Ida B Page 11

  “Sometime . . . ” Mama started. And then she stopped, like she was having trouble figuring out how to finish.

  “Yes, Mama?” I said, while I studied the pattern on that plate like I was memorizing it for an exam.

  “Ida B, ” she tried again, “sometime ...”and then she turned her body toward mine.

  Well, it was like Mama’s body was a magnet, making my body turn to her, too, and my eyes couldn’t do anything but look to see what her eyes were doing.

  And there was Mama, so close my skin was tingling like it expected to be touched. This Mama, who was different from the old Mama. She was slower and stiller, and even when she laughed there was a sadness around her mouth that never went away. But my insides knew her. And her eyes had that glowing, brighter than it had been in a long time. They were smiling, and wondering.

  “Sometime, honey,” she said, soft like footsteps in new snow, “I’d like to hear that story you read at school.” Mama looked down and took a breath to fill herself up again. Then she came back to me. “Would you read that story to me sometime, baby?”

  And then there was a silence between us.

  Now, I knew that silence needed me to cross it. But even though Mama was right there, the space between us felt awfully wide, and getting across it seemed like a dangerous venture. I was thinking that I might want to spend some time putting together a plan to cross it without getting hurt.

  But my new-old-big-and-filled-up heart told me that if I’d just take a step, without considering it too much, in an instant I’d be at the other side. So I did.

  “All right, Mama,” I said.

  Mama smiled, then she turned around and got washing again. I put that plate away and got ready for the next one.

  And the glowing traveled around the room and wrapped itself around us, one at a time and then together.

  Just about the time Mama and I were finishing up, Daddy came in. He got a drink of water, looked out the window over the sink, walked around the kitchen table, looked out the window again, cleared his throat, and said, “It’s a nice night out there.”

  “Hmmm,” Mama said back, and touched Daddy’s arm as she walked by him and headed over to the big chair.

  Daddy kept staring hard out the window, like he was searching for something of the utmost importance. Then he cleared his throat again and said, “Ida B, let’s go for a walk.”

  Well, I hadn’t been alone with Daddy in forever. And the idea of it made me a bit nervous, since the last time we’d had some all-by-ourselves time he’d told me they were selling the land and I was going back to school, and things hadn’t gone too well from there. But I was still feeling the warm sureness from my time with Mama, so I said, “All right, Daddy.”

  I looked over at her and asked, “Mama, do you want to come?” thinking she might ease the strain of our togetherness.

  But Mama smiled from where she was sitting. “I’m tired, baby. You two go on alone.”

  So we took the King of Slobberville and headed out, and we walked for quite a way with Rufus’s panting and slurping being the only sounds any of our mouths were making.

  When we got to the far end of the orchard, didn’t Daddy look up at the stars, take a deep breath and say, “We are the earth’s caretakers, Ida B.”

  Now, I have to admit that, after all of the terrible things that had happened and been done that year, I was a little surprised to hear Daddy saying that to me again. I was so surprised that even my feet got confused, and one tripped over the other. I was just about flying through the air, on my way to a not-too-friendly meeting with the ground and some good-sized, sharp-edged stones.

  But before I went headlong into the dirt, Daddy caught me by the back of my shirt, pulled me right up, and set me on my feet. Then he planted himself down in front of me, looked in my eyes, and asked, “Are you all right?”

  Daddy and I hadn’t spent too much time looking directly at each other in quite a while, and I think seeing each other’s eyes was a bit of a shock and a fascination to both of us. So the two of us stayed there staring, a little embarrassed and kind of mesmerized, for a minute or so.

  And neither of us said a word, but I swear I heard my daddy speak. Like the old tree speaks. Not in words, but a feeling that went straight into my heart. But if I had to give that feeling some words, this is what I think it was saying:

  “I’m sorry.”

  Well, it was like Daddy was just bursting with surprises. And this one was such a shock, I thought I might start falling over again, only backward this time. But the sadness and trueness in his eyes kept me standing straight and still, right there with him.

  And then I sent a message back to Daddy. Not with words, just a feeling. But I let my body show him what my heart was telling him, just so he wouldn’t miss it or get confused.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and I looked into his eyes as deep and hard as I could, till I could tell that the sorrow that was in there was paying attention. Then I nodded my head, twice. And that was it.

  “All right, then,” Daddy said as he stood up, brushed off his pants that weren’t dirty, and turned around so we were both facing home.

  We started walking again, Rufus leading, back through the orchard toward the house. And just as we came to the edge of the apple trees, I stopped and said, “Daddy?”

  He stopped, too. “Yes, Ida B?”

  “I think the earth takes care of us.”

  And didn’t he rub his chin and look like he was pondering that thought, but not for quite as long as the last time we had that particular conversation. “I think you’re right, Ida B,” he told the sky and the stars and the valley, and then we headed on home.

  As we walked, I could hear the trees behind us humming agreement, “Mm-hmm,” and I could feel them doing something like nodding their heads, if they had heads to nod.

  I looked up at the mountain and saw the old tree glowing with the moon shining on it, and all of a sudden I felt filled up again, so that my heart might come up my throat. And I was thinking how that can come over you, out of nowhere, and if it wasn’t such a fine feeling, it might almost be frightening. Like there’s more love and good thoughts and powerful things inside of you than one body can hold.

  “I’ll be in in a minute,” I told Daddy as we walked up the porch steps.

  “All right, Ida B.”

  And I just sat on the porch looking at all of that land and the mountain and the trees and the stars that weren’t mine at all, and never would be. But in some ways they’d always belong to me, and I couldn’t imagine not belonging to them. It doesn’t make sense in words, maybe, but it made sense to me that night.

  “Good night,” I whispered.

  “Good night, Ida B,” a quiet chorus came back, riding on the breeze.

  Acknowledgments

  My most heartfelt thanks to:

  My mother and father, who raised me, always, with books;

  Aunt “Doreen,” who supplemented with songs and stories of the strangest sort;

  Carol Creighton and Mary Jo Pfeifer, the best of teachers;

  Kate DiCamillo, Alison McGhee, and Holly McGhee, most marvelous readers, editors, and believers;

  Lynn Lanning, RN, OCN, for her patient instruction and advice;

  Steve Geck and everyone at Greenwillow Books and HarperCollins Children’s Books, who have given Ida B such extraordinary care;

  Catherine Dempsey and Angela Hannigan, grandmothers and namesakes, for the gifts of storytelling and a mighty and unbending will;

  Victor Clark, who listened again, again, and again, with love, constant.

  About the Author

  Katherine Hannigan’s first novel, Ida B . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World, was a New York Times bestseller, a Book Sense bestseller, and a Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner. Her latest novel is True (. . . Sort Of). She lives in northeastern Iowa.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCol
lins authors.

  Praise for Ida B

  #1 Book Sense Children’s Pick

  ALA Top of the List Editors’ Choice

  Publishers Weekly Best Book

  School Library Journal Best Book

  New York Public Library “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing”

  Josette Frank Award for Fiction, Bank Street College

  Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner

  “My guess is that there will be many, many, many readers like me; people who turn the last page of this book and feel a deep gratitude, a profound joy that both Ida B and Katherine Hannigan exist.”

  —Kate DiCamillo, winner of the Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux

  “A poignant, affirming, and often funny debut.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Ida B is definitely unique, and her ability to articulate her feelings will warm children, who will understand just what she’s talking about.”

  —ALA Booklist

  “There’s plenty of laugh-out-loud humor in Ida B’s observations and actions, but it’s the concrete descriptions of her maelstrom of emotions that will lead readers to embrace her as a friend.”

  —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Copyright

  Ida B . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World Copyright © 2004 by Katherine Hannigan All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hannigan, Katherine.

  Ida B . . . and her plans to maximize fun, avoid disaster, and (possibly) save the world / by Katherine Hannigan.

  p. cm.

  “Greenwillow Books.”

  Summary: Fourth-grader Ida B spends happy hours being home-schooled and playing in her family’s apple orchard, until circumstances force her parents to sell part of the orchard and send her to public school.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-073024-6 (trade bdg.) ISBN-10: 0-06-073024-2 (trade bdg.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-073025-3 (lib. bdg.) ISBN-10: 0-06-073025-0 (lib. bdg.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-073026-0 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-06-073026-9 (pbk.)

  [1. Family life—Wisconsin—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Nature—Fiction. 4. Sick—Fiction. 5. Cancer—Fiction. 6. Orchards—Fiction. 7. Wisconsin—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H19816Id 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2003035625

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  EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062112514

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