Sharon Creech - Absolutely Normal Chaos

SUE ANN:Have you seen her wash a single dish?

SALLY LYNN:And she doesn’t make up her bed.

SUE ANN: I have to make up her stupid bed.

SALLY LYNN:All she does is lie around and read.

SUE ANN:Or write letters.

SALLY LYNN:I’m just sick of her.

SUE ANN:Me too.

SALLY LYNN:She thinks she’s a queen.

SUE ANN:She sure does.

SALLY LYNN:Miss City Girl, Queen of Easton.

Well, I didn’t hear any more, because I ran outside and up to the barn and climbed up in the hayloft and sat there. Boy, was I mad . I was really mad.

First of all, the dishes: I have offered at least five times to help with the dishes, and they keep saying, “No, you go set awhile.”

Secondly, the bed: They don’t give me a chance to make it up. I get out of bed, get dressed, go downstairs, eat breakfast, and I come back up and it’s already made. I figured they liked to make it.

Thirdly: I am not a baby!!! I’ve only been crying because I am homesick and because they’ve been teasing me and scaring me to death.

Fourthly: Haven’t done a stitch of work!! They never asked me to do any thing. I would’ve helped if they had asked .

Fifthly: All I do is write letters and read books! Well, what else is there to do around this place????

Sixthly: I do not act like the Queen of Easton!!!!!

I stayed up in the hayloft a long time. After I got through being mad, I started to think about Carl Ray.

I hereby apologize for complaining about making Carl Ray’s bed, for teasing him, and for calling him stupid, cabbageheaded, witless, beefbrained, boobish, besotted, cockamamie, and anything else I might have called him.

But I’m never going to speak to Sue Ann or Sally Lynn again.

I didn’t speak to Sue Ann or Sally Lynn all afternoon.

Instead, while Aunt Radene was off doing the grocery shopping, and Sue Ann and Sally Lynn were God knows where, I swept the front porch (without anybody asking); I mopped the kitchen floor (without anybody asking); I dusted the entire downstairs (without anybody asking); I cleaned the living room (without anybody asking); I picked some flowers from the hill and put them around the house (without anybody asking); I swept and dusted the bedroom that I share with Sue Ann, Sally Lynn, and Brenda Mae (without anybody asking); and I was just starting on the windows (without anybody asking) when Aunt Radene drove up.

“Why, Mary Lou, what are you doin’?” she asked.

“Nothing. Washing windows.”

She said, “You don’t have to do that. You just set…”

“I don’t want to set!” I said.

“But you’re our guest ,” she said.

“Tough,” I said.

When I finished the windows, I walked through the graveyard. It’s a strange thing, walking through a graveyard in the daytime. It’s not spooky, like it is at night. And it gives you this strange feeling: sort of a calm feeling in one way, and a very sad feeling in another way. When you’re in a graveyard, all the other stupid things like the convict and the things Sally Lynn and Sue Ann said, all those things seem ridiculous to worry about. And you wonder why you worry about them and why you let them get you so mad.

The graveyard is a pretty place, with flowers here and there, with all that grass, with those stones and the poems and sayings written on them, all about loving memory and loving parents and loving sisters and loving brothers and time and heaven and sleep.

And I was so calm after walking around the graveyard that I lay down in the grass and fell asleep.

I dreamed a strange dream. It was about Carl Ray and some man with a sheet over his head, and Carl Ray was walking up to him in slow motion, and then he was lifting the sheet, and then the sheet was off and Carl Ray was hugging the man. And someone was calling me, “Mary LOUUU, Mary Louuuu, where are youuuu?” and then I woke up.

Aunt Radene was standing on the porch calling me.

So I went up to the house, and she said, “It’s dinnertime. Come on in.”

Boy, what a huge dinner. Fried chicken (again), mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, tomatoes, green beans, coleslaw, potato salad, and beets. Everybody was talking about how it was Carl Ray’s last night home (they didn’t mention me ) and oh, they wished he would stay longer, and couldn’t he at least stay until Saturday, and I started to feel sick because I thought he might give in and say yes.

But then. It was time for dessert. Sally Lynn and John Roy went into the living room and came out with this huge chocolate cake and on it, in huge white letters, was “MARY LOU: WE’LL MISS YOU.”

And then everybody started talking to me all at once, and Sally Lynn said she was sorry about Booger Hill and John Roy said he was sorry about the convict and Sue Ann said she was sorry if I overheard them today (how did she know?) and that they didn’t mean it, and on and on. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby , so I chewed on my lip a lot.

That was a nice thing for them to do, don’t you think?

But still, I’m not sorry to leave and WE GO HOME TOMORROW!!!!!!!

HOORAY!!!!

I AM HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We made it! The ship didn’t crash in the storm. Captain Carl Ray got us through. I am in my OWN room writing at my own NEW DESK. But, but, but. There’s more to tell first.

Where oh where to begin? Calm down, Mary Lou.

The trip. You can imagine, I guess, that I wasn’t real sorry to leave Aunt Radene’s, even if she did cry when she hugged me good-bye and even if Sally Lynn did give me a present (a book wrapped up in paper: it’s all about sex) and even if Aunt Radene did hold on to Carl Ray as if she wasn’t ever going to see him again.

One really surprising thing is that Carl Ray and I talked (yes, talked ) on the way back, and I found out the most amazing things about Carl Ray.

First, I asked him if he had ever been homesick at our house, and he said yes. So I asked him why he hadn’t said anything about being homesick, and he said, “Wouldn’t have done any good, would it?” I had to think about that. When I asked him if he would still be homesick now, he said he didn’t rightly know. “But why are you coming back, then?” He said he had some “unfinished business,” and he wouldn’t explain, but I figure he means Beth Ann.

It took about a hundred miles of the trip to get that much out of Carl Ray. Then I asked him if Uncle Carl Joe was always mad at him.

“Mad?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘mad’?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly seem thrilled to see you home.”

Carl Ray gave me one of his long, mournful looks. “He just doesn’t show it,” he said. “We had a fight.”

“A fight ?” This was interesting.

“Before. When I was still living there. That’s why I left in such a hurry. That’s why I came to Easton.”

“What? You didn’t come to find work? Aunt Radene said you were coming to look for work.”

“I did look for work, didn’t I?” he said.

“But what was the fight about ?” Carl Ray gets away from the important issues very quickly.

“Well…” He looked as if he was trying to decide whether or not he should continue. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to…”

Oh boy, here we go again, I thought. Maggie and Beth Ann are always making me promise not to tell. And Aunt Radene asked me to keep the secret about Carl Ray. Now someone else making me promise not to tell. I can’t keep all these promises straight.