Jacqueline Kelly: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

As a last resort, I rounded up my courage and went out to my grandfather’s laboratory. I pushed back the burlap flap that served as a door and stood quaking on the threshold. He looked up in surprise from the counter where he was pouring a foul-looking brown liquid into various beakers and retorts. He didn’t invite me in. I stumbled through my grasshopper conundrum while he stared at me as if he was having trouble placing me.

“Oh,” he said mildly, “I suspect that a smart young whip like you can figure it out. Come back and tell me when you have.” He turned away from me and began to write in his ledger.

So, that was that. My audience with the dragon. I counted it a wash. On the one hand, he hadn’t breathed fire at me, but on the other, he’d been no help at all. Perhaps if I’d made Harry go with me, Grandfather would have accorded me more attention. Maybe he was peeved that I’d interrupted his work, although he had spoken to me in polite tones. I knew what he was working on. For some reason, he had gotten it in his head to figure out a way to distill pecans into whiskey. He apparently reasoned that if you could make fine spirits from common corn and the lowly potato, why not the princely pecan? And, Lord knows, we were drowning in pecans—sixty acres of them.

I went back to my room and contemplated the grasshopper puzzle. I had one of the small green grasshoppers in a jar on my vanity, and I stared at it for inspiration. I had been unable to catch one of the big yellow ones, even though they were much slower.

“Why are you different?” I asked, but it refused to answer.

The next morning, I awoke as usual to a scuffling in the wall next to my bed. It was a possum, returning to his lair at his normal time. Shortly after this, I heard the slap and slam of sash weights as SanJuanna threw open the parlor windows beneath my room. I sat up in my high brass bed, and suddenly it came to me that the fat yellow grasshoppers had to be an entirely new species, separate and apart from the green ones, and that I—Calpurnia Virginia Tate—had discovered them. And didn’t the discoverer of a brand-new species get to put her name on it? I was going to be famous! My name would be heralded far and wide; the governor would shake my hand; the university would award me a diploma.

But what did I do now? How did I stake my claim on the natural world? I had a vague idea that I had to write to someone to register my find, some official in Washington.

I had heard debates at the dinner table between my grandfather and our minister, Mr. Barker, concerning Mr. Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of Species and the dinosaurs they were unearthing in Colorado and what this meant to the Book of Genesis. They talked about how Nature weeded out the weak and left the hardy to carry on. Our schoolteacher, Miss Harbottle, had glossed over Mr. Darwin, looking discomfited as she did so. Surely such a book addressing the origin of species would tell me what to do. But how on earth could I get my hands on it when controversy still raged about such matters in our corner of the world? There was even an active chapter of the Flat Earth Society in San Antonio.

Then I remembered that Harry was due to take the longbed wagon into Lockhart for supplies. Lockhart was the seat of Caldwell County. The county library was there. Books were there. All I had to do was beg a ride from Harry, the one brother who could deny me nothing.

IN LOCKHART, after conducting our business, Harry loitered on the corner so he could admire the figures of the ladies strolling by, exhibiting the latest finery from the local milliner. I mumbled excuses and slipped across the courthouse square. The library was cool and dark. I walked up to the counter where the elderly lady librarian was handing some books to a fat man in a white linen suit. Then it was my turn. Just at that moment, a woman with a little boy came up. It was Mrs. Ogletree and her six-year-old, Georgie. Georgie and I shared the same piano teacher, and his mother knew my mother.

Oh, no. The last thing I wanted was a witness.

“Good afternoon, Callie,” she said. “Is your mother here today?”

“She’s at home, Mrs. Ogletree. Hello, Georgie.”

“Hi, Callie,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Um . . . just looking at books. Here, you’ve got yours, you go ahead of me. Please.”

I stepped back and grandly waved them forward.

“Why, thank you, Callie,” she said. “Such lovely manners. I shall have to mention it to your mother next time I see her.”

After an eternity, they left. I kept glancing around to see if anyone else was about to come up. The librarian frowned at me. I stepped up to the counter and whispered, “Please, ma’am, do you have a copy of Mr. Darwin’s book?”

She leaned over the counter and said, “What was that?”

“Mr. Darwin’s book. You know, The Origin of Species.”

She frowned and cupped a hand behind her ear. “You have to speak up.”

I spoke up in a shaking voice. “Mr. Darwin’s book. That one. Please.”

She pinioned me with a sour look and said, “I most certainly do not. I wouldn’t keep such a thing in my library. They keep a copy at the Austin library, but I would have to order it by post. That’s fifty cents. Do you have fifty cents?”

“No, ma’am.” I could feel myself turning pink. I’d never had fifty cents in my life.

“And,” she added, “I would need a letter from your mother permitting you to read that particular book. Do you have such a letter?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, mortified. My neck was starting to itch, the telltale precursor to an outbreak of hives.

She sniffed. “I thought not. Now, I have books to be shelved. You must excuse me.”

I wanted to weep with rage and humiliation, but I refused to cry in front of the old bat. I left the library in a purple froth and found Harry lounging in front of the general store. He looked at me with concern.

I scratched the welts that had popped up on my neck and yelled, “What is the point of a library if they won’t give you a book?”

Harry glanced around. “What are you talking about?”

“Some people aren’t fit to be librarians,” I said. “I want to go home now.”

On the long, hot, silent trip back in the wagon piled high with goods, Harry looked over at me. “What’s the matter, my own pet?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. Oh, absolutely nothing, except that I was strangling on bitterness and gall and was in no mood to talk about it. For once I was glad of the privacy of the deep sunbonnet that Mother made me wear to prevent freckling.

“Do you know what’s in that crate?” Harry said. “The one right behind you?” I didn’t bother to reply. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I hated the world.

“It’s a wind machine,” he said, “for Mother.”

If it had been any of my other brothers, I would have snarled at him, Don’t be ridiculous—there’s no such thing.

“Really, it is,” he said. “You’ll see.”

When we got home, I couldn’t stand the noisy excitement at the unloading of the wagon. I bolted for the river. I ripped off my bonnet and pinafore and dress and threw myself into the water, casting terror into the hearts of the local tadpoles and turtles. Good. That lady librarian had ruined my day, and I was determined to ruin someone—or something—else’s day. I ducked my head underwater and let out a long, loud scream, the sound burbling in my ears. I came up for air and did it again. And one more time, just to be thorough. The cooling water gradually soothed me. After all, what was one book to me? Really, it didn’t matter. One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.