Isabel the Invisible

by Christine Bush

  It doesn't smell like Gram's house anymore. The baking smell is gone. It doesn't look like Gram's house anymore. Sometimes the thought of this just makes me want to cry. What am I saying? I'll be truthful. Sometimes it DOES make me cry.

  As I sat there on the porch, the door of the house next door opened up, and little Danny came out, lugging his bike. When Danny's father worked, he had a lady who came to take care of him. Her name was Mrs. Clancy (Nancy Drew again). Mrs. Clancy always seemed cheerful when she greeted Danny at the door after school when he got off the bus, but the truth is, she was really, really old. Not just a little old, like Gram (and look what happened to her!), but rickety old. I always watched for her to open the door in the afternoon, just to be sure she was OK.

  Danny was proud of his bike. You could just tell by the way he held the handlebars. It was a bright blue shiny thing, with a banana seat, and training wheels. He looked really cute. There was something about little Danny that I liked, but I'm not sure what. He was just sweet and cute and nice. On the school bus, he was really quiet, sitting in one of the front seats, where the little kids sit. I usually sat back a ways, but I kept my eye on him. I never really talked to him, though. Even though he's little, I'm shy about it. I just have trouble talking to people.

  Gram used to say "Isabel, you are an interesting, charming girl. Don't be afraid to share your gifts with the world. Have courage. Speak up."

  Gram always said things like that. Gram made me feel like I mattered, like she believed in me. Boy, do I miss that. It's funny, Mom says the same thing. But when Gram said it, I really HEARD it. And I believed it, just for a minute.

  Danny took his bike down onto the sidewalk, and he climbed on. His hair was very blonde, and really straight, shining in the sun. I pushed the porch swing with my feet, enjoying the breeze, and watching him. Danny pedaled pretty well, wobbling on his training wheels.

  But all of a sudden, there was trouble. I looked down the street, way down beneath the trees. A bicycle approached, and it was Milton the Maniac, out for a ride. I stopped swinging.

  Milton rode in the street, and he was a fast rider. His bike was black, with a banana seat, and high handle bars. It was only seconds before he was on our part of the block. My eyes were stuck to Milton like glue, but Danny didn't seem to notice the bigger boy. But then, he didn't know about Milton the Maniac.

  I felt really mixed up about what I should do. One side of my mind said, "Don't worry, Isabel, chances are he'll ride right by, and not try to bother a little five year old kid."

  The other side said, "Fat chance, Isabel. He lives to make trouble. Get down. Hide behind the porch fence and the bush in the corner. Keep out of Maniac's way or you'll be sorry."

  The third side was saying what Gram would say. "Have courage, Isabel. Don't worry if Milton sees YOU. Go help the child. You stand a better chance against him than Danny, that's for sure."

  It's an amazing thing how there can be so many parts to your mind. In a time like this, instead of taking action, my mind seems to like to have an argument. It felt like too many voices were talking at once. "Go, hide, don't worry, go, hide, don't worry."

  I would like to say I came to a heroic decision and bounded down the steps. I like to think that's what I would have done, if I had time. But the truth is, my body froze right on the spot for a minute. Then I started to move, but by then it was too late.

  Milton the Maniac had charged toward Danny, riding his bike right up on the sidewalk at full speed. At first, I thought Milton was going to plow right into him. But he didn't. Probably Milton thought he might hurt his own bike. What he did was equally mean, though. After scaring Danny, he took some kind of a metal bar out of his back pocket, and as he buzzed by Danny, who was peddling furiously to get away, Milton reached down and stuck the bar through the spokes of Danny's back wheel. Then he sped away.

  The result was a disaster. As the wheel turned, the bar stuck with a jerk. The spokes of the tire bent, the wheel unable to spin despite Danny's peddling. Stopping suddenly threw him off balance. I saw what was going to happen and leaped off the porch toward him. But I was too late. Crash! Instantly, the sidewalk was full of boy and bike.

  I sat on the ground next to him and pulled Danny into my lap, because he was crying really hard. His knee and his elbow were skinned, but he seemed ok except for that. I wish I could give as good a report about the bike. It was a sad sight. The back tire was no longer round. It now resembled an Easter egg, the spokes looking like a design. The handle bars had turned when he fell. They were facing sideways. Danny, I thought, was crying about the bike. I was right.

  "My bike, my bike," he wailed, once he caught his breath.

  "It'll be OK, Danny. The bike will get fixed." I said this to calm him down, though I didn't know if it was the absolute truth. But I figured a dad who looked as nice as Mr. Davis would get the bike fixed.

  Mrs. Clancy had opened the door, hearing him crying, and the two of us got Danny and the bike inside. I told her what happened.

  "Thank you very much, Isabel," she said in her soft voice. "You are a very wonderful girl for helping Danny."

  She took him inside to clean him up and get a bandage for his scrapes, so I left. I felt horrible.

  Because the truth was, I was not a wonderful girl. I was a spineless chicken, a slimy worm, something pretty close to pond scum. If I had even one ounce of courage, I could have saved Danny from the whole thing. I could have protected him from Milton the Maniac, even if Milton had come after me, instead. Even if he had hurt me, the truth was, I would feel better than I felt right now. Because being a chicken, and not having the courage to do the right thing really took its toll. I couldn't stand myself right now.

  I climbed back up on my porch. Milton wasn't anywhere insight. I looked up and down the street, trying to enjoy the leaves again. But it didn't work. Even sitting on the porch was no fun now.

  Inside, I could hear Mom singing from the top of her painting ladder in the kitchen. "Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, til you find your dream!"

  She sang at the top of her lungs, happy while she was flinging the paint. I was glad she was happy, but the truth was, I couldn't stand happiness at the moment.

  "Climb every mountain," she had sung. I decided to take that advice. Not the mountain part, but the climbing part. There was one part of the house that Mom had not attacked yet. There was one part of the house that didn't smell like paint. I snuck in the front door, and moved through the living room and up the steps. In the upstairs hallway, I opened the attic door.

  Ahead of me, a tall set of steps loomed up into the darkness. I flicked on the single light switch and a dim bulb lit. It was dark and spooky, but I didn't mind. No one could see me there. No one could see the sniveling slimy chicken named Isabel. I tiptoed up the steps to Gram's attic, alone.

  Chapter 3

  Attics have a certain smell. It's an old smell, but not a bad one. It’s a musty, closed in smell that reminds me of secrets and memories. Our attic is full of boxes and crates, some old furniture, and a lot of baby stuff from when I was little.

  I crept up the dark stairs, watching the shadows as they danced on the wall. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling right at the top of the steps. The glow from the light made a lot of weird looking shadows that I'm sure would have freaked me out, except for the fact that this was Gram's attic, and that made it ok.

  I gazed around at the sea of stuff when I got to the top of the stairs. Nothing was different since the last time I had climbed up here. Nothing had been touched. I don't think Mom had any great need to be up in the attic. So I tended to think of it as my private place. I plopped down in the old cane bottom rocker with the dark wooden arms and started to rock.

  This had been Gram's favorite chair. She had rocked many an hour in it, I knew. I rubbed my hands along the shiny wood, smooth with age, and closed my eyes. I could picture her rocking in this chair, though not up in the attic, of course.

 
When Gram had been alive, this chair sat in living room, right near the front window. From her rocker, she always said she could see the pots boiling on the stove down the hall in the kitchen. At the same time, she could see the people coming and going in the neighborhood by looking out the tall living room window. She said it gave her a great "overview" of her world.

  Mom wasn't being mean or anything, putting the rocker up here in the attic. We weren't hiding it, we were protecting it. I agreed. When the paint was flying downstairs, we didn't have to worry about Gram's chair. We would bring it down and give it a "place of honor", Mom said, when the rooms were done.

  I loved Mom for that. A lot of the time I think that Mom doesn't understand how I feel about things, but then she says something like that, and I know she has at least a clue. The problem is, I guess, she's so busy a lot of the time, she doesn't have time to even think about how SHE feels, let alone how I feel.

  Her job at the hospital is a good one, but it's hard work. And then there's me. I don't like to think that I cause a lot of work or worry, but I guess I do. When you add the clothes, and meals, and homework, and all that kind of thing, it all adds up. But we're getting by, Mom and me.

  Sometimes I dream my mom meets a really fantastic guy and they get married and I have a father. I dream she doesn't have to work so hard, so she could stay home and cook big meals like Gram used to do. I dream that this imaginary father wants to teach me how to play soccer, so I don't look so dumb at school. I dream that we all sit down and watch a TV show together. In the dream we all all laughing and happy. It's a pretty dumb dream, I know, but I'm being honest.

  I also dream that I have a dog, and her name is "Atalana". She would be named after this ancient Greek girl I read about in a story at school. She was a really fast runner, and she could beat all the boys. Needless to say, my dream dog would run fast as the wind.

  But enough of my dreaming. I had a lot of other things to think about today. I felt really bad that Danny had been scared, and had his bike demolished. I felt bad that Milton was such a mean, pond scummy creep. But most of all, I felt bad about me, Isabel Robbins. I was a chicken.

  This was not the first instant in my life that I suspected this fact, but it was the first instant that I definitely knew it was true. Sure, in the city I could chase a little brat who stole newspapers. That's because I was just about twice his size.

  But seeing old Milton barreling down the street froze me solid. Even though my mind was clear about what I SHOULD have done for the little tyke who lived next door, my body definitely had other ideas. The idea of Milton giving me a good crack if I got in the way was bad enough.

  It was also the thought of bringing attention to myself, opening myself up in the future to his daily torture in the classroom and in the school yard. I mean, when Milton decided to pick on somebody, he REALLY picked.

  But my mind knew that was no excuse. Danny, I felt, being my next door neighbor and all, had deserved my protection. He deserved more than my feeble help getting him back home. And Milton needed to be stopped.

  The sad thing was this fight between my brain and my body. It was like I knew what to do, but didn't have the courage to do it. Being "courage free" was not a positive thing.

  I rocked a long time in that rocker in the attic. Gram always said that rocking gave her peace of mind, but I must admit it didn't work for me. Of course, I'm sure Gram never had such a guilty conscience either. I'm sure you would never have found Gram hiding on the porch while Milton terrorized the neighborhood. She would have chased him with a broom or something. I closed my eyes and pictured that, and I have to admit, it made me smile. In a roundabout way, maybe rocking did help, after all.

  When I got bored, I started to explore the attic. On one side, there were a bunch of boxes and crates that we had brought from the city. These contained uninteresting things like my winter clothes (probably by now they wouldn't fit, anyway), books, books, and more books (don't look at me, Mom likes books), and a lot of extra kitchen stuff we didn’t need, so we didn't bother unpacking it.

  Behind this stuff was my old crib, baby clothes, and some boxes of toys. Every once in a while, I looked though my old stuff, just to remember. But not today. I already felt like a baby, I didn't have to rub it in.

  It was the other side of the attic that was the most interesting. Here there were a couple of trunks and boxes and old dressers with drawers filled with old stuff that Gram had put away. Gram knew how to save exciting stuff, not like Mom's crummy old pots and pans.

  There were old dresses that dated back to the days when she was my age. Once I had tried them on, and they made me laugh. In those days, girls wore lots of lace and ruffles, instead of running shoes and jeans and teeshirts. Try playing soccer in that garb, and you would be having a real experience, let me tell you.

  But it was still fun to look at. I liked to remember Gram as a young girl. I imagined she would be beautiful, and brave and strong and confident. She would be good at everything she did, from doing fractions in math, to making friends and going to parties. She would be kind and helpful to all the kids in her class, and would never, never, get picked on, because everyone would like her. She would be able to stand up to a deranged kid like Milton, and make him see the "error of his ways". He would become instantly nice and friendly, just because Gram asked him to be.

  Of course, in those days, no one even thought to call her Gram (figure it out for yourself, here). Her name was Katharine Isabel Maywood. When she had married my Gramps, her name changed to Katherine Isabel Maywood Murphy. Since that's quite a mouthful, everyone called her Katherine Murphy. To me, though, she was simply Gram, and she was about the most wonderful person in the world.

  When she had died, and we had had the funeral for her, I saw that there were a lot of people who thought she was wonderful, too. I never saw so much crying in my life (including Mom and I). There were old people and young people and people from the neighborhood, and people from church. They all said how they were going to miss her. Mom said it was very comforting. I guess it was, though I didn't feel so very comforted at the time.

  But I was her only grandchild, so I felt she belonged to me in a very special way. She told me that many times in her life.

  "Isabel," she would say to me, "You remind me so much of myself at your age. You are very, very special to me."

  When I thought about this, I sat down on an old black trunk in the corner of the attic. It was very dark back there, far away from the light, but all of a sudden, I really didn't mind. The truth was, I wasn't like Gram at all. I was a chicken. I could feel my stomach, all of a sudden, tying itself up into a knot.

  What if Gram had still been alive and had seen me hiding there on her porch while little Danny got whacked by Milton?

  Would she still think I was "special"?

  And then another, very scary thought crossed my mind. I had learned in Bible school about heaven and spirits and things like that, but I never really applied it to Gram. But what if it was true? What if she STILL could see me? What if her spirit was floating right there, telling me to go stop Milton, and I just didn't listen?

  Without a second's hesitation, hot, salty tears started to flow down my cheeks, and I couldn't stop them. I wasn't sobbing out loud, or anything, I just felt horribly sad inside. I sat very still on the black trunk, and the tears flowed and flowed and flowed.

  Gram had been, I guess, my very best friend in the world. The idea that she would be disappointed in me was a brutal one. I cried so much, my shirt started to get wet. By that time, I was tired of sitting up on the trunk, so I slid down the side of it, and rested my head in my arms on the top. The tears kept running. The top of the trunk even got wet.

  I was always really careful of Gram's things. When I looked in a box or a trunk, I was always very sure to put the things back exactly as they had been. I didn't want anything wrinkled or dirty, or ruined in any way. This was Gram's stuff. This was special.

  I hadn't gotten to this big black t
runk in my past explorations, so I wasn't sure what was in it. I did know I didn't want my tears dripping all over Gram's trunk. Believe it or not, that thought helped to turn off the faucet of tears. I used the edge of my shirt to dry the top of the trunk, and then I curled up in a ball, leaning against the side of it.

  I was exhausted. I wanted a few minutes before I had to face the bright lights of daytime, though. I closed my eyes just for a minute, glad that the tears had stopped. Next thing I knew (or didn't know), I was sound asleep.

  Chapter 4

  I didn't know how long I slept, but when I woke up, I felt really confused. By the light in the little tiny window at the other end of the attic, I knew it was late afternoon.

  Usually, when the sun was bright outside, there would be a little patch of sun on the floor. Early in the afternoon some strong sun rays pierced through the darkness, and settled on the little dust particles. The dust looked like it was dancing on the rays. But there were no dancing rays now, the sun had started going down a bit. It was dinner time, at least.

  I felt a little better than I had before. If Mom had been looking for me she would have been yelling, and I would have heard her. I decided to spend a little more time in my attic.

  I grabbed the leather handle of the big black trunk, and began to pull it out of the dark corner and toward the light bulb. The old trunk was really heavy. It's pretty hot in the attic, since it's so closed in, and I was sweating by the time I had the trunk where I wanted it. I didn't give up until it was in the right place.

  The latch was closed, but it wasn't locked. Gram had never been big on locking anything, which was good for me at this point. The lid of the trunk made a squealing sound when I raised it. I doubted it had been opened in quite a while. The thought made me excited. It was a chance to find some really interesting stuff.