Ann Martin - Mary Anne's Book

"When you've cleaned up, come down for a snack," Verna said. "Then I'll show you the fields and barn. I bet the goats will jog your memory."

But I didn't want to remember living with Verna and Bill. And I didn't want to hear any more about Bill and what he used to say and do. I wanted Verna to tell me about my mother.

While I ate my snack, Verna explained some

of the things she'd planned for us to do together. Most of it revolved around food. She was going to teach me how to bake. And she'd invited three of her closest friends to lunch the next day - which she said I'd help her prepare. "Marion, Ethel, and Janet will remember you," she said. "But I suppose you won't remember them."

"Probably not," I answered. My hands felt clammy. I hated meeting new people. And for the next two weeks everyone I would meet would be a stranger. I felt queasy. I was already homesick and I'd only been in Iowa for two hours.

Verna showed me every inch of the property. She didn't mention my mother once, but kept up a running commentary about what Bill thought of this and what he did about that.

Finally we returned to the house.

"I guess we better get on with the baking," Verna said. She didn't seem very enthusiastic. Neither did I. I hate cooking. Sewing and knitting are fun and interesting to me. But spending a lot of time preparing food is not my idea of a good time. Home economics is the only subject in school that I hated. Well, I thought, maybe when we're cooking Verna will talk about my mother.

In the next few hours we made a chocolate cake, sugar cookies, and prepared a bread

dough. But we didn't do much talking. Whenever I - asked Verna about my mother she changed the subject. For example, when I said, "Did my mother help you bake, too?" Verna looked at her watch and said, "Two o'clock. Time for my favorite soap opera." She turned on a small kitchen TV and the rest of our baking session was accompanied by my least favorite kind of television - soap operas.

After all that cooking, we still had to prepare our dinner of roast chicken and biscuits. I remembered my mother writing about how wonderful her mother's biscuits were, but I didn't even bother to mention this to Verna.

During dinner Verna was pretty quiet. So was I. I didn't know what to talk to her about. After washing the dinner dishes, I said I was tired and went to my room. I was too disappointed to write letters home. What would I say? "Having a terrible time. Wish I were home."?

The next morning I helped Verna feed the goats. Then we prepared for our luncheon guests. Verna's three friends were nice, but I

had absolutely nothing in common with them. They went on for awhile about how beautifully I'd grown up and what a darling baby I'd been, which embarrassed me. Then- they gossiped with Verna about who would win what ribbons at the county fair, which bored me. When

they were leaving one of the women - Mrs. Baily - took me aside and asked me how I thought my grandmother was doing "after her big loss." I knew she meant Bill's death.

"She talks about him a lot," I answered. "It's such a blessing that you are here," she said. "See if you can't get her to make up her blackberry jam and enter it in the fair. Will you?"

I nodded.

After our guests were gone, I told Verna I thought it would be neat if she entered her jam in the fair.

"I haven't made it this year," she said. "By the time blackberries were in season, Bill was gone."

"Is it too late to make it now?" I asked.

"I daresay there're still some berries around. Would you like to make it with me?"

"Sure."

"If it's important to you, I guess we could," Verna said.

"I think'it'd be fun to go to the fair and see you win a blue ribbon."

Verna's eyes filled with tears. I figured she was thinking about Bill again and all the times he watched her win blue ribbons. I went to my room.

Around five o'clock Verna walked into my room without knocking (something that drives

me crazy) and said, "Don't forget, we go to bingo in a half hour." She didn't look too happy about going to bingo. I figured it might be the first time she was going since Bill died and was grateful that she didn't say it. Well, maybe bingo will cheer us both up, I thought.

It didn't. I was introduced to all these people who remembered me when I was a baby. They kept saying how nice it was that I was visiting my grandmother "in her time of grief," and how sad my grandparents were when my father took me back. -

I hated that evening of bingo and I was

hating being with my grandmother. It was nothing like I thought it would be. We didn't say two words to one another on the way home in the car. I was grumpy and she was sad. We both went to our bedrooms as soon as we arrived home. I wrote a letter to my dad

and one to Kristy. But I didn't tell them I was having a terrible time.

The next morning Verna announced that we were going to pick blackberries for the jam. It was a hot muggy day, and blackberry bushes are full of thorns. I could tell that Verna wasn't enjoying the project any more than I was. "Bill used to make this task so much fun," she said. Was she angry at me for not making it fun? Was I supposed to be making up for her husband's being dead?

Making jam - at least the way Verna Baker does it - is a long, hot job. The kitchen felt like the inside of a furnace. And Verna kept criticizing the way I did things. When I spilled jam on the counter, she grabbed the pot from me. "I'll finish pouring," she snapped. "You can clean up your mess." -

As I reached for the paper towels I heard her mumble under her breath, "It'd be nice if

someone said they were sorry."

"Sorry," I said. "But I didn't spill it on purpose. My hands were sweaty and the pot slipped."

"You have to concentrate when you cook. Otherwise there are accidents in the kitchen. What if you'd burned yourself? What do you think your father would do?" She harrumphed. "He'd blame me and never let you come here again, that's what he'd do." I heard her mumble under her breath, again, "We should never have let him take you back."

"Stop criticizing my father," I told her sharply. "I hate when you do that. Besides, I wouldn't have wanted to grow up out here in the middle of nowhere. I wish I'd never come here."

I ran out of the kitchen and into the cornfields. I never wanted to see Verna Baker again.

I thought Verna would come running after me. But she didn't. I walked around the cornfields trying to figure out how I could get home without seeing or talking to her again. But if I wanted to go back to Connecticut I had to tell Verna and my father so they could arrange

it. And the sooner I did that, the sooner I'd be on my way. I went back to the house.

I saw Verna before she saw me. She was sitting on the glider couch looking at an opened scrapbook. Tears were pouring down her face. As I came closer it looked as though she were crying over a big school picture of me. Then I saw that it was a photo of my mother when she was around my age. For the first time since I arrived in Iowa, I thought about how I must remind Verna of her own daughter. I thought of how I'd been behaving, and realized that she was probably as disappointed in me as I was in her.

Verna looked up and saw me. "You look so much like Alma," she said. "And you act like her, too - even when you're unhappy about something."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Oh, child, don't be sorry about being like your mother. It's a blessing for me to see that her life goes on in you. A real blessing. I just wish I could be more helpful to you. I'm so full of sadness right now, because of losing Bill. It's not fair to you. I could understand if you want to go home earlier than we planned."

I stepped onto the porch and sat beside her on the glider. "Do you want me to go home now?" I asked.