Borrowed Children Read online

  “Let’s not get into that.”

  Aunt Laura looks hard at Omie. Then she takes from her purse a gold box and takes from the box a cigarette, and, looking like she owns the world, lights it in the Peabody Hotel. Omie s eyes blaze. But she doesn’t speak. She reckons the bill and signals our waiter.

  On the way out I ask Omie if the duck pond is for wishes.

  “If you can wish without throwing money,” she says. “What comes off the coins can poison the ducks. Trouble is, most people think wishing is throwing money, throwing it by the handfuls into wild and useless places. But you can wish by just touching the water. It’s the water that God made, not the coins.”

  I go over to do that, and while my back is to them Aunt Laura slips away.

  Coming home on the streetcar I ask Omie about Uncle Cress. What had Aunt Laura meant about her not liking him?

  “That’s just grown-up talk, Mandy. Don’t bother your head about it.”

  “Does that mean I won’t get to go and see them?”

  “No, not at all. And Mandy, try not to listen so hard.”

  I’ve thought about that and I must say, for once, I think Omie is wrong. If I don’t listen hard and bother my head, how am I ever going to know anything? She thinks I’m a child when I’ve already been a mother. I’m overdue for learning. I’ve got to watch and listen and read and ask and bother. That’s how the great scientists work. Mr. Aden told us at school.

  “They take nothing for granted. No mere notion of the earth contents them. Nor of the sea, the sky, the landscape of their own street. They mean to see it in a new way, to find its secrets.”

  That’s me exactly. And I can’t do that without bothering my head.

  17

  Christmas Eve. In Goose Rock Mama will put holly on the mantel. Daddy will set up the tree. Before bed, they’ll pop corn on the fire and light the candles. With Mama playing the piano, everyone will sing:

  0 little town of Bethlehem

  How still we see thee lie.

  Mama has a hymnal, so they don’t miss a verse. Anna and Helen hum when they run out of words.

  0 morning stars together

  Proclaim His holy birth.

  After that, Daddy always says, “I used to know some of those Morningstars. Had a farm over in Knott County. Couldn’t get to the end of a furrow but they’d proclaim.”

  “Jim,” Mama says, and that stops him. It’s a dance they do.

  But here it’s different. The tree has been up two days. The house is still. Omie gives me a rope of pine to wind down the stair rail. We chop onions and celery.

  After supper things move faster. We have to clean up the kitchen and get ready for church. It doesn’t start till eleven o’clock. I’ve never gone to a service that late. Omie explains, “We always have midnight service come Christmas and Easter. Most babies come at night, you know.”

  “But what’s Easter got to do with babies?”

  “Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, but Easter is ours. Light out of darkness, life everlasting. Who wouldn’t wait up for that?”

  A lot of people. I try to imagine getting us all to Manchester over muddy spring roads at night. But this is Memphis: brick streets, motor cars. And only the three of us.

  When I start upstairs to change, Omie calls, “Look in your closet for a present.”

  I know better than to bound up the stairs like I’m doing. But I can’t wait! I slow down just a little bit opening the closet door.

  There’s a new dress hanging between my old ones—low waisted, Christmas green. It’s velvet and smells elegant. It even looks good when I put it on! In a dress this shape, it’s okay to be skinny, and the color makes me look softer. I pull my hair back. When it gets longer … but I have to go show Omie.

  “That’s just right,” she says, after I turn around for her in the middle of the hall. “Laura said that style would suit you.”

  “Aunt Laura picked it?”

  “No, but she told me what to get.”

  “Does she choose your clothes?”

  “Heavens, no. She thinks I dress like a footstool.”

  “Well, I don’t. And I love this, whoever picked it. Thank you so much.” I give Omie a hug.

  “Then go change your shoes and we’ll be off. Opie’s warming up the car.”

  Church at home is wooden and Presbyterian; the windows are swirls of yellow and green, cheaper than stained glass. Omie and Opie go to the Episcopal Church. It’s gray stone with color leaded in the windows. Red, yellow, and blue stream out into the dark. People are hushed as they move along the walk and up the steps.

  The small church wavers in candlelight. We squeeze into a middle pew, but the people after us have to stand in the back. Everyone is singing “Hark, the Herald” and then “We Three Kings.” Where we have a communion table, the Episcopals have an altar, all gold, with a wooden crucifix hanging above it. Poor naked Jesus! He makes me nervous, nailed up there like a hide to somebody’s barn.

  But in front of the altar there’s a manger scene. “Creche,” Omie calls it. Wise men and beasts, shepherds and camels, and the family. One angel. It makes me think of Anna and Helen. I wonder if their ornaments are on our tree.

  The best things about the church are the music and the windows. And they fit together. Organ music is rich and excited, like darkness broken into light. Each windowsill has pine boughs and candles. We keep singing: “The First Noel,” “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Opie explains that we sing right up to midnight, when Jesus is born. Then he yawns. I don’t suppose anybody sang for Mary birthing Jesus. Nobody sang for Mama and Willie.

  Then the organ begins “Brightest and Best”:

  Brightest and best

  Of the sons of the morning

  It’s a mountain tune, steep and mournful. How did they get it here?

  Dawn on our darkness

  And lend us thine aid.

  I can hear Daddy’s voice, feel it tremble the hymnal as we go into the low part:

  Star of the East

  The horizon adorning

  Last year Helen couldn’t say “horizon adorning,” and Ben’s voice turned high when he tried to send it low.

  Guide where our Infant

  Redeemer is laid.

  Mama used to look at Helen as she sang that. This year it will be Willie. I’m not there to see it and I’m crying. Omie bends down.

  “If we were good enough for our babies,” she whispers, “we could do our own redeeming.”

  She reaches behind me to Opie to prod him awake.

  18

  When I wake up, daylight is standing in my room. I’ve never slept till light on Christmas and my heart lurches, afraid I’ve missed the whole day. At home Helen will be back to sleep now, exhausted by candy canes and a doll. Mama will have the turkey baking. And what about Willie?

  I find Omie and Opie in the kitchen. He’s dusting two picnic hampers and she’s working a golden turkey leg like a pump handle.

  “I don’t want to rush it, but I think it’s done. What do you think?”

  “Just tell me when to eat,” Opie replies.

  “Christmas gift,” I tell them. The first one to make this greeting is supposed to have luck the whole year.

  “Oh, Mandy, you’re up. Now we’ll have to have presents, and there’s so much to do. …”

  “Easy, Miss Anna,” Opie tells her. “None of us will starve.”

  “But Laura and Cress will be there at two o’clock.”

  “Be where?”

  “This year I really didn’t think it would be fair.”

  “What would be fair?”

  “The weather. So I hadn’t prepared—”

  “Opie, what is she talking about?”

  “Surely Rena’s told you. Christmas dinner outside: its an all-fired Ezelle tradition. Doesn’t have to be warm, mind you, just sunlight somewhere south of a snowbank.”

  “You know you love every minute of it.”

  “Yes, indeed. Broccoli s hearty.
A little frost never hurt it.

  And snowflake potatoes …”

  He holds his big hands palms up, as if to ask “Why me?”

  “You mean we’re going to eat Christmas dinner outside?”

  “Yes,” Omie says, leaning with her rolling pin into the roll dough. “In the shelterhouse at Overton Park. Weather permitting, we always do. And your grandfather always behaves like this.”

  “What can I do?” I ask.

  “Help yourself to some ham and beaten biscuit. Opie, pour the child some coffee.”

  Perched on a kitchen stool, I eat, watching Omie do four things while Opie does one.

  “I can take the gravy in one jar, the cranberry sauce in another. The oyster dressing can go in its baking dish… Mandy, come peel potatoes … the rolls in their pan wrapped in towels. You will build a fire, won’t you?”

  “Me?”

  “No, no, child. Mr. Culton, you will build a fire at the park?”

  Opie looks up from polishing each strand of the honeysuckle basket.

  “A fire? Only four days past the winter solstice?”

  “To keep the food warm.”

  “Yes, ma; am."

  Have they forgotten its Christmas?

  But once I’ve got the potatoes boiling, Omie says its time to go look at the tree. I have two presents; I open the one from

  Omie and Opie first. Its in a silver box, tied with blue ribbon. There’s cotton inside, and inside the cotton, a gold locket big as a half dollar! It has flowers engraved on one side and my initials on the back:

  A. V. P.

  When I open it, Omie and Opie look back at me, tiny faces snipped from a photograph.

  “We want you to keep us close to your heart,” Omie says, slipping the long chain over my head.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Opie.” I kiss his cool rough cheek.

  “Now see what Rena sent.”

  He hands me a flat, rounded package, something soft, not in a box. Forgetting to save the paper, I tear into it, through several layers of tissue.

  It’s a shawl of flowers and leaves, crocheted in white baby yarn. Holding it close, I smell home.

  “When did Mama do this?”

  “While she was in bed, she told me. Used to hide it under the covers when you came in.”

  “But I changed the bed.”

  “Rena’s quicker than that.”

  “Stand up,” Omie says, “and try it on.”

  I feel a little stiff and silly, but the shawl is so elegant that once it’s on, I start to feel elegant, too.

  “Pretty as a picture,” Opie judges.

  He doesn’t say of what.

  Omie has given Opie a tie and a new pipe. Daddy sent him a pipestand, carved from a single piece of cherry.

  “Now that’s masterful.” Opie turns it over in his hands, tracing the woodgrain. “A man who could do that ought to be carving newel posts and moldings.”

  Opie has for Omie an opal pendant. It’s her birthstone.

  “Now don’t take on,” he says, before she even gets started.

  “But I love it.”

  “I just went into Ostriker’s and said, ‘What goes well with a woman with freckledy eyes?’”

  Omie’s eyes are opalescent.

  Of course I know what Mama sent her: two dogwood and two redbud starts.

  “Just what we’re needing!” Omie exclaims. “Trust Rena to send spring. I had told her about losing that magnolia—”

  “You can’t expect these little fellows to replace that.”

  “You can’t replace a tree anyway. Like people, you don’t know how big they were till they’re gone. But it’s good to have new trees.”

  “Why don’t you plant them today, since it’s picnic weather?” The look she gives him is almost shy.

  It takes a long time to get Christmas dinner on the road. When we’re finally loaded into the car, windows fogged by the steam, the sky rumbles.

  “That’s s the blessing,” Opie says.

  Aunt Laura and Uncle Cress are late. We’ve put down the cloth, set the table—with a centerpiece of pine cones and branches—placed the food, and covered it all with blankets. Then we wait. A wind is starting by the time we hear them get out of their car.

  Uncle Cress’s voice booms in the cold air.

  Good King Wenceslas looked out

  Aunt Laura answers out of tune:

  On the feast of Stephen

  Uncle Cress picks it up again:

  When the snow lay round about

  “Round about!” Aunt Laura shouts.

  And dinner was uneaten!

  A duet of laughter. Both appear in matching raccoon coats.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  “Christmas gift!”

  “Joyeux Noel, Anna Ezelle!”

  Aunt Laura hugs Omie who stands still as a park statue.

  “Amanda!” Aunt Laura breaks the silence. “You remember your Uncle Cress? Cresswell, this is Amanda Virginia Perritt.”

  “So it is,” he says, offering me his hand. I’d forgotten how handsome he is, blond, smooth-faced, except for a mustache that curls.

  Omie stares at us all till we sit down.

  “Grace, please.”

  “Our Father,” Opie begins, but in his Southern speech it sounds like Owl Feather.

  “Bless the hands that prepared it,” Opie is saying. A crow calls like a rusty hinge.

  “Bless it to our use and us to Thy service. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Omie rolls the blankets off the food.

  “Viola!” Aunt Laura claps her hands. “Better than the magician yanking the cloth from beneath the dishes.”

  “I just hope it s warmer than this stone bench.” Omie shivers. Is she scolding Aunt Laura for being late?

  “Everybody up!” Opie orders. We stand while he spreads blankets on the benches. “Coffee?” he looks at Omie.

  “Let s save that,” she says. “We may need it to thaw out at the end of the meal.”

  We all sit down.

  “Oyster dressing!” Cress exclaims. “Why didn’t you teach your daughter to make this?”

  “Never could get her in the kitchen.”

  “Now, Mother.”

  “Or I never could get her to stand still. She danced, posed in doorways, draped tablecloths around her.”

  Cress takes a bottle from inside his coat and pours something in his cup.

  “Mr. Culton?”

  “Thank you.”

  Aunt Laura holds up hers.

  “But Rena played the piano.”

  “Only in the parlor. She didn’t practice any scales on the kitchen counter.”

  “She did in church. On her lap. And she had that paper keyboard—”

  “She had what?”

  “A paper keyboard she pasted on an old box. Used to practice up in our room when you said it was too late to play.”

  Mama?

  “I can still see her sitting up in bed in that raggedy nightgown—”

  “My child never—”

  “You threw it away but she found it. Practicing Chopin. Biting her lip, tossing her head, till I almost heard the music too.

  “I never knew that.”

  “That was when you had the bad leg. You never came upstairs.” A laugh simmers. “We still had the outhouse way at the back of the yard. And you had that cane-bottomed chair, remember? We could see you with your leg bent, resting your knee in that old chair, making for the outhouse.”

  She looks at Uncle Cress.

  “Mother said she had to start out long before she wanted to go.”

  Aunt Lauras laugh bubbles over. Cress and I join her; even Opie chuckles. But Omie looks at Aunt Lauras untouched plate.

  “The spirit of Christmas doesn’t come in a bottle.”

  We don’t say much after that. I like the cold food, though. All the tastes are clearer out here.

  “Now for the crown,” Opie says. “Where’s the plum pudding?”


  Omie uncovers it.

  “Bravo! Another rabbit!” Aunt Laura sings.

  “Let me get the hard sauce from the fire.” Omie gets up with some trouble. “This cold will make an old woman of me. Opie, you do the honors.”

  He takes a bottle from the hamper and drizzles its contents over the dark, fluted cake. It smells like sweet wood. Scratch—the flame leaps, covering the little dome. Opie jumps back.

  “God bless us! Now where’s the coffee?”

  Omie produces that, too, pouring it from a thermos jug while the halo of fire flashes out.

  “Laura, would you serve the pudding?”

  “That I can do,” Aunt Laura says, rising. “I’m an expert slicer.”

  When Opie takes his first bite, he sighs. “Topsoil couldn’t taste sweeter to a maple.”

  Everybody laughs this time, settling down to the last taste of Christmas. Opie lights candles. We’re alone in the park, the winter day fading. Just ahead of night, we pack up and drive home.

  19

  The next morning Omie is tired.

  “I’m not going to do a thing today but wash and put away dishes. That’s no fun. Why don’t you go with Opie to the mill?”

  Sawdust piles, handsaws, men with fingers gone: that doesn’t sound like much fun either. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “I’d love to.”

  “All right,” Opie says. “But first we’ll have to get these Christmas trees in the ground.”

  For a minute I think he means the tree we decorated. But then he goes on: “Rena’s mountain sprouts. They’ve been out of earth long enough.”

  So out we go after breakfast with a spade and a post-hole digger. We start in the side yard next to the corner. The ground is soft, and Opie’s used to this. He takes a neat tube of dirt out with the digger and leaves me to spade dirt loose around it. On he goes to the front.

  Omie wants one dogwood in front of the house, one in back, and the redbuds on either side. “That way,” she says, “I’ll see spring out every window.”

  “And see Rena,” Opie adds.

  He plants trees the way Mama makes biscuits, as if its as natural as breathing. His big hands pat the reddish dirt into place.

  “That ought to hold,” he says, as we finish the last of the redbuds. “Let’s get them a drink.”

  He carries that to them in a tin watering can. Then we wash up and set off for the mill.