We stopped an hour later in Yuba City for a breakfast of greasy bacon, lukewarm eggs and no conversation. I mean, who doesn’t talk during a meal? Mr. Forsythe, that’s who. He hadn’t said more than three words since leaving the Mathenys which was my only clue he actually understood English and wasn’t a mute.
It’s not like I didn’t try. I asked him how long he’d worked for CPS which earned me a shrug while he washed down a chunk of hash browns with black coffee. I asked him if he had a family. He gazed out the window as if I didn’t exist, gnashing a strip of undercooked bacon between his jaws. I asked how long it would take to get from Yuba City, California to Sweet Creek, Oregon. He tossed me a folded Oregon/California map he’d brought to the breakfast table. I gave up and studied the map. It almost took a magnifying glass to find Sweet Creek.
After breakfast we headed west to Interstate 5 which took us north. Bored after forty-five minutes of staring out the window at the dry landscape of California’s Central Valley, I asked, “So, how come you don’t like me?”
My efforts were rewarded with a long-suffering sigh, a sour glance in my direction, and Mr. Forsythe switching on the radio to a twangy country western station. He cranked it up to the no conversation possible volume and stepped on the gas.
I settled back in my seat and stared at the air conditioning controls. It must have been ninety degrees in the car with the windows rolled up, though Mr. Forsythe seemed oblivious to the crop of perspiration beads dotting his acne-scarred face.
I tried to remember the sound of my mother’s smiling voice wishing me happy birthday and my father telling me I was old enough now to find a job. “Go get ‘em, tiger!” he would have said through his easy grin. How could my life have turned upside down in only three weeks?
At least I could still email and text my friends. They had sent an outpouring of sympathy and love through cyberspace after learning of the boating accident. That helped, yet it seemed a flat and grainy replica of their friendship—misspelled words on a cold screen.
I considered the future: Great-grandma Penelope Ross. A stranger living some miles past a micro-dot on the map. Eighty-seven years old. That was, like, practically dead, right? And what would happen to me if the old lady went toes-up while I was living with her? Another foster home? Or maybe I could just dig a hole in the back garden and roll her in. You know, live by myself in her house with no one the wiser. And thinking about grandmothers, what about my own grandmother, my father’s mom? Dad had never spoken about her or explained why Great-grandma Penelope raised him instead of his own mother. He had once told my mom his Oregon family was steeped in scandal. Though I never knew what he meant by that, I knew the second he was out of high school he packed a duffle bag, lit out to get away from Penelope, and joined the Marines. Pretty radical if you ask me.
Maybe that should tell me all I needed to know about the old lady. After his tour with the Marines was up, Dad had moved to Los Angeles and never went back to Sweet Creek, even to visit. What sort of weirdness was I being forced to walk into?
Past the town of Redding, the scenery began to improve even if the country western music blaring from the radio did not. It was giving me a headache. Further on, Mount Shasta, an ancient tangle of several snowy volcanoes all stuck together, made my jaw drop. We crossed over the Siskiyou Mountains into Oregon and stopped in Medford for another silent meal. The food was passable, but the absence of country western heartache from beer-guzzling cheating men was like sweet spring water to a hiker lost in the Mojave Desert. By then, I didn’t care if Mr. Forsythe ever said another word to me. He didn’t let me down.
The deeper we drove into Oregon, the more majestic the landscape became, though I hated to admit it. We were, like, out in the middle of nowhere after all. Thick forests of Douglas fir, hemlock, and pines blurred past the Durango’s window. They clung to steep hills, flowing like a dense bristled carpet over tiers of mountains marching to the horizon. The forests melted into valleys, banking around meadows and hamlets, and standing guard along river banks. Back home in Pasadena, we’d have to drive for hours to see country like this. Now this scenery would be my backyard. The downside? Where were the In-N-Out Burgers? Where were the shopping malls? Where were the Chick-fil-A restaurants? C’mon!
Along about the time gangling shadows darkened the forest and stretched across the rural roads we’d turned onto, the Durango pulled into a gas station in the stunted town of Sweet Creek with its bullet-riddled sign boasting it was the “Gateway to the Cascades.” There was nothing affluent-looking about the buildings and shops that hugged its potholed streets. Most needed new paint and serious renovation to update them from that bleak 1930s look. I was exhausted and hungry, not to mention severely depressed by Sweet Creek’s “downtown” which boasted maybe four streets and no stoplights. There was a high school at the far end of town, a few poor-mouth shops, four churches, a City Hall building grand enough to make every other structure look even shabbier, a Safeway grocery store, a feed store, and four saloons. I thought I saw a hint of golden arches a block to the east. That only made my stomach cave in on itself with stage-four starvation.
The silent Mr. Forsythe told the attendant to fill the Durango before conferring with him about the best way to find the Ross Ranch. I didn’t catch much of it except the last two miles would be dirt roads. Of course they would be. True civilization had not infiltrated this redneck neck of the woods.
~ ~ ~
Just before the Ross house emerged through the forest and gauzy curtains of dust kicked up by the Durango, I stared through its filmy windows at cattle grazing on a humongous pasture that ran its fingers up into the shadowy forest surrounding it. Ranks of timbered mountains rose to the east, forming the Cascade Mountain range. Through acres of pasture, a peaceful river glinted streaks of rose and orange in the evening sun. I wished this country was ugly. Then I’d have grounds to hate it. I was outta luck there. With the sun tinting the pasture and mountains in soft rose, the peacefulness of a summer evening descended over me in spite of the nervous jitters swarming in my stomach about meeting the Dragon Lady. That’s what my father had called her.
Maybe that accounted for a feeling of cold dread when the old Ross ranch house glided into view like the monster in a fairytale. It emerged from behind fir trees and masses of untended red roses that had reverted to their wild state. As we pulled to a stop, clouds of dust settled over patches of teasel, mule ears, fiddlenecks, and pigweed that had invaded the remains of a garden. Any flowers it might once have contained had long ago expired.
I glanced up at the L-shaped two-story house, once a proud Victorian lady with crumbling gingerbread filigree lacing its gables and porch railings. The front porch sagged at one end like an old man’s mouth, showing grayed wood beneath peeling white paint. Tall narrow windows from a by-gone century glared from both stories like menacing eyes. Even their peeling green shutters failed to soften the stoic expression of this house. Beneath a gabled roof at the west end, an attic window faced into the gnarled branches of an ancient oak tree.
I slipped out of the Durango amid dust settling like brown talcum powder. A faint smell of rotting wood seeping from the porch mingled with the scent of pine and fir trees surrounding the clearing like battalions of soldiers. Above it all floated the smell of dust. And rot.
Mr. Forsythe’s lanky body spilled out of the driver’s seat and manhandled my box of belongings up the worn-out porch steps. He squeaked open a rusty screen door and knocked on the wooden front door behind it. That door’s beveled glass side panels hinted at a former era of dignity and elegance. I stood in what passed for a front yard and hoped no one was home.
No such luck. After a minute or two, the door opened and a slightly stooped old lady stepped out. Her white hair had been carelessly drawn back in a lumpy knot at the nape of her neck, and her faded hillbilly sack masquerading as a dress draped down a bony frame to her ankles where work boots pro
tected her feet.
Mr. Forsythe motioned me forward to the bottom of the porch steps. I glanced up to see the old woman’s critical gaze sweep my length and produce a frown of disapproval. Hopefully this withered wraith was the maid. I had the impression the Rosses were wealthy. Maybe they only kept this maid on out of pity. I mean, let’s face it. Who else would hire an old wreck like her?
“Emma Ross, meet your great-grandmother, Penelope Ross,” Mr. Forsythe mumbled with a sweeping gesture of his hand indicating the wreck.
My empty stomach sank. This wrinkled old crone in bag lady clothes was my . . . slave mistress?
Penelope Ross’s puckery lips made a pursing movement as she stared at me. “You may call me Grandmother or Miss Ross,” she instructed loftily. “Come into the house and bring your . . . things.” She delivered a half-hearted kick to my box.
I mounted the stairs which creaked beneath my Nikes. Mr. Forsythe turned for the Durango without so much as a goodbye. I could hear its door slam shut behind me and its engine rumble to life as I fumbled my box through the fancy front door.
“Miss Ross?” I asked. Curiosity had a way of ambushing my tongue. “Wasn’t that your maiden name?”
Her answering glare sent shivers spidering up my spine. “Presumptuous young upstart, aren’t you?” She sneered. “It’s none of your nosey business, you insolent child, even if you claim to be kin of mine. But”—here she closed her crinkled eyelids and shook her head with a sigh—“I suppose there are a few things you’ll have to know.” Her eyelids snapped open. “Therefore, no, you boorish little Philistine, I did not give birth out of wedlock to your grandmother, Charlotte, if that’s what your filthy mind is thinking. I married Franklyn Collins in 1948. When he died in a logging accident a few months before Charlotte’s birth in ‘54, I took back my family name and gave it to that good-for-nothing daughter of mine, too.”
Jeeze. No wonder my dad got the hell out of here the minute he could. This old lady had a personality designed to shrivel a horde of drooling demons.
“Well, don’t just stand there blinking like a frog on a log, girl. Come. I’ll show you to your room.”
I followed her through the parlor with its faded burgundy rugs, nineteenth-century loveseats and embroidered medallion chairs. A Victor wind-up phonograph stood on a table near the fireplace with its dusty horn aimed at the room’s interior. Heavy burgundy drapes hung rotting at the windows. This creepy ranch house looked like a decaying museum.
Grandmother led the way up a wide set of carpeted stairs with an oak banister polished smooth from more than a century of use. The second floor hallway had lost its majesty, covered as it was in peeling wallpaper featuring faded green ivy and fat red roses. Splashes of sunlight from the open doors of a number of bedrooms made me peek inside as we passed, my breath catching at the super-expensive four-poster beds, carved armoires, mahogany bureaus, and ornate dressing tables. Each room had its own wallpaper motif and looked as though it had been left untouched for the last hundred and twenty years. The musty smell of age and mildew wrinkled my nose as I followed Great-grandmother along the hallway. It seemed the entire house was rotting away in slow motion. Much like Great-grandmother herself, I suspected.
I trailed the old crone to the west end of the hall where a rickety set of steep ladder-like stairs on the left led to the attic. Great-grandmother stood at the bottom and pointed up the stairs.
“Your bedroom is up there. Same one your grandmother Charlotte grew up in. Bed’s made up. You’ll find a flashlight by the bed to light your way downstairs to the bathroom off the kitchen. Tomorrow we’ll discuss your wardrobe. No great-granddaughter of mine will shame me and the house of Ross by wearing those tight jeans and a skimpy T-shirt. I’ve endured enough shame in my life to last me ‘til the Lord sees fit to call me home. Nor will any female in this house wear waist-length hair like yours, parted down the middle and loose all the way down like an accursed Jezebel streetwalker.”
I fingered a few blond strands of my hair.
“See that you arrange it in one braid tomorrow when you rise. I ordered cook to put a Holy Bible on your nightstand. Read it. Good night.”
She left me standing alone at the foot of the ladder.
What? No dinner?
I sighed. My growling stomach and I climbed the stairs, shuffling my box of clothes up into a tiny unpainted room just a whisker larger than a horse stall. This was the room whose third-story window looked out into the arms of the oak tree.
No carpet softened the rough board floor. Not a closet nor a dresser gave the room a welcoming air. The walls, at least, had been finished with pine planks instead of left bare to show the joists and rafters. Unpainted wainscoting covered the walls to a height of three feet where raw pine boards took over up to the ceiling. There, a bare light bulb dangled on a wire.
I passed a battered bookcase occupying one wall along with a kitchen chair as I wrestled my box toward the bed. Tacked to the wall above the brass bed, a cheaply-framed picture of Jesus watched me with haunting eyes that seemed to follow me wherever I went.
I checked out the single bed, running my palm over knotty wads of something packed inside the mattress. Wouldn’t exactly be a Tempur-Pedic night. I folded back the covers; one top sheet, one moth-eaten blanket, and a thin quilt cover Great-grandmother might have made back when you could peek out the window and watch a stegosaurus wander by. Stained and faded, the quilt was coming apart, revealing thin batting between the hand-stitched seams. Handled gently, I guessed it would do. A ceramic wash basin and pitcher of water squatted on the shabby bedside table beside the Bible.
With all the empty showcase bedrooms down on the second floor, I was being stashed up here like an ugly old chair that didn’t fit anywhere. Just like my grandmother, Charlotte. What had she done that even her own mother hated her? And what in the world had become of her?
I was too worn out to read. I unpacked my laptop to send an email to my best friend. What was I thinking? There was no Wi-Fi. Of course not. Folks in these parts probably hadn’t heard much about computers. My smartphone showed no bars and no service. Rats. I was marooned out in the middle of Rotting Acres and my friends would think I’d abandoned them. I hadn’t seen a TV, an old CD player, or even a radio downstairs. That meant no Netflix. I was as isolated in this Twilight Zone episode as an innocent prisoner stuck in solitary confinement with a mad commandant holding the key.
Undressing in the day’s fading light, I climbed into bed and tried to find a comfortable position among the weird lumps in the mattress. My stomach growled. Deep-orange evening sunlight sifted through the oak tree outside and filtered through the gnome-sized window, dotting the far wall with dancing oak leaf patterns.
I sighed. “Happy birthday, Emma.”
Chapter 3
Penelope prowled like an ancient she-wolf near the bottom of the parlor stairs the next morning with a long dress draped over her arm. As I descended, her dark eyes skewered mine.
“Get yourself back up to your room this instant, girl,” she growled, “and wash that devil makeup off your face. I won’t have a harlot besmirching the Ross name. Not while I draw breath.”
Her upper lip quivered with anger, highlighting a badly-repaired harelip running from her wrinkled lip up to one nostril. I had done the math; Penelope had been born in 1929, right here in this house when Sweet Creek probably had no doctors who could fix a harelip properly.
“What are you staring at?” she demanded. “Go upstairs and remove those unseemly jeans and that tarty T-shirt. You look like a brazen whore from the sleazy side of town. Put this on instead.”
She thrust the dress she’d been holding over her arm at me. It was ugly and way old-fashioned. At least I’d remembered to braid my hair, but I sensed Penelope was a woman who could not be pleased. I turned and retraced my steps to my room.
T
he hideous gray dress was ankle-length with long sleeves and tied at the throat with a black ribbon. My pink and white Nikes appeared beneath the hem like a pair of Maseratis next to a covered wagon. There was no piece of the dress that clung to any body part, giving the impression I’d become shapeless overnight. Penelope must have more than a few bizarre personality issues or perhaps some religious cult leanings to demand that I dress like a nunnery novice from the Middle Ages. How could I possibly show my face outside the house looking like a poor homesteading girl right out of 1875?
Breakfast was served in the ample kitchen which still relied on a cast-iron wood-burning stove to deliver the meals. Here I met Cook, who apparently lacked a proper name. She was a pleasantly round African-American woman with a welcoming smile. Her salt and pepper hair had been scraped back into a low bun and she wore a gray floor-length uniform almost hidden beneath her starched white apron. She carried bowls of hot oatmeal to the table where Great-grandmother reigned, along with a platter of buttered toast and a silver pitcher of milk.
“You must be the great-granddaughter, Emma,” Cook said warmly. Her smile revealed even white teeth.
“You may call her Miss Emma or Miss Ross,” Great-grandmother informed her as if she had been appointed Almighty Matron of the Universe.
“Yes ma’am.” Cook lowered her eyes. Her smile faded. “Here, Miz Emma, have some of this fresh milk for your oats.”
I thanked her with my eyes, fearing Penelope would bark at me too, no matter what I said, and poured the milk over my cereal.
Penelope rapped her spoon on the table, glowering at me as I put my napkin in my lap. “Grace,” she announced.
What followed was a zealous speech to Penelope’s wrathful God leaving the listener in serious doubt as to which one of them was really in charge of Heaven and Earth. She implored Him to spare us sinners from an eternity in the sulfur and flames of eternal Hell. There followed a brief silence where everyone remembered how to breathe. Guess that pretty much explained Penelope’s wardrobe requirements and opinions on makeup. God had always offered a comforting ear and a friendly hand in my life. Why did Penelope make me suspect I’d already entered the portals of Hell and now sat in Hell’s kitchen?
A Certain Twist in Time Page 2