Borrowed Children Read online

Aunt Laura only nibbles at one log, but she drinks her fizz straight down.

  “I’ll have another,” she calls to the waitress.

  “I like it here.”

  “Good for you. Your grandmother probably won’t like it that I brought you.”

  “Has she been here?”

  “No. I’ve tried to bring her. She seems to sing best in her own cage.”

  “What?”

  “She has her own Memphis, that’s all. Are you finished?”

  “One more log.”

  “Okay. Then let’s get going.”

  When she stands, Aunt Laura wobbles a little.

  “I should have bought straw shoes, too,” she says. “A day in these heels can cripple you.”

  There’s no one in sight to pay, so Aunt Laura leaves a few curling bills and a mound of change on the table. I’m shocked. Where I come from you count. Even the pennies.

  For a minute, as we come out of Sultanna’s and into the sunlight, none of this seems real: Beale Street, sarsaparilla, Aunt Laura. It’s like something I made up. The real thing is Goose Rock, Daddy figuring in the ledger, Mama saying, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do.”

  Aunt Laura breaks the spell.

  “One more thing we need to do for you, Amanda. We need to find you some music.” “But I can’t stay till tonight.”

  “It’s a shame, too. But somebody will be playing to fill a hat down in Crawfish Alley.”

  Before we go another block, Aunt Laura guides me into a gap between buildings and, sure enough, there sits a man playing a long black horn. It sounds like a bird squealing.

  I know birds don’t squeal, but if they did they would sound like this. Squealing in tune, mind you. Squealing with joy and pain and fear—maybe about how birds have to fly but this one doesn’t want to. How does it know its wings will work? Or what to do when the wind changes? Or how to slow down and hook a branch with its claws?

  Aunt Laura says Omie keeps to her cage. Does that mean she’ll never hear this music? Mama sure doesn’t hear it in Goose Rock. And how can she get out? She’s surrounded: mountains, children. She’d have to fly. But the music says that’s so hard …

  I look at Aunt Laura, her eyes closed, leaning against the dirty wall.

  Suddenly the musician stops and looks up at me, his dark eyes squinting.

  “Humph,” he says to Aunt Laura. “Looks like your rose done caught her heart on a thorn.”

  Aunt Laura stands straight.

  “Why, Amanda, whatever is the matter?”

  Tears roll down my neck. “It’s just the music. It’s so …” I can’t explain. “It’s so big.”

  “Yes, indeed, it is that.” Aunt Laura laughs. She opens her purse, takes out another curl of bills, and tosses them in the player’s hat. “You’re Rena’s daughter all right,” she says, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Amanda. It’s time we were getting you home.”

  Light is wearing out as we walk to the top of Beale Street.

  “Aunt Laura, what happened to Mama’s music?”

  “I guess it’s in the attic somewhere if she didn’t take it with

  her.”

  “I mean her playing. It must have meant a lot to her—”

  “Everything.”

  “Now she only plays ‘Rock’ of Ages’ or ‘Turkey in the Straw.’”

  “Jim Perritt happened to it.’”

  “But Daddy likes her to play.”

  “Sure he does—in a cabin a hundred miles from nowhere.”

  “We’ve never lived in a cabin.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, why did she go?”

  “Your Daddy, like I said.”

  “Why didn’t they stay here?”

  “Jim Perritt said he had no mind to work timber in land so flat you could mow it down. Mountains are like rivers: they get in your blood.”

  “But not in Mama’s?”

  “No, hers was pure music.”

  “Then I don’t understand—”

  “That makes the two of us.”

  “I mean how she can stand not to play now.”

  “Probably better than she could stand the sound if she did.”

  “But that’s terrible!”

  “Yes, but look at it this way: Where would you be if music was the center of her life?”

  There’s nothing to say to that.

  “This is my stop. Can you go the rest of the way yourself?”

  “Sure. I’ve got Opie’s map.”

  She goes down the aisle and calls back from the door.

  “I’ve had hundreds. They don’t help. But they give you something to look at when you’re lost.”

  We both laugh as she swings down onto the street. I watch out the window but in half a minute she’s gone.

  22

  I’m just going to ask Omie is all. I want to know and people don’t volunteer telling. There’s only today and tomorrow before I go home, and tomorrow I’m going back to Aunt Lauras.

  Today is Sunday—still as a dead rabbit. We went to church but it wasn’t like Christmas, ate dinner, and now we’re sunk into the parlor, Opie asleep with the newspaper in his lap, Omie crocheting. Another popcorn-stitch bedspread. Every time she hooks the thread, I feel caught and twisted. If I’m going to ask, I have to ask now.

  “Omie?”

  “Yes, child.”

  Our words hang between ticks of the grandfather clock.

  “Why did Mama give up music for Daddy?”

  “Who said she did?”

  “Aunt Laura. She said music meant everything to Mama until Daddy took her away.”

  “That sounds like Laura.”

  “You mean it s not true?”

  “I mean Laura only paints with shocking colors.”

  “But what about Mama staying up late practicing on cardboard?”

  “I guess that’s true. Probably it happened once or twice and Laura’s made it a history. Laura didn’t want to lose Rena, you see. They had their own world. And in crashed Jim Perritt.”

  “Did Mama want to go on the stage?”

  “Rena? Heavens, no. Oh, she might have liked to play in an orchestra—I don’t doubt that—but not by herself. And what kind of life is that? That’s what I said to her—”

  “So you talked her out of it?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not.” Omie snaps this out and bites off her thread. Opie stirs under the paper.

  I’d better try another approach.

  “Why didn’t Aunt Laura want Mama to go?”

  “Why is the grass green, Mandy? Why is red flannel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I don’t know what’s making her mad.

  Omie looks at the circle she’s finished, flattens it out on her skirt.

  “I’ve always felt bad about Rena and Laura. It was my fault in a way. Laura was so little when William died and for a while—I don’t know, I just couldn’t stand a little child in my lap. Couldn’t tie her jingle shoes without hearing William say I’ve got bells on so Mama won’t get lost.’

  “I guess it takes different women differently. I might have doted on Laura, never let her out of my sight. But instead I pulled back. And Rena was so eager. Like you, Mandy, she was a little mother from the start…”

  I remember my heart falling when Daddy put Willie in my arms.

  “Laura latched on twice as hard, feeling I had left her. When other children called for Mama, she called ‘Vrena!’ And she loved your mother’s music. Until she got too big, she’d sit in Rena’s lap, still as a stone, while Rena practiced. ‘Vrena has songs in her hands,’ she told me.

  “Rena dressed Laura in the morning, put her to bed at night. When your mama was at school I felt like I was just keeping Laura. And I know that’s what Laura felt. It made me sad, but I couldn’t change it. It was too late.”

  The loss in Omie’s voice stirs something in me, too. Mama and Laura … I know that hurt. Where does it connect? Mama lifts Willie from m
y arms to bathe him for the first time. I stand at the kitchen sink in tears.

  No wonder Mama sent me to Memphis. She was afraid of losing Willie to me. Are there always two stories going on like that?

  “I don’t know what Laura expected—your mother to go on the road and take her along like a suitcase?—but she didn’t expect your mother to marry. And when Rena and Jim ran off—”

  “Ran off?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know that story.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Heavenly days, child! Well, don’t tell Rena I told you.”

  “So you didn’t want her to marry Daddy either.”

  “Not at seventeen, I didn’t. Opie told Jim just to wait a year or two, but no, Jim had to go back to the mountains and take a wife with him.”

  “How did they get away?”

  “Rena said she was staying overnight at Corrie Landrum’s and they left on the train.”

  Omie pulls up more thread.

  “And you didn’t know?”

  “Of course I knew!”

  The thread sticks. Omie leans on the arm of the wing-backed chair and tried to pull it free. When that doesn’t work, she opens her sewing stand, where the big cone of thread has slipped from its spindle. She resets it.

  “There!”

  The crochet hook begins to tug at the line.

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  I don’t know if she’s forgotten or just doesn’t want to tell.

  “How did you know?”

  “Renad been acting over-ordinary, the way people do when they’re about to upset everything. And after she left, Laura noticed something missing, I forget what, a thing she wouldn’t have taken to Corrie’s. So Opie went after them. Said he arrived at the same time as the train.”

  “Did they hide?”

  “Your mama and daddy? Not for a minute. Jim Perritt just said he’d be proud to have Opie stand up with them. ‘No sir,’ said Opie, and that was that.”

  “What about Aunt Laura?”

  “She cried like an orphan for longer than I care to remember. I could have skinned Rena. But there’s nothing as hard as a young heart, Laura’s included. You remember that.”

  What I remember is Aunt Laura on the streetcar, saying Mama is no more her sister now “than a toy that’s rolled out of reach.”

  23

  It’s raining and the streetcar is crowded. I feel funny going to Aunt Laura’s for lunch. Yesterday while Omie talked I felt I was meeting Aunt Laura as a little girl. But today at her house she’ll be grown up.

  Nobody pays me any mind. Does that mean I look like a city girl? Omie helped me pin my hair under.

  I can tell as soon as I arrive that something is wrong. Old newspapers are piled on the porch and the curtains are drawn. Aunt Laura is slow in coming.

  She has on a black satin bathrobe, shiny as coal and trailing all the way to the floor. It’s tied with a gold cord, but looks like it might fall open or off anyway. Maybe I’m early and she’s just gotten out of the bath. But she doesn’t have that kind of look. And when she takes me by the shoulders in her usual greeting, she doesn’t smell that way either.

  “Are you sick? Maybe this is a bad time for me to come.”

  “Heavens no, Amanda. People in the city don’t get up with the chickens. Except your grandparents. They’ve probably had you witness every sunrise since you got here.

  “Oh, no. I’ve slept later here than I’ve ever slept in my life. I don’t have to pump water or fry apples—”

  “That’s right,” Aunt Laura cuts in. “I forget that morning requires breakfast, too. I’ve heard that the sun coming up looks like a fried egg. Disgusting, but I expect that explains it.”

  “Actually it’s good you’ve had breakfast, because we’re going to be a bit delayed. I thought we could have cold beef for lunch, but Cresswell decided that wasn’t good enough for company, so he’s gone in search of something better. Put your umbrella down and come have a seat.”

  I look for an umbrella stand like Omie’s or a milk can like we have at home, but I don’t find any, so I just lay the dripping thing down.

  Aunt Laura leads me into the straw-chair room. Sure enough, she’s changed it. The chair is by the window, and, in its place, there’s a yellow loveseat with a trunk in front for a table. I sit on the loveseat, but wish I had the straw chair. Aunt Laura leans back in it like a tired queen.

  “Has Uncle Cress gone to a restaurant or the grocery?”

  “Neither. Or, in a sense, both. He went to a delicatessen.”

  She waits to see if I know what that is.

  “It’s a place which sells cooked food to take home. Cress says with this rain we need something hot. But there’s no telling what it’ll be. Except expensive. Cress’s tastes run high.”

  She stops a minute, picks at lint on her robe.

  “So Amanda, your visit to the big city is almost over. Are you ready to go back to Beanburg?”

  “It’s Goose Rock. And it’s not the end of the world, you know.” I’m amazed to hear those words come out of my mouth. “We have books and school and—a rosewood piano.”

  Here I am boasting about the piano when every time we move I wonder why we keep it. Long before moving day the piano is loaded into its wooden crate to be ready when the best chance comes. There has to be full daylight, no rain, and still Daddy worries the whole day that it’s going to fall out of the wagon. Once we’re settled it has to be unpacked and tuned. Then the crate turns back into a playhouse and the piano collects new dust.

  Aunt Laura smiles. “I know Rena kept her piano, ‘if only as a hostage against hard times.’ That’s what she told Mother. I say times are already hard if she doesn’t get to play.”

  “She plays Christmas carols. And in the summer, Mrs. Holcomb brings her chautauqua to Manchester. It’s a little festival, with readings and music and poetry, two or three nights in a row.”

  “No doubt that’s just what Manchester needs. And we need some refreshment. Let me fix something to hold us till Cress gets here.”

  I guess it’s a dressing gown she’s got on. People here probably wear those all day.

  In a minute she comes back carrying two big glasses of orange juice.

  “The one with the cherry is yours. I looked for some crackers, too, but there don’t seem to be any.”

  Her hand shakes as she holds out my glass.

  “To your health and your travels, Amanda,” she says, lifting her drink. “May they both take you far.”

  I touch my glass to hers.

  We sit for a few minutes sipping our juice, and then the front door opens and it’s Uncle Cress behind two big sacks. He carries them through the parlor to the kitchen without even saying hello. Uncle Cress is tall and usually walks with a swagger, but today he’s round-shouldered. And his blond hair, always neat and shiny, looks like straw.

  “All right,” he calls from the kitchen, “we’ll be ready to eat in a minute. Somebody in this house knows how to treat a guest.”

  Cold silence. Then he goes on.

  “You’re pretty special, Mandy, when I have to drag your Aunt Laura out of the bed to see you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “And find she’s asked you to a lunch of old roast with the fat stiffened on it.”

  “I don’t mind, Uncle Cress, really.” I hope he will stop.

  “And not a drop to drink in this house. Nothing. And do you know why?”

  “Cress—” Aunt Laura begins.

  “Because your lovely Aunt Laura is a sot. Yes, she is. Went to bed drinking from a jar and woke up pickled.”

  Uncle Cress laughs hard but it doesn’t cover the clink of

  ice.

  “Don’t pay him any mind, Amanda. I’m afraid your Uncle Cress is a bit spoiled.”

  She almost whispers this last, but Uncle Cress booms right back, “Spoiled! That’s a fine thing for you to say, Laura Culton. Who expects her toenails clipped onto a silv
er platter?”

  Aunt Laura giggles. “Isn’t he wild?”

  She drinks her juice straight down.

  After more rustling, Uncle Cress hollers, “Come and get it!” and we walk into the other room. He’s brought in folding chairs and heaped the card table with paper cartons. I look for a plate.

  “Our guest will have to help herself to a saucer or a soup plate, since the charming Miss L. can’t wash a dish.”

  “I thought you had a maid.” I didn’t mean to say that.

  “This is her week off,” Aunt Laura says, searching through a box of barbecued chicken.

  Uncle Cress snorts. “Her year off, don’t you mean? Even the fullest glass gets empty sometimes, Mandy. I can’t support Miss Laura and her servant habits forever.”

  Aunt Laura spoons ice into her juice glass and fills it with something clear.

  “Some men go to work, Cresswell. Most men don’t expect to quench the lifelong thirst of two people from one glass.”

  All he says is, “It lasts a lot longer if you don’t have one person guzzling.”

  I try to eat, but my stomach hurts and everything tastes like sand. There’s nothing to drink but what’s in the bottles, clear for Aunt Laura and amber forUncle Cress. I take some ice and wait for it to melt.

  Uncle Cress eats like a starved horse but Aunt Laura just picks at her chicken wing and crumbles her roll. Only her drink is disappearing.

  All of a sudden tears roll down her checks—no sound, just two streams of water. Then, without finishing the tears, she starts to laugh. It’s a horrible sound, high and broken. I want to do something to stop it, to help her, but I’m frozen. In one motion Uncle Cress stands up, leans across the table, and slaps her hard on the cheek. The flat crack of his hand on her face cuts off the laughter. I jerk back as if he hit me too. Then he walks around the table, picks Aunt Laura up, and carries her out. She can’t weigh much, but Uncle Cress is still off balance. His footsteps falter all the way back to their room.

  The rain is pouring now and Omie’s bright house seems as far away as the moon. I’m scared to move. What if they hear me and come back? What if they don’t? But I can’t just sit here. I’ll put away the food and clean up the kitchen. That might be a little help. If they’re not back when I finish, I’ll leave a note and take the streetcar home.