In time you will.
“I hate time. I just want to know now.”
You already understand more than most people.
“You mean my knowing about things?”
It’s a beautiful gift. Without it we wouldn’t be able to talk like this.
“I’m glad we can talk but I wish you could just be here, sitting next to me.”
I am.
I uncurl my finger from the bow on the back of Chastity’s white pinafore and push my bangs out of my eyes. “I gotta go to school.”
You know where to find me if you need to talk some more.
“Yeah, probably sitting on some cloud eating cotton candy.”
Isaac laughs. I blow a kiss to the air and hope it lands on my brother. “Bye, Isaac.”
Bye, Grace.
I rest my hand on the shelf next to me. Even though the furnace is off it feels warm, like someone’s been sitting there. The closet door opens and for a moment I think Isaac did it until I see Daddy standing in the doorway.
“Who are you talking to in there?”
“Just myself,” I say.
“You’re lying. Do you know where liars go?”
“Yes.”
Daddy jerks me out of the closet. He marches back and pulls all the dresses off the rod and throws them on the floor. He kicks every single shoe out into the room. Some of them fly under the bed.
“I’ve got enough on my hands without this nonsense. No more!” he yells. “Do you hear me? No more!”
I know better than to speak up, so I just try to stay out of his path. The next words out of his mouth devastate me.
“I’m calling off your baptism next summer, Grace. You’re not ready.”
“Daddy, no!” I burst into tears. I’ve been counting down the months until my baptism, which happens the summer when you’re twelve. Partly because I want God’s blessing, but mostly because I want Daddy’s. Maybe that water really does turn holy. Maybe it will wash me clean of everything people say about me, once and for all.
Daddy ignores me. He stomps out of the room and down the hall, muttering under his breath. I carefully rehang Chastity’s dresses and line her shoes neatly underneath them. I store my own shoes under my side of the bed and hang my three dresses on the hook on the back of the bedroom door. Before going downstairs, I peek my head inside the closet.
“Isaac?”
Nothing. I hope Daddy hasn’t scared him away.
* * *
On the way to school I concentrate on Mama and my baby sister. In my mind that little baby looks perfect, like a brand-new baby doll. I see a nurse bend over her tiny face, breathing into her mouth until the doctor says to give up and walks out of the room. But the nurse keeps going because there’s no reason for the little girl not to be alive. Then suddenly the baby gasps a deep breath and wails. Both Mama and the nurse cry out loud together. When the doctor comes running back the two women glare at him meaner than Billy Wolf’s worst Evil Eye.
Lola is waiting for me outside our classroom when I walk down the hall, a fur wrap draped over her shoulders. When she sees my face her mouth drops to match mine. “What’s wrong?”
“Mama had the baby. Another girl.”
“You’re upset you didn’t get a brother?”
“No, not at all. I knew it was going to be a girl.”
“Oh yeah. Stupid me. Of course you knew.” She cocks her head to one side. “Then why do you look so sad?”
“She’s sick. Something about her heart.”
Lola grabs me in a hug. “Oh, I’m sorry!” She pulls back and grips my shoulders. “She’ll be okay, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“But . . .”
“I don’t know everything, Lola. Just some stuff.”
Lola adjusts her wrap and I suddenly realize it’s an actual bear skin. From a real bear. The front leg parts hang over her shoulder as if he’s hitching a piggyback ride. The hood is actually part of the head. I reach out to pet it and this makes her smile.
“Somebody traded it for one of Catherine’s sculptures.”
My hand drops. “Poor baby,” I say. My eyes well up but we both know it’s not for the bear.
* * *
Mama’s on the sofa when I get home from school on Thursday. All you have to do is take one look at her and it’s obvious she has a hole in her heart to match my new baby sister’s. No matter what Isaac says, it doesn’t seem like this is a good lesson for Mama. She is just plain sad. Something else is different about her, too—a streak of irritability I’ve never seen in her before. When Daddy comes in and kneels beside her to pray she shoos him away. For once he is speechless.
Daddy wanted to name the baby Faith, but Mama would have none of it. While Daddy was away from the hospital Mama called for the nurse and filled out the birth certificate herself. Marilyn Elizabeth Carter is what she wrote on that piece of paper. My sister is named after a movie star and a queen. I think God gave Mama that name because Marilyn’s going to get better and she’s going to become someone important. And it will take a lot more than faith to get her there.
I sit on the floor by Mama’s feet with my head resting against her legs. Tears run down her face, soaking the pillowcase one drop at a time. I want to tell her I can empathize with her, that I know how she feels, but I don’t. Deep inside I know that creating a child, carrying her, and then facing the possibility of losing her is different from having your brother die, even your twin. Not worse or easier. Just different in the way that love feels when it’s taken from you.
9
Marilyn lives at a special hospital for babies with health problems. Aunt Pearl is coming from Mississippi to stay with us for a spell, until Mama gets better. Besides being tired out from childbirth, Mama has something called baby blues. It means she’s not feeling the excitement about having a new child, partly because the baby’s sick and partly because of mixed-up hormones. She also sleeps a lot on account of her sadness. Daddy said the doctor warned it could take a long time to get better because of how many babies she’s had. It’s already been a month.
I begged Daddy to let me come along to fetch Aunt Pearl from the bus station. It’s not really a bus station. Ralph’s Car Service has a counter where you can buy tickets, and there’s a chair next to the pop machine to wait for the bus. According to Daddy, Ralph is a heathen because he works on Sundays. I like Ralph. His hands are usually black from car grease. His face, too, which makes his eyes look really white. Whenever I buy a bottle of pop he pries the cap off for me. I want to remind Daddy that Sunday is the day he works the hardest, but I don’t think this is a good thing to point out after he’s let me come with him to pick up Aunt Pearl.
Daddy uses the bathroom at Ralph’s even though he just went at home. I know it’s so he can leave religious tracts on the back of the toilet because Ralph won’t let him put any up in the shop. When he comes out he motions me to follow him outside, where we sit on a bench that faces the road. Daddy buries his head in a newspaper to pass the time. I try to read the back page, but every time he shakes it out I lose my place. I study the buttons on his coat instead. They look like they’ll bust right off if he eats as much as a peanut. Mama used to scold him about eating too much gravy. I don’t think she cares now. The pile of mending in the laundry room has outgrown two baskets.
It’s been three years since we took a trip in our station wagon to visit Daddy’s family in Mississippi. Aunt Pearl is a widow who lost her husband in the war. She lives with her daughter Sue Ellen, Sue Ellen’s husband, Larry, and their two boys. Our whole family stayed in their den, which is bigger than our entire first floor. Mama and Daddy slept on the pullout sofa while we girls camped on their soft carpet.
Mama disappeared in the middle of our second night there. I woke when I overheard Daddy and Aunt Pearl whispering in the kitchen. I slipped out of my blankets and hid next to the doorway.
“I never should have brought her back here,” I heard Daddy say.
�
��You pulled her out of here too quick last time. She wasn’t ready.”
“Mind your own business, Pearl. The Lord called me to get back to my church and I followed His call.”
“Twasn’t the Lord talkin’ and you know it. It was you thinking you could run away from the pain of losing your—”
“That’s enough, Pearl! I’m going out to look for her.”
The kitchen door slammed; then our car started up and backed out of the driveway. When the headlights shone in my face I pulled back behind the wall.
Aunt Pearl looked over in my direction. “That you, Grace?”
I stepped sheepishly into the light.
“Thought so. What you doin’ up this late?”
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
Aunt Pearl sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her. She motioned for me to come over. I climbed into her lap and rested my head against her pillowy bosom.
“Nothing’s wrong, shoog. Your mama just needed a little fresh air, that’s all.”
“I think she needed to go visit Isaac.”
Aunt Pearl turned me around to face her. Bald spots showed through her bobby-pinned curls, like a bunch of Xs marking all the spots. “Oh, goodness no, Grace. Your mama wouldn’t go to the cemetery in the middle of the—”
“That’s where she is,” I said.
The front bobby pins backed up when she raised her eyebrows. “How do you know that, child? Did she tell you?”
I shook my head.
Aunt Pearl pulled me against her, stroking my hair. “Don’t you worry, Grace. Your mama’s fine. She’s just fine. Your daddy will find her.”
Aunt Pearl made a pot of tea and we sat at the kitchen table sipping and looking toward the window over the next hour. Daddy finally came back with Mama about the time I licked the last bit of honey from my spoon. He’d found her sitting by Isaac’s grave with a blanket draped over the spot where he was buried. We drove back home to Michigan the next day. Daddy wouldn’t even talk to Aunt Pearl except to say goodbye before he rolled up his window and drove off. The last time I saw her she was standing in the driveway like a broken statue.
A motor sounds in the distance, pulling me out of my memories and back to Cherry Hill. I shield my eyes, straining to see up the road. When light flashes off the silver side of the bus I about jump out of my skin with excitement.
“Here it comes, Daddy!”
I wave madly at the bus driver in case he doesn’t know to stop and leave Aunt Pearl. Daddy peers over the top of his paper, then folds it up real slow. The brakes make a sound like a roomful of teachers shushing noisy students as the bus rolls to a stop. I can see people moving around in the aisles but not well enough to make out faces because the windows are tinted dark.
When the door finally opens I recognize her feet first. Aunt Pearl wears slippers everywhere she goes. These ones are sky blue with black trim and a swirly design on the toe, the kind Orientals wear, though I personally have never seen an Oriental. Aunt Pearl is round like Daddy but not much taller than me. She rocks back and forth when she walks, which makes her slippers lean to the outside. She takes the black-rubbered stairs one at a time, saying, “Lordy, Lordy,” as if it’ll take a miracle to get to the bottom step.
As soon as she hits the sidewalk she looks at me and grins, her front gold tooth sparkling like a little star. “Come here, shoog,” she says, and opens her arms.
I bury myself in her hug. She smells like caramel corn. I don’t want to let go, but when I do I notice a few Cracker Jacks stuck to her brown furry collar. She looks where I’m looking and flicks them off, after which she reaches into her huge flowered bag and hands me an unopened box of them. “Here you go, SweePea.”
I thank her and wait to see if Daddy will tell me I’ll spoil my supper, but he’s busy getting Aunt Pearl’s suitcases out of the side of the Greyhound bus.
“Hank, put those bags down and give your sister a hug.”
Daddy stays put, holding her flowered luggage in both hands. She walks up and squeezes him real hard then lays her hand on his cheek. “You’re still just as cute as when you were a baby,” she says, which makes Daddy blush.
“Go on, Pearl,” he says. “You don’t remember when I was a baby.”
“Oh yes I do. Changed your diapers many a time, ya little poopsqueak.”
I laugh out loud hearing this, but Daddy glares at her. “Enough funny business,” he says, and starts walking toward the car. “And don’t call me Hank.”
Aunt Pearl winks at me. “Never could take much ribbin’,” she whispers. It feels good to be in on somebody’s secret for once, instead of being the secret itself.
I wait in the Volkswagen while Daddy and Aunt Pearl talk in private on the sidewalk. Their conversation is hushed, but each word comes out in a huff of hot breath that turns into steam in front of their faces. Behind them, Ralph’s tow truck pulls onto the lot with a brown car hanging from the back. The lady in the front seat of the truck is Rosalie Cutler’s mama. Rosalie is one grade under me even though we’re the same age. She had to repeat the second grade because she wrote her letters backward. Doing second grade over didn’t help. She still writes backward letters.
Rosalie’s mama climbs down from the truck all ladylike, a hard thing to do in heels. Mrs. Cutler is what they call a nervous person. Maybe because of Rosalie. Or maybe because she lost her husband to cancer and she’s afraid of losing other things. She clutches her purse in front of her real tight as if somebody might try to take it. Halfway across the lot she nearly slips on an icy puddle. When Ralph reaches out to steady her Mrs. Cutler pulls away.
Aunt Pearl raises her eyebrows when she sees our Volkswagen, but Daddy gives her The Look so she keeps quiet about it. They get in the front seats and slam their doors at the same time. We wait while Daddy grinds the gears looking for the right one before he finally finds it. When he pulls onto the road I dig past the sticky popcorn and peanuts for my free surprise at the bottom of the box. Inside the package is a tiny magnifying glass. When I hold it over my fingertips the details remind me of the footprints on Marilyn’s birth certificate we hung in the nursery. It seems like you could follow the swirls forever trying to get to the center and never find it.
Aunt Pearl leans sideways to look at me through the rearview mirror. “I think you’ve grown a full foot since I last saw you.”
It’s more like a foot and a half, but I don’t want her to think I’m bragging since she’s such a short person. I just grin at her and pop another caramel corn into my mouth.
* * *
Mama’s on the sofa, right where we left her. She sits up when we walk in, but the top half of her body leans to the left and I worry she might tip over. Her messy hair is flat on one side and the zigzag design of the sofa has left a memory of itself on her cheek. I’m tempted to put my magnifying glass over it, but I don’t.
Aunt Pearl kisses the top of her head. “Poor thing,” she says. “You poor, poor thing.”
Mama tries to smile but starts crying instead. When Daddy makes a move toward her she looks the other way. Daddy loves Mama almost as much as he loves Jesus and everybody knows it. Maybe even more than Jesus, although he’d never dare say it out loud. I think it just about kills him to see her this way. Eventually he turns around and walks out of the room, leaving his sister to comfort his broke-down wife.
* * *
Chastity and Joy walk home from school ahead of me. I stay and wait for Hope’s bus. It’s the last day before Christmas vacation starts. Hope goes to a school in Little Dune, but the bus drops her off at our school. I don’t like her to walk home alone. If that molester is still out there she’d be an easy target. Hope will talk to anybody, even strangers. Especially strangers. The other reason I wait for her is because the kids tease her for being different. Sometimes they call her Hope the Dope, but I know better. Hope isn’t stupid, she just has a hard time getting certain parts of her brain to work. She forgets things and she falls a lot. Mean
kids like Billy Wolf like to trip her. Hope doesn’t seem to mind when it happens. She never blames the person who tripped her. But I know what it’s like to be picked on, so I walk her home most days.
When the bus pulls up, Hope skips down the steps and hugs me. “Merry Christmas!” she says.
“It’s not Christmas yet,” I say.
“I know. But it’s almost Jesus’s birthday and I’m so excited!”
Halfway home she starts shivering.
“Hope, where’s your coat?” She was so happy when she got off the bus I didn’t notice she wasn’t wearing it.
“I left it on the bus!” She turns to me, panicked. “We have to go back.”
Just then her bus passes us and she chases after it. I chase after her.
“Hope, stop!”
When the bus turns the corner Hope shakes her fist at it.
“Here,” I say when I catch up to her. “You can wear mine.” I take off my coat and hand it to her. Even though she’s three years older we’re almost the same size.
“Really?” She sticks her arm into one of the sleeves. “It’s still warm,” she says.
“Let’s get home before I freeze,” I say.
Hope puts her arm around me. “Put on the other sleeve. We’ll both wear it.”
At first I think no way, but seeing Hope’s grinning face makes me change my mind. I put my arm in the sleeve and my sister and I bumble our way down the sidewalk, falling twice, before working out a rhythm for walking while wearing the same jacket. When we come through the front door we’re both laughing so hard we have a difficult time telling the others why we’re both wearing the same coat. Aunt Pearl helps us out of the sleeves and even Mama giggles.
By the end of the day Mama seems a little better. By the end of the week, we’re all feeling a lot better. For the first time since Marilyn was born we’ve had good meals, clean laundry, and a regular schedule. Not because Aunt Pearl does all the work, but because she makes us want to do the work. I don’t know why, she just has a way of making you feel happy about making her happy. Our family is still broken, but the pieces don’t feel as sharp with Aunt Pearl around. I hope she can fix things but not too quickly, because I want her to stay for a while. It sounds selfish, but I can’t help it. She’s like wax around a candle wick. Without her, it feels as if the whole family might just burn up into one big, hot mess.
This I Know Page 9