How It Happened in Peach Hill Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2007 by Marthe Jocelyn

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books,

  75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

  Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc.,

  New York

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher - or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Jocelyn, Marthe

  How it happened in Peach Hill / Marthe Jocelyn.

  eISBN: 978-1-77049-068-0

  I. Title.

  PS8569.O254P42 2007 jC813′.54 C2006–902093–0

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  v3.1

  For Jerry, AJ and Pa

  And all beloved spirits on the Other Side

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Put salt on the doorstep of a new house and no evil can enter.

  Chapter 2 - A young lady should never sing while cooking; she will marry an aged man.

  Chapter 3 - The spouse who goes to sleep first on the wedding day will be the first to die.

  Chapter 4 - If you can make a cracking sound with your finger or toe joints, it is a sure sign that somebody loves you.

  Chapter 5 - If you dream of seeing an idiot, you will have much discouragement and sorrow with your family members.

  Chapter 6 - Tea spilling from the spout of the teapot while it’s being carried indicates that a secret will be revealed.

  Chapter 7 - The sound of bells frightens away demons.

  Chapter 8 - It is a lucky omen to meet the same person twice when you are out on business.

  Chapter 9 - To prevent an unwelcome guest from returning, sweep out the room she stayed in immediately after she leaves.

  Chapter 10 - If you use the same pencil to write a test that you used to study for the test, the pencil will remember the answers.

  Chapter 11 - In ancient Egypt, when a cat in a private house died a natural death, all the residents shaved their eyebrows.

  Chapter 12 - If you drop a knife, you will receive a male visitor.

  Chapter 13 - A uniformed person in your dream foretells that a wealthy person will come to your aid.

  Chapter 14 - If you do not present a new pair of shoes to a poor person at least once during your life, you will go barefoot in the next world.

  Chapter 15 - It is bad luck to point at the moon.

  Chapter 16 - The palm symbolizes victory.

  Chapter 17 - A spider repels plague when worn around the neck in a walnut shell.

  Chapter 18 - If a strange dog begins to trail you, good luck will follow.

  Chapter 19 - Never speak ill of the dead, hut utter phrases such as “poor man” or “rest her soul”—otherwise the spirit may come visiting.

  Chapter 20 - To dream of cake means you will have good fortune.

  Chapter 21 - She who hurries cannot walk with dignity.

  Chapter 22 - If you sing before seven, you will cry before eleven.

  Chapter 23 - Laugh alone and the world thinks you’re an idiot.

  Chapter 24 - It is a good omen to meet an idiot when on some important task.

  Chapter 25 - It is bad luck to leave a house through a different door than the one used to enter.

  Chapter 26 - If you cut bread unevenly, you have been telling lies.

  Chapter 27 - In Old English, the word “silly” meant “blessed.”

  Chapter 28 - A light shining out of the dark in a dream shows that you will finally find the truth in a situation, or the answer you have been seeking.

  About the Author

  1

  Put salt on the

  doorstep of a new house

  and no evil can enter.

  Mama taught me to lie.

  Some would say that Mama went to jail in Carling, New York, because of lies, but we had other ideas.

  We knew that the truth came in different varieties and that most people had a favorite. Same thing with untruth. Anyone could decide what to call a lie, so sometimes there’d be a misunderstanding.

  Mama made claims to being clairvoyant: able to “see clearly” what was unseen by everyone else. She had what she called a sensitive way with the spirit world. I was her assistant. We offered services that only we could perform. Mama cultivated her talents to help people seeking solace, or relief from a predicament.

  When a gentleman, for instance, misplaced a gold watch and offered a reward for its recovery, Mama’s psychic ability was almost certain to detect the missing object. Particularly when her beguiling smile and her nimble fingers had caused the misplacement to begin with, and I had selected the discovery site. When the gentleman reclaimed his property, we were handsomely paid, and everyone was content.

  Until an incident of faulty timing led to a watch being observed in our possession.

  That day in Carling, I was fifteen. I watched Mama being dragged away by the police with her stockings torn and her feet scrabbling to touch the ground. I saw her hat flung to the pavement, with the ostrich feather snapped under a boot. I wanted to howl and kick somebody. That sickening scene played over and over in front of my eyes, like at the moving pictures with the pianist gone home.

  And while Mama languished for two days and nights in the stone cellar of that Carling police station behind a wall of iron mesh, I was confined to the sheriff’s home. The sheriff’s wife was a more formidable jailer than any of the young men with pistols who were watching over Mama.

  “We’ve had villains in here before, Miss Annie Grey.” She jabbed her finger at me. “But never one so young, nor so unrepentant!”

  Well, what was I supposed to be repenting for? We didn’t want the watch, we wanted the money for its recovery, and we never got that, so how could we repent?

  “You sit right there and read aloud from the Good Book. Your mother has some nerve, with her claims to see into the future. No one but the good Lord can say what awaits us! I know what awaits you, young lady. You will read, without moving, from the moment you finish your breakfast until I put your supper on the table tonight.…”

  At first I didn’t think it was much of a punishment. There are some great moments of drama in the Bible, storms and miracles, plenty of evil doings and heroic characters.

  “ ‘And God divided the Light from Darkness!’ ” I thundered, waving my fist in the air, “ ‘and God called the light Day and He called the dark Night.…’ ”

  But the sheriff’s wife didn’t want my interpretation. She wanted my piety and she wanted it plain.

  “Don’t you get fanciful and don’t you rest.”

  I had no wish to repeat that experience as long as I lived. I chose to have an epilept
ic seizure at the same moment that Mama agreed to marry her guard, and so between us we negotiated our freedom.

  Luckily, Mama prided herself on always being prepared for trouble. Our savings were neatly arranged in the false bottom of our trunk and hadn’t been disturbed by the rude officers who had searched our belongings. We left town the very hour Mama was released, and we swore not to repeat our errors. Mama said soon we would have enough money to buy a home of our own. She said we could settle down, just as I’d been begging for, so long as I could remember.

  We arrived in Hawley feeling breathless, as if we’d run all the way from Carling in our fine leather Hi-Cuts, instead of sitting in a first-class compartment with a Thermos of chamomile tea and a two-pound box of coconut macaroons. We stayed in Hawley just long enough to come up with a new twist to our old game.

  “One of our strengths is your sweet and innocent face,” said Mama. “We’ll take it one step further and turn you into a dim-witted angel. You will be clucked over and then ignored by heartless women who think only of themselves. This will put you in an excellent position for eavesdropping.”

  Mama was sharp; no mistake about that. She was a fake as far as hearing from the dead, or even seeing the outcome of a situation ahead of time, but she had a sensitive way about her, when required professionally. She was a master at drawing out secrets. With a little background information, she easily appeared to see straight into the hearts of forlorn and desperate seekers—usually women—who spent heaps of money to hear the advice of a stranger. And Mama was so pretty, people tended to trust her without thinking about it.

  So, in Hawley, I sat for hours holding Mama’s mirror with the tortoiseshell handle. I perfected the ability to cross one eye while my mouth stayed open. I breathed out with a faint wheeze so that my lips dried up or even crusted. Once in a while I’d add a twitch.

  If anyone had looked through the window, they would have heard Mama scolding me, “Get rid of that smart glint in your eyes. And let your lips gape!”

  “It makes me thirsty, having my tongue lolling out.”

  “Try honking through your nose when you laugh. That will give your mouth a rest.”

  I experimented on the streets of Hawley. People would take a first look at me and shiver with disgust. They’d look again and think, Oh, the poor thing, thank the heavens she’s not mine. And then they’d ignore me, just as Mama had predicted, out of politeness, maybe, or embarrassment.

  That was the moment I could go to work.

  While in disguise I planned to gather gossip and bring it home to Mama. She would put it to use in little ways, giving it back to the very same people, only shaped differently and in exchange for money. Lots of money, over time.

  We moved on to Peach Hill toward the end of summer, to start fresh. The days were still hot and I wished we could go closer to the shores of the Finger Lakes, but Mama said resort towns attracted more sophisticated people. We were better off in Nowhere, New York.

  There was not a peach tree in sight. There was a hill, though, dotted with fancy houses that might have had peach trees before they had swimming pools and rose gardens. Below the hill, it was an ordinary town like all the others we’d ever stayed in; big enough for a train station, a church, and a cinema, but small enough to see most of it during an evening stroll. The edge of town wasn’t an edge so much as a fading away, with a few more tumbledown houses before the farms and fields began in earnest.

  I felt shivers that first night, in spite of it being August. It was pretty here, and I wondered if this would be the place where our savings would add up high enough to find a nest. We’d abandoned most of our possessions in Carling, so we had only the trunk and a few bundles to carry from the taxicab into our new, furnished rooms at 62 Needle Street.

  “Look there,” Mama whispered. “The curtain is quivering at number fifty-nine across the road.”

  I slid my tongue out and let my eye droop.

  “Put up the sign before you heat the kettle, Annie,” said Mama. “We’ll have customers by nightfall tomorrow.”

  It never took long for word of our arrival to flutter around a town like a flock of birds. People might scorn us in public, but nearly everyone had a reason to seek us out on the quiet. Our rooms were on the ground floor, just off the main square, where people could find us easily. It wasn’t showy; we didn’t want anyone feeling nervous. But we gussied it up enough to suggest that our talents were worth the investment.

  We took care setting up the front room, where Mama received company. We were lucky that the rooms provided a red cut-velvet armchair for the customer and a smaller, wooden one for Mama. We hired a polished table to place in between, one that could be enlarged, as needed, when we were hosting what Mama referred to as a calling. We could seat eight as the occasion demanded. By day, an ivory lace curtain dappled the light, almost like in a chapel. The sign in the window, lettered in gold script, announced MADAME CATERINA, SPIRITUAL ADVISOR.

  Mama’s circulars claimed that we had Gypsy blood, but our tawny skin and black hair were really thanks to her grandmother, a Mexican maid in her grandfather’s house. Saying “Gypsy” meant more to the customers, that was all, making them think that wanderlust and fortune-telling came naturally.

  Peach Hill was our eighth town, Mama’s and mine, if you didn’t calculate the hundreds of places we’d stayed three nights each while we worked with Lenny’s Famous Fun Fair. We joined Lenny when I was maybe four or five. When I was about nine, the United States joined the Great War and people had better things to do with their money than spend it on fun. Lenny closed up shop and we were forced to make our own fortune.

  We moved a few times in the beginning, but for most of the war we lived in Deacon, where the factory made buttons for uniforms. That place was filled with sad, lonely wives, working on the assembly line and praying that their gleaming buttons would not be blown off the chests of distant husbands.

  It was in Deacon where we first began to prosper. All those funerals were not just because of the war, but also because of the great influenza epidemic. There was likely not a family in town, or anywhere else, who did not release a soul or two through that deadly illness. But it was mainly the young men gone to be soldiers who brought us the clientele.

  “I beg you! I beg you, on my knees!” a lady would say as soon as I opened the door. “Read my palm, look at the cards, pour out the tea leaves, whatever it takes, just tell me that my Davey (or my Joe, my Marco, my Terence) is still alive.…”

  Not hearing from overseas for weeks or months could drive a woman crazy. Mama had to be careful about her wording on those occasions, wanting a return visit whatever the outcome.

  “Ooh,” she’d murmur. “I’m seeing a place of great darkness and confusion. Your loved one needs you to be strong and patient.…”

  When bad news came, it was no surprise that people hurried back to our parlor. The war had a positive outcome for Mama and me, aside from stomping out the wicked tyrants overseas who threatened peace and liberty. It left thousands of mothers and sweethearts and wives aching to connect with their lost boys now dwelling on the Other Side.

  Mama plied her trade, and we learned an important lesson: Heartbreak is very good for business.

  2

  A young lady should

  never sing while cooking;

  she will marry an aged man.

  The first true test of my new character was Peg, hired on to keep house for us. Peg was maybe twenty-five, taller than Mama, with strong arms and a long nose, and curly hair bouncing off her head. Peg liked to sing while she worked and didn’t mind that our busiest day was Saturday.

  “My daddy doesn’t want me to have a beau,” she admitted. “Saturdays last forever without a dance to think about.”

  At first I thought Peg was as slow as I pretended to be, the way she shook her head from side to side while Mama gave instructions. Then I realized she just couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Mama tossed in extras so that Peg would have somethin
g to gossip about in town.

  “Turn the pillowcases inside out on the beds, Peg. Makes the spirits restless and readier to communicate.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “And never lean the broom against a bed, or the person who sleeps there will soon die.”

  “Yes’m. I mean, No, ma’am.”

  “And Peg?”

  “Yes’m?”

  “Call me ‘madame,’ Peg. Not ‘yes’m.’ I’m a clairvoyant, not a butcher’s wife.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “If someone knocks, Peg, tell her I’m with a client and make an appointment for the next day.”

  “But ma’am, that would be a fib.”

  “My clients are not all among the living, Peg. To receive news from the Other Side, I must keep in contact with the spirits every day.”

  “Oh,” said Peg.

  “Precisely,” said Mama. “So it is not a fib to tell people at the door that I am otherwise engaged, even if you cannot see my customer.”

  “Yes’m.”

  We soon had the opportunity to test the system. A day or two later, Peg answered a knock while Mama and I were tidying the front room.

  “Madame is engaged with the dead,” we heard her say. “If you come tomorrow, Mrs. Romero, she can see you at eleven o’clock.”

  “Well done, Peg,” said Mama, sending her off with a smile before turning to me. “Annie, you heard the name. Why are you dawdling? Go.”

  I hurried to the window and caught a glimpse of a green jacket as Mrs. Romero rounded the corner. I snatched my hat and my notebook and slipped out the door to follow her.

  It wasn’t my first time out. I’d practiced in Hawley and I’d already circled Peach Hill a few times, observing where women gathered and gossip flowed. I’d pinpointed the best places for eavesdropping: the benches in the square, the front table in Bing’s Café, and wandering around Carlaw’s, the greengrocer’s. Women seemed to loiter there long beyond buying potatoes and peas. I wrote in a code I’d made up, so no one else could decipher it. After each excursion, I unscrambled my code and catalogued whatever I’d heard, no matter if they were clients yet or not.