Savvy

Early the next morning, Momma and Rocket drive to Salina, Kansas, to visit Poppa in the hospital. Rocket gets to go because his electric savvy keeps the old car going. Mibs spends one last day at middle school—when she acquires her savvy, she’ll become too dangerous for other kids and will be homeschooled—and tries to focus on her studies while thinking about her dad. The other students have heard strange stories about the Beaumonts and keep Mibs at a distance, calling her “Missy-pissy” and considering her a freak. Mibs wishes she had a savvy power to shut them up.

After classes, Mibs and Samson return from school to find Miss Rosemary, the preacher’s wife who has decided to keep an eye on the Beaumont kids while their mom is away. As usual, she lectures the children and orders them about. On this day, she cleans the dust off a set of jars perched atop the kitchen cabinetry. When she finishes, she closes her eyes briefly, “as though she [is] praying for the strength to clean up the whole wide world” (20).

Miss Rosemary has brought two of her children. Bobbi, age 16, sports a pierced eyebrow; she’s disappointed that Rocket isn’t at home, and she’s flamboyantly bored about being stuck with the Beaumonts. Will Junior, 14, is a bit straitlaced but always treats Mibs nicely. He prods at Samson’s dead pet turtle. Samson, who insists it’s still alive, retrieves the turtle and leaves the room.

Will offers his condolences about Poppa and says his family is praying for them. He puts a hand on Mibs’s shoulder, as if in preacher mode, and informs her that his mother brought meatloaf. Mibs backs away awkwardly. She appreciates Rosemary’s intentions but thinks, “[T]onight, for the Beaumont family, meat loaf [can’t] do squat” (26).

In the evening, the dining room is tense with the Beaumont kids’ discomfort with Miss Rosemary. They struggle to keep their powers secret, which surge when they feel emotional. Rosemary announces that there’ll be a birthday party for Mibs and that all of them must attend. Bobbi protests, but her mother scolds her, and the girl slumps down.

Miss Rosemary says she’ll call around and gather up a group of attendees for the party. The Beaumonts squirm, knowing that this is a bad idea on a 13th birthday, but they remain silent. When Rocket turned 13, the kids were helping their late Grandma as she caught radio waves and placed them into jars. The jars preserve moments from broadcasts that can be listened to again later, and the children wrote the name of each on the lids. Rocket, carrying the jars, suddenly bent over, with a “blinding explosion of brilliant blue sparks” (33) erupting from him. The jars fell and broke, releasing their radio sounds all at once, and the lights shattered and went dark all the way into town.

Mibs prays not for a big superpower or even her father’s recovery but that no one comes to her party.

Early on her 13th birthday, Mibs wakes cautiously, sensing to see if she has her savvy. Nothing new happens, but as soon as she rises, her roommate, Gypsy, wakes up, something the toddler never does. Downstairs, Mibs hears a thumping sound and traces it to the turtle’s aquarium. The creature is trying to climb the glass wall: It’s alive after all. A creepy feeling washes over Mibs.

Momma calls and tells Mibs she kissed Poppa for her. Mibs asks if he woke up; Momma says he hasn’t yet. Mibs realizes what she can do for Poppa—her savvy must be to wake people and things up, like she woke Gypsy and the turtle—but she doesn’t yet know how she’ll do it for Poppa.

At 2:00 p.m., the group piles into the preacher’s van for the drive to the church in nearby Hebron. Mibs wears a fancy dress bought for her by her father. Poppa is “good and sweet and ha[s] wild black eyebrows that twist[] like dancing beetle legs” (40). He sports a mermaid-and-anchor tattoo on his forearm from his time in the Navy. It doesn’t matter that, as an outsider who married into the family, he has no savvy of his own.

They arrive at the church. It’s filled with kids. Fish takes Mibs aside and warns that it’s not safe for her to be at a crowded place today. She assures him that she knows what her savvy is and that it’s a quiet one. Will escorts Mibs into the church, “straight into the catastrophe that [is her] thirteenth birthday party” (45).

Two middle-school girls who love to taunt Mibs are at the party. They’re dressed up, behave snidely to her, and flirt with Will. Fish arranges a sharp breeze that sends them scurrying away. Mibs feels jealous over their attention to Will. They walk past a hastily arranged table of gifts, and Will hands one to her. He says it’s a pen set. They visit the kitchen, where Bobbi and two friends make punch and tease each other about their hopes that Rocket will attend the party. Mibs feels intimidated by them.

She hears a “singsong voice” in her head and stumbles into Will, who knocks a tray of sandwiches to the floor. Cursing, Bobbi bends down to pick them up, and Mibs sees a tattoo of an angel with a devil’s tail on Bobbi's back beneath her short blouse. The tattoo turns to Mibs and says of Bobbi, “She’s really very lonely, you know” (53). Mibs promptly faints.

Mibs awakens in the pastor’s office. He holds a pink Bible and pounds on it as he scolds the delivery man about the book’s color. Across the room, Fish grabs for the phone Miss Rosemary wants to use to dial a doctor for Mibs; Fish insists that Mibs merely needs to go home. Miss Rosemary shouts at her husband for help, but he ignores her.

Mibs hears voices arguing. They seem to be inside her head. They’re two women, Rhonda and Carlene, who argue about the delivery man’s career handing out Bibles when he should be selling coffee. Mibs slips out of the room; as she does so, Rhonda and Carlene’s voices fade. Outside, Will asks if she’s okay. Mibs answers, “You have to help me get out of here” (61).