by Ruth White
At the top of the stairs my dad wraps his strong arms around me and whispers, “I love you, Rosebud.”
I am almost overwhelmed, but I manage to say, “I love you too.”
21
Silver calls while we are eating lunch the next day. It’s an odd hour for him to phone, and his voice flutters like a shaky leaf in the wind.
“I have something important to tell you.”
“How important?”
“Important enough that I don’t want to tell you on the phone. I’m trying to get Dad to bring me up there to see you.”
“Great! When?”
“I’m not sure. Whenever he has time to drive me.”
“Well, I need to know. With Dad here, it’s—”
“I know!” he interrupts me. “I know your dad is there, and your life is suddenly all peaches and cream!”
I am too surprised to reply.
“I’m sorry, April,” he mutters. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Well, I do know, but … but … I mean, I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“What is it, Silver? Has something happened?”
“I’ll explain everything when I see you.”
“Okay. Just let me know when you can come.”
We try to make light conversation then, but it’s no use. We say goodbye and hang up.
When I go back into the kitchen, I get the feeling that Aunt June and Dad have been discussing me. Aunt June has probably told him about Silver. Now they are quiet.
I sit down to my grilled cheese sandwich, but it’s cold, and I’m feeling uneasy about Silver. What could be wrong?
“Well, who is he?” Dad asks me. “Will I ever get to meet him?”
“Maybe, if you behave,” I tease him. “Or maybe not.”
“Does your mom allow you to have boyfriends?”
“I’ve never had one before,” I tell him.
“Well, I think fourteen is a bit young.”
“We don’t date!” I protest. “We’ve only been together at church.”
And he says no more.
It’s Saturday evening when Mr. Shepherd brings Silver to see me. In his royal blue shirt and dungarees, he looks very handsome. Everyone is in the kitchen as usual, and I am so proud to bring Silver in to meet my dad. After introductions, Aunt June and Mr. Shepherd start babbling excitedly about the healing, and I pull Silver away so that we can be alone. I lead him into the October room where we sit side by side on the forest green couch.
Silver looks at the telephone on a table beside us. “So this is where you talk to me on the phone?”
“The very place.”
“This is a nice room.”
“Yeah, I love this room.”
I don’t know what else to say. I wait for Silver to speak, but he seems far away from me, and he avoids my eyes. Aunt June sees Mr. Shepherd to the front door, and they pop in to speak as they pass.
“I’ll come back for you at ten, Silver,” Mr. Shepherd says.
Then he leaves, and Aunt June returns to the others. After that, we can hear the traffic and vague murmurings from the kitchen. The rest of the house is quiet. Silver squirms and glances around the room. He looks at his feet. He scratches behind his ear.
“What’s wrong, Silver?” I say softly.
“It’s about my mom,” he blurts out.
“Your mom?”
“Yeah. I need to tell you about her.”
I don’t say anything. I just listen.
“She’s been in an institution for the last three years. She has schizophrenia.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a mental illness.” His voice is barely a whisper now.
I don’t know how to respond because I don’t know anything about mental illness.
“It’s like she’s not my mom anymore,” he says sadly. “She doesn’t even look the same, and the last time I saw her she thought I was somebody else.”
“That’s awful, Silver.”
“Do you still feel the same about me?” he asks.
“Of course I do!” I touch his arm. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He shrugs. “Well, I was only a kid when she started getting sick and we tried to care for her at home. That was hard, because sometimes the other kids saw her then wouldn’t play with me. I guess they thought schizophrenia was contagious, and they might catch it.” He leans back on the couch and rubs his eyes with the backs of his hands. “And sometimes they made fun of me. They called me names.”
“I’ve been made fun of. I’ve been called names,” I tell him. “It hurts.”
“And there’s more,” he goes on.
I brace myself.
“Dad thinks he has healed your aunt. I keep telling him that he really didn’t have much to do with it. Your aunt healed herself with the power of the mind. But then he preaches to me that I don’t have enough faith in him. Now he believes he can heal anybody, and he wants to go back home and heal Mom.”
“Back to Ohio?”
“Yeah. It’s like he’s obsessed now. It’s all he can think of.”
“So y’all are leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!”
“Afraid so. We’re already packed. Dad has to do a wedding at two o’clock. It’s something he committed to months ago. It’s over in Kentucky, and we will go on to Ohio from there.”
I am stunned. Tomorrow? Silver will be leaving me tomorrow?
We hear laughter from the kitchen.
“I think sometimes Dad is crazier than Mom.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Mom had to go away to the hospital, he was inconsolable, so I felt like I lost both of them. He couldn’t accept that she would never get better. That’s when he got religion and thought God was talking to him.”
“And what did God say to him?” I ask.
“To come here and preach to the people of Appalachia.”
“Why here?”
Silver shrugs again. “I don’t know. Maybe Dad thought people here needed him more because so many of them are poor. He didn’t ask me what I wanted, and I really hated this place right up until the day I met you. Then I started to love it, and now I want to stay at least as long as you are here.”
He takes my hand and looks into my eyes. “You will probably be gone to Florida when—and if—we come back, but I want to write to you. Will you write back?”
“Of course. I don’t know yet what my address will be, but you can send a letter here in care of Uncle Otis. Aunt June will send it on to me.”
He puts a hand into his shirt pocket. “I have a present for you.”
He places a small box in my hands. I open it quickly and find a gold locket on a pink ribbon.
“Oh, Silver, it’s beautiful,” I say to him. And it really is. I have never had such a pretty piece of jewelry.
“It opens up,” he says.
But I have already found the tiny catch that springs the heart open. Inside there are the usual openings for two photos, facing each other. In one of them is a picture of Silver.
“It’s just a school picture,” he says. “I thought you might want to put your own picture in the other side, and we will be face to face over your heart.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” I say. “I love it, Silver.”
I position the ribbon around my neck and he ties it for me.
“And can I have a picture of you, April?”
“Mom has all my pictures with her. But I’ll send you one as soon as I can.”
A little before ten o’clock, we walk out on the porch together, and he kisses me for the first time. It’s a sweet quick kiss, but then he pulls me close to him.
“When I am old enough to make my own decisions, April,” he whispers into my hair, and his voice breaks a little bit. “I … I will come to you. I will find you wherever you are. I promise.”
I don’t trust my voice to answer him.
>
“Unless …” he goes on, “unless when the time comes, you don’t want me anymore.”
“Of course I will still want you, Silver!”
“I will miss you every day,” he whispers so softly I almost don’t hear him.
We are standing apart, facing each other with the fingers of both our hands intertwined, when Mr. Shepherd pulls his car into the yard. Without another word, Silver goes to the car and gets in. I can barely make out his face in the dark. He throws up one hand to me. Then I watch the red taillights of his dad’s car disappear around the bend. And Silver is gone.
22
When I go inside I find that Uncle Otis, Poppy, Emory, and Avery have gone to the TV room to watch Gunsmoke , but Aunt June and Dad are in the log room. I peep in the door, hoping to be invited in, and I am.
“Come on,” Aunt June says. “I know you’re curious about this room.”
I enter and look around at the heavy, dark furniture and all the books.
Aunt June is sitting in the rocker, which is the only place in the room to sit, and Dad is leaning against a bookcase, going through an old photo album.
“Is your boyfriend gone?” Dad asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s gone for good.”
“Preacher Shepherd told us,” Aunt June said.
Both of them are studying my face, looking for signs of tears, I reckon.
“I’m okay,” I say. “We’re going to stay in touch. He’s going to send the first letter here, Aunt June. Will you send it on to me when you have my address?”
“Of course.”
“There will be lots of boys, honey,” Dad says sympathetically, “because you’re a cutie.”
I lean against the bookcase beside my dad. “There will never be another Silver,” I say sadly.
“That’s true,” Aunt June says.
Mom is the only other person I would ever share these feelings with—and maybe Mitzi. So I’m thinking how good it is to have somebody to talk to, when Dad has to spoil it all by saying, “This is how it will go. You will write to each other often for the first few months, and pretty soon you’ll forget his face, and before you can count the days he’s been gone, you’ll have another boyfriend. I’m telling you, Garnet—”
“I have his picture,” I interrupt, more than a little irritated, and open up the locket for them to see.
Both of them glance at the picture of Silver in the locket and make no comment.
“But life goes on,” Dad continues.
“Absolutely,” Aunt June agrees, “and I promise you, Garnet, the pain you are feeling now will pass.”
“That’s right,” Dad says, and places an arm around me. “You’ll be amazed how quickly it will pass.”
“And how soon did you get over Mom?” I say, looking up at him.
He is obviously caught off guard. He glances at Aunt June. She has a slight smile on her face. He changes positions against the bookcase, pulls his arm away from me, and folds both arms across his chest. Aunt June and I wait silently and watch his face.
“That was different,” he finally says. “It was a more serious relationship. We were older, and we were married.”
“You’re still married,” I remind him, “but you didn’t answer my question.”
He doesn’t know what to say, and there is silence in the log room for some time.
“Y’all think because I’m a kid, I don’t feel things deeply?” I say at last.
“No, I don’t think that at all,” Dad says.
“Me either,” Aunt June agrees. “I think sometimes kids feel things even more deeply than adults.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad says, “if that’s how we came across to you.”
“He said he will find me again someday,” I say, and my voice trembles. “And he said he will miss me every day.”
Aunt June and Dad look at each other and have the good sense not to say anything else about time, and forgetting Silver’s face, and finding a new boyfriend. Dad puts his arm around me again.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m sorry about everything.”
I think of the happiness we’ve shared for the last few days, and suddenly I want to put away all this sad stuff on a high shelf in my brain and pull it down later when I’m alone. So I change the subject.
“How do you feel, Aunt June?”
“I feel absolutely wonderful.”
“Silver says that you healed yourself with the power of your mind,” I tell her. “He says it’s something like the people in India who walk on hot coals and don’t get burned. They do it with their minds.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Dad says.
“Except that I didn’t do anything,” Aunt June says. “I just opened up my heart and my mind to the possibility of being healed, and I felt all this electricity shooting through me.”
“Did it hurt?” I ask.
“No, not at all.” She laughs a little. “It didn’t feel like a shock. It was just a surge of energy. It was amazing.”
“Are you sure you had cancer?” Dad asks her.
“I only know that I was very sick and in a lot of pain, and three different doctors told me I had a malignant tumor, and they all agreed it would kill me. Since my healing I have had no pain, no sickness. In fact, I have never felt better in my life. And the same doctors who told me I was going to die now say there is nothing wrong with me.”
“Wow!” I say. “So Silver’s dad actually did it.”
“No, Garnet, Silver’s dad is only a person like you and me, with no special powers,” Aunt June says. “He simply provides the conditions for a healing to take place.”
“What conditions?”
“The ceremony, the prayers, the expectations.”
“Maybe he’s the conduit through which the electric current flows,” Dad the electrician interjects.
“Something like that,” she says. “But I think we all have the power to heal ourselves without help from another person, if we believe and keep our minds open.”
“Did you read that in one of your books?” Dad asks her, gesturing around at the shelves.
“Yeah, there are lots of good ones in here,” Aunt June says.
“So why do you keep this room locked?” I ask her. “Maybe somebody else would like to come in here and see your God stuff, as Avery calls it.”
“You are welcome to do that,” Aunt June answers me with a smile. “Just ask me, and I will unlock it for you. There are also valuables hidden in here, in the drawers, in the bookcases, even in the floor. Old diaries and photographs, family heirlooms, insurance policies, tax papers, rare books, even money.”
I glance around the room. The history of the Roses, I am thinking. Yes, before I leave I will come in here and snoop.
“So I guess you did find God?” I ask her.
“Yes, I found him.”
“At Hanging Holler?” I ask. “Or at Joy Creek? At Apple Knob?”
“No, I found him here,” she says, and touches her heart. “He was here all along, closer than breath.”
Closer than breath. I touch my own heart and feel its beat and think about my breath moving in and out of my lungs.
“There is nothing outside us that is going to save us,” Aunt June continues. “The kingdom of God is within.”
23
Early the next morning Mitzi and I are sitting in the grass as the sun burns away the mist and chill of the night.
“Lost love can be found again,” she says to me, and these are the most hopeful words I have heard since Silver left. Yes, he did promise to find me again.
“Thanks, Mitzi. You know how to make a person feel better.”
“Where y’all goin’ to worship at this morning?”
“I’m not going. I’m spending the day with Dad because I don’t know how many more days I will have with him. Aunt June is trying to decide now where she will become a member. Today she’s going to a church up at Garden Branch, where they’re going to do some shouting.”
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br /> “Some what?”
“Yeah, according to Aunt June, they get the Holy Ghost and start shouting. It’s part of their worship.”
“You tell me some right innersting stuff, Garnet. I’ll be sorry when you’re gone.”
“Yeah, me too, Mitzi. I guess I’ll be leaving as soon as Mom sends me the money for the bus.”
“I’m gonna miss you bad, Garnet.”
“I’ll miss you too, Mitzi. I’ll write to you. Will you write me back?”
Mitzi hangs her head and mumbles, “I cain’t read and write.”
Of course she can’t. I knew that. And now I’ve embarrassed her.
“That’s okay, I’ll still write,” I say quickly. “Your mom can read it to you.”
“Yeah!” she says, and her pudgy face seems to bloom with the sudden joy of that realization. “And she can answer fer me too. I never got no letter before. How quick kin you write me one?”
“Give me time. I’m not even gone yet!”
And we laugh together in the sweet morning dew.
In the afternoon Dad takes me and Emory and Avery to Black River to see a movie. It’s The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. It’s real suspenseful, with this haunting music that hangs around like a spirit long after the movie is over. But even better than the movie is the ride in Dad’s convertible. I get to sit up front with him while Emory and Avery sit in the back.
On the way home, Dad talks about his work as an electrician. “It has made it possible for me to travel as I wanted to,” he says. “I can get a good job anywhere in the country doing what I love.”
“Then you can move to Daytona Beach,” I say to him, “and get a good job down there close to where I will be living with Mom.”
“I doubt that your mom will want me to do that.”
“But she can’t stop you.”
“Maybe she’ll let you come up here and spend the summers or something like that—if I don’t antagonize her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if I make her mad, she may not let me see you.”
I think about that for a moment, then I say emphatically, “No, Dad. Mom’s not spiteful like that.”