“Callie Vee is making me some socks for Christmas, Mrs. Gates. Aren’t you, Callie?”
“Yes. That’s right. Socks.”
Travis said, “It will be nice to have wool socks when it’s cold, don’t you think? I hope they’ll be done in time.”
“Oh, Travis,” said Mrs. Gates, smiling, “I’m sure they’ll be done in time for Christmas, won’t they, Callie? Why, socks don’t take any time at all.”
I felt like saying, Don’t bet on it.
“Lula can make a pair of socks in an afternoon,” Mrs. Gates went on.
“Really?” said Travis, digesting this information and then looking at me with puzzlement.
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. “Lula,” I interrupted, “do you want a ride on Sunshine? It’s okay, Alberto’s got her, she won’t bite. But if you’re worried, I’ll go first if you want.”
“Okay, Callie, that would be nice,” Lula said, and we excused ourselves.
Travis, again showing admirable social skills for his age, followed Lula with his eyes but cannily stayed behind to woo Mrs. Gates with his attentions. That boy was growing up fast.
As we passed the groaning trestle tables of food, I saw Sul Ross head for the trees with two mounded plates of cake. I had forgotten that I was supposed to shield him from his own excesses. I felt guilty, but in truth an eight-year-old should know better, shouldn’t he? Besides, it was my birthday party too.
We passed the horseshoe game, which Harry was supervising. He kept one eye on Sam Houston, who was known for his wild pitches, and the other on Lula’s older cousin, Fern Spitty, who swanned about nearby, twirling her white lace-trimmed parasol.
“Callie,” Lula said tentatively, “it seems like you’ve been in such a bad mood. Are you sick?”
I was torn about explaining it to her. Could she, the budding princess of bobbins and lace, understand what I was going through? We’d been friends for years, yet lately it seemed that we didn’t speak the same language. But the thought of not being able to tell my best friend that my paw was caught in the trap was too sad. So I screwed up my courage and said, faltering, “I . . . I don’t like all that sewing and knitting stuff, not like you, and besides, I’m not any good at it. I want to do something else with my life.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You mean you want to be a schoolteacher? Like Miss Harbottle? But then you wouldn’t get to have a family of your own. Don’t you want a family of your own?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
She looked confused. “Everybody has a family. Don’t they?” She thought for a moment and said, “Oh, you mean you want to be like the Telephone Operator, like Maggie Medlin. She doesn’t have a family.” Lula thought some more and said, “She does get paid real money of her own. That would be nice, real money of your own. . . .”
“I don’t know what I want to do, Lula.” And then it came to me, like the first shocking glimpse of the sun’s disk rising over the horizon, what it was I did want to do. It was so obvious that I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. I only had to say it aloud. Did I have the courage to do that? To reveal it in the open air? Maybe I should try it out in front of Lula to see how it sounded.
“I think,” I said, then stopped. “I think maybe I want to go to the university.”
“Really?” Lula was either impressed or appalled, I wasn’t sure which. She said, “I don’t know anyone who has gone to the university. Wait, did Miss Harbottle go?”
“No, she went to the Normal School. She’s only got a certificate.”
“What do you do at the university?” said Lula.
“You study things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“All kinds of things,” I said, a trifle pompously. I had no real idea what you did at the university—I was making it up as I went along—but I didn’t want her to know that. “Science and things,” I said. “They give you a special diploma that shows you’ve been there.” I was afraid she would ask me what you did with your special diploma once you got it, and the truth was I had absolutely no idea. The sudden, ridiculous superstition seized me that if she asked the question and I couldn’t answer it, I would never get to go. “Come on, Lula,” I said, grabbing her hand, “let’s go for a ride!”
She smiled with pleasure and swiped at the sweat beads scattered on her nose like freckles, and we ran off to find the cranky pony. As we passed the horseshoe pit, I saw Harry talking to Fern Spitty, and there was something about his attentive attitude that made me think we were in for the mating dance again.
After riding Sunshine, a group of us played at Civil War games, enacting the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, skirmishing with wooden swords and firing log cannons. All my brothers except for Sam Houston lamented that they had missed the heroics and the romantic glory. (Sam Houston was the one who had seen Mathew Brady’s gruesome photographs in the library and hadn’t found them any too glorious.) We had to maintain a strict rota to determine whose turn it was to play the Federals, as no one wanted to enact their part. We tried playing a few times without the North, but this turned out to be so boring that we abandoned the game altogether.
Then we had a watermelon-seed-spitting contest, which Lamar won, naturally, as the biggest gas-bag in attendance. Next we opened gifts, and I received a tiny brown bag of licorice from the three youngest boys, who had pooled their resources to buy it. Sam Houston gave me a buttonhook, and Lamar gave me a pincushion shaped like a fat red tomato. Harry gave me a book of music for the piano, Jolly Songs for Family Fun. From my parents, I got a dress of the finest white lace-trimmed lawn and a new pair of winter slippers made of rabbit fur to replace the ones I’d outgrown. I gave each of my brothers a bookmark of a waving Texas flag that I’d inked and colored myself.
By the time the fireworks were set off, all of us were worn out. There was much laughter. There were tears and snits and several small bruises and scrapes, all the hallmarks of a grand party. Dovie got a black eye from running smack into another child’s fist. (It could easily have been my fist but it wasn’t, I swear.) This earned her much approval. Since she was generally esteemed an unbearable Miss Priss, this did her a world of good and earned her much approval.
That evening Mother took to her room with a large bottle of her tonic. Viola went to lie down with a cold cloth and a headache powder and was given an unprecedented two whole days off to recover. SanJuanna and Alberto shouldered the thankless burden of cleaning up. Alberto reported that when he led Sunshine back to her stall at the end of the day, she was too exhausted to try and bite him even once.
And Granddaddy’s gift did arrive at the end of the week, although we all came to wish soon enough that it had not. It came in a large crate with ventilation holes, always a promising sign in a gift. We assembled on the front porch and watched as Harry pried it open. It contained a scrolled wire cage, in which sat a gorgeous parrot. How on earth had Granddaddy known?
And it wasn’t just any parrot. It was an enormous, full-grown Amazon, three feet (excuse me—one meter) long from crest to tail feathers, with a brilliant golden breast, azure back, and wings of shocking crimson. We all stared at it in awe. Granddaddy had read about it in the Austin papers and had bought it from an estate sale, the bird having outlived its previous owner. It was the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen. And it looked like it could take your eye out without the slightest effort.
As we gaped at it, it reached through the bars with its great scaling beak and delicately opened the latch, then swung itself onto the top of the cage in a practiced move, despite the impediment of a thin silver chain that ran from one ankle to its gnawed perch. It preened a long iridescent feather, shook its head, raised and lowered its crest in a gesture that was somehow threatening, and turned to gaze at us with a perfectly round, yellow eye.