This I Know

by Eldonna Edwards

  10

  Aunt Pearl shuffles across the kitchen and fetches two baby bottles out of the refrigerator. It’s funny-looking milk, bluish with a little cream floating on top. The doctor says Marilyn will have a better chance if she has Mama’s milk instead of the kind from a cow or formula. Mama’s not up to traveling so she squeezes her milk into jars. Aunt Pearl and the church ladies have been taking turns driving a cooler up to Blue Rapids every couple days. Mama can’t hold Marilyn right now, but maybe this is a way to love her from far away.

  Aunt Pearl holds up one of the mason jars and smiles at me. “How’s about a taste, SweePea?”

  I shake my head, but she screws off the top and dips her finger into the milk anyway. When she sticks it in my face I shake my head like a wet dog.

  “No, thank you!”

  “Go ahead, Grace, take a lick. This here is mother’s nectar.”

  Knowing Aunt Pearl, she’ll stand there until I give in, so I close my eyes and open my mouth. I think I’ll probably throw up when she plops that blue milk on my tongue, but I don’t. It’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted, laced with a memory of Mama’s face looking directly into mine. I can even smell her, the part that’s only breathable when you snuggle in real close.

  Aunt Pearl’s voice shatters the memory into tiny pieces. “Whatsa matter, shoog? You look like you’re about to fall asleep standing up.”

  I open my eyes and wait until I’m back in the kitchen where I belong, although I feel like I belong in that other place, too. “Nothing’s wrong,” I say.

  “You want to ride along with me to the hospital, Grace?”

  There’s no other place I’d rather be than with Aunt Pearl. Not to mention if I stay home Joy is apt to figure out a way to trick me out of my future allowance. We still have a few weeks of putting it into the Sunday offering plate as our punishment for the fortune-telling incident.

  “Can I?”

  “I don’t see why not. I could use the company and maybe you can help me find the gears in that confounded rig your daddy bought. From the Germans, no less.” She mumbles a few more words under her breath then stops herself mid-mumble. “Oh, never mind, go get your coat and boots, honey child.”

  * * *

  Aunt Pearl lets me shift the gears because I’m so good at it. It’s not that hard since the Germans drew a map right on the gear stick. Plus you can pretty much feel where it needs to go, even reverse. I like the way the ball feels in my hand when it clunks into place. We make a good team, me and Aunt Pearl, even if she did have to add a block of wood on the pedals to reach them.

  Aunt Pearl takes a wrong turn and we end up in a shabby neighborhood. She pulls into a snowy driveway to get her bearings. When a woman peeks out the front window from behind a torn curtain Aunt Pearl says, “Don’t put the kettle on, Ma, we ain’t stayin’.” She backs out of the driveway and backtracks about six blocks before pulling into the hospital parking lot. She yanks the key out of the ignition. We hoist the Styrofoam cooler from behind the seats and slide the rolling door closed.

  “C’mon, Grace,” she says. “It’s time you meet your baby sister.”

  I follow her into roundabout front doors that sweep me around in a complete circle. Aunt Pearl grabs me by the collar on my third pass and rescues me from my spinning glass cave. She waddles past a tall lady pushing a cart full of food trays who looks down at Aunt Pearl’s slippers. The lady winks at me before shoving her cart through the elevator doors ahead of us. Aunt Pearl taps the number 5 button and the tiny room shoots upward. It feels like my stomach stayed right where we started.

  At the second floor the food lady gets out and an old man takes her place. As he moves to the back I can smell the sadness buried in the air he breathes out. Aunt Pearl waits until he grabs the rail before pushing the number 5 again. When the doors close his mind falls open like a dump truck, spilling his thoughts all over me.

  How will I live without her? I can’t sleep in that bed alone. Who will tend her flowers? Oh, Harriet, why did you have to go and leave me?

  I plug my ears because it’s too hard to take, but this doesn’t help. When I look up at the old man he turns away. A tear travels down a crease next to his eye all the way to his chin, where it hangs on to a stubble of whiskers. Aunt Pearl is humming a cheery song and it feels like sprinkling sugar on rotten eggs. When the elevator bell finally dings for Marilyn’s floor I practically run into the hall.

  Aunt Pearl snaps her fingers behind me. “Slow down, Grace. You’ll see her soon enough.”

  We follow a line of yellow arrows painted on the floor until a nurse stops us. She shakes a bony finger at Aunt Pearl.

  “You can’t take that child in there, Mrs. Gundry. You’ll have to leave her in the waiting room.”

  Aunt Pearl shifts the cooler to her hip and grabs my hand. “Why not?”

  The nurse folds her wrinkly arms across her chest. Her thin lips are squeezed so tight they barely move when she talks. “Germs. Children bring in germs.”

  Aunt Pearl grins. “You think she’s gonna have less germs a couple years from now? This child has the same germs as me. We live in the same house.”

  The old woman tips her pointy hat toward the sign above the nurse’s station. “No one under fourteen, that’s the rule.”

  “If I can go in I expect she can, too.”

  Aunt Pearl marches off, leaving the woman in the white sailor hat with her mouth hanging open. We push through another set of double doors and then we’re inside a room filled with bassinets. Along one wall, a couple of nurses sit in rocking chairs bottle-feeding tiny babies. Both nurses have socks on the outside of their shoes and masks over their mouths. One of them hums softly to the baby in her arms.

  The bassinets look like little spaceships with their bubbled tops and beep-beeping machines. Aunt Pearl pauses as we pass a red-faced baby about the size of one of Chastity’s dolls. She clucks her tongue. “Poor babe ain’t no bigger ’n a minute.”

  I stare at each of the little bodies as we pass by half a dozen babies with tubes going every which way in and out of them. Some are crying. All of them look lonely. Aunt Pearl stops at the very last bassinet and sets down the cooler.

  “There she is, Grace. Say hello to your little sister.”

  Behind the glass Marilyn is awake but quiet. She’s beautiful and looks like a normal baby. She has blue eyes like my other sisters and a wisp of white-blond hair on her forehead. Joy, who gets all As in biology, says babies can’t focus, but she’s wrong. Marilyn is looking at me in the way you’ve known someone for a long time.

  Aunt Pearl nudges my arm. “You want to touch her?”

  I nod.

  “See the holes in the side of her bassinet? You can reach inside there with these here mitts.”

  She helps me slip my right hand into one of the rubbery gloves. I slowly reach into the bubble and rest my hand over Marilyn’s chest. As soon as I touch her I feel it. There’s a hole for sure, a tiny hole, between the right and left side of her heart. My own pulse speeds up to match hers, faster and faster. I close my eyes and I can see her heart just as clear as if it’s painted on the outside of her naked body. A tiny leak. So tiny. Tinier. My hand is tingling, sweating, buzzing, hot, getting hotter. I feel dizzy. The hole is shrinking, disappearing into itself.

  “Get her out of here!” A familiar voice sounds from somewhere behind us, but I can’t let go because it’s not finished yet. I look up to find Aunt Pearl staring at me with bug eyes. My legs feel weak.

  “You all right, SweePea?”

  I turn back toward Marilyn, but the picture in my mind has disappeared and her eyes are closed. An alarm goes off next to her bubble. Bony Nurse bolts toward us, yelling. She’s brought a big black man with her.

  “Remove that child from here this instant!”

  Aunt Pearl wheels around to face the two of them and holds her hand up like a crossing guard.

  “Stay. Back.”

  The nurse stops so quick she nearly t
umbles forward. She whispers something to the man, but her words echo on the edges of a dream. Aunt Pearl catches me just before my knees hit the floor.

  * * *

  I’m flat on my back on a sofa in the front lounge of the hospital. The lights are too bright. Aunt Pearl sits in a chair next to me. She strokes my forehead when I wake. “Hey there, SweePea.”

  I’m so tired. I can’t believe how tired I am. It takes all my concentration to make words come out of my mouth. “Is Marilyn okay?”

  “Oh, she’s better than okay, shoog. They’re sending her home tomorrow.” Aunt Pearl crinkles her brow and brings her face next to mine. “Just what’d you do in there, Grace?” she whispers. “You fix that baby somehow?”

  But I only remember both of our hearts beating together and the buzzing in my hand. It was hot, I remember that, too. I haven’t forgotten how mad Daddy got when I said Isaac helped us down from that tree and when I knew Chastity was sick. I bite my lip and keep quiet.

  “Well,” she says, “I saw it with my own eyes. Y’all got the healin’ in you, child.”

  “Don’t tell Daddy,” I squeak out.

  She smiles and kisses my cheek. “Don’t you worry, shoog. Your daddy will be proud to know the good Lord works through his baby girl.”

  I try to sit up, but I’m too dizzy and have to lie back down. “No! Really, Aunt Pearl. Please don’t tell him.”

  But she’s grinning like someone holding the best secret they’ll ever get to let out.

  * * *

  On the way home from the hospital I tell Aunt Pearl everything that’s happened since I last saw her. I tell her about my conversations with Isaac and how the Knowing has gotten stronger. I beg her not to say anything to Daddy because he gets angry about such things. Aunt Pearl drives quietly for a spell before pulling into Thrifty Acres’ parking lot. She turns off the engine. When she looks at me, her face is so full of love it could almost melt the ice on the car windows.

  “I want to tell you a true story, Grace.”

  She turns to face the windshield, as if watching her tale play out on the glass.

  “It was your mama and daddy’s wedding day. We were all getting ready to go to the church, a little chapel about twenty miles east of Blue Rapids. Your mama picked it because she said it looked like it belonged on a picture postcard. Your daddy was intent on not seeing his bride in her wedding dress until she came up the aisle, so they were going to ride in separate cars. Well, I’ll be doggoned if Isabelle didn’t refuse to ride in her bridesmaid’s car. Pitched a fit, she did. Wouldn’t say why, just stomped her foot and said she’d ride with the rest of them and if Henry didn’t want to see her dress he’d better just look the other way.”

  Aunt Pearl peels off hand-knitted gloves and huffs on her chapped hands before continuing her story. “So they rode together, Isabelle and Henry and her bridesmaid, Lana Bailey, all in the front seat. The best man, some skinny guy your daddy went to Bible College with, rode in the back with your aunt Arlene and me. It was July, so blasted hot we were nearly all stuck together by the time we reached the chapel.”

  Aunt Pearl pauses to pat my hand. “You listening, Grace?”

  I nod. I’m hanging on to every last word. There’s so much I don’t know about my parents.

  “What happened then, Aunt Pearl?”

  “Well, I’m about to tell you that. Lana’s younger brother found your mama’s bouquet sitting on the kitchen table. He decided to drive Lana’s car to the chapel so the bride would have her flowers. He took the back way on Garfield Road, which has more curves than a pinup girl, and ended up rolling the car when the brakes gave out. There was only about a foot of water in the ditch, but it drowned him because he was unconscious from hitting his head.”

  I start to shiver but not because it’s cold. I’m shivering for Mama’s sake. I wish I could tell her it wasn’t her fault. That just because you know things doesn’t mean you made them happen.

  Aunt Pearl turns on the engine and puts the heater on full blast.

  “Lana’s brother, he was a good kid, but I didn’t know him. God forgive me, but I was mighty glad he was in that ditch instead of your mama. Now, your daddy dearly believes the Lord spared his beautiful bride and maybe that’s true. But he never did mention anything about her refusing to ride in Lana’s car.” She bows her head, slowly turning it side to side. “Never did.”

  We both sit quietly and ponder Aunt Pearl’s story before I speak up.

  “Daddy doesn’t like it when people know things they’re not supposed to. That’s why you mustn’t say anything about what happened with Marilyn today.”

  Aunt Pearl curls her lips inside her mouth and rolls them around as if she’s evening out invisible lipstick before turning back toward me. “I understand, shoog. I didn’t say nothin’ when you told me where your mama was that night she visited the cemetery and I won’t tell now.” She bites down on her lower lip, as if sealing our pact.

  “Isaac says we all have the Knowing, but only some of us welcome it. He says Mama turned away from the Knowing after having a vision of that ice-cream truck backing over Hope when she was little.”

  “That’s what he tells you, huh?” She smiles and puts her arm around me, hugging me hard. “Well, if that’s what the boy tells you, then it must be the truth, SweePea.” I can tell by the way she says it she’s trying to convince herself by saying the words out loud.

  She pulls back onto the highway and drives a ways before speaking again.

  “Doesn’t matter if it was you or not, your sister’s healin’ came from on high. Our Lord still offers miracles, and it doesn’t make a whit of difference how they come or who they come through.”

  11

  Aunt Pearl never did tell Daddy the whole story. Just said we were praying for Marilyn when the commotion started at the hospital, which in a way is true. Now that Marilyn is home, Joy seems to think the baby is her very own Christmas present. It’s Joy, not Mama or Aunt Pearl, who’s first to pick her up when she wakes. Joy carries her around everywhere almost as if Marilyn is a part of her body. Even when she’s not holding the baby she rocks back and forth like she’s forgotten her arms are empty.

  It’s probably a good thing Joy is such a big help since Aunt Pearl has more than enough work taking care of the rest of us without adding a baby into the picture. Aunt Pearl does the cooking and the laundry, as well as looking after Mama to see she gets her medicine on time. Each of us girls helps with one chore: Hope with cleaning, Chastity with laundry, and me with cooking. It goes without saying that Joy’s chore is Marilyn.

  Daddy doesn’t seem too interested in the new baby, maybe because this one wore Mama to the bone. Once in a while he’ll carry Marilyn up to her crib, although he has to pry her out of Joy’s arms to do so. Watching him hold her makes me go all soft inside. I don’t know why, but something about seeing her little body cradled in his big old arms brings tears to my eyes.

  Daddy spends most of his time watching Mama. She’s here, but not here. Yesterday he found her in front of the barn, no coat on, holding an empty plate. She said she was meeting a friend for lunch. I pictured her like Chastity, who used to hold fancy parties with her play tea set for imaginary friends. I think the medicine makes Mama more like a child than us kids. And Daddy more like a father than a husband.

  * * *

  When the doorbell rings on the morning of Christmas Eve, Joy yells at me to answer it before it wakes the baby. As if her yelling at me won’t wake up anyone within a block. I’m happy to be the first to greet Grandpa and Uncle Bill and Aunt Arlene, knowing what I’ll get in return for putting up with her cheek torture. But Chastity has beat me to it. When she turns around after all the oohing and aahing her cheeks are red from pinching, but she’s carrying the prized bag of Christmas candy they bring with them every year. Grandpa winks at me and hands me a butterscotch from his pocket.

  Aunt Arlene is Mama’s sister. We hardly ever see her and Uncle Bill because they live three hours away i
n a swanky place on Lake Michigan. Ever since Grandma died when I was only two, Grandpa has lived with them. Uncle Bill has an important position with the power company. He’s a lot older than Aunt Arlene and also much quieter. He combs his white hair straight back and wears handsome sweaters. I’ve never seen Daddy in a sweater. Not even once.

  Aunt Arlene sells Avon to all the rich ladies in Cedarwood. Every time she visits us her hair is a different color. Today it’s the same as an overripe pumpkin with lipstick to match. I park myself on a stool in the corner of the kitchen while she sits at the table talking nonstop about all the houses she’s been in and how nice they were decorated. She takes a sip of coffee, leaving a fat smear of orange lip prints on the cup. Aunt Pearl offers her an apron, but she just keeps right on talking. Aunt Pearl throws the apron on the kitchen table and turns back to the stove to baste the turkey.

  I’m peeling potatoes over the sink when I sense Mama behind me. We all figured she’d sleep through most of Christmas like she sleeps through everything on account of the pills she takes, but here she is. I turn to see her putting on the apron that was meant for Aunt Arlene. It’s the first time I’ve seen Mama wearing regular clothes instead of a nightgown since Marilyn was born. Her pink blouse is wrinkled and her slip is showing a bit, but otherwise she looks almost normal. I suppose something about having a bunch of women in her kitchen has given her a boost, even if one of them happens to be a lazy gossip.

  We all try to act as if we’re not shocked when Mama stands next to the stove and hums softly as she stirs jellied cranberries. Aunt Pearl cradles a big bowl full of mashed potatoes across the kitchen, whipping them to beat the band. When she sets the bowl on the table I’m surprised to hear Mama giggle before Aunt Arlene starts in, too. Aunt Pearl says, “What?” which only makes them laugh harder. I wonder what’s so funny until I see it myself.