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Picturing Alyssa

Page 5

by Alison Lohans


  “A bath room?” The four-year-old didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. “We have baths in the kitchen. On Seventh Day.” Then she tugged at her nightgown. “I’m sorry I wet,” she said.

  It turned out that Deborah was the one who’d know what to do, since Mama had to stay in bed. And Deborah was doing chores. Alyssa took the hand that Frances offered. Together, they went down the creaky steps.

  The kitchen was a busy place, but Deborah wasn’t in it. A girl who was about seven stood on a chair by the black thing in the corner — a wood stove — stirring a pot of porridge. A little boy younger than Frances sat on the floor, stacking empty wooden spools. The boy Alyssa had met before — Herbert — tromped in carrying two buckets. Water sloshed over the rims as he set them by the large tub. “I see that Frances wet again,” he said. He stared at Alyssa.

  The girl at the stove turned around. Straight, light-brown hair bordered her freckled face. “Frances!” she said. “How could thee? If thee knew how much work it is to wash the sheets …” Her glance fell on Alyssa, then her fingernails, and her brown eyes widened.

  “Is there —?” Alyssa gestured helplessly. “I need to … go.” Her soaked red pajamas from last night were no longer on the kitchen floor; somebody had cleaned up after her. Shame burned in her face.

  The girl understood. “The little house out back,” she said.

  Alyssa hurried down the path worn into the grass. The “little house” was unmistakable by its shape and the odour that hung in the air. In its dim interior, she saw two holes in a wide horizontal board. She sat down cautiously, feeling the cool wood against her skin. A fly buzzed lethargically in the early morning air. Then the door creaked open. Little Frances, still in her wet nightgown, climbed up to join her on the other seat.

  Alyssa squeezed her eyes shut. She was supposed to be at Rachel’s. What time was it there? Had they called Mom and Dad? The police?

  There was no toilet paper. Ripped-off Sears catalogue pages sat in a wooden box nearby. After a moment, she knew what to do with them.

  Frances followed her back up the path. “Eva’s cross,” she announced. “Mama’s sick, and there’s going to be a baby.”

  There was an irritable clucking. The rooster stepped forward, blocking their way. His reddish-brown feathers huffed out, and his angry red wattles swung as he looked at Alyssa with beady yellow eyes. She caught her breath and shrank backwards. This time she didn’t have jeans on. Deborah’s nightgown left her lower legs and bare feet exposed.

  “Thee bad, wicked rooster!” Frances shouted. “I hate thee!” She clasped Alyssa’s hand and pressed closer.

  “Shoo!” Alyssa said, remembering what Herbert had done. But the rooster didn’t move, and no broom was conveniently available. Instead, he advanced, flapping his wings. Alyssa edged sideways. The grass was still wet from the night’s storm.

  The rooster pursued them, clucking louder.

  Frances whimpered. Still clinging to Alyssa’s hand, she ducked behind her, leaving Alyssa face-to-face with the aggressive bird.

  “Shoo!” she said, with rising panic.

  The rooster flew at them. Frances shrieked. Stumbling backwards, Alyssa’s bare foot tangled with a smaller one. She went down, trying to keep from landing on the little girl, at the same time hoping to protect her from the onslaught of pecks and scratches and the fierce, flapping wings.

  An instant later she realized it was herself that she’d need to protect. She buried her face in the crook of her elbow, coughing in the feathery tumult. A raking scratch seared her forearm, then her scalp. There was a constant, high-pitched sound — Frances screaming?

  For some reason she thought of Brooklynne, and how she’d taken the twenty dollars Dad gave her for groceries. She remembered the eggs splattering on the floor at Bristow’s, and how Brooklynne had gloated while she searched her pockets for the money. That awful skit.… Tears smarted in Alyssa’s eyes. Suddenly she was angrier than she’d ever remembered feeling before. Furiously, she hit out at the rooster. There was an irate squawk. Her hand closed around a scaly leg that reflexively pulled back. She hung on.

  Abruptly, the rooster was off her. Its squawking rose to a frenzied pitch.

  Blood oozed from a scratch on her forearm. Gasping, Alyssa sat up. Two long legs stood in front of her. Behind her, little Frances was sobbing. She looked up and saw Deborah’s older brother standing there with a squirming bundle of feathers clamped tightly beneath his arm.

  The boy looked at her, then at the wailing Frances, and again back at her. “This old man gave thee quite a beating,” he said. He extended his free hand to help her up. “Is thee all right?”

  “I don’t know.” Everywhere she thought about hurt, especially her scalp. Deborah’s blue nightgown was splotched with mud. Angrily, she plucked a red-brown feather off her front. A curvy black tail feather lay beside the boy’s foot, and she was glad. “Thank you,” she added.

  “Wilfred,” Frances whined. “Carry me!”

  Still clutching the rooster in its cramped, upside-down position, Wilfred lifted his little sister with his other arm. As she nestled against his chest, the wails subsided to choking gulps.

  Wilfred headed up the path to the house, so Alyssa followed.

  Deborah was in the kitchen, wearing an apron over the same dress she’d worn before. “Oh, Alyssa!” she said. “Thee looks awful!”

  Alyssa chewed her lower lip to keep from crying. Everyone was staring.

  Frances ran to her big sister and tugged at her flowered skirt. “Debbie! That wicked rooster bited me!” She pointed to her hand. Alyssa couldn’t see any red marks anywhere on the little girl.

  “Thee’ll be fine,” Deborah said, stroking Frances’s hair.

  With a pang, Alyssa remembered how Mom used to stroke her hair when she was upset. She looked down at the dirty hem of the nightgown and the drying mud on her bare feet. She didn’t dare give in to the hurt. After all, she was too big to … blubber, George Clayton had called it. It made her think of whale fat. She looked away from Herbert’s and Eva’s staring eyes. The smallest boy — Charles — now was playing with something that looked like a corncob. And the calendar on the wall still said it was June 1931.

  To avoid the intense scrutiny, she went to the black, boxy stove and stirred the thick porridge. She could hear the soft murmur and snaps as the flames devoured the wood, and smell the distinctive fragrance of wood smoke.

  An instant later, Eva grabbed her arm. “Thee mustn’t!” she said.

  Alyssa pulled back, startled.

  “Eva, thee could speak more pleasantly to our guest.” Deborah’s voice was stern.

  “She’ll get the mush dirty!” Eva’s hair jiggled with her indignation. “I don’t want to start all over.”

  Heat flooded Alyssa’s face as she noticed the mud on her arms and hands, and the bits of outdoor debris on the sleeves of the nightgown. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. Couldn’t she do anything right?

  The door opened and Wilfred came inside with two buckets of milk. Alyssa watched as he poured it into a metal thing they called a “separator,” then put a bucket beneath a spout at the bottom and began turning a crank. Deborah, having extricated herself from Frances, placed an empty can beneath a second spigot. Noticing Alyssa’s stare, she explained: “We separate the cream. If we don’t need it for butter, Daddy sells it in town.” Thin, bluish milk trickled from the spigot at the bottom, while the yellowish cream dribbled into the can.

  “Debbie, could thee finish?” Wilfred said. “There’s another job —”

  “I want to help!” Herbert’s yell came through the open kitchen window.

  Wilfred went back outside. A moment later, a chicken squawked.

  “I’ll take Mama her breakfast,” Eva announced, and headed upstairs with a tray. There was a thud followed by a crash.

  “Eva?” Martha called. “Is thee all right?”

  Alyssa caught her breath. Eva was just a little girl, and those stairs
were steep. It would be hard for a larger person to carry a tray up there. She glanced at Deborah. “I’ll check on her,” she offered.

  Deborah shot her a grateful smile.

  The tray had slid to the bottom of the stairs. Eva sat halfway up, beside a chipped bowl. Oatmeal and milk had spilled all over. Nearby were a spoon and the broken-off handle of a teacup. Eva’s freckled face was flushed; her upper lip trembled, and then a tear raced down her cheek.

  “Eva?” Martha’s voice was sharp with worry.

  “Everything spilled!” the little girl wailed. “That horrid loose board caught my foot and the tray tipped.”

  “She’s okay,” Alyssa called. When she sat down and put her arm around Eva’s hunched shoulder, she was startled at the tension she found there.

  Eva jerked away. “I don’t want thee. I want Mama.” Instead of running the rest of the way up the stairs, she buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

  Alyssa picked up the bowl and spoon. The spilled porridge and milk were a mess, but there wasn’t much she could do about it at the moment.

  Eva’s crying had a tight, desperate sound. “Why don’t you go to your mom?” Alyssa said after an awkward pause.

  “Daddy says we’re not to worry her, on account of the baby,” the little girl whimpered. There was a surprisingly loud hiccup.

  Alyssa almost laughed. Just as quickly, a pang shot through her. They were worried about the unborn baby. Mom had never looked as sick and swollen as Martha Clayton. Was this baby going to die too? It was too awful to think about.

  “Come, Eva,” Martha said gently.

  Alyssa extended her hand. A cold little hand clasped hers.

  Martha’s face was still puffy. “Is thee hurt, Eva?” she asked, beckoning them over to the bed. Her grey eyes acknowledged Alyssa, thanking her.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Eva choked. She climbed up and nestled against her mother.

  “Of course thee didn’t, sweetheart.”

  Alyssa’s throat ached at the tender way Martha cuddled Eva. Then Martha looked directly at her. “Is thee all right, Alyssa?” she asked. “What happened?”

  “The rooster got me.” It wasn’t fair to divert attention away from the unhappy little girl. “I’ll clean everything up,” she added, and left the room.

  Frances found her a rag. There was no running water. After filling a bowl from one of the buckets by the sink, she blotted the spilled milk and wiped up the oatmeal as best she could. Downstairs, a clock gonged seven. It seemed much later.

  “Alyssa?” Deborah called. “I’ve heated water so thee can wash.”

  Only Deborah and little Charles were in the kitchen now. Deborah pulled a long curtain across one corner of the room, but even so, it was embarrassing taking off the blue nightgown, and just as embarrassing to see how dirty it was. Would the mud smears and grass stains wash out? Alyssa felt worse when Deborah didn’t complain.

  The hot, bracing water was sudsy thanks to a hard cake of soap. It felt wonderful on her face and neck, but the scratches on her arms and legs stung. “Thee looks more comfortable now,” Deborah observed after she’d dried herself and squeezed into what turned out to be Deborah’s second-best dress.

  Comfortable wasn’t exactly the word she would’ve chosen. It was strange looking down her front and seeing a rounded collar and little pink flowers on a skirt that reached below her knees. Her arms felt confined in the elbow-length sleeves. And the buttons.… She’d fumbled, straining to fasten them on the back of the dress, until Deborah did the job for her.

  “Once Daddy and the boys are back, we’ll have breakfast.” Deborah sounded satisfied as she cut a loaf of homemade bread and set the individual slices on a cookie pan. “I’ll take more mush up to Mama in a minute.” She turned to Alyssa with a puzzled expression in her grey eyes. “Could thee tell me first, where thee’s from? I don’t understand at all!”

  Chapter Eight

  Alyssa gripped the back of a chair. One of the place mats on the table was crooked so she straightened it, as well as the silverware that had been laid out. “I don’t know how to explain this,” she said when Deborah’s silence grew so long it was awkward. “I live in North Dakota.”

  “Yes.” Deborah’s grey eyes looked straight into hers. When she spoke next, she almost sounded impatient. “But thee’s … different. Thee simply disappeared into thin air! At first I thought I’d imagined thee, but Herbert and Wilfred and Daddy all saw thee, too. So did Flossie — and she simply barked, and whined, ever so much, when thee vanished. Thy clothes are different. And blue fingernails! Even with the town girls I’ve never seen that.”

  “Yeah.” Alyssa wiggled her toes, looking at the startling colour. Rachel’s bedroom, and the sleepover, seemed impossibly far away. “I think we’re related,” she said cautiously. “We have a picture of you guys.”

  Deborah began setting napkins around the table. “A picture? When was it taken?”

  “1931.” Last night, Martha and George had seemed upset when she mentioned it. A chill prickled Alyssa’s arms. There hadn’t been a baby in the picture.…

  “I live in … the future,” she said. “This will sound really weird, but every time I look at that picture, it’s like you’re smiling at me. And when I look at you with a magnifying glass, I come here. To this farm.”

  A napkin slipped from Deborah’s hand. “Oh, my!” she said. “I never knew a person could do that!”

  “Me neither.” Alyssa picked up the napkin and put it on the table. “But things like that happen in some of the books I’ve read, and in movies.”

  Deborah’s eyes shone. “What’s it like? Can thee tell me?”

  “I don’t know if I can explain,” she said. “I feel really dizzy. Kind of sick, actually. Everything gets dark — and then I bump down here.”

  “How strange,” Deborah said. “How does thee get back home?”

  “I don’t know!” Alyssa said helplessly. “It only happened that one other time, and I landed on the couch. That’s where I was sitting. I think it has something to do with the picture. But I don’t know what.”

  Deborah clasped her hand. “Thee must feel frightened. I know I would.”

  Alyssa nodded, grateful for the warmth of Deborah’s hand. For a minute neither of them spoke.

  “There must be some reason this has happened,” Deborah finally said. “Some purpose we can’t understand.” Then she gasped. “The mush! Eva will be upset if I let it burn.” She hurried to the stove and stirred the oatmeal with a wooden spoon. “I’ll take Mama some breakfast. Could thee make the toast? Just put it in the oven,” she added, as Alyssa looked around for a toaster. “Then, if we hurry washing dishes, thee can come with me to the brook. I want to hear everything about thy world!” She gave Alyssa another one of her direct, searching looks. “I wonder — is thee a cousin? Or maybe my granddaughter?” She burst into giggles. “Imagine — me, a grandmother!”

  Before Alyssa had a chance to reply that Grandma Hadley’s name was Anne, Deborah put the slices of bread in the oven, then began assembling a second breakfast for her mother.

  Frances wandered into the kitchen, carrying a large cloth doll. “This is Susannah,” she said importantly. “My baby, and Eva’s, and Debbie’s baby. Does thee want to hold her?”

  “Okay.” For a moment, Alyssa felt silly reaching for the doll. It had been a long time since she’d played with dolls; all she had now was her ceramic horses. Susannah settled into her arms, looking up with twinkly black button eyes, a cute little nose, and a smiling mouth made with lots of careful stitches. Her hair was braided brown yarn that had been sewn onto her head. Somebody — was it Martha? — had spent a lot of time getting Susannah just right.

  “Sing to Susannah,” Frances commanded. “She’s sad.”

  If anything, the doll looked relentlessly cheerful. Frances was gazing up at her expectantly. What to sing? “Erie Canal” or “Home on the Range?” “Hit the Road, Jack?” Definitely not “The Ants Go Marching” or �
��Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The songs from school didn’t seem right. Remembering the toast in the oven, she clasped the doll against her and peeked into the hot, dark interior. As far as she could tell, it still looked like bread.

  “Sing!” Frances insisted.

  Reluctantly, Alyssa hummed the first tune that came into her head. She couldn’t remember most of the words. Where was the song from? When she got to “Remember your gift, now let your life shine,” it came back to her — it was the Stardancer song, from last night. Alyssa sang the song again, searching for more words. “When times are dark, and (la-la-la-la) alone, (something, la-la-something) cast in stone. (Something-la-la-la) divine, remember your gift, now let your light shine.” It was “light,” not “life,” the way she’d sung it first.

  “That’s not right,” Frances said. “Songs don’t have ‘la-la-somethings!’”

  For an instant Alyssa was tempted to throw the doll at her. But her arms felt settled around Susannah who, with her sewn-on face and hair, and her pink-checkered dress, must be about the same size as a real baby. Would Charlotte have been this size? How would it have felt, having a baby sister she could hold and hug? She swallowed hard and made herself sing again.

  Frances jumped up and down. “Stop!” she said. “I told thee, thee can’t just sing ‘la-la-something.’ That’s not a song!”

  Deborah was back. She picked up the struggling Frances with obvious effort. “Thee mustn’t be rude, Frances. It’s a pretty tune, and if Alyssa doesn’t know all the words, we’ll make up some that fit.”

  Frances swung her dangling feet and glowered. “‘Something-something-la’ is wrong. Susannah wants a real song.”

  Alyssa almost put the doll on the set table, but moved her to one of the chairs as Herbert, Wilfred, and George came in. There was starting to be a smell of burning toast. She glanced at Deborah, but Herbert had pushed his way between them.

  “What a chase!” Herbert’s eyes glinted. “I thought we’d never get him!” His freckled face was cleaner than it had been earlier, and his hands and arms shone wetly. Dark-red spots were scattered across his blue overalls.

 

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