by Abby Bardi
“It's hard to say, Mary Fred.” Diane looked at me like this was not the question she was hoping for. “It depends.”
“What does it depend on?” I asked in spite of myself, though we were always taught that it's not polite to ask adults questions, especially not two in a row.
“Well, there's the trial. Both trials, actually. And then after that, it's impossible to say.”
“To say what?” I couldn't believe my impertinence, asking her a third question. The Reverend Thigpen would have said that I was being presumptive and told Mama and Papa about it, then I would have gotten a beating. But Diane didn't seem to think it was odd, though I could tell she didn't like this question any better than the last one.
“It's hard to say if they'll be convicted and if so, how much time they'll have to serve.”
“Well, our lives are service,” I said cheerfully.
“I mean, in jail,” Diane said, biting her lip. “It depends on what the judge says.”
“I know,” I said, trying to make it easier for Diane, though I was getting a knot in my stomach. “So how long do you think it will be?”
“I don't know,” Diane said, looking at me. Her eyes looked so sad behind her glasses that I wanted to say something to comfort her.
“I'm sure I'll like it here,” I said. “I'm sure it will be just fine.”
“Here's your lemonade.” Alice came through the kitchen door carrying a tray with three different-sized glasses on it. “The big one is for you, Mary Fred,” she said, stooping in front of me. I had never seen an adult serve a child before, and certainly not from a tray, and I felt funny taking the big glass, but I did. I waited for her to give Diane her lemonade and to sit down, and then I took a sip of mine. It tasted like old sweat, but I drank it all down fast so I didn't notice it. I decided to get me a bunch of lemons and some sugar sometime soon and show the Cullisons what real lemonade was. It looked like I'd be here for a while, so I figured I'd get a chance.
“Alice, why don't you tell Mary Fred something about your family?” Diane said, waving her hand in the air like she was trying to swat a fly.
“Oh, okay!” Alice brightened up and pressed the palms of her hands together. “Well, Mary Fred, it's me, and my daughter Heather, and my brother Roy. We've lived in this house for about thirteen years, since Heather was two.”
“Heather is just your age,” Diane added, in case I couldn't do the arithmetic for myself.
“I work in the library at the college near here. Heather just finished the tenth grade, and she'll be going into eleventh next year.”
I waited for her to tell me what Roy did, but she didn't. I also wondered where Heather's father was, and how you could call one woman, her brother, and her daughter a family. I thought about my own family, the seven of us kids, and Mama and Papa at the dinner table, all of us saying the BeautifulPrayer together. But of course two places at the table were empty when I tried to imagine it, and that just made me feel worse and more confused. For a moment I felt like crying, and I wished I'd been able to bring the stuffed dog with me from the shelter. I'd gotten kind of attached to him.
“Would you like to see your room, Mary Fred?” Diane asked. It seemed like Diane was the only one who knew what to do. Alice jumped to her feet like she was about to dance, and started up the stairs. I followed her. The stairs were made of scuffed wood, and they twisted up onto a small, dark landing. Alice flipped a light on and I could see five wooden doorways. One had a flowered name tag on it that said “Heather” and stood open just a crack. I could see an unmade bed, a bunch of stuffed animals, and a lot of clothes on the floor. Two doors were closed, but the third was open, and I could see a bathroom. Alice opened the fifth door wide so I could look in. There was a bed with a flowered bedspread and a big piece of the same flowered fabric across the window. It didn't look like any curtains I had ever seen.
“This is your room, Mary Fred,” Alice said, waving me in. “It used to be the guest room, but I fixed it up a little and tried to make it look more, well, feminine.” Diane gave her a disapproving look that I pretended not to notice. We went into the room. It was all nice and neat, and a little fan was blowing as hard as it could next to the open window. Through the window, framed by the flowery fabric, I could see a big oak tree. It was a spready oak, the kind in the Book, and I made a plan to stand under it for a while in case the One wanted to send me a prophecy, or maybe just some idea of what was going to happen now.
“It's very nice,” I said to Alice, who smiled and looked pleased altogether. “It's a fancy room.” It was just the kind of fanciness Lackers seemed to like, so I figured I ought to say that.
“You can put your things down, Mary Fred,” Diane said. I was carrying my overnight bag. I put it down on the bed.
“Why don't you get unpacked, and maybe you'd like to wash up,” Diane said.
I knew it would only take me about two minutes to unpack, but I said I would, and they left me there. I opened my suitcase and started taking things out. I had brought my two best dresses, in case we went to church, though last time I'd been with Lackers that hadn't happened. I looked for somewhere to hang them up and sure enough, there were a bunch of plastic hangers in the closet. The closet was big enough for another twenty dresses or so, but needless to say I didn't have them. I had a pair of brown dungarees for working in the garden, in case there was a garden, and I folded those up and put them in a drawer in the dresser next to my bed, along with five pairs of cotton underpants. Next to them, I put my stripy yellow and brown shirt, the one that Fred used to say made me look like a skinny little bumblebee. “A bee in the body of a lion,” Mama would add, smacking Fred for making fun of me. I would make a loud buzzing sound and swoop down on all the Littles like I was going to sting them, and they would scream and run away, laughing. It would be a hot day, like this one, and we'd all be out in the yard raking and watering, chasing each other with the hose. I put my hands over my ears because all I could hear was laughing in my mind and then the terrible silence of this house, with nothing but the fan humming.
I sat there for a moment, still holding my ears and shaking my head to get the fan sound out of it. Then I made myself get up and close the dresser drawer, and I looked for somewhere to put the toiletries that I had in a small plastic bag. I didn't want to leave them in the bathroom in case they were in anybody's way, so I put them down on the nightstand. I put The Book of Fred right down next to them, but that seemed kind of disrespectful, so I put the plastic bag on the floor. Then I noticed a little bookshelf next to the window, so I put my book there, squeezed in between a bunch of what looked like picture books. On top of the bookshelf was a plastic pony with long, braided, wavy pink hair. What will they think of next, I thought to myself. We used to braid our horses' manes sometimes, but of course they were never pink. I had to admit, though, that the plastic pony looked awfully pretty that way.
When I had unpacked everything, I slid my overnight bag under the bed and sat down on the comforter for a while with my hands in my lap. I figured that Diane and Alice might have needed to talk about me some, so I gave them a little time. Then I went out on the landing and found the bathroom, and I splashed some cold water on my face and washed my hands. I said to myself, “The water of life is bright as crystal,” and then, “Blessed is the one who keepeth the words of the prophecy of the Book.” I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Amen.” I wasn't used to mirrors, since Mama didn't believe in them, and my face always looked like a stranger's. But I said hello to the girl in the mirror anyway, and gave her a little wink.
Diane and Alice were sitting on the sofas talking when I came downstairs. I was sure they had been talking about me before, but now they were on the weather and how hot it was, and Alice was saying that she really wished she could afford air-conditioning but it was just one of the many things, something or other, and she mentioned some man's name and looked sad. Diane looked bristly, and her wiry hair seemed to pick up an electrical charge and quiver,
but she didn't say anything, just shook her head and stood up. “Mary Fred, I'll be leaving now. Is there anything you need to ask us?”
I thought for a minute. “What are my chores?”
Diane and Alice both laughed, like this was funny. “Oh, Mary Fred,” Alice said, touching me lightly on the arm, “it's not like we want you to be our servant or anything. We want you to feel like you're part of the family.”
I said I figured that anyone who was part of a family had chores. They laughed some more, so I gave up and asked about school. Diane told me that school was just about over so I didn't have to worry about it until fall, but that they would try to get a tutor for me over the summer so I could catch up with my grade. “Heather can help you,” Alice said, though Diane looked at her funny, like she thought that wasn't likely.
“Is Heather at school right now?” I asked.
“I hope so,” Alice said. “I mean, yes.”
“Well, Mary Fred, I'd better be off. Welcome to your new home. I know you'll like it here.” Diane gave me a little pat on the arm, and then handed me a card. “Call me if you have any more questions, or if you just need someone to talk to.”
“I will, ma'am,” I said, putting the card in the pocket of my dress. Diane smiled at me and said, “I'll talk to you later,” to Alice. She went out the door, pulling it shut behind her. The air whooshed around us as the door closed. Alice turned to me, smiled brightly, and said, “Are you hungry?”
“Not really, ma'am. Alice. But thank you.”
“Would you like to go lie down for a while?”
“No thanks. I'm not really tired.”
“Would you like to watch some TV?”
“Oh, no, ma'am.” I didn't want to explain that only Lackers watched television, that we would never, ever poison our brains like that. That would have been a rude thing to say, so I just said, “I don't care for TV, thank you.”
Alice looked like she had no idea what to do with me, so to bail her out I said, “Why don't I bake something for dinnertime?”
“You mean like cookies?”
“Yes, ma'am. Alice. I can do cookies, or a cake if you'd rather.”
“Do you like to cook?”
“I like it fine. That's what I'd be doing right now. If I was at home. So I figure since this is home for a while, I ought to do what I'd be doing. At home.”
“Oh, of course, honey. Well, let's go see what ingredients we've got. It's awfully hot for baking, isn't it?”
“Well, yes, I guess it is. In the summer, we generally do it in the morning when the day is still cool. Mama says the heat is just a little reminder for us of what it would be like to go to the other place. She says baking concentrates the mind because of that.”
Alice opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, then closed it again. We went into the kitchen and she started pulling open cabinets and peering into them. There were a lot of cabinets, but they were full of things all jumbled together, not in lines or rows or anything. In one of them she found a bag of flour, but when she looked inside, she made a tsking sound with her mouth and threw it away. There was another bag of flour in another cabinet, and that one had never been opened, so she handed it to me. She found a can of baking powder and gave me that too. I checked the date on the bottom—it had expired, but it would probably still work. She found sugar in a large canister and some walnuts in the freezer.
“Do you have any vanilla?” I asked. She gave me a bottle of extract with the cap kind of stuck on and gooey. “Any ginger?” She handed me a little jar with a red cap. “How about butter?” She found me some on a shelf in the fridge. The fridge gave off a sour smell when she opened it, so she shut it back up quick. “Cookie sheet?” Alice was smiling now, like we were havingour own little game, and I have to say I was kind of enjoying it too. It felt good to do something normal, something I was used to. When everything I needed was piled up on the counter, I asked if she had some matches to light the oven. She said the oven lighted by itself and just to turn it on. I had a feeling Alice wasn't really interested in baking at all, just in entertaining me, so I said that if she had other chores she needed to do, I would be happy to do the baking all on my own. She said that actually, she had brought some work home and needed to see to it, so I thanked her and she left. I found some mixing bowls in a cabinet under the counter and got to work.
When I had put the cookies in the oven, I went back out into the living room. It was dark and a lot cooler than the kitchen. I listened for Alice but didn't hear her, so I sat down on one of the sofas. It was dark green and kind of prickly underneath a blanket with moons and stars on it. All around me were tall shelves crammed full of all kinds of books. I looked at some of their titles but I had never heard of any of them. We never read books by Lackers, or as Mama says, not by anybody unless they had heard the trumpet sound. A television was next to me, staring at me with its big blank eye.
I had been sitting there for a while, not doing much of anything, when the front door opened and a girl came in. She looked surprised to see me, but then seemed to realize who I was. “Oh, hi,” she said, throwing a huge book bag down on the sofa opposite me. “I'm Heather.” The way she said her name it sounded like it had a thousand Rs at the end of it.
“Hi, I'm Mary Fred,” I said, looking at her. She was tall, with wavy hair like Alice's only darker brown, with a few streaks of orange and even a bit of what looked like blue but couldn't have been, since hair is never blue. Where Alice was thin and wispy, Heather was more solid-looking, and her facewas tan, though she seemed to have some kind of white makeup all over it. She had a lot of dark stuff on her eyes that had smudged. I stood up and went over to her in case she wanted to shake hands, but she just waved and threw herself into a big armchair.
“So you're, like, going to live with us for a while?”
“It looks that way.”
I stood above where she was flopped in the chair, her arms and legs sticking out in all directions, and neither of us said anything. I started to wonder if Heather was happy about getting a new family member. She didn't look all that happy.
Alice came down the stairs that moment and said, “Puffin, what are you doing home?”
“Half-day,” Heather said. “We had a final.”
“Really? Already? What was it in?”
“Bio.” Warming to the topic a little, Heather said, “It was so horrible. I thought I was going to die right in the middle. One kid actually started crying.”
“Really? Who?”
“Oh, it was Danny Fox. That dork.”
I wasn't sure what a dork was but it definitely didn't sound good. I expected to hear Alice tell Heather that we are all creatures of the earth and none of us are dorks, but she just said, “Mary Fred is baking cookies. Smell? Mmmn, Mary Fred, they smell great.”
“Oh, cookies,” Heather said in a miserable-sounding voice. “Just what I need.”
She didn't sound happy at all about the cookies, so I wasn't sure why she thought she needed them. Alice went into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of lemonade. She handed one to each of us and I knew I'd have to guzzle mine down just to be polite. Heather swallowed hers in one gulpand put the empty glass down on a wooden end table, and Alice picked it up, saying, “Not on the wood, Puff, you'll leave a ring.” She took it into the kitchen, then went upstairs. Heather picked up a plastic thing and pushed a button on it, and the television came on. “Do you watch All My Children?” she asked. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I said no. On the screen, a man and a woman were in a bed, the man on top of the woman. It looked like they didn't have any clothes on, but when the police came into the room and the picture got bigger, you could see the woman was wearing black underwear. The man stood up—he was wearing pants— and the policeman put handcuffs on him and led him away. Then a woman came on and talked about vitamins. I finished my lemonade and brought it into the kitchen. I had washed all my dishes from baking, and I rinsed the glass out and put it on a wooden r
ack next to the sink. There were only a few minutes left till the cookies would be ready, so I decided to wait by the oven, since I figured the half-naked people would be back on the television pretty soon, and I knew Mama wouldn't want me to be anywhere near them.
When the cookies were ready, I put them on a plate and brought it into the living room. Heather took one and said, “I'm trying to lose weight. I'm only going to have one. How do you stay so thin, Mary Fred, if you bake cookies all the time?”
“I'm just made this way I guess. My brothers always say if I turn sideways I'll disappear. They say the crows will see me and fly away as fast as they can.” There, I had done it again—I had said it as if they were still alive and were going to come in the door any minute and tease me about my skinniness. In spite of myself, I felt tears come into my eyes, but I blinked them away before Heather saw. I wouldn't want her to pity me, though I wasn't sure she was the pitying type anyway.
“I'd give anything to have your body,” Heather said, taking a second cookie. “You look like a model.”
“A model what?” I asked, but Heather just laughed and didn't answer.
I sat with Heather for a while in front of the television, doing my best to ignore what was on it. I was going to have to remember to leave the Book in the sitting room in case I got stuck here a lot and needed something to do. I hoped no one would think it was rude if I read to myself instead of participating in the family activities, whatever they turned out to be. I was a tiny bit curious about what was going to happen to the man on the television, but I didn't let myself look up because I could just about feel Mama smacking me on my hand and saying, “Mary Fred, now you know better.” So I sat staring at the carpet, which was one of those round knotted ones, faded and flattened in spots, and tried to think about all the nice things there would be about living here for a while. I would have my own room. I would have an opportunity to experience something new. And maybe if I was here long enough, I could share the Word of the Book with the Cullisons. That was a good thing, I thought, and I said “Amen!” to myself, though I knew that in actual fact, Lackers would never hear the word, not in a million Sundays.