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Disappearing Acts

Herculeah Jones

Disappearing Acts by Betsy Byars, 1998.

Herculeah’s friend, Meat, decides to take a comedy class at a local comedy club called Funny Bonz.  While he’s at the club for his class, he finds a dead body in the men’s restroom.  He quickly runs to get help, but when the club’s owner (who is also the teacher of the class), Mike Howard, goes to check, the body is gone.  It happens to be April 1st, so everyone assumes that it was just an April Fool’s Day prank.  However, Meat is sure that what he saw was a real dead body.

He tells Herculeah what happened, and he also remembers that he has proof of what he saw: a blue wallet that he picked from the floor near the body.  The ID in the wallet says is for a woman named Marcie Mullet.  Meat never got a clear look at the identity of the body because it was lying face down, but he remembers that it had a ponytail, so they assume that it was Marcie.  Marcie was supposed to be a student in the class, too, but she never showed up.  Meat and Herculeah assume that the body must have been Marcie.

However, Herculeah is somewhat preoccupied by something else.  She’s been getting strange vibes from a camera that she bought at a secondhand shop.  The camera was cheap, only a dollar, and there’s still a partially-exposed roll of film inside.  The camera was a great deal, but Herculeah’s hair is frizzling, and she senses danger approaching.

When she develops the film left in the camera, she realizes that the camera had once belonged to Meat’s mother, and the pictures show Meat’s father.  Meat has very little memory of his father because his parents separated when he was very young, and his mother has refused to talk about him for years.  Herculeah knows that Meat badly wants more information about his father, but she hesitates to show him the pictures because she doesn’t think that he’ll like what he sees.  He’s imagined that his father could have all kinds of cool professions, and she doesn’t know how he’ll react to his real one.

Self-perception is also very important to the solution to the murder.  Meat is the first to learn the killer’s true identity and is able to get the killer to confess and confide in him.  The killer was tired of the victim’s mean-spirited jokes, all of which were about the killer, who is fat.  The murder was unintended; the person just snapped when the victim gloated about using the mean-spirited comedy routine to become famous.  Meat understands how the killer feels because he hasn’t had a very good perception of himself and knows what it’s like to be fat.  There is a series of fat jokes in this part of the book, the meanest of which (the killer quoting the victim) are about a fat woman’s bra size.

When his father’s true identity is revealed, Meat is actually glad, which surprises Herculeah.  Meat’s father is very different from what he had imagined, but oddly, finding out that his father is a professional wrestler gives Meat something new to aim for.  Meat is sometimes self-conscious of his large size, but seeing his father makes him realize that he can change his fat to muscle and be really impressive.  The two of them meet, and Meat’s father apologizes for leaving so suddenly when Meat was young.  He explains that, much like his own father, he has trouble living anywhere for very long.  His own father had similarly abandoned his family when he was young.  Both of them just reached a point when they had an irresistible urge to pick up and move on.  However, Meat’s father makes it clear that he really does love him and is proud of him and says that he will continue to see him.  It’s a strange explanation, but Meat accepts it and forgives his father.

This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House

The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House by Mary Chase, 1968.

Nine-year-old Maureen Swanson has a bad reputation in her neighborhood, mostly deserved.  The other kids don’t like her because she tells lies and picks fights with them.  Maureen is fascinated by an old, abandoned house in her neighborhood where the wealthy Messerman family used to live.  Sometimes she likes to pretend that she lives there herself. 

One day, while trying to avoid punishment for her latest antics, she finds her way inside the Messerman estate.  There, she meets a little man who turns out to be a leprechaun.  He tells her that she should leave immediately and not come back, but instead, she ends up exploring inside the house.  To her amazement, she finds paintings of the seven Messerman sisters, who disappeared from the house long ago, and the ladies in the paintings move when she turns her back on them.

When Maureen tries to tell others about it, no one believes it.  When she leaves the house, Maureen takes with her a strange bracelet that she finds on the ground, the same one that she had seen on one of the ladies in the paintings, a gold chain with pigeon feathers.  Later that evening, the same lady from the painting shows up at Maureen’s house, asking for her bracelet back.  The rumors Maureen has heard about the Messerman house being haunted are more true than she knows, and the wicked Messerman girls will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Years ago, the leprechaun came to the Messerman house along with a maid who was from Ireland.  Mrs. Messerman was a very kind woman, and Nora, the maid, was his friend, so he decided to stay.  However, the Messerman girls were always selfish and wicked.  One day, the eldest of the girls stole the leprechaun’s magic bag of tricks and turned herself and her sisters into birds so that they could always go where they wanted and do what they wanted without anyone stopping them.  Mr. and Mrs. Messerman were broken-hearted when their girls disappeared.  Years later, after their parents were dead, they finally returned.  They were not sad at all, but continued their selfish and wicked ways.  Because of the magic, they never age and can turn into birds whenever they like. 

Maureen is afraid to admit that she has the bracelet because she knows that her parents will punish her for trespassing on the Messerman property.  The next day, the women trick her into entering the estate again, only this time, Maureen enters the estate as it was in the past, when the girls were young.  Mr. and Mrs. Messerman are very kind to Maureen and offer to look after her until they can find where she lives.  Mrs. Messerman seems to know that her daughters are mean but doesn’t seem to know what to do about it.  She asks Maureen to help them if she ever has the chance.  It’s a touching moment for Maureen, who suddenly realizes that no one has ever asked her for help before.

Maureen, frightened by the girls, finally gives back the bracelet, and they all fly off again, leaving her alone in the past. How is Maureen going to get home?

This book also goes by the title The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

This is partly a story about personal transformation. Maureen has definitely been the resident mean girl, but she gains a new perspective on her own life and behavior when confronted with the frightening wickedness of the Messerman girls.

The leprechaun tells Maureen that the only way to get out of the pretend past created by the Messerman girls is to think about what is going on in the real world.  When Maureen thinks of her mother, she hears her mother calling her and returns to her own time.  The leprechaun catches the birds in a net and almost drowns them in a pond, but Maureen stops him, telling him that Mrs. Messerman had asked her to help them.  The leprechaun releases the birds and tells Maureen that they will continue to be, literally, flighty birdbrains, but that their mother’s love will always be with them.  Maureen, having seen how cold and cruel the sisters were, never appreciating their mother’s love, learns to appreciate her own family more and to behave better. At the end of the story, she acknowledges that she heard her mother calling her and that call, the product of her own mother’s love and concern for her, was what helped her to return home. Maureen ends up better off than the wicked and flighty Messermans because she not only has a home where people care for her but she has learned to appreciate that home and those people and will now treat them better.

One of the things that I appreciated most about this book was the unusual way the leprechaun was used in the story. The story starts out seeming like it will be about ghosts in a haunted house, but that’s not quite what’s happening. Also, when leprechauns appear in stories, they usually have a pot of gold or play tricks on people, but the leprechaun’s role in this story isn’t quite the same.