POEM: “THE WAVES OF THE SEASHORE”
BY GENEVA LOUISE PRICE, MELBA JOSEPHSON, AND PHAY WRIGHT
PLAY: “THE SNOW STORM”
BERENICE JOSEPHSON—JILL
EMMELINE JOSEPHSON—MOTHER NATURE & SUN QUEEN
MELBA JOSEPHSON—CLOUD QUEEN
GENEVA LOUISE PRICE—RAY FAIRY
HARLON WRIGHT—JACK FROST & OLD OCEAN
PHAY WRIGHT—JAMES
SONG: “RAIN DROPS”
BY ALL
SONG: “BRYAN O’LINN”
BY MISS MCKENNA AND ALL STUDENTS
THE END
She went behind the curtain rigged up by the work party but mostly by Clare and her father. Emmeline wore a long, gold, drapey dress that had been her great aunt’s, with green velvet leaves that fluttered along the sleeves and hem. She had waved her hair and she let Miss McKenna powder her face and rouge her lips and she wasn’t fooling anybody. She was excited in spite of herself.
Neva said her part of the poem to herself and tapped her foot to keep the beat.
“Roll on, roll on, you noisy waves,
Roll higher up the strand.
How is it that you cannot pass
That line of yellow sand?”
She hadn’t known, when the inspector came last week, that this beat was called iambic tetrameter, but she knew it now because the inspector told her. She didn’t like the inspector because he didn’t like Miss McKenna. You could tell from the straight line of his mouth and his stiff mustache. He had frowned at the planes on their strings along the ceiling and he didn’t stop frowning while Miss McKenna explained what they were. Neva had come up to him when he was alone and told him that Miss McKenna was the best teacher she ever had and the man stared down at her with his stiff face and said, “Well, missy, you haven’t had many teachers yet, have you?” Neva hoped the inspector was struck by lightning and never came back again.
She felt a cough coming, held her breath until she’d fought it back down.
“Roll on, roll on, you noisy waves,” she whispered again, rubbing her index finger ever so lightly across her fairy wings so she could feel the powdery bits of mica. The grown-ups were loud on the other side of the curtain, and she liked it when she heard her father’s laugh and her mother’s hellos to Mrs. Odekirk and Mrs. Wright. She could also hear Yauncy’s funny nasal voice and that was a nice surprise. Nobody had seen Yauncy since Mr. Tanner fell out of his hayloft and broke his neck.
“About ready then?” Miss McKenna asked, her shiny black hair glistening around her face. She was like an angel, she really was, dropped down from heaven for them. She kept going child to child, adjusting crowns and wings and collars. Neva felt the clogging of her windpipe again, and held her breath again. If she coughed, her mother would come behind the curtain and ruin everything, especially the magical surprise, because that was what it was, a magical surprise, Clare pulling on a rope threaded through a pulley way up on the highest beam and lifting her up into the sky. She could hardly believe it was going to happen but it was. When the Sun Queen called, “Fly, little Ray Fairy, down to the ocean!” Neva was going to fly. It would be the most magical thing ever done in the entire history of Stony Bank School.
Neva inhaled, and felt the cough seizing her, and stumbled out the door so she could cough where no one would hear her. But Miss McKenna followed her out.
“Are you all right?” she asked when Neva finally stopped coughing. “Your father gave me the Pinex just in case.” She held up the little bottle of cough syrup.
Neva took a sip, not very much, and held it in her mouth, because the syrup looked good but wasn’t. Clare said it had more alcohol than rum but Charlotte said how would he know? All Neva knew was that it burned when it went down. She closed her eyes, swallowed, and hoped it would take the other stuff in her throat down with it. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m fine now,” she said.
33
No one could have foreseen the connection, was Ansel’s opinion. Especially not Aldine. Those who blamed her for what happened were ready to blame her for anything—like Josephson and his daughter. Everyone was enjoying the night well enough before the rope trick, laughing and clapping at their own bright-cheeked children as they recited and sang and bowed in their blue-gray glittery getups. He felt a swelling flood of fondness and gratitude move through him when Neva said her solemn lines about the ocean waves and Ellie hooked her arm in his, leaning against him in a way she hardly ever did anymore.
He’d loved coming into the schoolhouse, finding it warmed by the stove, the funny stage curtain hanging at one end of the room, the paper airplanes strung up overhead. In his chair next to Ellie, he closed his eyes and inhaled. He’d sat in this very schoolhouse as a boy, and while sitting here had fallen in love with books and singing and any number of little girls, but what he had really been doing, he thought now, was falling in love with this place, and all that it was. Him so small and so different then. But not entirely so.
Aldine’s program itself was charming everyone. They all chuckled at wispy Phay Wright, dancing on his tiptoes and saying, “Mother Nature! Mother Nature! Will you send us some snow?” Ansel had no idea that the youngest Wright boy could be such a ham, pretending to ice skate across the floor, showing Emmeline’s regal Mother Nature how he’d pack a snowball with his hands.
Emmeline looked almost benevolent when she smiled at him and said, “Well, child, I will see what I can do for you. My plants and seeds need a snow blanket. I will send for Jack Frost. Jack Frost! Jack Frost!”
Harlon Wright appeared stage left in a union suit covered all over with paper snowflakes—and so did Old Ocean and the Sun Queen, both of whom were played once again by Harlon and Emmeline, who were breathing so hard after their costume changes that they could hardly speak their lines. Old Ocean said something about calling the Ray Fairies, and when Neva came running out shedding mica from her blue gown and paper wings, he couldn’t keep himself from clapping a little.