Borrowed Children Page 10

  I’ve never been in Aunt Laura’s kitchen, but I don’t hesitate. Dishes can pile up pretty high with six children, and I’ve helped out at the Skidmores’, too. Here there’s just Aunt Laura and Uncle Cress. I push through the swinging door.

  There’s not a countertop to be seen—it’s all dishes. Not cleared and stacked; piled any which way, with food still on them. Before I get close enough to see, I hear the scurry of roaches. I want to turn and run.

  Instead, I find the sink and lift its load of dishes to the floor. I draw water to heat on the stove.

  Then I see the empty wood box and panic. In this rain I’ll

  never find dry wood. Could they have a water heater like Omie s? I turn on the spigot to see. Sure enough, the water begins steaming. Hot water gives me hope.

  I look at each plate hard, like it could keep me from thinking of Aunt Laura. I scour the glasses. There’s no room in here for clean dishes, so I find a tablecloth and spread it on the dining room floor. When I finish there’s enough stuff for a congregational dinner. I scrub the counters and wash the floor. Three times. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

  Shelf paper is all I can find for a note. But what can I say?

  Aunt Laura,

  Gone home. Hope you feel better. Do not worry.

  Mandy

  I don’t put Love and I don’t put Amanda. I can’t.

  24

  At the streetcar stop I have to wait in the rain. What am I going to say to Omie? Shell want to hear about the visit and it’s not for me to tell.

  But when I get there Opie’s describing a mill accident. By the time he gets through, supper is ready. Maybe I’ll get by—

  “And how did you find Miss Laura?” he asks, first thing.

  “Easy. She’s right where you said she’d be.”

  “And did she feed you ambrosia?”

  I think it’s Aunt Laura he’s poking fun at, but I’m not sure.

  “Chicken.”

  “The bird of the gods.”

  “Samuel—”

  Opie lowers his head.

  “Uncle Cress brought in food,” I offer.

  “Money’s a good cook.” He goes back to his soup.

  We eat in silence except for silverware clinking and the creak of Opie’s chair. Then Omie gets up to pour coffee.

  “We’re going to miss you, Mandy,” she says, coming around behind me. “I can’t believe the time has gone so fast.”

  “I’ll miss you, too. And Memphis and this house—” I look at the dining room, its pale blue walls and high rail holding Omie’s plate collection. There are flowers, fruit, birds—even a naked lady with cherubs dancing around her.

  “But I promised your mother I wouldn’t keep you. And you must be getting homesick.”

  She kisses the top of my head, then goes around to Opie.

  “Who would have thought we’d be borrowing children?” he asks, as she fills his cup.

  “They’re every one borrowed,” she tells him.

  I can’t help but think of the last table I sat at. The crowd of boxes, Aunt Lauras wild laugh. I wonder how she imagined her life those years when she ate at this table. And Mama, too. What was she dreaming? Sawmill gravy and a rented house full of kids?

  “Amanda,” Omie’s voice is gentle. “You must be wool-gathering.”

  She’s holding out a sauce dish, something to put on pound

  cake.

  Embarrassed I ask, “When you make pound cake do you cream the sugar and butter with your hand?”

  That’s what Mama does. Takes a big bowl in the bedroom, rocks the cradle with her foot. Even with Willie.

  “Of course she does,” Opie answers. “And sings ‘Love Lifted Me’ for as long as it takes.”

  “I do not. Sometimes I sing ‘Softly and Tenderly.’”

  “Only hymns that have to do with cakes.”

  They tease each other like Mama and Daddy. I didn’t know that was a blessing.

  After dinner Omie comes up to help me pack. “I owe you an apology, Mandy,” she says. “Whatever happened today was partly my fault.”

  I feel like someone took a stitch in the middle of me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I expect there was a scene at Lauras—”

  “Oh, no. Everything was—”

  “You can’t protect me, honey. I’ve seen my share.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Be that as it may, you didn’t have to see it. I’m afraid I put you in harm’s way, used you like your mother did the ring.”

  “What ring?”

  “And I should have known better. It’s just that I don’t see any way to help her. She won’t come near me. And I thought maybe you, being Rena’s daughter—maybe she’d reach out to you and that would help her find herself. I know it’s foolish—” Omie sits on the bed, puts her head in her hands. Her voice catches. “I don’t know what will become of her.”

  Does this mean Mama didn’t suggest my coming—it was all Omie’s idea? Not for me but for Aunt Laura?

  “She’s been awfully good to me,” I say.

  “She is good,” Omie insists. “Why, when Laura was a child, she had the clearest, deepest eyes you ever saw. And she’d look for hours at a picture or a flower or straight into your face. Whatever she had, she’d give you; whatever she knew, she’d tell you. She sang if she was happy, she wailed if she was hurt, she laughed like laughing was all she had to do in this world.”

  “She still has that laugh.”

  “Yes, but it has another sound entirely. Oh, you can’t expect a child to stay a child, ‘trailing clouds of glory.’ But Lauras not just grown, she’s changed completely. And I held you out to her, hoping she’d turn around—”

  “What about the ring?”

  “It worked for your mother. But gold and emerald aren’t the same as flesh and blood.”

  Omie stops right where she should go on.

  “But what happened?” I think back to that summer night, Mama big with Willie, me angry about secondhand clothes. “I know Mama ordered a ring but she told me it was for her, that she needed something pretty.”

  “No doubt, but the little emerald was for your father, for the mill. She told Ostriker’s she wanted it on approval, then used it to secure a loan Jim had applied for. He didn t know why the bank finally came through, but it meant he could buy trees.”

  “Didn’t she have to pay for the ring?”

  “I think she made one or two payments—you know your mother, she didn’t tell me about it at the time—but then she sent the ring back. She’d gotten enough money to prime the pump, so to speak, and business was flowing. Of course your Daddy didn’t know.”

  I remember how she made me promise not to tell him. And I thought she was selfish! Tears sting my eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Mandy.”

  “It’s not that—”

  “I should have known better. You remind me of her, too.”

  “Mama?”

  “No, Laura.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  I see Aunt Laura at her dressing table, perfect as a flower. “I used to look just like you,” she said. And we talked, with her clothes heaped around us and Beale Street ahead. Was that just the day before yesterday?

  “I didn’t believe her,” I tell Omie.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  She pushes the suitcase aside and hugs me.

  “I don’t want you to think I asked you to visit just for Laura’s sake. I wanted to see you.”

  “I know.”

  But it does seem like I came for a crowd of people: Omie and Laura, Mama and Willie and me. I’m glad I did, though. Mr. Aden says travel always teaches. That’s not the half of it.

  25

  It’s the path I always take when I’ve been up to my thinking rock. It follows the wet-weather spring down behind the house. In the dream its slippery as April and I grab at saplings to keep my balance.

  For some cause I’m in a
big rush and when I run up on the porch and find the front door locked, I don’t even stop to wonder, just tear around to the back. They can’t have all gone off. Maybe there’s a bedroom window open.

  I squeeze between the snowball bush and the house but it’s no use. The window is shut tight. And I can see the house isn’t empty. There’s a heap of quilts on the bed and Mama under them. There’s the cradle within arm’s reach. And between the bed and the window, all across the bare floor, is a dark pool.

  “Mama!”

  I scramble from behind the branches right into a little rose bush. Get free from that, scoop up a rock, and climb the porch rail. There’s no latch. I have to break the window in the door. I have to make it big enough to get through.

  Glass scrapes my wrists.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  I smash the glass again and again.

  Hands are on my face, smoothing back my hair.

  “There, Mandy.”

  Someone’s sitting me up, holding me close. I push at the arms.

  “I have to get through. There’s blood.”

  “It’s all right—”

  “No, it’s Mama. There’s blood—”

  “It’s only a dream, Amanda.”

  Omie’s voice gathers me back. “I’m right here. It was just a dream.”

  “But it wasn’t a dream! It really happened—”

  “I know it seems that way—”

  “It did happen, only not to me. It was Mrs. Skidmore who found her and broke the window—”

  “Mandy, what are you talking about?”

  I’m wide awake now.

  “Mama, when Willie was born. Daddy and Doc Bailey left, and if Mrs. Skidmore hadn’t come and seen the blood—”

  “Slow down. What blood?”

  “All over the bedroom floor. She saw it through the window, thought it was water leaking from the icebox, but I knew in the dream and I broke the doorglass, just like she did, but I couldn’t get through.”

  I feel frantic again. There’s a big hurt in my throat; it’s hard to breathe.

  “There, there, honey. It’s all over now.”

  “But if Mrs. Skidmore hadn’t found Mama and sent her husband for help, Mama would have died, locked up in that house. And maybe Willie, too. And all I thought about was having to quit school—”

  “What?”

  “How it was unfair, me having to stay home and take care of them.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “I mean I didn’t know you stayed home.”

  “You didn’t? I thought that’s why Mama asked if I could visit. I’ve not had a day of school since Willie came.”

  “Well, this is the first I’ve heard about that or the hemorrhage. Jim just wrote that Rena was weak, needed all of you to help with chores.” Omie’s voice thickens. “That child would die of thirst before she’d ask for a drink of water.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I would have come, child. I could have taken care of her and that baby, too. Lord knows, I’ve bottomed enough babies. But Rena wouldn’t ask, or Jim Perritt. Proud as poplars, the two of them.”

  She draws herself up, pulls her flowered robe around her.

  “So you’ve looked after a baby and nursed an invalid and run a household, and Opie and I have been treating you like a child. We must have tried your patience, Mandy.”

  “No, it’s fun to be a child again.”

  We both laugh.

  “Would you like some hot milk? I don’t think I can lie right down after such a tale as this.”

  I follow Omie into the night-lit hall and down the staircase. It’s much longer in the dark. On the landing the full moon peers through the window like a face.

  “The first thing I remember about you,” I whisper to Omie, “is when you held me up to that window. ‘It’s an oculus window,’ you told me, ‘like your eye.’ I thought you meant that’s where the house looked out.”

  Omie smiles as she turns on the kitchen light. We both blink.

  “That sounds like one of Laura’s notions.”

  “Or Helen’s.”

  “It just goes to show we’re all related.”

  “I guess so.”

  I think about that while she heats the milk. Mama and Omie, Aunt Laura and Helen and me. Like a crazy quilt stitched and bound together, not the same pattern, not even the same cloth. Old tie silk, velvet, scraps of wool—

  “Here you go.”

  Omie sets two night-blue mugs on the table.

  “I added a little honey.”

  “It smells good.”

  The bubbles make me think of fresh milk, how it froths at the rim of the pail. And how this time tomorrow night I’ll be home.

  26

  The train leaves at seven-thirty, so we re up before light. My talk with Omie seems like a dream. With the other dream inside it.

  “Morning, Miss Perritt,” Opie says when I come into the kitchen.

  “Is it?” I ask, bleary-eyed.

  “Your grandmother says you had to sit up half the night and talk. Womenfolks! Here, let me get you some coffee.”

  He pours me a cup, takes a look at the toast in the stove.

  “‘Don’t let it burn,’ your grandmother says, as if I had a handle on fire.”

  “I’ll watch it.”

  The pieces come out, golden and yellow.

  “I’m going home today, Opie.”

  “Really? I thought we were putting a package on that train.”

  “I’m going to see Mama and Willie—”

  “Fetch some of Omie’s preserves, please ma am.”

  “And Daddy and Helen—”

  “They’re in the pantry. Blackberry. In the jam jar.”

  “I’m really going to see them, Opie.”

  “You’d better eat up then. You won’t see them if we’re still here when it’s light.”

  “That’s what I know,” Omie says, as she comes in wearing her robe. “I’m awfully slow this morning. If you don’t mind, Mandy, I’ll let Opie take you to the station. I’m getting too old to say good-bye.”

  “Too old for talking till the sky pales,” he teases.

  “You won’t mind?”

  “No, Omie. I’m sorry I kept you up.”

  “That’s all right, child. You can’t plan dreams.” She sets out plates. We eat quickly and Opie gets my coat.

  “Button that up,” he says. “It’s cold as Christmas this morn-

  “You write me now, Mandy,” Omie orders. “And tell Rena to let me know how she is. Tell her what I told you.” She straightens my collar. “And tell Jim not to make himself such a stranger. Surely he can come out of the woods long enough to say hello.”

  “We’ve got to go, Anna.”

  “And kiss that baby for me, and hug everybody who’ll stand still—”

  “Anna—”

  “And here’s some ribbon candy. For the trip.”

  “Thank you, Omie. Thank you for everything.”

  She hugs me close. Opie’s already headed for the car.

  He leans forward to hurry us through the traffic. “Never saw a woman who could leave.” He wipes our breath off the windshield.

  “Aunt Laura can. She just disappears.” No comment.

  “Opie, would you tell her good-bye for me?”

  “If she ever darkens my door.”

  It wouldn’t have to be darkening, I want to say, remembering curtains and beads in the doorways of her house.

  We’re coming up on Union Station now. Opie cranes his neck, hunting a place to park.

  “And Opie—”

  “What, Traveler?”

  “Try to get to the ocean.”

  For a minute he looks confused, and then it comes back. “I’ll try. But first I’ve got to get you on this train.”

  While Opie checks the schedule board in the lobby, I listen: heels tap marble, clothes rustle, and conversations swoop by like birds. Then, a voice fr
om the wall: “Passenger service now boarding on track nine for Chattanooga, Knoxville, and points north. All aboard, please.”

  From behind a big woman in a yellow coat, Opie appears.

  “That’s your train, Mandy. We’re just under the wire.”

  He takes my hand and we snake through the crowd and down the steps to the concourse. Opie hails a porter.

  “Have a safe trip and don’t stay away so long.”

  “I’ll try not to. Thank you for having me.”

  People push between us. I can’t tell if he says something else or if he’s just nodding.

  27

  “Good-bye, Opie!” No one can hear me. “Goodbye, Memphis.

  Good-bye!”

  Good-bye is always hello to something else. Good-bye/hello, good-bye/hello, like the sound of a rocking chair. The train pulls out and Memphis slips away: Omie, Opie, Aunt Laura, the man who played the bird horn.

  Across the aisle an old woman is saying the rosary. I know what it is because Janey Mobeltini brought hers to school. Mr. Aden asked her to explain it.

  “Each bead is a prayer,” she told us. “We say one Our Father and ten Hail Marys—”

  “But to whom are you praying?”

  “The Queen of Heaven.”

  “Why not to God?”

  “He’s busy.”

  Mr. Aden said you’re supposed to know the prayers so well that they keep the top of your mind busy, and free the rest to “contemplate the Mysteries: Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious.” Janey said she didn’t know about that.

  I wonder what Mysteries the old woman is thinking of, with her red headscarf on and her hanky balled up in her hand. I’ve got a load of Mysteries. I look at my ticket and remember how I explained round trip to Helen. “You come back the same way you went.” I was so grown-up. I knew all about it.

  “But that’s not round, that’s straight,” Helen said.

  “It’s just a way of talking,” I told her.

  Its not. It’s a Mystery. You don’t ever come back the same. The tracks are spiked down and the train stays on the track, but you come back from a different direction entirely. It makes me sleepy just to think about it.

  When I wake up the news butch is coming through. “Papers, candy, souvenirs,” he calls. “Sandwiches, soda pop!”

  Now is my chance to get presents. I wait while the man in front buys cigarettes.