fence at the front of her grandparents’ estate at the road that winds up over grassy hills from Richmond, Virginia.
Looks like someone has been by recently, Amelia says.
Now Hannah notices the puffs of dust floating in layers over the road, settling the way flour does after Jasmine sprinkles it on her rolling board and plops down a mass of pie dough, shooting the white powder into the air. After, the flour drifts like snow to form a thin coat on the floor.
“Uh-oh, Amelia! Mama and Uncle Andrew may have got here already! They must have gone past while I was talking to Cynthia.”
Without warning, Mama’s voice comes from straight below her. “… out of the question, Andrew!” Hannah freezes.
Uncle Andrew’s voice follows. “You can’t mean to cloister yourself for the rest of your life in this house, Lee! Hayden went missing in action nine years ago, for goodness’ sake. You need to start building a new life.”
Mama’s voice is shaky when she laughs. “I’m silly, I know, but I keep feeling he’ll come back.”
“You still imagine he is alive? Or you can’t face the fact that he’s dead?” Uncle Andrew says.
A silence ensues. “What do you mean?” Mama’s voice is cold and flat.
“Just that you’ve waited nine years, Lee. Your life has stayed in one place with you hoping for Hayden to come back. Isn’t it time …”
Hannah watches Mama put her hand over her heart. “But I know he’s not …”
“Lee, if he’s alive, he doesn’t intend to come back. I just don’t think Hayden would do that to you, not without telling you.”
They are silent for a long time. When Mama answers, her voice trembles. “Maybe you’re right, Andrew. God knows, I can’t stay in this rut forever. But Texas!” Her laugh is rueful. “I do want Cynthia to grow up cultured.”
“And Hannah?”
“Oh, Andrew, you know how I feel about poor Hannah.”
“Spyder Hill is a college town, Lee. Civilized enough. A lot more wholesome for the girls too. What do you want for them? Coming-out parties, four years at Mary Baldwin, marriage into a proper family like …”
“Like me, marrying Hayden.” Mama sighs.
“Give the girls a chance for something different, Lee. Give yourself the chance to learn to think for yourself, find your own way. The girls could do with a father.”
“I don’t intend to marry again, Andrew!” Hannah can see Mama’s face, the chiseled features, slender nose like Cynthia’s, hazel eyes and high cheekbones, fastidiously plucked brows, the small mouth and thin rigid set of her lips.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant I could play that role. I don’t expect to marry either.” He stops.
“You, not marry! Andrew! Did you … you met a girl somewhere in the war, didn’t you?”
“Yes, in Japan during the Occupation.”
“Japan! She wasn’t Japanese!”
“Yes, she is, but she won’t come with me to the United States.”
“I’m sorry. Oh, Andrew, in a way I’d like to come with you, but …”
“Can’t you hear what I’m saying, Lee? I need you. I think we need each other right now.”
For a moment Mama doesn’t answer. Then she says, “Well, Andrew, I guess you’ve found my Achilles’ heel. I guess maybe I’ll come.”
Mama’s voice is fading away. Hannah decides she should get down fast, before they start looking for her. She knows better than to count on Cynthia not telling where she is.
But getting down from the Sublime is a lot harder than getting up. For one thing, no matter how careful she is, the branches keep snapping beneath her feet, and as usual, she’s taking the skin off her arms clinging to the slender trunk. Her knees and the inside of her legs aren’t faring much better. Just as she reaches the bottom branch and thinks she has made it, her foot slips and she tumbles a good eight feet to the ground, knocking the breath out of herself.
For a moment, before air will come, she thinks she’s dead, but when at last the wind jabs into her lungs, she pushes herself up and sees the branches scattered all around her on the grass. Yikes! Hopping to her feet, Hannah scoops up an armful but stops when she sees her grandparents’ black Cadillac turning into the drive and curving past the garden toward the carriage house that has been made over into a garage. Joshua is driving; Hannah can see his round, black face. The silhouettes of her grandparents are visible in the back seat.
“I think I’m in trouble, Amelia. What should I do?”
When you take to the air, Hannah, you need a plan for landing. If you’re in the air and can’t find a runway, you will have to put the plane down on a road or what you hope is a level field. If you choose the field, you may just end up rolling your plane. I did that a couple of times in my little Kinner Airster. All you can do then, Hannah, is take the consequences of injury and pay for repairs.
“But when they look at me, hear what I’ve done, they won’t let me see Uncle Andrew! They always figure out what will hurt me the most!”
You know what, Hannah? I’ll bet your uncle Andrew will find a way to see you. He’s never let you down before, has he?
“Not Uncle Andrew.”
So, there you are, Hannah! He won’t let you down this time, either.
Hannah thrusts the branches under a lilac bush and runs for the nearest door of the house, plunges into the kitchen. She sees at once that her timing’s bad, turning up in the kitchen scratched from head to toe and Jasmine watching the New York Yankees beat the pants off her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. Worse still, Bob Kuzava is pitching, the score is four to two in the seventh inning with two outs, and Jackie Robinson is up to bat.
Jasmine sits in a straight-backed chair in the far corner of the big kitchen, her black eyes glued to the television. “Okay, Jackie, let ’em have it!” She swings back muscular arms, hands clasped as though around a bat like she is Jackie himself. “Knock the stuffing out of that ball, Jackie!”
Hannah hesitates. Then she hears Mama and Uncle Andrew coming into the dining room from the garden through the double French doors. She edges over beside Jasmine and puts her hand on Jasmine’s wrist. “Jasmine!”
“Don’t bother me, Miss Hannah,” Jasmine says. “Can’t you see I’m watching the greatest show on earth?”
“The Greatest Show on Earth is a movie, Jasmine. You’re watching a ball game.”
“Miss Hannah,” Jasmine says, her head and neck stretching up in indignation, her eyes on the screen, “don’t you know this is Jackie Robinson, the World Series?”
“Yes, Jasmine, but …”
“But what?” Jasmine swings around to glare at Hannah, her head at an angle so that she can look over her bifocals. When she sees Hannah, she leaps to her feet. “Miss Hannah, Miss Hannah! What has you done to yourself? You is scratched from head to toe!”
“Fell out of a tree,” Hannah mumbles, rubbing a hip bone.
“You knows your Mama is going to send you upstairs without supper,” Jasmine says, shaking her head as if in sorrow.
Tears stream down Hannah’s cheeks. “I want to see Uncle Andrew!”
“Hush, now, Miss Hannah, it’s going to be all right.” Jasmine reaches out and Hannah shuts her eyes and leans against her, feeling the long arms pull her close to the flat, hard body, the little puffs of softness where the drooping old breasts lie beneath the cotton print dress, the hot, earthy smell of blackness enveloping her like a comforting womb.
“He’ll come up to see me, Jasmine?”
“Course he will,” Jasmine croons. “That man dotes on you, Miss Hannah.”
From Hannah’s bedroom window, she can see how night has fallen over the sloping green lawns, how the quarter moon glimmers behind the dusky forms of chestnut trees spaced here and there between the house and the road.
“I don’t know what got into me, Amelia. I just keep getting into trouble, no matter how hard I try to be good.”
I was pretty strong-headed myself, Hannah. My parents were not keen on my learning to fly an airplane. Took my father a while to even believe I was serious about it. He wouldn’t pay for lessons, so I got a job in the mail room of the telephone company. Then my parents complained that I was working with a lot of boys, which was not ladylike, and they forbade me to have a male flying instructor. So I just shifted over to operating a switchboard for the phone company, and found Neta Snook to teach me to fly.
“Did they get really mad?”
Well, Dad interviewed Neta and felt okay about it, even though she was hardly older than I. By that time I suppose they saw that my mind was set and they let me get on with it.
Hannah is feeling tired, so she crawls into her bed. Sometimes, she reflects, she likes the dark better. You can’t see all the dumb heart-shaped pillows or lacy pink curtains they put in your room because you’re a girl. You can pretend you have an army blanket on your bed, and maybe green-striped wallpaper instead of flowers. You might even pretend that Uncle Andrew is coming when the clock points with luminous hands to after eleven. Where is he, anyway?
Amelia wouldn’t lie here doing nothing.
“Amelia? Do you think Uncle Andrew is not coming?”
I think he thinks you’re asleep, Hannah.
“Uh-huh, that’s what I think too.”
Hannah sits up, puts her feet into her slippers, moves without a sound through her bedroom door and sneaks Indian-style along the hall to his room. The door is partway open, and she pushes it wider so that pale light falls across the white brocade coverlet. The bed is flat and tidy, with no hump on it. Uncle Andrew is not here yet.
She slips down the back stairs into the kitchen wing and along another hall to the main part of the house where chandeliers still shine brightly from the door of the main parlor. Peeping around the door sill, she can see Mama sitting with her back to her on the mahogany, velvet-covered Victorian settee, Uncle Andrew to Mama’s left in a matching wing chair.
“That child is uncontrollable,” Mama says. “Sending Hannah to Greenlea School last year seems to have helped at least a little bit.”
“So Mother sent her away to an institution in order to protect her prizewinning roses?” Uncle Andrew’s voice is dry. “And you just let her do that?”
“That’s not fair, Andrew. Mother is concerned about Hannah. She is trying to find some way to help the child. You have to understand that Hannah is destructive. She needs a framework to prevent that wilful misbehavior. Cynthia never acted the way Hannah does! Can you imagine Cynthia climbing a tree?”
“No, but it might do her good.”
“You don’t understand, Andrew. You think Hannah is a wilful child like you were as a boy.”
“Yes, I do. You just judge her more harshly because she’s a girl. What Hannah needs is normal surroundings and more attention. A small-town atmosphere like in Spyder Hill, Texas, will be perfect for her.”
“She causes me far too much stress, and after all I’ve been through over losing Hayden, you’re not being fair to ask more of me by taking her to Texas. Greenlea is the best place for her.”
“So we should ask Hannah to bear the burden of Hayden’s death? Listen to yourself, Lee.”
Hannah sees Mama stiffen. “You’ll be here a week this time, Andrew. Maybe you will see the light about Hannah.”
“I doubt I’ll change my mind,” Uncle Andrew says. “Anyway, I’m exhausted. That three-hour layover in Washington, DC, was more tiring than the train ride itself.” He stands.
Hannah doesn’t wait to hear more. She flies up the wide front stairway as fast as she can without making noise. At the top she doesn’t look back but ducks straight into her room. She lies still in the darkness in her bed, concentrating on leveling out her rasping breath, taking in air in small bits, calming her pounding heart.
By the time her heart rate is normal, her door is cracking open. “Awake, Hannah?” Uncle Andrew says in a low voice.
Hannah sits up. “I’ve been waiting for you, Uncle Andrew. I thought maybe we could sneak down to the kitchen for milk and chocolate chip cookies and tell war stories, just like old times.”
“I was just wishing for a chocolate chip cookie,” Uncle Andrew says. Hannah jumps out of bed, and quiet as mice they go hand-in-hand down the stairs.
“Amelia, remember when I first met you?”
Sure do, Hannah. Christmas two years ago back when your Uncle Andrew gave you that book about me. You and your family were gathered around that huge Christmas tree at your grandparents’ house.
“That’s right. Out the front window I could see the snow swirling down onto the lawn. The smell of Jasmine’s delectable cocoa and cinnamon rolls was wafting from the kitchen. That book was called The Glorious Adventures of Amelia Earhart.”
That’s the one. Funny, us meeting when you were born in 1939 and I had disappeared two years before. You know, my sister Pidge and I had imaginary friends too. Mine was named Laura, and Pidge’s was Ringa. The four of us had amazing adventures!
“That makes me feel better, Amelia. Sometimes I worry that having an imaginary friend means I’m crazy. Anyway, I’m glad that somewhere along the line we began to talk and became the best friends we are today. In fact, I’m not sure if I could have survived last year in Greenlea School without you.”
I know, Hannah, I know. Sometimes when you’re flying in a thunderstorm, the plane bucking like an untamed bronco, you’re just not sure you’ll make it. That’s real fear, Hannah. Most of us have it at one time or another. That’s why, in my later career after I helped start the Ninety-Nines for women fliers and those wishing to fly, I helped a lot of girls just by common sense and encouragement. So, if you want to fly, Hannah, I’m here to help you learn.
“I do, Amelia, I do. You know, the thing I really like about you is that when you have a problem, such as breaking the nose of your plane or smashing the landing gear, you just get out and fix it!”
Christmas morning of 1949. Why, Hannah can see the whole scene as clearly as if she were living it right now.
“Do you know who Amelia Earhart was?” Uncle Andrew asks as Hannah rips the wrapping off the gift he has handed her. When she shakes her head, he says, “Amelia Earhart was the first woman to pilot a plane across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to fly round-trip across the United States, and she made a lot of other long flights. The sad thing is that, back in 1937, Amelia had only a few thousand miles left to go to fly around the world, when she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, never to be seen again.”
Hannah sits stunned, the book half-swaddled in its satiny green, star-studded wrapping paper on her lap. She pulls out the book and stares at the cover. “That’s Amelia?” When Uncle Andrew nods, she says, “They never found her, Uncle Andrew? Like they never found Papa in the war?”
“That’s right, Hannah. But the point is, she became a pilot, and she nearly flew around the whole world.”
“Well, I’ll be! A woman pilot! I’ve never even imagined a woman pilot.”
By now Hannah has read this book about forty times, has likely memorized it, but keeps returning to it again and again like a secret chant. That chant comes in real handy when Hannah has problems, like today with Mama insisting she can’t go with them to Texas to live with Uncle Andrew.
In her mind’s eye she conjures up an image of Amelia, again in her leather flying suit beside the Lockheed 10-E Electra, the plane Amelia was flying on her last flight. Since Amelia is Hannah’s best friend, Hannah can talk to her anytime she wants.
“I wish I never had to go back to Greenlea School, Amelia!”
I wish you didn’t either, Hannah.
“I mean, bad things happened there, things I don’t want to mention, but you know what I mean.”
I do, Hannah. We both know Greenlea is not the place for you. I went to some pretty dreadful schools myself. In Des Moines, Iowa, it was so bad our mother found a governess to teach us at home, although that didn’t work out. Later, when I attended the Central High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, I found I was miles ahead of the other students. School can be a pretty tough place to be.
“What I don’t understand, Amelia, is how to persuade Grandmama Gosslin that I can’t go back next fall. In the past whenever I’ve argued with her, she’s just gotten more determined that I’m going to do what she thinks is right.”
That’s hard, Hannah. At least we know that she wants what’s best for you. We just have to figure out how to get her to understand what it is you need.
“Yes, without telling her about you-know-what.”
You’re right, Hannah. If we told her what happened, she would get all upset and who knows what she might do then! Some people are like that—anxious.
“Exactly. I mean, that’s how I got into Greenlea in the first place. With all my temper tantrums, they didn’t know what to do. Jasmine, our housekeeper, warned me if I didn’t straighten up, Mama and Grandmama would send me off some place I wouldn’t like. I should have listened!”
You need to listen to the Jasmines of this world, Hannah, the folks with a lot of common sense.
“I can see that now, Amelia, I surely can. But what should I do?”
In my opinion, the first step would be to stop the temper tantrums.
“I don’t know, Amelia. It’s not like I plan them. They just sort of happen.”
I’m thinking maybe you could watch for little signs that warn you one’s coming, kind of like a pilot checking out the weather before she flies. Know what I mean?
“You mean, like when I’m getting all antsy because someone won’t let me do what I want?”
That’s the idea, Hannah.
“But, Amelia, if I stop having temper tantrums, Grandmama will think the school has helped me. That’s the last thing I want her to think.”
That’s a problem, Hannah. I think we need to make a flight plan here.
“Do you mean to escape, Amelia? Fly away and never come back?”
I didn’t mean not to come back, Hannah. I loved my life! But a flight plan helps you look forward to your next step. Why, when I was a girl and my dad took me on my first airplane ride at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California, the flight only lasted ten minutes, but after that I knew I had to fly! The thrill of it, Hannah! I didn’t have a lot of money back then. So I made a plan. I drove trucks, wrote articles, took photographs, and anything I could think of to raise enough to buy my little Kinner Airster biplane that I named Canary. You’ve seen a photo of it in that picture book of yours. If you want something enough, Hannah, you have to move heaven and earth until you get it.
“That’s all right for you, Amelia. You were grown up. I’m just a girl. I have to do whatever Mama or Grandmama make me do, and they never listen to what I’m trying to tell them.”
That’s sad, Hannah. Parents have their problems too. Why once my sister Pidge and I spent a whole year with my grandparents because my parents couldn’t find a house for us to live in that Mother thought was good enough.
“I see what you mean, Amelia. Mama lost my dad in the war. Jasmine says Mama has depression. She still cries sometimes, especially when I don’t cooperate.”
Mothers can be like that, Hannah. But I persevered and got my little biplane. If you keep working at it, I know you’ll find a way to persuade your mother to let you go to Texas. Think of it as a way to get your own plane off the ground.
Hannah sighs. “I could try to cooperate. I guess I’ll have to stop having all those tantrums.”
Sounds like the beginning of a plan, Hannah. Getting a plane aloft is not easy. Why, when Bill Stulz and Slim Gordon and I were getting ready to head from Boston to Trepassy Bay, Newfoundland, for that first Atlantic flight, Bill couldn’t get the plane in the air because it was too heavy. We threw out cans of gas and everything we could, until finally the Friendship lifted off.
Despite the bright, sunny morning, Hannah can feel a tantrum coming on. She sucks her lips in and clamps her mouth shut by biting the insides of her lips. She balls up her fists in her overall pockets and holds her breath until she thinks she’s going to burst.
“Amelia, I don’t know what to do! Grandmama is having a charity tea this afternoon, and I have to make an appearance.”
Sounds tough, Hannah. Guess you have to get all dressed up, put on the dog, as they say.
“You’re right. Pink and flouncy, with little ribbon bows all over the skirt.”
I know just what you’re feeling, Hannah. Why, back in the days when Pidge and I used to go exploring and climb trees, I hated girls’ clothes. Back then little girls wore skirts down to the ground! Luckily our mother called a seamstress and had her make each of us a pair of bloomers, you know, those baggy, knee-length pants girls wore for athletics at school. Made all the difference, Hannah, all the difference in the world. But I don’t suppose your grandmama will let you wear bloomers to a tea party.
Hannah sighs. “Or overalls.”
At the party Hannah is bored. Everyone talks to her in sugary voices and says silly things, like how she’s grown. Well, of course she’s grown. She’s a kid, isn’t she? Her older sister Cynthia, smiling graciously, pours tea from a silver tea service into those pretty little porcelain cups with flowers painted on them. Cynthia’s blond curls cascade down the nape of her neck, and her dress, a light-blue organza with a big fluffy sash, flows over the chair like a crystal waterfall. Everyone says she looks like a princess!
“How are you doing, Hannah?”
Hannah looks around at Uncle Andrew. “Fine. Not fine. I’m bored. Why is Cynthia so perfect?”
“Cynthia? Perfect?” Uncle Andrew glances at Hannah’s sister. “I see what you mean. It may surprise you to know that your mother was perfect like that when she and I were growing up. I was always the one who got in trouble.”
Hannah looks at him. “What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, getting mud on my new suit, knocking a valuable vase off a table. You know the kind of thing.”
“Like me.”
Uncle Andrew smiles at her. “Yes, a little like you.” He nods across the room. “Otto looks as miserable as you do.”
“Otto Ballinger? At the table with the little irises in the glass vase?”
“Right. You know him, don’t you?”
Hannah squirms a little. “Sort of. He goes to my Sunday school class.”
“Why don’t you talk to him? Maybe the two of you could sneak away to that small sitting room next door and play Parcheesi. I know you like that game.”
Hannah is so surprised, she sucks in air. “Could we?”
“I suspect so, if you’re very quiet about it.”
Feeling a kind of radiance flowing into her heart, Hannah crosses the room to Otto’s table where he’s sitting with his mother and two aunts. “Hi, Otto. Want to play Parcheesi?”
Otto’s eyes expand with surprise. “Really?” He looks at his mother.
“Of course, dear. That would be more fun, wouldn’t it.”
The two of them weave silently through the tables to the sitting room, where Hannah gets out the Parcheesi. They play together until it’s time for Otto to go home.
Hannah? Have you noticed something today?
“I’m not sure, Amelia. What?”
Sometimes all you have to do to get along is keep quiet.
“Well, I’ll be a donkey’s ear! You’re right, Amelia.”
The next evening, when the family gathers for Sunday dinner at the grandparents’, everything seems normal. They have just sat down at the dining table spread with the white linen tablecloth and lace-edged napkins. Jasmine has put the roast beef and gravy in its mouth-watering splendor on the table in front of Grandpapa and withdrawn to the kitchen while they say the blessing. When they open their eyes, Grandpapa raises the long fork and the carving knife. He looks at Uncle Andrew and smiles.
“Andrew, we all wish to congratulate you on your recent graduation from Princeton Seminary. You could have knocked me over with a feather when you first told me you wanted to become a minister, but you’ve finished your schooling and we are now looking forward to your rapid rise to fame in the southern Presbyterian Church.” Grandpapa winks at Uncle Andrew. Then he pushes the fork into the roast and begins to slice the meat. “As you know, I am well situated in this presbytery. So I’ve been asking around about vacancies right here in Virginia where you can begin your first pastorate.” Hannah glances at Uncle Andrew. Hasn’t he told Grandpapa he’s going to Texas? Grandpapa looks pleased with himself. “I am delighted to say that I have found two excellent churches that are vacant.” Then Grandpapa stops, because Uncle Andrew has raised his hand like a police officer halting traffic.
“Thank you, Papa, that’s very kind of you. Perhaps I should have let you know sooner. I’ve already found the place I will be going for my first pastorate. In Spyder Hill, Texas.”
Silence follows, the kind of silence you hear when crystal shatters. A hush, and then consternation and pain flying around in the air so thick you can almost see it. Hannah stares aghast at her grandpapa’s face turning scarlet, his teeth showing white as he expels the word Texas! as though uttering an expletive. “You will get nowhere in Texas!”
“Politically, you mean, Papa? No, perhaps not. But I see Texas as a Galilee, away from the central powers in the church. In Texas I might be able to try something new.”
“Newfangled, you mean.”
Grandmama, wearing her usual corsage of hothouse camellias, red against the shoulder of her silver-gray dress, looks dazed, her pearl-tinted curls bobbing as she looks back and forth between the two men.
“Call it what you will, Papa,” Uncle Andrew says. “I’ve accepted the call and leave in late August. And while we are talking about my leaving, I’ve invited Lee to bring the girls to come and live with me. Lee has accepted.”
Mama turns pink and almost chirps in her discomfort. “I’ve got a job teaching English in the high school there, Papa.”
“That’s absurd!” Grandmama says. “You’re not well enough to teach, Lee! And how do you imagine Hannah will get along without Jasmine? You’ll send her back to Greenlea fast enough.”
“Jasmine is coming with us,” Uncle Andrew says.
“You can’t take Jasmine! She’s been with your father and me since we married!”
“I’ve asked her and she said yes,” Uncle Andrew says. “We live in a free country, after all.”
For a moment Hannah thinks her grandpapa will keel over. Then he shoves back his chair, tosses his napkin on the table and storms out of the room.
“Amelia? Can grandfathers have temper tantrums too?”
Grandmama leaps up and follows, saying, “John? John, darling!”
But even more spectacular is the cool princess Cynthia standing and screaming at Uncle Andrew, “This is my senior year at Ladybrook Academy, and you are ruining my whole life! I won’t go! I won’t!” Then she loses all control: “I hate you, Uncle Andrew! I wish you had never come back from the war!” She rushes sobbing from the room.
Only Hannah, Mama and Uncle Andrew remain at the table, although Hannah senses Jasmine hovering at the kitchen door. Hannah stares at the napkin Grandpapa tossed on the table when he stomped out: the fabric hangs over the gravy boat and is soaking up the rich brown sauce. Uncle Andrew takes a deep breath. He looks as haggard as though he’s just finished running a marathon. Beside him Mama appears stricken.
Then, the most bewildering thing happens; Hannah can’t believe it. Mama starts to giggle. Unable to stop, she keeps wiping tears from her eyes. Then she jumps up and throws her arms around Uncle Andrew’s neck. “Oh, Andrew, you did it! You stood up to them! I could never have done that in a million years!” Finally, to make Hannah’s confusion total, Mama bursts into tears.
When Hannah says, “Well, I want to go to Texas too,” no one notices her at all.
Summer has shot past, and they are on their way to Texas. Hannah and her family are traveling in Uncle Andrew’s almost new ’49 Buick with its shark-like, sabre-toothed grin on the front. Mama is sitting beside Hannah’s uncle, humming “Tennessee Waltz” along with the radio. To Hannah’s left, Cynthia has her nose stuck in a magazine from a pile stacked on the floor just beside her feet, clad in red Penalja sandals with their crisscross straps.
“Humph!” Jasmine, on Hannah’s right, says. Her voice is more a growl than a word, a tone Hannah knows well. Whenever she hears it, her heart speeds right up, because it means Jasmine is about to make some unpleasant accusation like, “You done torn up that baby doll, Miss Hannah? Your Grandmama is gonna be mighty disappointed in you!”
Hannah draws a quick breath and darts a look at their housekeeper, but for once Jasmine is not looking at Hannah. She’s looking at the back of Uncle Andrew’s head, or maybe what she sees from her angle is his profile.
Hannah is surprised that Jasmine’s expression is not at all belligerent. In fact, dressed up in her fresh-pressed flowered dress with the big buttons down the front, no apron like she usually wears tied around her skinny waist, the woman has an almost cunning smile on her dark, angular face, and her voice sounds as innocent as a dove.
“Mr. Andrew, has you got a death wish?”
Death wish? Hannah has never heard about a death wish, and she’s not sure she wants to. She is not a baby, she’s eleven years old, almost twelve, but she sure knows the word death and it gives her the creeps. After all, her papa disappeared in the war and is probably dead. Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan also disappeared somewhere out over the Pacific Ocean and are probably dead too, although no one found any bodies. And here Hannah is, feeling bone-weary and awestruck at the same time, stuffed in the middle of the backseat, with Uncle Andrew nosing the car along the narrow highway twisting through the Blue Ridge Mountains. All around her, great green humps of land transform themselves into glorious fall colors that take her breath away.
“What do you mean by death wish, Jasmine?” Uncle Andrew is glancing back at the housekeeper through the rearview mirror in which Hannah can see his clean-cut face with intelligent blue eyes, all surrounded by dark, wavy hair.
“I mean,” Jasmine says, as if she were speaking to the small boy Uncle Andrew was some thirty years ago when she looked after him the way she does Hannah now. “I mean how every time you rotates that head of yours to admire some of those gorgeous leaves, you turns the steering wheel in the same direction as your nose.”
“What has admiring great scenery got to do with a death wish, Jasmine?”
“Well,” Jasmine says, her voice almost syrupy now, her nostrils flared with incredulity at Uncle Andrew’s slowness to catch on, “there just might be a relationship if you drive us over one of these high cliffs here beside the road. I mean, you can’t drive a car on a mountain highway fast like those fighter planes you used to spin around in all through the war.”
Hannah can almost hear Uncle Andrew pondering Jasmine’s words, reaching under and over and all around to find the real meaning, the same way he does when he’s listening to Hannah. He speaks with a careful voice. “Don’t you find the colors incredible, Jasmine?”
“Sure I does!” Her voice flows now, full-throated, as if the woman is singing a hymn. “But I am not the one driving this here car!”
“Hmm. Guess you might have a point there. I will try not to speed over a cliff, Jasmine.”
“Humph. You just remember that this is a car, not a plane, got no ailerons to keep us aloft in that air, cool and crisp as it is up here in these mountains.”
“You are right, Jasmine. I hear you.”
“That’s good. Now maybe I can start breathing again.”
Breathe? Hannah feels a tension in her stomach, her eyes getting big. She looks down at Jasmine’s flat belly to see if it will rise and fall. “You aren’t breathing, Jasmine?”
Cynthia, the silver-haired fairy princess with the pointed head, snickers. “Smart, Hannah.” She keeps her eye on the page.
Hannah glares and bites her tongue. Getting into an argument right now is not what she wants to happen.
Two weeks pass in a way hectic for everyone in the family except Hannah. It took her all of two minutes to put away what she brought in her suitcase. Cynthia, on the other hand, spent hours trying to find places in their shared bedroom for all the stuff she brought. Hannah has helped Jasmine unpack the kitchen boxes. Other than that, she has stayed out of people’s way, curled up on her bed reading books she found at the local library. September the fourth, the day after Labor Day, has arrived, and school is starting.
“Ready for school, honey?” Jasmine asks. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Hannah watches the quick movements of the skinny body in the loose cotton dress, senses the energy surge through the old woman’s arms and hands, smells the bacon, hears it sizzle.
“Guess so,” Hannah says, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. “Wonder what kind of special school they have here in Spyder Hill, Texas.”
“Oh, they got something at the college, probably,” Jasmine says. “You can bet your uncle Andrew has found you the best place in town.”
“In Spyder Hill, Texas? Jasmine, what’s a little town like this going to have for a special school? I mean, how many messed-up kids can there be in one little town?”
“Now, Miss Hannah,” Jasmine says, turning to tend the eggs. “You ain’t messed up.”
“Then why do I have to go to a special school?”
“You just got a few things to work out. I wouldn’t be surprised none if in a year or two you would be in a regular school, just like your sister Cynthia.” She slaps down a plate in front of Hannah. “Now you eat good, Miss Hannah, so you can do a good job at that new school.”
Hannah stares at the scrambled eggs, sliver of bacon and a nice-sized pile of hominy grits framed by the pink crockery plate. The eggs and bacon she scarfs down at once, but then she puts down her fork. She knows Jasmine is not going to let her get away without eating these hominy grits.
What would Amelia do?
She thinks about how Amelia piloted airplanes across oceans, and how she made it almost around the world before she disappeared. Even now in 1951, no one has discovered exactly what became of her. Taken prisoner of war by Japanese forces? Radio went on the blink so she couldn’t find the tiny island where she had to refuel? No one knows, but theories abound, and Hannah knows every one of them.
“I wish I had a little Kinner Airster biplane like you had when you were young, Amelia,” Hannah says. “Except where could I go? I mean, after so much war the whole world’s been blown apart—London, Dresden, Tripoli, Nagasaki. I’ve seen pictures of what’s left, in Life magazine. And now there’s war in Korea. Guess any place looks about as good as these hominy grits on my plate. Ugh!”
We didn’t have hominy grits in Atchison, Kansas, where I grew up, says Amelia. We had beefsteak and apple pie for breakfast.
“Guess Jasmine has never heard of apple pie for breakfast. Back home in Virginia, we always had hominy grits. Jasmine never lived anywhere else until she came to Texas with us.”
When I have to eat something I don’t like, I just stuff it in my socks.
“Good thinking, Amelia!”
Jasmine, black as earth, stands at the kitchen stove dishing out eggs onto the pink plates. The tall woman faces away from Hannah and stands as straight as an iron pipe. She’s cutting sections in a grapefruit now, probably for Mama or maybe Uncle Andrew.
Hannah looks at the watery mound of hominy grits before her, piled like wet mothballs. She scoops them up by handfuls into the tops of her bobby socks. They drop in soft lumps against her ankles. Hannah pulls up the thick white cuffs over the bulk of the grits.
“What are you doing, Missy?”
Hannah jerks upright. “Fixing my socks.”
She picks up the empty plate and carries it to the kitchen sink. All around her a greenish glow reflects from yellow-painted walls and cabinets.
“You sure did eat fast, honey,” Jasmine says as she smooths out the cotton tablecloth slick as glass and smelling of fresh ironing.
Hannah knows this tone: mild, genial, suspicious.
“Gotta go, Jasmine.”
“Where’s you going to, might I ask? Your uncle’s gotta take you to school in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, I know. Another special class. For misfits. See you later, Jasmine.”
“Hannah Rebecca Heywood! What’s that dribbling out of your socks?”