* * *
I’m almost asleep when the side of the bed sags next to me. I pretend to be sleeping, hoping to feel Mama stroke my face the way she used to when I was a little girl. She reaches out and tucks a few stray hairs behind my ear then pulls the covers around me and pats it. Through the slit between my eyelids I see Joy’s nail-bitten fingers smoothing out the quilt.
“G’night, Grace,” she whispers, in a way I know not to answer.
20
A lot has changed around here in the last few months. For one thing it’s quieter. Hope started a new project—she’s trying to read the entire Holy Bible in a year. She’s a slow reader to start with, plus she’s underlining as she reads to keep track of how far she’s gotten. Sometimes she stops to memorize a verse, which bogs her down even more. It’ll take her a lot longer than a year to finish, but I admire her determination. I can’t even eat a Tootsie Pop without biting into it after three licks.
Mama was in the rest home for six weeks. They changed her medications, but it hasn’t helped much. She sleeps even more than she used to and rarely gets dressed. Joy picks Marilyn up from Mrs. Poole’s house every day on her way home from high school. Mrs. Poole already has a toddler so she offered to take Marilyn during the day to help us out. Joy keeps a bunch of storybooks and toys in her room so she can study while watching Marilyn. My job is to make dinner. I don’t mind since that means Chastity has to wash dishes. I think she actually likes doing them. Sometimes she stares at her reflection in the dishes and pretends she’s a movie star. But she still refuses to put her hand in the sink and pull the plug when she’s done. Chastity can’t stand soggy food coming into contact with her hands.
Tonight I’m making SpaghettiOs with hot dogs cut up in it. Daddy bought the family-size cans, but I still have to open two in order to feed everybody. Daddy buys the economy size of everything to save money. Our creme rinse comes in a pink gallon jug. We probably have enough to untangle a whole congregation’s worth of hair.
Daddy took a part-time job at the Rexall to help with paying Mama’s and Marilyn’s hospital bills. The church can’t support us even though he’s doubled the congregation since we first moved here. Daddy has a way of convincing people to come to church. Earl Felt never used to attend with his family because he didn’t have Sunday clothes. Daddy told him if he’d come the next Sunday he’d wear overalls in the pulpit. I couldn’t believe he actually did it. I loved watching Daddy that day wearing overalls while he preached. I think it made him seem more like a real servant of the Lord. Earl has attended with his family almost every Sunday since that day. I wonder if Mama would come to church in her nightgown next Sunday if Daddy promised to wear his pajamas in the pulpit?
Daddy walks into the kitchen wearing his white jacket from the drugstore with a pocket on the front. He stocks shelves and waits on customers in the afternoons. I think he likes his job because he can witness to people, although the owner had to talk to him about it last week. Some of the customers were complaining that Daddy preaches at them. Daddy agreed to stop, but he still slips a religious tract into every single bag that leaves his register.
I set paper plates around the table and noisily pound a spoon on the side of the cook pot to bring the family to the kitchen. Daddy lifts the cover and peers inside. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t frown either. His face is just flat. Maybe he’ll get tired of my cooking and let Aunt Pearl come back.
After supper I head upstairs to work on homework for my current events class. I’m supposed to write about something important going on in the world. Most of my seventh-grade classmates are writing about the Vietnam War, but that’s one thing I can’t think about. If I concentrate too hard on all those people I hear them wailing in my head. I’ve decided to write about Janis Joplin. I’m not supposed to listen to rock and roll music, but sometimes I sneak the dial on my transistor radio over to WOKY out of Milwaukee. I think Janis has the Knowing, too. I want to write about Janis because she understands what beauty is in an ugly kind of way.
I’ve just started the second page of my report when the phone rings and Joy hollers for me to answer it. Chastity is grounded from the phone after calling a modeling agency in California last week. Daddy threatened to yank the phone out of the wall when he got the bill. I run downstairs and grab it on the fifth ring. For once it’s actually for me.
“Hi, Lola!” I drag the phone into the hall closet so we can talk without Miss Big Ears listening to every word.
“What’re you doing, Grace?”
“Working on my essay.”
“Will you write one for me?”
“You know I can’t do that, Lola.”
“What’d you say?” She yells it into the phone.
“What’s that thumping noise?”
“Just a minute.” Lola puts her hand over the receiver and yells even louder, “Catherine! Can’t you wait until I’m off the phone to practice your congas?”
The thumping continues. She comes back on and says, “I’m going to have to call you later, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
When I finish my homework I decide to write Aunt Pearl a letter and beg her to come back.
Dear Aunt Pearl,
It seems like forever since you left and I sure do miss you. You would not believe how big Marilyn is getting. She’s walking all over the place and she can talk some, though she can’t pronounce her r’s too good. She calls me Gwace.
Ever since Mama went to the hospital Joy elected herself head honcho around here. Daddy makes us do everything she says even though she’s only two years older than me. Yesterday she ordered me to change all the bedding while she took a nap with Marilyn.
I was wondering if you might come back for a while. Daddy won’t ask for help because he thinks if we pray hard enough Mama will snap out of her depression. Sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever be normal again.
It’s okay if you can’t come, but I hope you do. Joy’s driving me crazy. Write me when you can.
Love from your Sweet Pea,
Grace Marie
I fold the letter and tuck it into one of Mama’s pretty envelopes that match the stationery. Little pink roses line the edges of the paper and the inside of the envelope. I spritz a little perfume from a dusty bottle shaped like a bell that I borrowed from Mama’s dresser. As I’m going out the door Daddy asks me where I’m headed.
“I wrote Aunt Pearl a letter,” I say.
“You shouldn’t bother her. She just had surgery and doesn’t need you crabbing about how much you miss her and making her feel worse.”
“What kind of surgery?”
He blushes. “Woman stuff,” he says.
“Maybe a nice letter is just what she needs to cheer her up.”
He frowns but fishes two quarters out of his pants pocket. “Here. Pick me up eight stamps.”
* * *
On the way to the post office I tear up the letter. Daddy’s right. Aunt Pearl doesn’t need me whining about my problems. I buy eight stamps and spend the change on a Tootsie Roll at Norberg’s. As I pass the blind girl’s house I pause at the rickety gate in front of their sidewalk. I keep hoping she might come back, but the place looks completely empty, right down to curtainless windows. A fat red maple leaf rests on the wooden seat of the tree swing. Part of me wants to climb over the fence and go for a ride, the part that still feels like a girl. But the part that’s starting to feel more like a woman won’t let me. I close my eyes and picture the blind girl. Something bad happened to her, but I can’t see what. When I try harder to get inside her head my mind goes cold and flat.
By the time I get back from town, Daddy’s in the bathroom doing some last-minute cramming for his sermon tomorrow. It’s one of his favorite places to think. Unfortunately, if one of us needs to pee we have to walk over to the church because he’s not coming out anytime soon. Even if he did, nobody would want to go in right after Daddy’s been in there. I fast-walk across the street, rushing past the church janitor and into
the girls’ bathroom. Somebody has scratched Jesus Loves You into the back of the bathroom door. I wonder if whoever wrote it considered whether Jesus would like her vandalizing His holy house.
On my way out I stop near the big meeting room in the basement where the kids sing before Sunday school. Mr. Weaver is buffing the floors with a machine that twirls the wax into a shine so glossy you can almost see your reflection in it. It’s a little like that commercial for dishwashing soap. “Look, Marge,” one lady says to the other, “you can see yourself.” And sure enough Marge’s face is right there on the plate, red lips smiling away. As if either of those fancy women actually does dishes.
Mr. Weaver startles me when he hollers across the room.
“What?” I yell back.
He leans over and turns off the buffer. “You wanna try it? It’s fun.”
I grin at him. “I suppose next you’re going to ask me if I want to whitewash a fence, Mr. Weaver.”
“Now, Grace, you know you can call me Harold.”
“Daddy says it’s disrespectful to address adults by their first names.”
“Well, I’m not just any old adult. I’m your friend, right?” He digs into his pants pocket. He might have quit drinking but he still has a beer belly bulging over his belt. “Here,” he says, holding out a plastic bag of peppermints.
I hold back from taking his friendship offering. Partly because Daddy doesn’t like it when we beg candy off Mr. Weaver and partly because I’m not a little kid anymore.
He shakes the bag, sending the minty smell my way. “Go on, have a couple.”
I take a step toward him. “Well, okay. I am kind of hungry.”
“Need to fatten you up a little anyway, Grace. You’re too skinny.” He looks me over and smiles. “Although you’re starting to fill out some, aren’t you?”
My face heats up. I’m embarrassed and pleased at the same time. At least somebody has noticed.
“So you wanna give it a whirl?” He nods toward the buffing machine.
“Okay,” I say. It does look kind of fun.
“Here. Put your hands on the bar and hold tight. When I turn the machine on, just follow it around the room.”
I grab the handle and brace myself.
“Ready?”
I nod. When he bends over to flip the switch his butt crack shows above his baggy work pants. I concentrate on the machine instead. The vibration feels weird under my hands, as though it might jiggle the skin right off my arms. He comes up behind me and puts his hands over mine to steady the buffer. His belt buckle digs into my back and when he pulls back on the handle, his knuckles push against my chest. I let go of the whole business and duck out from under him.
“Grace!” he yells, then chases the buffer, catching it right before it slams into the piano. He kicks the switch off with his foot. His face gets even shorter when he furrows his brow.
“What’d ya go and do that for?”
I stare at him blankly. “I don’t know. It scared me, I guess.” His forehead relaxes a little. “It’s okay, honey. You go on back home now. Tell Pastor Carter the floors will be slick enough for the Lord himself to eat off when I get done with them, you hear?”
I bend over the drinking fountain on the way out. The warmish water tastes like iron. When I stand and wipe my face on my arm, the janitor is leaning against the handle of the buffer with his eyes closed, smiling. He sure does love his job.
* * *
Most people don’t like school, but I look forward to it. Our little elementary school goes from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade. The classes are small, with some combined into two grades. The high school, where Joy is a freshman, sits across the street from the K-8 building. I’m glad Joy and I don’t go to the same school anymore, but the teachers still compare us. “Your sister was so quiet,” they say when I make too much noise. Or, “Your sister is a whiz at math. Surely you can do better.” Next year will be my last year here. In a way I will miss it, but I’m also ready to stop being treated like a child. Chastity is probably counting down the days until she’s the only Carter at Cherry Hill Elementary.
When Monday comes around Lola and I walk to the field beyond the campus during lunch hour and lay with our heads on a rock. The ground is cold and damp, but the sun warms our faces. We both get bored with the way the other seventh-grade girls walk around whispering to each other about boys. We’d rather watch clouds drift by and discuss the world and stuff. Sometimes Lola reads aloud to me from one of her poetry books, but she has to explain most of them. Sometimes I talk about how much I miss Mama. Lola listens without ever getting sick of me. And sometimes we don’t say anything, just lie side by side and stare at the sky.
“Did your family go on vacation last summer?” I ask her, pulling my hood down over my ears.
“Yeah, we went to a music festival in Colorado.”
“Wow. That must’ve been amazing.”
“It was. But I wish I could have planned for it. When our family does something it’s usually spontaneous and my parents never tell us until the last minute. One time they got us up in the middle of the night to drive to Canada so we could fly into Churchill to see the polar bears.”
“You saw polar bears?”
“Yeah, they were really cool. But I had to call the neighbor from a pay phone to get him to feed and water the horses while we were gone. Catherine never thinks of things like that when she gets an idea in her head.”
“At least you get to go somewhere. We’ve never even been on vacation.”
Lola props herself on one arm. Her freckles have doubled in number since we left the school building. “Never?”
“Nope. Unless you count the time we drove down to Ohio to see Billy Graham preach.”
In the distance the school bell rings. I sit up, but Lola doesn’t move. She’s chewing on a blade of brown grass, stroking the soft tip with her long fingers. In her faded bib overalls and barn boots, she looks like a female version of Huck Finn.
“We should go in,” I say.
“You go ahead. I think I’ll stay here for a while.”
“But, Lola, you’ll get in trouble.”
“I’m already in trouble for drawing a mermaid on the chalkboard, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” I feel sorry for her because it’s obvious Mrs. Humphrey has it in for Lola. “It was beautiful,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“I wish I could draw like you.” It’s the truth.
“I wish I could know things like you.”
“Maybe you should have put a bathing suit top on her,” I say.
“Mermaids don’t wear bathing suits, Grace.”
“That’s true.”
I lay back down beside her. We don’t say any more, even when Mrs. Humphrey comes out and hollers our names. We both know she’s too lazy to walk all the way out here to try to find us.
* * *
Lola and I end up having to stay after school and each write “I will not be a troublemaker” five hundred times. I write the first word all the way down the page and then the next word. This way seems to make the punishment go faster. It takes Lola twice as long because she’s so mad her pencil lead keeps breaking when she pushes it into the page. When we finally finish, Mrs. Humphrey hands me a note to give to Daddy. I open it in the school parking lot.
Dear Rev. and Mrs. Carter,
Grace has been exhibiting worrisome signs of rebellion. I believe she’s being influenced by spending time with children who share few family values. I suggest you monitor her friendships more closely.
Sincerely,
Marjorie Humphrey
I crumple up the letter and toss it in the trash can next to the school bus stop. Daddy already thinks Lola’s parents are lowlifes. I convinced him they only dress like they do because they’re poor. I told him I’ve been witnessing to the Purdys and that I’m pretty sure they might visit our church very soon. I make a mental note to invite Lola to church with me the next time I see her.
/> As I walk down our street I imagine Mama in the kitchen making pork chops and cabbage for supper. She’d be wearing her favorite flowered apron, singing happily as she waits for her children to arrive. After dinner she’ll sit on the edge of the bathtub and pour a pitcher of water over my hair to rinse the shampoo. We’ll talk about girl things, mother to daughter, while she washes my back. I’ll pull a handmade nightie over my head before she follows me to bed, petting my face until I fall asleep. By the time I reach the house my daydream feels so real I almost call out her name before seeing her bedroom door closed like it always is when she’s tucked away in there, far away from us.
I climb up to the loft, but of course Lyle isn’t there. I haven’t seen him since that evening when I doubted him about the kids and the school bus. I walk to the back of the loft and lay down in the straw where he used to sleep. Something shiny catches my eye under the pew in front of me. I stretch out on my belly and strain to reach the object. Sometimes when Lyle drinks he drops things. For once I’m glad since this is the first thing I’ve found of his besides the fork he left, but that wasn’t really his, it was one of ours.
It’s a locket. The silver is partly blackened and bent on one side, like it was left in the charcoal grill. The chain is similar to the one we have on our bathtub plug. I used to see Lyle fiddle with that chain in his pocket sometimes. I always figured it was connected to a watch. I try to pry the locket open, but it won’t budge. I bite it with my teeth. No luck. I set it on the straw, then pick it up again. I fold my hands over the locket and close my eyes.
That lake again, and the bow of the boat cutting a path through the water. He’s paddling furiously. The water splashes against the oars as he plunges them into the water over and over. No, no, no, no, no! The smell of smoke and the sound of branches crackling. And then his voice, wailing, before everything goes black. The locket burns in my hands and I drop it. It lands on the floor and pops open. On one side is a younger version of Lyle. On the other an unfamiliar face. She stares back at me, smiling, but the smile isn’t meant for me.
This I Know Page 18