"Four years old? No, he's about eight. I know because my mother is on the same charity board of directors as Corbette's and she asks about him all the time."
I paused, tilting my head.
"I don't understand what you're saying, Audrey."
"Corbette's little brother isn't suffering from a blood disease. Well, I suppose technically it might be called that. It has to do with chromosomes and stuff. He has Down Syndrome. You know what that is?"
"Yes," I said, "but I thought it was a different sort of blood disease, maybe even a cancer."
She shook her head.
"He died when he was four," I repeated. "I'm positive he said that."
"We can call my mother and ask her," Audrey said, "if you don't believe me. Corbette's mother didn't have his younger brother until she was in her late thirties. She's already in her mid forties, so you can't be remembering it right."
"I know what he told me," I said.
"Why would he tell you that?" she wondered aloud. Her face brightened with the answer. "Maybe he was trying to get you to feel sorry for him so you would let down your guard and become another victim of the King
Cherry Picker."
I stared at her.
"Rain?"
There was a disturbing smell.
"Oh no," I screamed rushing to the stove, "the biscuits!"
They were almost burned; just like I had almost been.
16
Who Can I Trust?
.
Jake came by in the morning to pick up the
Rolls so he could bring Grandmother Hudson back from the hospital. I saw him drive up in his car and went out to speak to him. I was thinking about going along, but I was afraid to suggest it, afraid it might upset Grandmother Hudson.
"Mornin', your ladyship," Jake quipped, tipping his hat and bowing as I approached.
"Good morning, Jake. What time will you be bringing Mrs. Hudson home?"
"They told me to be at the hospital by ten. It won't be more than a forty minute ride today. No real traffic." He gazed at the house. "How do you like livin' in that big house all by yourself?"
"I had a girlfriend over for dinner," I said as an answer. "I told her about your ghosts."
Jake laughed.
"Did it scare her?"
"A little, I think. You really believe in ghosts, Jake? My mama does."
"Something lingers in a house like this one, Rain," he said, taking his cap off and scratching his head. "There's too much history. There's nothing here that'll hurt you, though," he promised.
"How can you be so sure, Jake?" I challenged. He shrugged.
"Nothing here has ever hurt me," he replied. He opened the car door and looked at me. "Did you want to come along for the ride?"
I was tempted. I actually took a step forward and then stopped.
"No, I'd better wait here," I said. "I have some homework left to do and I want to be free to do whatever I can for Mrs. Hudson."
"You know she's bringing a live-in nurse home with her, right?"
"Yes and I heard how Victoria thought she was too expensive."
He laughed and then shook his head.
"Well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with keeping your eye on your stash," he said getting into the car. "You can learn a lot from Victoria if you'll listen."
"When you're with Victoria, that's all you can do is listen," I muttered. I probably shouldn't have said it even though I didn't for one moment think Jake would tell anyone what I had said. I just didn't like sounding mean and ungrateful.
He lowered his sunglasses and gazed at me with a half-smile on his face and then he started the engine, waved and drove off. I watched until the car disappeared. Then I turned and slowly walked back into the house.
Merilyn was just starting her dusting and vacuuming. She had come home very late the night before and hadn't bothered getting up early enough to prepare my breakfast. She knew I would make my own and leave the kitchen in better condition than she usually did, so she wasn't worried.
I really didn't have any homework left to do, just a little studying for a possible history quiz. Audrey and I had done all our homework after dinner the night before. We had talked and talked until her mother had come for her. She had confessed that the one thing she longed for more than anything, more than the best grades, the best part in the school play, was a real boyfriend, and she told me about the one and only time she had almost had a relationship. Bizarre didn't even begin to describe it.
"His name was Charles Princeton," she had begun, "and he was in this special advanced French class that combined girls from Dogwood and boys from Sweet William. It was part of an experimental college satellite program run by the nearby
community college. We were the only ninth graders in the class at the time, both having done well on the entrance exam. All the rest were juniors and seniors.
"Charles was just an inch or so taller than me and chubby, but I thought he had the most beautiful blue eyes, Rain. When he looked at me, he really looked at me. He would stare right into my eyes as if daring me to stare back into his. You know how some boys will always be staring at your breasts and make you feel as if you are naked. He didn't. He just kept his eyes on mine. I always gazed right back at him. I wasn't intimidated like most of the other girls. Not that he was very popular with other girls. He wasn't, but he didn't seem to care. I used to watch him when the other boys in the class stared at one of the prettier senior girls. Charles really wasn't a gawker. At first I thought he just wasn't interested in girls yet. You know, some boys are so immature, they'd rather collect baseball cards."
I laughed.
"I didn't know many like that," I said. "Where I come from, you grow up fast. Twelve girls in my eighth grade class got pregnant."
"Really?" Audrey said impressed, her eyes wide with excitement. Rich white kids, I thought. What I told them about my life wasn't real to them, nowhere near as real as it had been to me.
"Have you ...almost gotten pregnant or anything?" Audrey asked. It was her way of trying to find out just how sexually active I was.
"No, have you?" I countered. It brought a wide smile to her face.
"Me? The only thing I've ever done is kiss Charles a few times and let his hand rest here," she said indicating her right breast.
"That was all? How did you stop him?" I asked, just as curious about the intimacies of these rich girls as they were about mine.
"I didn't have to. When he touched me, he acted as if he had put his hand on a hot stove. He was more frightened than I was by what he had done."
I started to shake my head skeptically.
"No, really," she emphasized. "It was his mother's fault,"
"Mother's fault? What do you mean? She wasn't there, too, was she?"
She looked down for a long moment and then said, "I swore to him I would never tell anyone." "Then maybe you shouldn't," I said.
She looked up quickly. When someone is just bursting to tell you something, the best way to get them to do it quickly is to tell them not to, I thought.
"No, Charles is gone. His family moved away over a year ago and I suppose it's all right to tell you."
"Why is it all right to tell me?" I questioned.
"You're different," she said with a thin, nervous laugh that sounded like tiny china cups shattering. "And I don't just mean because you're AfricanAmerican. You're easier to talk to," she said with sincerity in her eyes.
I gave her a small smile and waited.
"He told me how his mother warned him about sex. She made him think of his penis as if it was a little animal with a separate mind of its own living between his legs!"
"He said that?"
"A huh. She told him it would get him into big trouble if he let it do what it wanted. So to stop it..."
"What?" I asked, finding myself more intrigued than I had anticipated.
"She made him wear tight rubber underpants. He said sometimes he was actually in pain down there. He told me that w
as why he was afraid to look at girls or think about them."
I had heard and seen some very ugly things in my life and I had grown up thinking this was the way it was with poor, oppressed people. Distortions, promiscuity, pornography, all of it was natural to the world I'd lived in and grew like fungus in our dark, dirty neighborhoods.
But the twisted and ugly avenues people's thoughts traveled apparently knew no money barriers. Charles's mother had tortured and abused him in a different way, but the result was the same, I concluded.
"How horrible," I muttered. "Didn't his father have anything to say about it?"
"No. His father had left them soon after he was born." "I don't blame him," I muttered. I thought for a moment. "Was he still wearing those confining rubber underpants when you knew him? When you kissed him?" She nodded and then turned crimson with a memory. "What?"
"Swear you'll never tell a soul," she said.
"I don't gossip, but I swear."
"He ...made me stand on one side of the room and he stood on the other and he took down his pants to show me the rubber underpants and then he lowered them to show me how quickly it--"
"What?" I practically shouted. She swallowed hard. "How quickly it grew and grew and then erupted when he touched it."
I sat with my mouth open for a moment.
"He did that in front of you?"
She nodded.
"That's so weird."
"I ran away:' she admitted. "It frightened me."
"I think I would have run too." I grimaced at the images. "He was your only boyfriend?"
"Sort of," she said. "After that, we didn't see each other much. I had the feeling he had told his mother what had happened and she had forbidden him to see me."
She looked so devastated because she had told me the story that I immediately changed the subject and got her to talk about other things like television and movies, books she had read and places she had been. The story had actually made me sick to my stomach and I wanted to forget it as well.
When she asked me questions about my life in the Projects, I found myself exaggerating the good things. It almost sounded as if I had left a wonderful world to come suffer in this big house with all these rich people and go to a private school. She left looking at me enviously and I felt as if the house and my new life was corrupting me, turning me into another one of those who stored secrets and lies in her heart.
Late in the morning, Grandmother Hudson arrived like a storm. I heard her voice rattling the walls as soon as the front door opened. The nurse, Mrs. Griffin, stood at her side and tried to hold her arm. She was a tall, dark-haired woman who looked strong enough, but Grandmother Hudson refused to lean on anyone or anything.
"Where is everyone?" she cried.
I rushed out of my room and hurried down the stairs. Merilyn came running from the kitchen.
"Welcome home, Mrs. Hudson," I said.
"Ma'am," Merilyn said with a nod.
Grandmother Hudson gazed around with furious eyes, glanced into the living room and then started down the hallway toward the dining room.
"Mrs. Hudson. I want you upstairs and in bed," Mrs. Griffin said.
"In a moment," Grandmother Hudson replied, waving her away. Mrs. Griffin looked at me and then at Jake, who beamed a wide smile and shook his head.
"Did you wash down that dining table once since I've been gone?" Grandmother Hudson demanded of Merilyn.
"Yes, ma'am."
"It doesn't look it. There's dust on those window casings. You need to vacuum them, not just wave a feather brush at them. All that does is move the dust to another spot. I think I've told you that about one thousand times, if I told it to you once."
"I did vacuum," Merilyn asserted.
Grandmother Hudson made a gruff noise in her throat and then looked into the kitchen.
"If there's anything wrong in there, it isn't my fault, Mrs. Hudson. Rain used the kitchen too. She even had a guest for dinner last night and cooked their dinner herself," Merilyn revealed.
Grandmother Hudson raised her eyebrows and gazed my way.
"And who might that have been?"
"Audrey Stempelton," I said.
"Mrs. Hudson, if you're not going to pay any attention to my orders, I might as well not be here," Mrs. Griffin said sharply.
Grandmother Hudson looked at her the way she would look at an annoying house fly, but then headed back toward the stairway.
"Bring me some tea and biscuits," she commanded
Merilyn and started up the stairs. She turned to me. "Come to my room in twenty minutes," she ordered.
"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," I said as I stood beside Jake and watched her and her nurse go up the stairs.
"I give that nurse forty-eight hours," Jake said. "See you in the morning," he added and backed out as if he was happy he was able to escape, closing the door quickly behind him.
Merilyn gave me a fiery look.
"I thought you washed down that dinning room table last night," she whined and pivoted like a toy soldier to go into the kitchen and prepare
Grandmother Hudson's tea.
After Grandmother Hudson was settled in, I went to her room. She was propped up in her bed, looking comfortable. Mrs. Griffin had just finished taking her blood pressure.
"You can go get yourself some lunch now," Grandmother Hudson told her.
"I think I can decide for myself when I want to have lunch, Mrs. Hudson," the nurse replied dryly. "If you want me to leave the room, just ask for privacy."
Grandmother Hudson gazed up at her with a look that could burn a hole through the Washington Monument. Mrs. Griffin turned away, took her time, and left the bedroom.
"A most annoying, impudent, arrogant person, just like all those medical people. There's no better reason to stay healthy and well than avoiding those self-anointed saints. The doctors act like they walk on water. The nurses treat you as if you were interrupting their coffee breaks. I refuse to ever go back there. I'll live and die in this bed if I have to," she vowed.
I couldn't wipe the smile off my face.
"And what is so funny, might I ask?"
"The operation obviously hasn't slowed you down, Mrs. Hudson," I said.
"Of course not. It was unnecessary and it's quite annoying having this ...this thing in my chest. Now what's been going on here?"
"Not much," I said shrugging.
"I realize that from one superficial look at the house. It doesn't look as if she was in this room once since I've been gone. I hate to go into the bathroom and see what condition it is in. Why is it so difficult to find reliable help?"
"Maybe you should try to relax for a day or so, Grandmother," I said in a lower voice. "Get your strength back."
"Everyone's got advice. Get my hairbrush off the vanity table. I look a fright," she said.
I found it and brought it to her.
"Just brush it down, please," she said. I smiled and began. She closed her eyes. "How's your school going? The play?"
"Very good," I said.
"And your mother? Have we heard a word from that country?"
She opened her eyes to see the expression on my face as I answered.
"She said she's coming this weekend with Alison and Brody, but not with Grant."
"One of her and her children's duty calls. I hate them. Keep brushing. What about Victoria?"
"She hasn't been here since you went to the hospital," I said. Her eyebrows rose.
"That's surprising." She was quiet for a moment and then put her hand on mine to stop me from brushing her hair. "There's something I want you to get for me," she said after taking a deep breath. "It's in the den in the safe. The safe is behind the desk, behind the picture of my husband.
"I'm going to trust you with the combination. I never make mistakes when I evaluate someone and I don't expect I'm making one about you now. Has this minor imperfection turned me into a fool?" she asked.
"I told you before and I'll tell you again, Grandmother Hudson, I am not
a thief."
She made that small smile on her lips again.
"We'll see. Turn to the right twice and stop on ten. Then go back to two and to the right to twelve. On the very top of the pile of papers there is a document in a pale yellow folder. Bring it to me before Victoria gets here. And I don't want anyone to know about it. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Merilyn came in with the tray carrying tea and biscuits. "What did you do, send to Richmond for that? I asked for it hours ago."
"It hasn't been twenty minutes, Mrs. Hudson." "Hmm," Grandmother Hudson said. "Put it here. Come on."
Merilyn hurriedly did so and stepped back. Grandmother Hudson felt the teapot.
"It's not hot enough," she said.
"It was scalding, ma'am."
"Maybe twenty minutes ago. Get me hot water."
"Yes, ma'am," she said directing her angry look at me.
"Well?" Grandmother Hudson said, turning to me. "What are you waiting for?"
I hurried out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the safe. Was it my imagination, or had Grandmother Hudson returned from the hospital even more crabby than before she had gone in? I thought she was supposed to feel better. I really felt sorry for Merilyn.
As I walked past the kitchen, I gazed in and saw Mrs. Griffin making herself a sandwich and some coffee. She looked like she was mumbling to herself. After I entered the den, I closed the door softly and then went to the portrait of Mr. Hudson. I carefully removed it from the wall and started to turn the knob on the safe. It clicked and I opened it and reached in. I could see there were some jewels, papers and what looked like a birth certificate. I found the document she wanted and closed the safe, carefully placed the portrait back and left the den. I didn't look at the document. It was very thick. As I approached the stairway, the front door opened and Victoria entered. Instinctively, I lowered the document and held it close to my side so it wasn't visible in my hand.
"How is my mother?" she demanded without a hello.
"She looks fine," I said. "The nurse settled her in and she's having tea and biscuits."
"Where's the nurse?"
"Having lunch," I said.
"That's probably what she'll do most of the time. I don't know why we needed a fully licensed nurse. A nurse's aide would have been quite sufficient." She started up the stairs.
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