“Then keep it shut. We wouldn’t want what’s left of your brains to trickle out.”
Agnes’s mouth flew open and immediately slammed shut. She shrugged, gave an angry little sniff, and then began to eat her lunch.
Gilly paused to give a generous smile to the other people at the table while spreading her napkin delicately on her lap and picking up the milk carton with her pinky curled the way Mrs. Nevins used to do when she picked up her coffee cup.
After lunch she allowed Agnes to follow her around the playground like a stray puppy. Once Agnes ventured a tentative “Hey, Gil,” but Gilly spun around with such a frightening look that any further words withered.
And when Gilly left school, Agnes fell in behind her without a word. They marched up the hill, Agnes tripping along double time to keep up with Gilly’s exaggerated strides. When they got to Trotter’s, Gilly went in. As she was closing the dirty white picket gate behind her, Agnes touched her arm and handed her a note. It said: “When can I talk?”
Gilly smiled benignly. “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll just see how it goes.”
Agnes opened her mouth like a starved baby bird, but she didn’t give a chirp. Good bird. Gilly patted the skinny, freckled arm and swept up the walk into the house, leaving the open-mouthed fledgling outside the gate.
“Zat you, William Ernest, honey?”
“Zat’s me, Maime Trotter, baby,” squeaked Gilly.
From the kitchen she could hear Trotter’s laugh rumbling. “C’mon in here and get yourself a snack, Gilly, honey.”
Gilly was tempted, but determined not to yield. She was too smart to be bought with food, no matter how hungry she felt. She stomped up the stairs past the open kitchen door from which came the definite smell of chocolate chip cookies. Double-damn you, Maime Trotter.
Later, behind her carefully closed door, Gilly took out the money from the bureau. Then she pulled out the whole drawer and dumped it upside down on the bed. She smoothed out the bills on the drawer bottom, and then took from her pocket the masking tape she’d taken care to steal from Miss Harris’s desk and taped the bills to the bottom of the drawer.
Without warning, the door flew open. Gilly, to cover the money, fell chest down over the drawer.
A frog-eyed William Ernest stood on the threshold, trying to juggle a small tray which held a plate of cookies and a glass of milk.
“What in the devil?” screeched Gilly.
“Tr-tr-tr-tr-Trotter…” was all the child could manage in the way of an answer. He was rattling the tray so hard that the milk glass was threatening to jump the edge.
“Well, put ’em down, stupid.”
W.E.’s eyes searched the room in desperation. Gilly was beginning to feel like a fool lying chest down on a bureau drawer. She raised herself enough to turn the drawer over. Then she sat up and turned to face him.
“Didn’t Trotter ever tell you about knocking before you bust in?”
He nodded, eyes wide, tray rattling.
She sighed. What a weird little kid. “OK,” she said, reaching out across the narrow space. “Give it here.”
He shoved it at her and ran blamety-blam down the stairs. Gilly turned the drawer back over to make a table on the bed and put the milk and cookies on it. She shut the door and then sat down cross-legged on the bed and began to eat. Oh, thank you, thank you, Maime Trotter. What a delicious-smelling plate of cookies. My, my, and ahhhhh-men.
In the middle of the last cookie, an inspiration came to her. It wasn’t Agnes Stokes whom she would use. Agnes couldn’t be trusted between freckles. It was William Ernest. Of course. Trotter’s honey baby engaged in a life of crime. She laughed out loud at the pleasure of it. Baby-Face Teague, the frog-eyed filcher. Wild-eyed William, the goose-brained godfather. The possibilities were unlimited and delectable. The midget of the Mafia. The Orange Reader Squeezer. No. The Orange Squirt.
She jumped up and put the room to order, danced down the stairs, balancing the tray high on one hand, and skipped into the kitchen.
T
rotter looked up from the table where she was spooning cookie dough onto a baking sheet and gave her the eye. “Feeling good, now?”
Gilly gave her the 300-watt smile that she had designed especially for melting the hearts of foster parents. “Never better!” She spoke the words with just the right musical lilt. She put her dishes by the sink, started to wash them but thought better of it. Trotter might get suspicious if goodness was overdone.
She skated out into the hall and around the bottom of the stairs right into the living room where W.E. sat on the floor staring at Sesame Street. She slid down beside him, and when his eyes checked her out sideways, she gave a quiet, sisterly kind of smile and pretended to be enthralled with Big Bird. She said nothing through Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and The Electric Company but occasionally hummed along with one of the songs in a friendly sort of way, never failing to smile at William when she caught him snatching a quick stare in her direction.
Her strategy seemed to be succeeding. At any rate when suppertime neared, she said to him, “Do you want to set the table or get Mr. Randolph?” and he answered with hardly a stutter, “Get Mr. Randolph.”
So she set the kitchen table, humming under her breath the “Sunny Days” theme from Sesame Street. And after supper she folded an airplane for him from notebook paper, and at her suggestion he even followed her out on the front porch to fly it.