A Treasure of Gold

by Piper Huguley

  The day went well. There were twenty-five children and although she felt slightly stretched, they all appeared grateful in having something to do. Nettie made a mental note, however, to get some of the mothers to volunteer one day out of the week to help her, especially when it came time to work on the children’s math. They needed more help than what she could give—and it wasn’t a subject that was her strong suit.

  However, after the math lesson, it was time for music. This was where she excelled. She sectioned the children off and created a choir. They sounded amazing. Their young voices, uplifted in song, would make for a lovely Easter pageant.

  Though they didn’t have much time, only three weeks, she could write a short moving tableau, something close to the actual Easter story. With some songs, it would be a production the parents could come and see. Maybe Jay would come to see Goldie perform. Anything to get Jay to come to church was worthy.

  Then she would learn his true Christian name, as he’d promised.

  She whistled as she ladled out the soup to the children for their lunch, rejoicing at the thought of bringing a new soul to church.

  Still, she knew she was really marveling at the fit of that custom-designed suit he wore, even as she knew it was a thought unworthy of her.

  On Wednesday, Jay returned home earlier than usual. When he opened the door, he took a sniff and a delicious warm-food smell wrapped around him. Ever since he had come across Nettie, going around and collecting adult pennies and nickels in the hopes of a big payday didn’t seem fun anymore. He had thoughts about how to get out of the game, but he needed to act on it, sooner rather than later, and certainly all at once. He couldn’t expect to ease out and live.

  He was also getting sick of Lem, who kept teasing him about “his nanny” and what she could do for him. It didn’t seem fun or right to even think of someone like Nettie in that way. She was very ethereal, and there was something clean and safe there for him and Goldie. He didn’t appreciate Lem making it dirty or sordid.

  When he walked into the kitchen, he moved toward his daughter. Nettie had fashioned some type of play costume for Goldie and they were laughing. Something good—chicken, he could see—was frying and a pot of vegetables bubbled away on the stove.

  “Daddy, you’re home!” Goldie came to him and grabbed him around his legs, a gesture of hers that always warmed his heart.

  Nettie looked a little less perfect than usual. She turned from him to turn the chicken and give the vegetables a stir.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I was practicing, Daddy, rehearsing my role in the pageant.”

  “The Easter pageant.” Nettie wiped her hands on an apron.

  She had a spot of flour on her cheek and he longed to touch it, to help her wipe it off. He kept a firm hold on Goldie. She was his anchor right now.

  “There’ll be an Easter pageant?”

  “Yes. I’m to be the angel who tells the women not to look for Jesus in the tomb.” Goldie split from him and spread her arms into a dramatic pose. “Why do ye seek him here? He is in the tomb no more.”

  Nettie laughed and clapped her hands. “Very good, Goldie.”

  “Now a pageant too? What about the school?” he asked.

  “Well, we practice during school time. I’m afraid some of the things that I’m not as strong in, like math, have taken a bit of a backseat. I thought this would be a fun way for the children to come to know the Easter story, and it’ll be nice for the parents to see them in the pageant.”

  He knew he appeared to be frowning, but he couldn’t help it after Nettie’s words. “Math is what they need to know. Helps the children to not be cheated out there in the big world.”

  Nettie regarded him, but turned to his daughter. “Take off your wings, Goldie, and lay them on the couch. Then you can set the table.”

  Goldie did just what Nettie said. Such a pleasing change in his daughter.

  “I’m aware of that, but the mothers haven’t helped out as I thought they might.”

  “They like having their children away from them for a few hours. I’ve seen some of them and heard how they remark about the way they are able to accomplish a little more. But it’s important to have the learning reinforced.”

  “I think so too. When they go back, I have thoughts about making it into an after-school thing. I’ll see. If it becomes that, I won’t be able to get your dinner on the stove.”

  “We’ll work it out. You have good ideas.”

  Jay stepped forward, picked up a towel on the edge of the counter and used it to wipe the smudge from Nettie’s cheek. The gesture permitted him to step closer to her, and she smelled like cinnamon. That was the spice he had been trying to nail down. A West Indies spice—something warm and welcoming. Home. When he touched her with the towel, however, it started that charge between them again and Nettie grabbed at his wrist, seemingly to stop him from touching her. To stay the electricity somehow. It didn’t work.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, much more softly than he intended it. “You had flour on you.”

  Nettie took her hand away and he handed her the towel. She lowered her head and a blush appeared under her sienna-brown skin, but rather than be pleased at having shaken her perfect posture, Jay was embarrassed too.

  He was a little surprised when she laughed, which relieved the tension a great deal. “That’s something that’ll happen when you’re frying chicken and putting feathers on wings with flour paste.”

  “You do a lot for me and my daughter and I’m grateful for it. I want to thank you.”

  “It’s my job, Mr. Evans.” She lowered her eyes.

  “I know. But I would like to see you get some satisfaction from it. You give and give—I bet the money that I’ve been paying you has been put into the school or the pageant.”

  Nettie faced him directly. He knew she couldn’t deny it. “It’s my life’s work.”

  “And what about something for you? You deserve something for yourself.”

  “I like what I do.”

  “Is it enough?”

  She turned from him so swiftly Jay knew he’d touched a nerve. He wanted to half smile at how Nettie was practically vibrating—she was going to tell him to go to the devil, if he wasn’t there already.

  Come on with it, Little Country.

  But she kept it under control, since Goldie stood right there, so he backed down physically. Nettie did as well.

  “Daddy, can’t Miss Nettie stay and have supper with us? I’m out here setting the table for two, and I can put on an extra plate for her. She always makes a lot and we know there are leftovers. She makes a lot. You don’t eat that much, Miss Nettie, so you should eat with us, then go to your house.”

  Jay watched his daughter put forward her argument and marveled at how Goldie, at the tender age of seven, always seemed to make perfect sense. Why hadn’t he thought of asking Nettie to dinner?

  He knew why.

  Staying with them was a step down a pathway Nettie wouldn’t want to go down. It would be a reminder to Jay that he was not good enough for her. She was also a tie to his beloved wife and he’d resented her for it until very recently. Still, he didn’t want to seem to be inhospitable.

  “You should,” Jay echoed.

  “Yes you should,” Goldie said. “It isn’t fair that you eat with Solly and Maisie every night.”

  “Well, Goldie, people usually eat dinner with their family. Solly and Maisie are my nephew and niece, so that’s why I eat dinner with them. Mr. Evans here, he’s your daddy and you eat dinner with him. My place is at the table down in the brownstones with my family.”

  “Gee, you could have some food with us. Then maybe it could mean that we would be family sometimes. I don’t have a mother and, Miss Nettie, you could—”

  “Goldie Louise, that’s enough.” He hated to be stern with her but
she was going somewhere she shouldn’t.

  Goldie’s hazel eyes transformed into large pools of tears.

  He didn’t even know Goldie could cry that fast. She was usually such a stalwart child. They could hear her little Buster Brown shoes run across the wooden living room floor and skip up the steps to her room.

  The two of them stood there, and from the way she poked at the chicken in the pan, he knew Nettie was bothered by Goldie being upset.

  Such strange new territory they were in. Should he go to Goldie? He had just spoken to her in a very stern way. Should Nettie go? She was the child’s nanny and she was still working.

  “This is what happens when a fellow comes home a little early. A lot of confusion.” He slumped against the wall.

  “You should go see her,” Nettie spoke to the stove while attending the sputtering chicken. She opened the cookstove and used a folded towel to retrieve a pan of cornbread, and the scent of corn tickled his nose.

  “I didn’t mean to upset her. I just didn’t want to put foolish dreams into her head.”

  Nettie slid the pan of hot cornbread onto a place at the back of the stove where it was still warm. She didn’t say anything and her silence alarmed him.

  He wanted her to tell him that he was wrong, and Goldie’s vision wasn’t a foolish dream, but Nettie didn’t say anything. She expertly moved the chicken out of the pan to a warming plate and the hot grease stopped sputtering when she moved the pan back to a cooler place on the stove. She turned to him.

  “You’re her father. Go to her.”

  “You’re her nanny and still on the clock.”

  “Oh well, when you put it that way…” She reached around her waist, untying the apron strings there, and started to pull the apron from her.

  “No, no, that is not what I meant. It came out all wrong.”

  “I’m your employee, Mr. Evans. I’m here to do as I am told.”

  Jay reached out to Nettie and touched her cheek. “You aren’t some kind of statue. You’re a living, breathing woman and it’s time you recognize that fact.”

  She stepped back. “How do you know that?”

  He stepped to her. “Sometimes, it’s hard to see the obvious.”

  Once again, Nettie put a hand to his arm and stayed him from touching her, but it was a more gentle hand. “Please. Don’t. I’m someone who has been set apart from others in a different way and I understand that. If I were in the Catholic faith, I would probably be someone who would join a convent, someone who lived in one place day and night and sought to serve God.”

  He snored at her high-minded talk. “Do you really believe that is what God wants of you? He wants you to live and to share in his gifts. One of his greatest gifts is the love between a man and a woman.”

  Nettie shuddered. Why? “A gift so many people debase.”

  “But a gift nonetheless. Do you deny it when you look at Goldie? Or your nephew or niece? Any of the children in the school?”

  “No. They’re all precious.”

  “They are. That’s why I insisted that Goldie have the name that she does. You’re Garnet. You should be Garnet, something precious and real.”

  “Goldie needs us. She’s sad and lonely and thinks she is in trouble.”

  “She’s not. I’ll tell her soon enough.”

  “Well then, I should go.” Nettie moved to the steps.

  His voice reached out to her—to beckon her back. “Stay for dinner then, just like she wanted.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “What are you hiding from? Life? Why?”

  The displeasure that she had shown before with him came back with a vengeance. “I’m not hiding. I’m out here giving myself to the church and these children.”

  “But not to a man. Why?”

  “Those are physical acts that are meant for other women. Not for me.”

  He moved to her again because he couldn’t help it. Nettie was just as distressed as Goldie, deep down, and he wanted to get her to tell the truth. “You’re a beautiful, attractive woman, and you deserve what beautiful women have. Why not you?”

  “I know what God has in store for me.”

  “He gave us minds to think with and hearts to feel. Are you using yours?”

  Nettie gave a faint smile and shrugged the slightest bit from his hold. “I think that we have too much emotion for each other’s good, Mr. Evans.”

  “Maybe that means we can be good for each other.” The words tumbled from him before he could stop them. Once he said them, he wished he could take them back because of the alarmed look on Nettie’s face.

  “I could never be with a man who doesn’t embrace faith.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Then that is a problem, isn’t it? You could come to church and find out.”

  Jay felt anger welling up in him. “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?”

  “My faith is the answer to everything.”

  Nettie’s words landed on him with a hard impact. He wanted to say something that impacted her the same way.

  She turned and stood on the threshold. “I better go home. I hope you enjoy your dinner.”

  “I’m sorry that you won’t give us a chance, just to prove a point.”

  “Isn’t it enough that you gamble? Do you have to make me say the words to you?”

  He stood over her, speaking the words slowly, “I don’t gamble. I’m a banker. The only kind of banker this town will allow me to be.”

  His words frightened her because she backed away, and he understood Nettie’s reluctance for one minute. There were all kinds of things in this crazy world that made no sense.

  She spoke, “There’s rice pudding in the fridge. Please tell Goldie I said good night.”

  Jay watched Nettie pick up her gloves, hat and coat off the edge of the couch and run outside without donning them first, something she never did. The only satisfaction he had was that he had gotten to her. He had finally pierced that perfection.

  The next morning at the church basement, something in Nettie’s beautiful face lit up when she sipped on a cup of milk at breakfast and Jay shuddered watching her. “Why do you drink this?”

  “It’s not as fresh as I’m used to from Winslow, I have to admit.” Nettie put down the mug of milk with a sigh.

  “The farm does do better.” Jay had to admit.

  “The farm?” Her entire look changed from a protective to an open one.

  Bless her heart. Little Country misses home.

  “Yes, I have a dairy farm.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “It’s a good hideout when the cops come.” He leaned forward and she leaned back, Goldie laughing at her.

  “We go to the farm sometimes on Sundays.”

  “Which is why you haven’t been in church.”

  “Exactly. A different kind of worship. You ought to try it sometime.”

  Nettie stood and collected their plates. “Uh, no. You would not have me let you go astray.”

  “I would be glad if you were doing the leading, Miss Nettie.”

  “Time to help with clearing the tables, Miss Goldie.”

  She was so smooth in the way she changed the subject to suit her.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jay didn’t care to see his daughter clearing tables, but doing some work didn’t seem to hurt her. Clearly Goldie was up to the task.

  Watching his daughter and Nettie made him think, Why wait until Sunday? I can take a day off. If it helped to clear the sad look off Nettie’s face when she talked about the fresh milk, it would be worth it.

  The thought so consumed him that Jay left the charity-kitchen breakfast table without even saying goodbye.

  “You clear up the stakes, Lem. I have something to do this afternoon. I
’m taking the car, Matt, so you help him on foot.”

  Matt pulled his chair in closer and picked his teeth. Yeah, he wasn’t happy about that.

  He straightened.

  “What’s going on?” Matt asked.

  “Checking something with Goldie.”

  “I hope it’s not with that holy nanny lady,” Matt’s voice rumbled.

  He said nothing, pushing forward the slips Matt needed. Matt didn’t have the best memory, and Jay wanted no more shootings.

  This was also about Goldie. She needed some fresh air on this late March day. It was a rare beautiful early spring Pittsburgh day with no rain in sight. He would show Miss Nettie how to celebrate and have some fun.

  After Jay collected the number from the bank, he dropped his crew off at the storefront. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Don’t rush, Boss. I mean, take your time. She’s worth the wait.”

  Lem and Matt walked off, laughing and slapping at each other’s backs. Despite his injury, he was able to get the car around without hurting himself. The flexibility he’d had with his arm was slowly returning. How good it felt to heal.

  Healing made him think more about getting out of the game and what that meant. He was certainly done with getting shot. What could he possibly do? A thought seized him.

  I want to see Goldie grow up.

  Jay pulled up to his house and surprised Nettie and Goldie, who had laid out the preparations for dinner.

  Nettie stared up at him, her hands wrapped around a chicken. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Evans?”

  All of a sudden, he didn’t know what to say.

  He coughed. “I thought maybe you would like to go for a drive in the car.”

  “I bought groceries for your dinner.”

  “I mean a longer drive. To see some of the greener parts around here.”

  Goldie put in, “We were about to make dinner.”

  “Put it in the icebox for tomorrow, Gold. I got the diner to give me some sandwiches.”

  Goldie began to run around the room, putting things away. “Let’s go, Miss Nettie. You’ll like how green it is on the farm.”