Read Online Ghost Girl by Delia Ray - Free Book Online Page B

we set off with a gust of wind blowing at our backs. By the time we made it to the schoolhouse, the classroom was packed full with folks, all dripping wet from the trip over. Miss Vest was scurrying around, mopping at the floor with a rag and setting up folding chairs in between the desks.
    She trotted over when she saw us coming, and the next minute Aunt Birdy was at my side, giving my hand a squeeze. “See there, Miss Vest,” she said, grinning, “I told you not to give up on ’em. I told you Alma was coming.”
    Mama and Miss Vest nodded to each other, and then Aunt Birdy scooted us over to three folding chairs in the second row, behind the Jessups. I knew Mama would have rather found a place in the back, but she followed Aunt Birdy without a fuss, trying to ignore all the ladies who stared as she walked by. Most folks hadn’t seen her out in company for a year or more, and I wasn’t surprised at the way they put their heads together and started clucking like hens.
    Mrs. Jessup, who was bouncing Dewey’s fat baby brother, Little Elton, on her lap and sizing up everybody who came down the aisle, hoisted herself around and said hello to Mama. “Good to see you out again, Alma,” she said in a loud, sugary voice. “Look, Ida . . . Dewey . . . there’s April. I hear Wes is working down in Criglersville now. It’s been so long since we seen you all. We been looking for you over at our place on Sundays.”
    Mama nodded, but I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. She’d sooner walk through fire than go to the Jessups’ house again, with our Victrola sitting right out in their front room.
    Aunt Birdy leaned across me and tapped Mama’s arm before Mrs. Jessup could say anything else. “Look over yonder, Alma,” she said. “That’s where Apry sits ever’ day. In that desk where Alvin Hurt is setting. Miss Vest showed me at last Sunday’s meeting. And look up there. There’s her painting up on the wall, the one of the chestnut trees down the mountain. See, it’s got a gold star on the top.”
    Mrs. Jessup huffed herself back around again, and Mama seemed to relax. She flicked her eyes up to my painting on the bulletin board and tried to manage a smile. “Looks real nice, April,” she said, and I smiled back, feeling something flutter in my chest.
    I was getting ready to point out some other things around the room when Miss Vest came up to the front and welcomed everybody, sweeping her hands this way and that. She was thrilled to see more new faces each week, she said, glancing at Mama and me. Then she announced that she had decided to start each Sunday with a Bible reading, since that seemed to be everybody’s favorite part of the service.
    â€œFor today,” she said, carefully opening the Bible, “I’ve decided to read the passages from Genesis about Noah and his ark. . . . When I selected these, I honestly had no idea we’d be living through our own flood this morning. You all might need an ark to get back home today.” Everybody laughed and turned to look at the rain streaking across the windows.
    Of course I had heard about old Noah before, but I never knew the whole story until Miss Vest began to read. Nobody had ever told me that Noah was six hundred years old when he made his big floating barn out of gopher wood. And I had never really thought about what it would be like for all those animals to squeeze together, two by two in the ark, with the windows of heaven stuck open and rain pouring down for forty days and forty nights.
    I could have sat listening to Miss Vest for at least that long. Her voice was steady and soothing, like the sound of the rainfall outside, and next to me Aunt Birdy closed her eyes and rocked back and forth as she listened. It was like we were all under a spell of some kind in that warm, steamy room, with the smell of Silas Hudgins’s pipe