The Year of Miss Agnes Read online

  And we all thought it was funny because the book had a Little John and we had a Little Pete. And they were both really big, not little.

  When she put the book back on her desk, Miss Agnes took one of the big pieces of paper and made a picture of Robin Hood. She could draw really good, and fast, too. Zip, zip, zip, and there was a man.

  We all laughed when she made him have long underwear, with funny moccasins that had pointed toes, and a short shirt, and a hat like Gilbert Dendoff was wearing when he came home from the army, except Robin Hood’s hat had a feather in it.

  Then she took a box of colored chalk and colored him in. Green clothes because that was like the Merry Men’s uniform. And that was Robin Hood.

  Marie wanted a picture of Maid Marian. Marie was all worried that Robin wouldn’t see his girlfriend again because he was an outlaw, but Miss Agnes wouldn’t tell us any of the story ahead of time. Not even a hint.

  Chapter 7

  Miss Agnes used the big map to teach us geography. She pointed out the continents with a yardstick, and then she showed us how to find Alaska every time.

  We had to look for the old man’s beard and the fat nose. The beard was all islands. The Aleutian Islands. I never knew about those.

  Then she took out a folded-up map, a map of just Alaska. It was as big as two desks, so we pushed Little Pete’s and Roger’s desks together, and there we were.

  There was the Koyukuk River, our river, and the Yukon, down below us, and all the villages, even Dolbi, our old village that no one lived in anymore. And there was Fairbanks and Anchorage. All the little creeks were there, and the long lakes and the sloughs.

  Little Pete and Roger got just excited, showing us where their trapline was, and where they set the blackfish trap, and where their dad shot the bear.

  It was so interesting, somehow, seeing it there on paper. I never saw the big boys so excited about anything in school.

  I asked Miss Agnes where Juneau was, and she showed me, way down at the bottom, in the part she said was called the panhandle because that part looked liked a long handle and the rest of Alaska like the pan. I ran my finger from where we were on the Koyukuk River to Juneau and thought of Daddy making that long trip. It was a long way away to go to die.

  Miss Agnes said she was going to teach us every one of the countries on the big map, so we’d know everything about the world. There were places where it was hot all the time and where they had never seen snow. There were places where it was cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

  I could hardly wait.

  After Miss Agnes folded up the big Alaska map, she gave us all a paper with arithmetic on it. She’d made one for each of us, but they were all different. Charlie-Boy’s and Selina’s just had numbers on them, and places to draw things. To see if they could count, like.

  I was ten, so my paper had some hard adding and some take-aways. Marie’s and Little Pete’s and Roger’s had lots more on it than mine did.

  I always hated this arithmetic, and I always just wrote any old numbers down before, so I wouldn’t have to think about it. And if the teachers wanted to make me do it right, I would cry and carry on. Then they would leave me alone about it.

  Even if writing was fun when Miss Agnes showed us how, there was no way she could make this arithmetic fun.

  After she walked around to see how many of us could do the figuring on our papers, she told us the story of Sam Dubin. That’s the old man who had the mother named Frederika. Sam Dubin came from far away, too, a place above the boot. Yugoslovakia or something. And then he made a store here long ago, up around Allakaket.

  He made a lot of money because there were a lot of mining camps around here in the old days. And those miners would buy anything. But that old Dubin couldn’t read, and he couldn’t do arithmetic, only a little. After a while people began to cheat him.

  And he lost all his money. He had to go back to where he came from, broke. All that money he got cheated out of because he couldn’t do this arithmetic.

  Miss Agnes was going to teach us so no one could cheat us. Like if we went to a trader in Fairbanks and sold our furs, when they added it up, we’d know if they shorted us. Or if we went to a store and gave them money, we’d know if they gave us back the wrong change. Or charged us too much. It could happen if you’re not smart.

  So right there I made up my mind I was going to get good at this number stuff.

  After school Little Pete ran home and got his dad, Big Pete, to come and look at the map of Alaska. I was staying after to help Miss Agnes. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want school to end, even.

  Big Pete was embarrassed to come into the school, I could tell. He didn’t speak English too good, so he just nodded his head up and down when Miss Agnes talked to him.

  But he got all excited over the map, too, and started to talk in Athabascan to Little Pete. One place on the map he said was wrong. Some way the creek turned, like. Seemed like they looked at that map a long time, and then they finally left.

  It was really funny about Big Pete, because he was the littlest man you ever saw. He was just a little bigger than me. Mamma said he was always like that, just a little thing. And then he got married to Lena and they had Little Pete, and that’s when they started to call him Big Pete, but now

  Little Pete was way bigger than his father, way bigger than anyone else in the village. Little Pete was just a giant, and he was still growing, Grandpa said. His head just scraped the top of the school door. And Big Pete was like a wolverine, Grandpa said. He could get madder than anyone, and if he was mad at Little Pete, it would look so funny, him yelling up at Little Pete, and Little Pete just looking down at him, scared like. Little Pete was as gentle and kind as a big moose and here he had this scrappy little father.

  After they left, I helped Miss Agnes wipe the desks off with hot, soapy water. And then Miss Agnes washed the blackboard so it was perfect again. I couldn’t do it like that. I always got it smeary. I watched her long, skinny arms, up and down, up and down. She moved so fast always.

  “Miss Agnes,” I said, “why did you quit teaching school at Allakaket?”

  “Goodness, it was about time I quit. All those children must have got tired of me long ago.” She looked at me to see if that was enough answer, but she could see it wasn’t, so she got serious.

  “It was time for me to go home,” she said. “I haven’t been to England for a very long time. I didn’t mean to stay in this country so long. It was only to be a few years. Then the war started, and I didn’t want to go back to England when the war was on.”

  I knew about that war. Gilbert Dendoff had gone to fight in that war, and Old Man Andreson was always listening to the radio and reading the newspapers and talking to the old men about it. He used to get pretty excited.

  I had forgotten about that war. I was really little when it ended.

  “My mother wrote me every year to come home.”

  I looked at her with interest. To think of Miss Agnes having a mother. What could her mother be like?

  “Does she wear pants?” I asked.

  Miss Agnes laughed. “Goodness, no. And she’d have had a fit if she’d ever seen me in them.”

  “Well, then, how come you didn’t go to England after you left Allakaket? Did Sam really kidnap you?”

  She put one eyebrow up in a funny way she had. “I was almost on my way when he came by the hotel in Fairbanks with Dr. Ryan. The superintendent. Dr. Ryan said he had a hard time getting this school set up, and he was going to lose it if I didn’t take the job. Just for one year, until he could find someone else.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “I’m glad Sam did that.” Then I thought of how long it had been since she’d been home. “Was your mother sad that you’re not coming?”

  Miss Agnes gathered all the pencils on her desk together and put them in her drawer. “My mother died two years ago,” she said.

  “Miss Agnes will only stay here a year,” I told Bertha. Bertha looked sad.


  “I knew it,” she said. “I hope I learn to spell real good before she goes. Then I can write her letters.”

  Chapter 8

  The next day I forgot my lunch and Bokko brought it to me. She knocked on the door and then stepped in, looking frightened. She put the lunch on my desk and started out the door.

  Miss Agnes looked very surprised. She put her hand on Bokko’s shoulder. Bokko looked at the floor.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked Bokko. When Bokko didn’t answer, Miss Agnes looked at me.

  “She’s deaf,” I said. “She can’t hear you, and she can’t talk.”

  “Deaf,” said Miss Agnes, still surprised. “Why hasn’t she been coming to school?”

  The others looked at Miss Agnes as if she were crazy. “She can’t learn nothing, she’s deaf,” said Charlie-Boy.

  “Nonsense,” said Miss Agnes. “Why hasn’t she been sent out to a school for the deaf? Is she related to you?” she asked me.

  “She’s my sister,” I said.

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s twelve, like me,” said Toby Joe.

  “Do you both live with your mother?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Does your mother know about schools for the deaf?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Grandpa made her bring Bokko to this school the first year the school opened. That teacher said she didn’t know how to teach deaf kids and Bokko had to go to a special school. Mamma got mad. She said Bokko don’t need no school. She said it’s bum to go so far away. Bokko’s learning to cook. And she can sew pretty good.”

  Everyone was feeling pretty nervous now because Miss Agnes was not happy about Bokko.

  “She must come to school from now on,” said Miss Agnes. “I’ll speak to your mother.”

  She took Bokko by the hand. “The rest of you finish your lunch. I’m going to have a little talk with Bokko.” She put her arm around Bokko and pointed to her. “You,” she said. Bokko understood that. Then Miss Agnes looked at me. “Bokko. What kind of a name is that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just what Grandma started to call her when she was little. Some kind of Indian name, I think.”

  “Well, does she have another name?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “How do you spell it?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw anyone spell it.”

  “Well, I never,” said Miss Agnes. We never saw her surprised yet, but Bokko sure did it.

  She started to write Bokko’s name on a piece of paper. “You,” she said. She pointed to Bokko and then to her name written on the paper. Then she put the pencil in Bokko’s hand and held her hand so that Bokko wrote her name, too. “You are Bokko.” She did it again and again so that Bokko would know.

  And then she took a piece of that tape and wrote Bokko’s name on the empty desk. Bokko pinched her lips together and looked at all of us. We looked at each other.

  Miss Agnes was going to teach Bokko.

  I don’t know what Miss Agnes said to Mamma, but Bokko did come to school. Not the very next day, because Mamma was kicking up a big fuss about Bokko having no clothes and her socks having holes in them, but the day after.

  Mamma had a big fight with Grandpa about it. She said who was going to help her at home if me and Bokko were in school, and what good would school do Bokko if she couldn’t hear anything anyway, and she wished there was never a school here, and that skinny white woman was too nosy.

  But Grandpa told Mamma to dalek, be quiet, and he told her he always knew there was a way for

  Bokko to learn, and that the skinny white woman was a good woman who would help our Bokko.

  When Mamma stamped out the door, Grandpa lit his old pipe, and then he pointed it at me and said real crabby, “Your mamma had a hard life, you know. It’s hard to have a baby born deaf, and then your daddy got sick and went away and died. A hard-luck person like that could get kind of mean. You got to think about that.”

  Like I was the one who yelled at her, and not him.

  When Sam White flew in with the mail that afternoon, Miss Agnes had a long talk with him at the store, and the next time Sam came in with the mail, there were special books for Bokko. Sign language. A way Bokko could learn to talk with her hands.

  This sign language is really something. Miss Agnes said when people have been doing it a long time, their hands just fly. I’d like to see that.

  And that’s not all deaf people can learn to do. Miss Agnes said there’s a way deaf people can learn to look at your mouth when you’re talking and know what you’re saying that way. She said they would teach that to Bokko in a special school for the deaf if she went.

  We all got tickled with that idea and started talking to each other without making a sound. Only we made our mouths really stick out when we did it. It was so funny, Charlie-Boy fell off his chair laughing. Then Roger started saying bad words in Indian with his mouth, and everyone started giggling.

  Then Miss Agnes told us about a way that blind people can read. We were pretty interested in that because of old Blind Simon. He’s been blind for a long time, because he got whipped across the eyes with a willow branch when he was out trapping, that’s what he told us. I bet he would like to know about this blind reading.

  We all practiced making bumps on our paper by pushing a pin through and then trying to see if we could tell how many bumps there were when we had our eyes closed. That was really hard.

  Roger had scars all over his hands and fingers from that time he burned himself putting gas in the stove to start a fire. So Roger said he couldn’t feel a single bump with his fingers.

  Miss Agnes said he’d better take very good care of his eyes, then. Roger looked pretty serious about that.

  Here we used to think some things were so bad you just had to give in to them, like being deaf or blind, but now we were finding out that there’s always something they’ve thought of to help people like that. It was hard to do, this sign language and blind reading, but it’s better to kick some instead of just sinking.

  While we were doing our morning work, the writing and the arithmetic, Miss Agnes would work with Bokko.

  Together they learned the alphabet. You do this alphabet with just one hand, because if you use two hands, then deaf people can’t talk if they’re holding something.

  Miss Agnes would show Bokko the picture of the letter in the book, and then Bokko would make the sign, and then Miss Agnes would have her write the letter on paper, the little letter and the big one. And Miss Agnes’d say the letter, and Bokko would make her mouth go the way Miss Agnes’s did.

  We all learned the sign language alphabet. We couldn’t help but watch them. Bokko learned it faster than Miss Agnes. And Charlie-Boy learned it faster than anybody.

  “Goodness,” Miss Agnes would say in a disgusted way. “I wish I had a six-year-old brain.”

  Charlie-Boy could do all kinds of things like that, really. He was only six, but when we played ball games, he would be the best thrower and the best catcher.

  He could run faster than anyone and he could climb up to the top of the tree like a squirrel, and do all these somersaults and cartwheels.

  He wasn’t any good at school stuff, really. He wasn’t really good at anything you sat still for. But he was the best at sign language.

  Miss Agnes watched him arid said, “I think sign language is as much an athletic skill as a language.” She meant if you’re good at stuff like Charlie-Boy, you’d do the sign language easier.

  Soon Bokko could ask all of us to tell her our name, and we would do it in sign language, and then we’d ask her her name, and she’d sign it for us.

  Bokko was so happy, knowing everyone’s real name. Bokko had made up names for all of us in the village, but only I knew what they meant. Like Old Man Andreson, he had such a big belly that Bokko would curve her hand above her stomach for his name. And for Mamma, she’d pretend to make a bow of the apron strings Mamma always tied around her f
ront, and I knew who that meant.

  And then Miss Agnes said it was too long to spell out everyone’s name in signs, so we just used initials. I was Fred, so she told Bokko to make the little F sign over her heart to show I was her sister.

  After Mamma wasn’t acting so crabby about Bokko coming to school, Bokko went home one day and tapped Mamma on the arm to make her pay attention. Then she made the sign for Mamma, her thumb under her chin.

  “That means ‘Mamma,’” I said.

  Then Bokko smiled that smile she got from our daddy, and she made the sign for pretty.

  “That means you are pretty, Mamma,” I said.

  Mamma’s face went so stiff for a minute that I felt nervous. And then she ducked her head away and went on with her sewing.

  “You girls act foolish,” she said in a sort of funny voice, not looking at us.

  The next day Mamma wrapped up a loaf of her good bread in a towel and told us to take it to school for Miss Agnes. We were so surprised, we just stared at her for a minute.

  Mamma frowned at us as mean as she could.

  “That teacher don’t look like she eats nothing,” she said. Like it was our fault Miss Agnes was so skinny.

  That’s how we knew Mamma wasn’t mad at Miss Agnes anymore.

  Chapter 9

  In November Little Pete had to go to the trapline with his grandpa and his dad and his uncles. Little Pete’s auntie Bernie usually went to winter camp with them and did all the cooking.

  Little Pete’s mom was dead, that’s why. A long time ago, when Little Pete was just born, they had measles at our old village of Dolbi. Those measles killed a lot of people, mostly the old people and the babies, but Little Pete’s mom died then.

  Big Bernie, we always called his aunt. She was really big, like Little Pete, and could do anything a man could do. Once she even made a cabin by herself. Eight logs high, Grandpa said, and it was a good one, too.

  Usually Little Pete was dying to get out to camp as soon as it snowed. He really liked it out there at their camp because he liked being out in the woods. But he didn’t really want to go this year because school was so interesting with Miss Agnes there. Most of all he didn’t want to miss the end of Robin Hood. He wasn’t good enough at reading to read it for himself, so Miss Agnes read extra long the last day he was in school, and we finished the book.