The Great Gilly Hopkins Read online

  “No,” she said sharply. “Me.”

  “Oh.” He smiled widely although his eyes did not seem to move. “You must be the new little girl.” He stretched out his right hand. “Welcome to you, welcome.”

  Gilly carefully took the elbow instead of the hand. “Trotter said for me to get you for supper.”

  “Well, thank you, thank you.” He reached behind, fumbling until he found the knob, and pulled the door shut. “Kind of chilly tonight, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  All she could think of was Miss Ellis. OK, so she hadn’t been so great at the Nevinses’, but she hadn’t done anything to deserve this. A house run by a fat, fluff-brained religious fanatic with a mentally retarded seven-year-old—well, maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t actually retarded, but chances were good the kid was running around with less than his full share of brains or why would Trotter make such a big deal of it? But she could’ve handled the two of them. It wasn’t fair to throw in a blind black man who came to eat.

  Or maybe Miss Ellis didn’t know. Maybe Trotter kept this a secret.

  The sidewalk was uneven. Mr. Randolph’s toe hit a high corner, and he lurched forward.

  “Watch it!” Without thinking, Gilly threw her arms around the thin shoulders and caught him before he fell.

  “Thank you, thank you.” Gilly dropped her arms. She thought for a horrible moment that he was going to try to grab her hand, but he didn’t.

  Boy, Miss Ellis, are you ever going to be sorry you did this to me.

  “Now Mrs. Trotter did tell me your name, but I’m ashamed to say I don’t seem to recall it.” He tapped his head with its short, curly gray hair. “I can keep all the luxuries up here, but none of the necessities.”

  “Gilly,” she muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Gilly Hopkins.”

  “Oh, yes.” He was shuffling painfully up Trotter’s front steps. Jeez. Why didn’t he get a white cane or something? “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Gilly. I feel mighty close to all Mrs. Trotter’s children. Little William Ernest is like a grandson to me. So I feel sure…”

  “Watch the door!”

  “Yes, yes, I thank you.”

  “Is that you Mr. Randolph?” came Trotter’s voice from inside.

  “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Trotter, with the sweetest little escort you’d ever hope to see.”

  Trotter appeared in the hallway with her hands on her hips. “How you doing in this cold weather?”

  “Not my best, I’m afraid. This sweet little girl had to keep me from falling right down on my face.”

  “Did she now?”

  See there, Trotter? I managed.

  “I guess this old house is going to be a bit more lively now, eh, Mrs. Trotter?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” answered Trotter in a flat voice that Gilly couldn’t read the meaning of.

  The meal proceeded without incident. Gilly was hungry but thought it better not to seem to enjoy her supper too much. William Ernest ate silently and steadily with only an occasional glance at Gilly. She could tell that the child was scared silly of her. It was about the only thing in the last two hours that had given her any real satisfaction. Power over the boy was sure to be power over Trotter in the long run.

  “I declare, Mrs. Trotter,” said Mr. Randolph, “every day I think to myself, tonight’s supper couldn’t be as delicious as last night’s. But I tell you, this is the most delicious meal I have ever had the privilege of eating.”

  “Mr. Randolph, you could flatter the stripe off a polecat.”

  Mr. Randolph let out a giggling laugh. “It isn’t flattery, I assure you, Mrs. Trotter. William Ernest and Miss Gilly will bear me out in this. I may be old, but I haven’t lost my sense of taste, even if some folks maintain I’ve lost the other four.”

  They went on and on like that. Mr. Randolph flattering the fat woman, and the fat woman eating it up like hot-fudge sundae with all the nuts.

  What I should do, thought Gilly, as she lay that night in the narrow bed with her arms folded under her head, What I should do is write my mother. Courtney Rutherford Hopkins would probably sue county welfare if she knew what kind of place they’d forced her daughter to come to.

  Miss Ellis (whose eyebrows always twitched when Gilly asked questions about Courtney) had once told her that Courtney was from Virginia. Everybody knew, didn’t they, that families like Courtney’s did not eat with colored people? Courtney Rutherford Hopkins was sure to go into a rage, wasn’t she, when she heard that news? Perhaps the self-righteous Trotter would be put into jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Miss Ellis would, of course, be fired. Yum!

  She’ll come to get me then, for sure, thought Gilly. Her mother wouldn’t stand for her beautiful Galadriel to be in a dump like this for one single minute, once she knew. But how was she to know? Miss Ellis would never admit it. What kind of lies was the social worker telling Courtney to keep her from coming to fetch Gilly?

  As she dropped off to sleep, Gilly promised herself for the millionth time that she would find out where Courtney Rutherford Hopkins was, write to her, and tell her to come and take her beautiful Galadriel home.

  MORE UNPLEASANT SURPRISES

  In the tiny mirror over the bureau Gilly noted with no little satisfaction that her hair was a wreck. Yesterday before the bubble gum got into it, it had looked as though it simply needed combing. Today it looked like a lot that had been partially bulldozed—an uprooted tree here, a half wall with a crumbling chimney there. It was magnificent. It would run Trotter wild. Gilly bounced down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  She held her head very straight as she sat at the kitchen table and waited for the fireworks.

  “I’ll take you down to the school a little after nine, hear?” Trotter said.

  Of course Gilly heard. She tilted her head a little in case Trotter couldn’t see.

  “If I take you down earlier,” Trotter went on, “we’ll just have to sit and wait till they can take care of us. I’d as leave sit here at my own table with a cup of coffee, wouldn’t you?” She put a bowl of steaming hot cereal down in front of Gilly.

  Gilly nodded her head vigorously Yes.

  William Ernest was staring at her, his glasses steamed up from the oatmeal. Gilly bared her teeth and shook her head violently No at him. The boy snuffled loudly and ducked his head.

  “Need a tissue, William Ernest?” Trotter pulled one from her apron pocket and gently wiped his nose. “And here’s a clean one for school, honey.” Trotter leaned over and tucked a tissue into his pants pocket.

  Gilly craned her neck over the table as though she were trying to see the contents of W.E.’s pocket. Her head was within a couple of feet of Trotter’s eyes. The woman was sure to notice.

  “William Ernest got promoted to the Orange reading group yesterday. Didn’t you, William Ernest, honey?”

  The little boy nodded his head but kept his eyes on his bowl.

  “You’re gonna have to do some reading out loud and show Gilly how great you’re coming along with your reading these days.”

  W.E. looked up for one split second with terror in his eyes. Trotter missed the look, but not Gilly, who smiled widely and shook her half-bulldozed head emphatically.

  “In Orange they use hardback books,” Trotter was explaining. “It’s a real big step to be Orange.” She leaned over Gilly to put some toast on the table. “We really worked for this.”

  “So old W.E.’s getting a head, is he?”

  Trotter gave her a puzzled look. “Yeah, he’s doing just fine.”

  “Before you know it,” Gilly heard herself saying loudly, “he’ll be blowing his own nose and combing his own hair.”

  “He already does,” said Trotter quietly. “Leastways most of the time.” She sat down with a loud sigh at the table. “Pass me a piece of toast, will you, Gilly?”

  Gilly picked up the plate, raised it to the height of her hair, and passed it acros
s to Trotter at that level.

  “Thank you, honey.”

  At eight thirty Trotter got William Ernest off to school. Gilly had long since finished her breakfast, but she sat at the kitchen table, her head propped on her fists. From the doorway she could hear Old Mother Goose honking over her gosling. “OK, Big Orange, you show ’em down there today, hear?” Trotter said finally; and then the heavy door shut and she was heading back for the kitchen. As she got to the door, Gilly sat up straight and shook her head for all she was worth.

  “You got a tic or something, honey?”

  “No.”

  “I would’ve thought you was too young for the palsy,” the huge woman murmured, sliding into her seat with the cup of coffee she’d promised herself earlier. “I see you got sneakers. That’s good. You’re supposed to have them for gym. Can you think of anything else you’ll need for school?”

  Gilly shook her head, but halfheartedly. She was beginning to feel like an oversharpened pencil.

  “I think I’ll go upstairs till it’s time,” she said.

  “Oh, while you’re up there, honey—”

  “Yeah?” Gilly sprang to attention.

  “Make the beds, will you? It does look messy to leave ’em unmade all day, and I’m not much on running up and down the stairs.”

  Gilly banged the door to her room for all she was worth. She spit every obscenity she’d ever heard through her teeth, but it wasn’t enough. That ignorant hippopotamus! That walrus-faced imbecile! That—that—oh, the devil—Trotter wouldn’t even let a drop fall from her precious William Ernest baby’s nose, but she would let Gilly go to school—a new school where she didn’t know anybody—looking like a scarecrow. Miss Ellis would surely hear about this. Gilly slammed her fist into her pillow. There had to be a law against foster mothers who showed such gross favoritism.

  Well, she would show that lard can a thing or two. She yanked open the left top drawer, pulling out a broken comb, which she viciously jerked through the wilderness on her head, only to be defeated by a patch of bubble gum. She ran into the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine chest until she found a pair of nail scissors with which to chop out the offending hair. When despite her assault by comb and scissors a few strands refused to lie down meekly, she soaked them mercilessly into submission. She’d show the world. She’d show them who Galadriel Hopkins was—she was not to be trifled with.

  I see they call you Gilly,” said Mr. Evans, the principal.

  “I can’t even pronounce the poor child’s real name,” said Trotter, chuckling in what she must believe was a friendly manner.

  It didn’t help Gilly’s mood. She was still seething over the hair combing.

  “Well, Gilly’s a fine name,” said Mr. Evans, which confirmed to Gilly that at school, too, she was fated to be surrounded by fools.

  The principal was studying records that must have been sent over from Gilly’s former school, Hollywood Gardens Elementary. He coughed several times. “Well,” he said, “I think this young lady needs to be in a class that will challenge her.”

  “She’s plenty smart, if that’s what you mean.”

  Trotter, you dummy. How do you know how smart I am? You never laid eyes on me until yesterday.

  “I’m going to put you into Miss Harris’s class. We have some departmentalization in the sixth grade, but…”

  “You got what in the sixth grade?”

  Oh, Trotter, shut your fool mouth.

  But the principal didn’t seem to notice what a dope Trotter was. He explained patiently how some of the sixth-grade classes moved around for math and reading and science, but Miss Harris kept the same group all day.

  What a blinking bore.

  They went up three flights of ancient stairway to Miss Harris’s room slowly, so that Trotter would not collapse. The corridors stank of oiled floors and cafeteria soup. Gilly had thought she hated all schools so much that they no longer could pain or disappoint her, but she felt heavier with each step—like a condemned prisoner walking an endless last mile.

  They paused before the door marked “Harris-6.” Mr. Evans knocked, and a tall tea-colored woman, crowned with a bush of black hair, opened the door. She smiled down on the three of them, because she was even taller than the principal.

  Gilly shrank back, bumping into Trotter’s huge breast, which made her jump forward again quickly. God, on top of everything else, the teacher was black.

  No one seemed to take notice of her reaction, unless you counted a flash of brightness in Miss Harris’s dark eyes.

  Trotter patted Gilly’s arm, murmured something that ended in “honey,” and then she and the principal floated backward, closing Gilly into Harris-6. The teacher led her to an empty desk in the middle of the classroom, asked for Gilly’s jacket, which she handed over to another girl to hang on the coatrack at the back of the room. She directed Gilly to sit down, and then went up and settled herself at the large teacher’s desk to glance through the handful of papers Mr. Evans had given her.

  In a moment she looked up, a warm smile lighting her face. “Galadriel Hopkins. What a beautiful name! From Tolkien, of course.”

  “No,” muttered Gilly. “Hollywood Gardens.”

  Miss Harris laughed a sort of golden laugh. “No, I mean your name—Galadriel. It’s the name of a great queen in a book by a man named Tolkien. But, of course, you know that.”

  Hell. No one had ever told her that her name came from a book. Should she pretend she knew all about it or play dumb?

  “I’d like to call you Galadriel, if you don’t mind. It’s such a lovely name.”

  “No!” Everyone was looking at Gilly peculiarly. She must have yelled louder than she intended to. “I would prefer,” she said tightly, “to be called Gilly.”

  “Yes”—Miss Harris’s voice was more steel than gold now—“Yes. Gilly, it is then. Well”—she turned her smile on the rest of the class—“Where were we?”

  The clamor of their answers clashed in Gilly’s brain. She started to put her head down on the desk, but someone was shoving a book into her face.

  It wasn’t fair—nothing was fair. She had once seen a picture in an old book of a red fox on a high rock surrounded by snarling dogs. It was like that. She was smarter than all of them, but they were too many. They had her surrounded, and in their stupid ways, they were determined to wear her down.

  Miss Harris was leaning over her. Gilly pulled away as far as she could.

  “Did you do division with fractions at Hollywood Gardens?”

  Gilly shook her head. Inside she seethed. It was bad enough having to come to this broken-down old school but to be behind—to seem dumber than the rest of the kids—to have to appear a fool in front of…. Almost half the class was black. And she would look dumb to them. A bunch of—

  “Why don’t you bring your chair up to my desk, and we’ll work on it?”

  Gilly snatched up her chair and beat Miss Harris to the front of the room. She’d show them!

  At recesstime Monica Bradley, one of the other white girls in the class, was supposed to look after her on the playground. But Monica was more interested in leaning against the building and talking with her friends, which she did, keeping her back toward Gilly as she giggled and gossiped with two other sixth-grade girls, one of whom was black with millions of tiny braids all over her head. Like some African bushwoman. Not that Gilly cared. Why should she? They could giggle their stupid lives away, and she’d never let it bother her. She turned her back on them. That would show them.

  Just then a ball jerked loose from the basketball game nearby and rushed toward her. She grabbed it. Balls were friends. She hugged it and ran over to the basket and threw it up, but she had been in too much of a hurry. It kissed the rim but refused to go in for her. Angrily she jumped and caught it before it bounced. She was dimly aware of a protest from the players, but they were boys and mostly shorter than she, so not worthy of notice. She shot again, this time with care. It arched and sank cleanly. Sh
e pushed someone out of the way and grabbed it just below the net.

  “Hey! Who you think you are?”

  One of the boys, a black as tall as she, tried to pull the ball from her hands. She spun around, knocking him to the concrete, and shot again, banking the ball off the backboard neatly into the net. She grabbed it once more.

  Now all the boys were after her. She began to run across the playground laughing and clutching the ball to her chest. She could hear the boys screaming behind her, but she was too fast for them. She ran in and out of hopscotch games and right through a jump rope, all the way back to the basketball post where she shot again, missing wildly in her glee.

  The boys did not watch for the rebound. They leaped upon her. She was on her back, scratching and kicking for all she was worth. They were yelping like hurt puppies.

  “Hey! Hey! What’s going on here?”

  Miss Harris towered above them. The fighting evaporated under her glare. She marched all seven of them to the principal’s office. Gilly noted with satisfaction a long red line down the tall boy’s cheek. She’d actually drawn blood in the fracas. The boys looked a lot worse than she felt. Six to one—pretty good odds even for the great Gilly Hopkins.

  Mr. Evans lectured the boys about fighting on the playground and then sent them back to their homerooms. He kept Gilly longer.

  “Gilly.” He said her name as though it were a whole sentence by itself. Then he just sat back in his chair, his fingertips pressed together, and looked at her.

  She smoothed her hair and waited, staring him in the eye. People hated that—you staring them down as though they were the ones who had been bad. They didn’t know how to deal with it. Sure enough. The principal looked away first.

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  She jerked her head No.

  He coughed. “I would rather for us to be friends.”

  Gilly smirked.

  “We’re not going to have fighting on the playground.” He looked directly at her. “Or anywhere else around here. I think you need to understand that, Gilly.”