Hannah

  Everything felt strange and unfriendly. Blackberry briars scratched my arms and snagged my hair. Branches slapped at me and tore my skirt. Every direction I turned seemed to lead me into more trouble. The ground gave way and slipped out from under me. I gave up, sinking down to my knees. At first I was too stubborn to call for help. Then, knowing I was lost, I cried out. There was no answer.…

  Text copyright © 1991 by Gloria Whelan. Illustrations copyright © 1991 by Leslie Bowman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Whelan, Gloria.

  Hannah / by Gloria Whelan ; illustrated by Leslie W. Bowman.

  p. cm. —“A Stepping Stone book”

  SUMMARY: Hannah, a blind girl living in Michigan in the late nineteenth century, doesn’t go to school until a new teacher tells her about the Braille method of reading for the blind.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78905-1

  [1. Blind—Fiction. 2. Physically handicapped—Fiction.] I. Bowman, Leslie W., ill.

  II. Title. PZ7.W5718Han 1993 [Fic]—dc20 92-24243

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks and A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  v3.1

  To Linda

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  1

  It was the fall of 1887. I heard Papa’s horse and wagon before my brother, Johnny, and sister, Verna, did. Because I can’t see, I listen harder than they do. Ever since I learned the new teacher was coming to board with us, I tried to imagine what she would look like. I thought she might be heaped into a round, soft shape like the big pile of laundry Mama does on Mondays, or she might be tall and straight and hard like the oak tree that grows next to the porch. I wondered what her voice would be like and hoped it would have the gentle sound of a mourning dove on a summer day.

  When the buggy pulled up, everyone rushed to the window to see her. I just stayed put. I had been told often enough to keep out of the way so I wouldn’t get knocked over when people were rushing around. Verna didn’t forget me, though. She called out, “Hannah, the teacher’s pretty! She’s got a big puff of brown hair and a lace collar on her jacket.”

  “Never mind pretty,” Mama said. “Pretty doesn’t make a good teacher.”

  We were picked to have the teacher live with us because our farm was the nearest one to the school after the Bonners’ farm. The Bonners couldn’t board teachers any more because they were getting too old. Even though it would mean more work for her, Mama looked forward to having the teacher. Our nearest neighbor was Mr. Peterson, and there were no women on his farm, so the teacher would be company for Mama. Papa liked the idea of having the teacher too, because she would pay us a dollar a week for her room and three meals a day. It was money you could count on, not like money you got from the winter wheat, that might freeze, or the corn, that could dry up if the rain didn’t come.

  “Here’s the new teacher, Miss Lydia Robbin,” said Papa.

  Lydia, I thought. What a beautiful name. I said it over to myself. It was like the sound of Mama’s silk dress sliding off when she got home from church.

  Papa was introducing us. “This here is Martha, my wife. And Verna, she’s eleven. Johnny, he’s six. And Hannah, she’s nine.”

  Miss Robbin said “How do you do” to each one of us. When she came to me, Mama said, “You needn’t shake hands with Hannah. She can’t see you, nor anything else, poor thing.”

  Everyone around us had always known I was blind, so it was only when a stranger came that it had to be explained. Even though I had grown used to it, I didn’t like to hear it said out loud. But Mama claimed it was a “fact of life” that had to be faced.

  I felt someone take hold of my hand and squeeze it gently. I knew it must be Miss Robbin’s hand, because it was soft and smooth. One of Papa’s hands had a finger missing where he got it caught in the combine. Mama’s hands were rough from all the washing up and digging in the vegetable garden. Johnny’s hands were little and sort of damp because he still sucked his thumb. Verna’s hands felt raggedy at the nails because she bit them. “How do you do, Hannah,” Miss Robbin said. “I look forward to having your three children in my class, Mrs. Thomas.”

  Mama said, “Verna and Johnny won’t give you any trouble. Hannah doesn’t go to school. There’s no point to it.” Mama’s plain-spoken, but I guess what she said sounded a little hard even to her. She knows how I hate it when Verna and Johnny leave me behind in the morning. So she added, “Hannah keeps me company.”

  “Well, we must see about that,” Miss Robbin said. Her voice wasn’t as soft and polite as it was at first.

  “There’s nothing to see about,” Papa said. “No point in buying books and clothes for someone who can’t see to learn. Now, I expect you’d like Martha to show you where your room is. I’ll get your trunk from the wagon.”

  As soon as we were alone, I said to Verna and Johnny, “Tell me what she looks like.”

  Verna said, “She’s a little thing, but she stands up straight. Her eyes are blue. Her complexion is all white and pink. Her jacket has little buttons down the front and a sort of ruffle in the back.”

  Miss Robbin sounded elegant. I sighed and wondered what I looked like to her. I hoped she wouldn’t notice that my hand-me-down dress from Verna was too large for me. I knew my hair was tangled too. When it was long, like now, I had trouble combing it. Mama had been so busy she had forgotten to cut it.

  “Even though she’s little, I think she’ll be able to handle the older boys,” said Verna. Last year’s teacher whined all the time about how bad the older boys were. They threw erasers across the schoolroom and didn’t do their lessons. They even tipped the privy over one night. The teacher complained, but she never did anything.

  Verna and Johnny were good about telling me what happened at school, but it wasn’t the same as being there. I would have given just about anything to go to school.

  2

  The next day was Sunday. It was my favorite day because I got to go to church. The church was five miles away, so we all crowded into the wagon.

  “Where were you before you came to us?” Mama asked Miss Robbin. Mama likes to know all there is to know about someone.

  “I was born downstate, in Flint. When I was only a baby, my mother and father died of typhoid, and I went to live with my aunt and uncle on their farm. My uncle died six years ago. I lost my aunt last winter. I was teaching in a school near their farm, but after my aunt died, I decided to make a new start someplace else. I could never live in a city, so when I heard about the school up here in northern Michigan and how you had lakes nearby and woods, it seemed a perfect place.”

  “Well, I don’t know that you’ll have much time to go walking in the woods or along the lakes, but it is pretty country,” said Mama. “My husband’s father homesteaded here. We’ve made a living off the farm, but not much more. You won’t find things fancy.” Then, because Mama was softer-hearted than she let on, she said, “I hope you don’t feel too bad about your aunt’s passing.”

  I felt her stretch her arm out, and I guessed she had taken hold of Miss Robbin’s hand, because the teacher said, “I just thank the Lord that I have come to a kind family. If I do or say anything you don’t think right, you mus
t let me know.”

  But this show of feeling was too much for Mama. She took her hand back and made some remark about how warm it was for October. Our schools always started the first week in October and went until January. In the winter there was so much snow on the roads, school closed down. The snow got so high, even the sleighs couldn’t manage. Papa often had to dig a tunnel through the snow to the chicken house and the barn. In April school opened again. It went on until August. After that children helped to harvest the corn and wheat.

  In church I waited for the choir to come down the aisle singing, “Holy, holy, holy.” That always half-thrilled and half-scared me. Since I couldn’t see anything, I was never sure but what God wasn’t right in the church looking at me. Pastor Olsen’s sermons were long, and my back got tired from sitting up straight. Sometimes Pastor Olsen would read a Psalm from the Bible. I would try to say the words over in my head so that I could keep some of them. Especially the Psalm where the mountains skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. Or the one where the precious ointment runs all the way down Aaron’s beard to the hem of his garment.

  After church everyone clustered around us to meet the new teacher. People don’t often come to settle around here, so a new face causes a stir. After they were introduced to Miss Robbin, they said a few words of greeting to Mama and Papa and asked me, “And how is poor Hannah today?” I was always “poor Hannah,” like it was one word.

  When we were back in the wagon, Miss Robbin asked me, “Why do they call you ‘poor Hannah’?”

  “Because I can’t see,” I said.

  “If it comes to that,” Miss Robbin told me, “all of us have things we don’t see. I would guess, Hannah, that you see some things people with perfectly good eyes don’t.”

  “We’ve never pretended to Hannah that she was like other children,” Mama said. “We believe in facing up to facts.”

  “Oh, but surely, Mrs. Thomas, Hannah is like other children.”

  “No, she’s not. I don’t say there’s anything bad about her, mind you. She’s good company for me when the other children are away at school and Mr. Thomas is out in the fields. I couldn’t ask for better. She can make up a story right out of her head that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I suppose you would miss her if she went to school?” Miss Robbin asked. For a moment I got so excited by the thought of being able to go to school, my breath stopped.

  “Well, she’s not going to go,” Mama said. And for the first time I wondered if Mama was keeping me home from school because I wouldn’t do well there or because she just wanted me for herself.

  I got to sit next to Miss Robbin at Sunday dinner. She smelled of something nice. It wasn’t strong like the perfume Mama kept in a little bottle on her dresser and never used. It was more like fresh lemonade. Mama went to a lot of trouble to make a good dinner for Miss Robbin. “I don’t want the teacher telling other families she doesn’t get a decent meal here,” Mama said. We had all my favorite things: roast chicken and mashed potatoes with lots of gravy, and biscuits. For dessert there was apple pie sweetened with maple sugar from our own sugarbush. Mama cut my meat for me. When I heard the milk jug being passed around, I held my mug out so Mama could pour for me.

  “I’ll show you how to pour your own milk, Hannah,” Miss Robbin said.

  “She’ll only make a mess of it,” said Mama.

  But Miss Robbin told me to put my finger inside my mug. “Here is the pitcher, Hannah. Just pour very slowly until you feel the milk with your finger. Then stop right away.”

  Everyone was quiet. I knew they were watching me, and I worried about spilling the milk. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of making Mama angry with me but that I didn’t want her to be angry with Miss Robbin. I poured as carefully as I could, and as soon as I felt the cold milk on my finger, I stopped and held out the pitcher for someone to take.

  “Very good,” said Miss Robbin. Her words sounded a little strange. In our house no one praised you for doing something right. It was just expected of you. Miss Robbin had nice things to say about Mama’s cooking too. “Mrs. Thomas, this chicken is so tender, I can cut it with my fork. And I’ve never tasted lighter biscuits. If I didn’t keep my hand on them, I think they would float right up to the ceiling.”

  Johnny giggled. I could tell by the way Mama insisted that the chicken was stringy and the potatoes lumpy and the biscuits too well done—none of which was true—that she was pleased. The more you said nice things to Mama, the more she fought them off.

  After dinner Miss Robin said, “I ate so much, I can hardly take a breath. I’ll have to walk some of that delicious dinner off. Hannah, will you come with me?”

  I jumped up eagerly. It wasn’t often that someone asked me to walk with them. They usually got tired of holding my hand and telling me to look out for things.

  “I don’t know that it’s healthy to take a walk after a big meal,” Mama said. I began to feel Mama and Miss Robin were each pulling at me from different sides. I wasn’t sure I liked being in the middle.

  “Nonsense,” Papa said. “I go out and plow a field after a big dinner six days a week.” I could have hugged him.

  3

  I knew the sun was shining, because I could feel its warmth like a wool shawl all along my arms and shoulders. There were no leaves under my feet, so I guessed they were still on the oak trees. Soon they would fall. Already I could hear the acorns dropping on our roof. “Why don’t you show me around the farm, Hannah,” Miss Robbin said.

  “I wouldn’t know how to,” I told her. “Nobody ever showed me.” I could get from the house to the privy, and sometimes Verna and I would go for a walk, but I didn’t know where anything was or even what was there. I knew we had horses and cows and pigs, because Papa talked about them and I could hear them, but I didn’t know where they were or exactly what they were like.

  “Well, in that case, Hannah,” Miss Robbin said, “I guess I’ll have to show you. We’ll start with the barn. Run your hand along the fence and count your steps, and you’ll know how to get there yourself next time. This is the barn. Don’t step off the walk or you’ll get your feet dirty. Here’s the first cow. Just feel her, Hannah. Feel how smooth and warm she is. Now run your hand over her face. Feel how long her eyelashes are, and now feel under her belly. This is where the milk comes from. I’m sure your father could teach you how to milk a cow.”

  We went to the stable and I felt our horses, Billy and Maggie. Then we went to the pen where the pigs were. It didn’t smell very good there, but I got to feel some little piglets and even held one in my arms until it wriggled away. We went into the chicken coop, and I felt a rush of air as the chickens flew out of our way. Miss Robbin put my hand on the warm, smooth eggs in the nests. The eggs were traded for sugar and salt at the general store. The farm grew larger and larger in my mind. I felt almost dizzy. “What else is there?” I kept asking. “What else is there?”

  Finally Miss Robbin said, “I think you’re getting too excited, Hannah. We’ll save the rest for another day. Let’s just walk out to your father’s woods and find a nice cool spot.” As we went, Miss Robbin told me what she saw. “The wild asters are blooming, Hannah. Here, feel what they are like. Smell them.”

  The flowers were small in my hand. Each one had tiny petals and a center like a little covered button. Their smell was dry and sharp. “The milkweed pods are open,” Miss Robbin said. She put something in my hand that was as soft as anything I had ever felt. “There are thousands of soft things like that,” she said, “each one with a seed. They’ll float in the air, and wherever they come down there will be more milkweed plants. Here is a nice mossy place where we can sit.” I settled down beside her, feeling spongy, thick moss under my hand. “Your mother tells me you make up stories, Hannah. Would you tell me one?”

  Suddenly, I was shy. It was one thing to tell my mama a story while she was dusting or kneading bread and only half-listening. It was something else to tell Miss Robbin. She would hear
every word I said and might think my story foolish. Still, she had been so nice to me, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

  “Once there was a horse named Billy, just like our horse,” I began. “By day he pulled a plow, but at night whenever the moon shone on him he became Nebuchadnezzar. You could fly through the sky on him. You could go anywhere in the world and see anything you wanted to see. You could fly over Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple, covered with gold and garnished with precious stones. You could see Queen Victoria drinking tea in Buckingham Palace. You could see whales swimming in the ocean. On the way home you could fly over old Mr. Peterson’s house and see his dog that gets around on three legs.…”

  “You know, Hannah,” said Miss Robbin, “books are like your horse, Nebuchadnezzar. When you read them, you can see wonderful things.”

  “But I’ll never be able to read.”

  “Perhaps you will. First, we must ask your parents to let you go to school.”

  4

  Monday came and Johnny and Verna went off to school. Miss Robbin had left early to get the schoolroom swept out and tidied for class. Verna knew I was sorry to be left behind. She promised she would tell me all about the first day of school.

  When she got home, I was waiting for her. “Carl Kleino was throwing spitballs at the little kids,” Verna said. “Miss Robbin said if he was going to act like a baby he would have to sit with the kindergarten and first grade. Carl’s face was red as a beet. And you know what? Miss Robbin told the class that before long there might be a new pupil in school. I think she meant you.”

  After dinner that night while Miss Robbin was helping Mama with the dishes, she said real nicely, “I’ve only got twelve students, Mrs. Thomas. I’d have plenty of time to give Hannah some lessons if you’d let her come to school.”