Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,11
was supposed to do anything, but it didn’t seem like it. As far as I could tell, I was just supposed to be an observer.
A part of me was relieved—how could I have performed in a play when I hadn’t learned the script?—but a part of me felt PO’d. Why didn’t I, the middle March, have a part in the play? Did I have stage fright? Was I a bad actress?
Meg and Jo put on their costumes on a cot bed they referred to as “the dress circle,” while Beth and Amy helped. Then, as the audience—in other words, Marmee and Hannah and me—took their seats, a blue-and-yellow chintz curtain was raised.
The play, which was mostly confusing, was also mostly Jo. She played all the male parts, wearing leather boots and an old sword and a slashed doublet that she obviously loved. Meg played the female—no big stretch.
I was relieved when it was over, because I hadn’t been able to figure out what was going on in the play. Besides, it was finally time to eat again.
Pink and white ice cream, cake and fruit, French bonbons, and a bouquet of flowers for each of us. Whoa! It was way better munchies than I’d been expecting. Marmee said that Mr. Laurence—the grandfather of the Laurence boy, whom Meg swore we didn’t know—sent it. Marmee said he had sent it because he heard about us giving our own breakfast away.
Ah, the rewards of virtue! I thought happily, reaching for another bonbon and dropping it on top of a spoonful of pink ice cream before popping it all into my mouth. The pink ice cream was so good.
I had a sudden inspiration.
“Hey, do we still have any of that thick milk from this morning?” I asked.
“Of course, why?” Marmee said.
“Can I have a glass?” I asked.
Hannah brought me one—I had to admit, the servant thing was easy to get used to—and I scooped up the rest of the ice cream, dumped it into the glass of milk, and swirled the two things together. I was going to ask for a straw but stopped myself. Did the 1860s even have plastic yet? Shrugging, I sipped from the glass. Oh, yum.
“What are you doing, Emily?” Jo demanded.
“Hmm?” I said, wiping with the back of my hand at the milk mustache I could feel on my upper lip.
“That thing,” Jo said, pointing at my glass.
“Oh,” I said. “Here. Try it.”
Jo took a cautious sip and then a smile broke across her face. Before I knew it, she passed the glass to Meg, who had the same reaction, and so on through the sisters and finally to Marmee. Then they all asked Hannah for glasses of milk, adding their own pink ice cream and swirling.
Hey! It struck me. Had I just invented milk shakes?
“Well, I’ve spoken to him before,” Jo said importantly. “The Laurence boy, I mean.”
Then, as the others listened closely, she told us how she talked to him once over the fence about cricket, whatever that was, until Meg came along and spoiled the fun. Jo added that he seemed shy and in need of a good time. Ha! I could tell Jo thought she was just the person to provide it.
With the exception of the spectral figure of Papa in his letters and perhaps a few of the Hummel children, it had just been women, women, women since I’d arrived. But now things were changing. A boy was being introduced into the story!
There’s always trouble when a boy enters the picture—hello! Jackson, anybody?—and I did try to warn the others.
But, just like with Beth and the Hummel baby, no one would listen to me.
Beth and the baby …
Suddenly it hit me. In the original Little Women, Beth and that baby was really the beginning of the end for Beth, even though the reader had no clue at the time. And then it further hit me: Mr. Ochocinco’s assignment, back in my real world. We were supposed to pick one thing we’d change about a favorite book to make it perfect. I’d been going back and forth about changing what happens to Beth or fixing things between Jo and Amy and the boy next door to make the book more romantically satisfying. But now … now that I knew Beth, the choice was obvious. I’d save Beth’s life. To heck with who wound up with the boy.
So maybe that was my purpose in being here? The thing that would get me home again?