Cake: Love, chickens, and a taste of peculiar

Chapter 1

Hope is the thing with feathers …

—Emily Dickinson

Birds have hollow bones. That’s how they can fly.

Sometimes I wish I had hollow bones so I could fly. I would fly so far away no one would ever find me. I would fly to the highest mountain on the furthest continent. I would perch there and wait for just the right air current to come my way, and then I’d fly some more. I’d fly over oceans and farms fat with corn and wheat and cows. I’d rise with the air and fall with my wings outstretched so wide you’d think they might snap … but they won’t. My wings are strong.

That night I stayed awake. I didn’t want to sleep. I knew if I did the morning would come too fast. So I kept myself awake, awake dreaming about flying over the ocean and watching the waves build and roll and crash on the shore. Awake dreaming that I could fly over the Great Redwood Forest. That I could fly above the green tree canopy where salamanders live on the branches of the world’s tallest trees.

I flap my wings but only a few times so I won’t get tired. Mostly I rest on the air currents like dandelion seeds. Mostly I fly with only the wind under my wings.

Miss Tate arrived the next morning. She’s my social worker from Miss Daylily’s Home for Children, or Miss Daylily’s Home for Unwanted and Misunderstood Children. That’s what I call it. I lived there before I went to live with the Crums. Actually, I’ve lived at Miss Daylily’s Home off and on since I was a baby, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

The Crums don’t want me anymore. So Miss Tate — tall, dark, and skinny like a Slim Jim—is taking me to a new foster home.

Lester and Mauveleen Crum have had me long enough, they said. Time for someone else to take over. Reason one: Lester won a boatload of money in the lottery, and now he wants to take Mauveleen on a trip around the world. They don’t have room for me to go along, even though I am small, like a wren. They only have room for their three real children. Mauveleen said I’d just be in the way.

Reason two: I put shaving cream inside Lola’s pillowcase. She’s the oldest Crum child. I put honey on one of the kitchen chairs, and Lester sat in it. And I rigged a small bucket of water over a doorjamb, and it rained down on Lola.

So I had kind of a record with them. Mauveleen said they couldn’t have a prankster along on the trip, and they were sending me back. Fortunately, Miss Tate told me she had some people who were interested in taking me right away, so I wouldn’t need to go back to the home. No siree, Bob! I was going straight from the Crum house to my new foster family.

Come on, Wilma Sue, Miss Tate called from downstairs. It’s time to go.

I had one suitcase. The same one I carried into the Crum house three years ago. It’s brown with wrinkled leather that reminds me of cracked sidewalks and trees and maps of places I’d like to see. I crammed my book Emily of New Moon inside, along with my most secret possessions: a spiral-bound journal where I write my deepest thoughts, and the dictionary I won in a fourth-grade spelling bee. Ever since then, words have become my hobby. I’m always looking up new ones and figuring out a way to use them during the day. I also crammed my walk-around notebook into my back pocket because I never know when the flash will strike. That’s what Emily, in Emily of New Moon, called that sudden urge to express what’s in your deepest heart. Sometimes it’s like a lightning bolt; sometimes it comes on slow, like Christmas.

Next, I stuffed a brown bear that I’ve had forever inside my suitcase and zipped it closed. I think I got the bear when I was a baby, but I can’t be sure. I don’t remember too much about those baby days. I just remember sounds. Loud sounds like crying or muffled sounds like water running.

I’m coming! I called. I took one more look around the little bedroom that had been my nest—at least a small part of it. I’d shared the room with Lola.

I lugged my suitcase down the steps. Lester Crum was out getting a haircut. Mauveleen stood near the front door with Miss Tate. Mauveleen wore her brand-new dress, hot pink with black buttons. She had her hair all done up like a princess, complete with a diamond tiara. I knew she couldn’t wait for me to go so she could climb into her brand-new red Porsche and drive away.

You take care, Wilma Sue, she said. It was good having you.

I smiled at her. For a second I thought I should hug her, but she was closed that morning, the way she was closed most every day. Mauveleen Crum rarely looked me square in the eye, unless it was to holler at me about some such thing that I might or might not have had a hand in. And she always seemed to stand with her arms crossed against her chest, the best way of all to say, No hugs allowed. I had written in my notebook a few months back, I will always look people in the eye and always be ready to give out hugs.

I looked at Miss Tate. Her face reminded me of a walnut, warm but wrinkly.

Can I help with your suitcase? Miss Tate asked.

No, thank you. It’s not heavy, I said. I smiled just so she’d believe me. I figured a girl’s got to carry her own bag through life.

We drove in Miss Tate’s van. It was black like midnight and had the words

Miss Dayliiy’s Home for Children

emblazoned on the side in big yellow letters. The van was large enough to carry nine unwanted children. I was certain that everybody we passed knew the kid in the backseat was Unwanted and probably Misunderstood.

Miss Daylily’s Home sat like a great stone factory with billowing smokestacks and chain-link fences in Philadelphia, all the way down near the waterfront. I had lived there off and on my entire life. Miss Tate said I arrived one cold winter day as a baby. She found me on the front steps with a small note pinned to my yellow blanket. The note said my name was Wilma Sue. She and Miss Daylily took care of me until I went to live with the McAllisters. I’d been two years old when I went there, and the thought of Mrs. McAllister gave me a slight pain in my chest. It was probably just heartburn, which I had pretty much all the time when I lived at the Crum house. But after the McAllisters, I lived at Miss Daylily’s again for a whole year—almost to the day—from the time I was eight until nine. And then I went to live with the Crums.

Before Miss Tate took me to the Crum house, for a while I was the oldest kid at Miss Daylily’s, and Miss Daylily and Miss Tate expected me to do a whole lot to earn my keep, like change little Earl’s diaper. And when Miss Daylily told me to do something, you betcha I jumped, cause otherwise she’d have me writing an entire essay on the origin of diapers or something.

Even so, I liked Miss Daylily. She was big and fat and wore long skirts down to her ankles. She wore her hair in a large gray bun that she secured to her head with two chopsticks, and most of the time she smelled like cherry cola. She made the best applesauce on the planet. And every once in a while, she would hold me in her lap and read me a book.

As Miss Tate and I drove, we passed block after block of row homes, some in better shape than others, with flower gardens and wrought-iron fences and lawn gnomes. Some of the houses we passed looked like ruins, with broken or missing windows and doors hanging off their hinges like dislocated shoulders. One house had yellow police tape stretched across the front door.

We drove through the large shopping district they called simply Forty-fifth Street, where I saw people on foot pushing shopping carts or carrying tote bags. We finally made it out of the city and into the suburbs. I knew this because I could see the summer sky again, blue and cloudless.

Miss Tate didn’t have much to say the whole way. Me neither. She did tell me three times that the weather was nice for early summer, but she’d heard rain was moving in later in the day. She also looked at me in the rearview mirror, and I saw her eyes were a little stern and thin. She said, Do your best to get along in the new house, Wilma Sue. The most important thing is to do your best to get along with everyone.

This is exactly what she told me when she took me to the Crums’. It was probably what she told me when she took me to the McAllisters’, too. And now she said it again.

Millie and Meg McAllister were very nice people. Millie was the mother. My mother for all of six years.

Her husband, Mervin, died about two years before I got there. They had one other daughter, Meg, and she was a lot older than me. But that was okay. Meg treated me real nice. But when Meg went away to college, Millie sent me back to Miss Daylily’s Home. I was so sad that day; I thought my heart would break into a gazillion pieces.

Do you ever feel that way? So sad that you can’t even stand it another second and think for sure that your heart is breaking into a gazillion tiny pieces never to be put together again — ever? That’s how sad I felt when I left the McAllisters’ house. It was the first time I wished I had hollow bones.

Did you hear me, Wilma Sue? Miss Tate asked. I said for you to get along in the new house. She pointed her index finger into the mirror. And no more pranks! I mean it, Wilma Sue. This is a trial run. Just one infraction and back you go to the orphanage. That’s the rule.

Yes, ma’am, I said as I watched out the van window as neighborhoods of large houses whizzed past. Giant trees lined most of the streets. No more pranks.

Then we turned onto a street called Bloomingdale Avenue. I liked the name but decided it was too soon to say it out loud. There were fewer cars on Bloomingdale Avenue and most were parked in driveways. We drove more slowly, and I noticed the houses grew further and further apart. They had larger and larger yards and longer fences. I thought maybe the longer the fence, the richer the people who lived on the other side.

Here we are, Miss Tate said as she pulled up in front of a big stone house. It looked creepy, like a haunted house, with many roofs and porches and funny round windows like the kind you’d see on a ship. It sat on the corner of the street all by itself.

This is the parsonage, Miss Tate said. Your new home.

Parsonage. I knew that word from all the time I spent reading. It’s where the pastor of a church lived. Am I going to live with a pastor?

Miss Tate laughed a little. No. Not a pastor. Missionaries. The church is letting them live in the house.

Oh.

Their names are Ruth and Naomi Beedlemeyer. They’re sisters. Never married. They lived in Africa until last year.

Africa? That part sounded extravagant. Imagine that, Africa. I would like to fly to Africa. Are they black?

Miss Tate looked at me in the rearview mirror. No. They’re … they’re like you. They worked as missionaries in Africa.

I didn’t know much about Africa, only what I learned in school. While Miss Tate snagged some papers from her briefcase, I imagined flying over Africa like a pink flamingo, sleek and fast, eyeing the continent for a lake.

I lugged my suitcase up the long cement path to the steps that led to the front door. The whole house was made from stone that looked like mica schist, great huge rocks with flecks of silver and gray that twinkled suddenly in the afternoon sun. The house had many slanty roofs and windows and two crooked chimneys. Even the roofs were covered with slate rock. I would call it Gray House.

The Crums’ house was Black House. The house itself was white with shutters the most awful shade of dark purple you’d ever seen. It was like the color of plums left in the refrigerator too long. And when I walked inside, it was like walking into a black, dark cave. At least that was how it felt. Somebody was always fighting with somebody.

My favorite house so far was the McAllisters’ — Yellow House. It was sunshine yellow with black shutters, and walking inside it was like walking into a field of Black-eyed Susans.

Gray House had several wind chimes that dangled from the porch roof. But they were silent. There was no wind that day. But I figured that if Miss Tate was right about the rain, then I’d probably get to hear the wind chimes tonight. I liked them. They were birds suspended from long chains. Miss Tate was just about to push the doorbell when the door flung open with gusto.

Well, hello there! Come in. Come in. The woman, tall, old, and smelling of buttercream frosting, stepped aside and waved her arm with a flourish. She was barefoot. Welcome home, Wilma Sue.

And then I saw a long cardboard sign made up of individual letters hung on a piece of string draped across the mantel:

Each letter was gold. Only the C was crooked and hung by a single strand of string.

I looked at Miss Tate.

Go on, Wilma Sue, say hello.

Hello.

Here we are, Miss Tate said when she pulled up out front of a big stone house. It looked creepy, like a haunted house, with many roofs and porches and funny round windows like you’d see on a ship.

That was when the other woman appeared. She was fatter around the middle but with skinny ankles like a sparrow. Oh my goodness gracious! Aren’t you just the sweetest little thing to ever walk the earth? Come on over and sit down on the sofa. She sat first and patted the seat next to her. She talked to me like I was five.

I looked at Miss Tate. She moved her eyes in a way that told me I should sit.

Isn’t she darling, Naomi? the woman on the sofa said.

I felt like a Christmas present.

Yes, yes she is, the other woman said. Darling. Darling. Darling.

I felt my eyes roll, even if I didn’t show it.

And you must be Ruth, Miss Tate said to the woman on the sofa.

Yes. That’s right. I’m Ruth, and this, of course, is my sister Naomi. She giggled with three fingers to her mouth. But I just told you that, now didn’t I? I must be nervous.

Miss Tate smiled with tight lips.

Are you thirsty, Wilma Sue? Naomi asked. We have lemonade.

A minute later she returned with a tall, sweaty glass of lemonade. I sipped it as they all stared at me like I was the royal food tester checking for poison. It’s good. Thank you.

They all let go of their collective breath. Oh, and such nice manners, Naomi said.

Good, good, Ruth said.

I tried to listen to what Miss Tate was telling Ruth and Naomi, but after a while I stopped. The sisters’ house was kind of weird. The sofa smelled like bread dough, and it was thin and lumpy, like they had mice tucked away underneath the cushions. Strange and colorful blankets hung on the walls. One of the blankets had a picture — a sunset had been woven into it with a silhouette of two giraffes in the foreground. It was pretty and colorful, orange, red, purple, and yellow. I thought about the person who might have made it and imagined that her hands were thin and callused.

On the table next to me stood a lifelike wooden carving of a tall, skinny black woman with a long face holding a naked baby to her breast. The woman wore a long skirt, and even though it was carved in wood, it flowed like ocean waves, like the woman and her baby were standing on a mountaintop letting a warm summer breeze swirl about them.

Ruth and Naomi had shelves and shelves of old books crammed together with pottery bowls and cups and animal statues tucked in places haphazardly, like the sisters never gave a single thought to it. Like the tiny wooden animals chose their own places. A tingle of excitement sparked in my belly at the thought of all those books, but I quickly extinguished it. I doubted I’d be here long enough to read many of them.

The Crum house had been bookless, except for the ones I brought from the public library.

Would you like a slice of cake? Ruth asked. She patted my knee again. I decided she was a knee-tapper. I’d have to live with it if I wanted to get along. Getting along, said Miss Tate, was important