“No.”
“Ya sure? It’s free.”
“Will I get it faster?”
“Well—”
Exasperated, Chad exclaimed, “Yes, give me butter, napkins, oh and I need a bottle of water.”
“That’ll be two bucks and the napkins are at the end of the counter.”
Chad glanced at his wallet as the steaming bucket of buttered popcorn slid across the counter. He had several twenties, a five, and a single one. His mouth opened to protest the inflated pricing in theatrical establishments but heard himself say, “Keep the change.”
He grabbed the waiting bottle of water, the bucket of popcorn, and resisting the temptation to pour it all over the service counter, dumped the imitation butter-soaked kernels in the trashcan on his way back into the theater. Seconds after he sat next to Willow and passed her the bucket, he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Here’s your change. We’re not allowed to take tips. Thanks though.” The kid nodded at Willow. “Hope you feel better.”
A glance at Willow and his mind was back on the crisis at hand. “Feeling sick again?”
She nodded. “The room is spinning. I feel so…” Her eyes closed automatically.
“Don’t close your eyes. Focus on the seat ahead of you. Closing your eyes doesn’t help. Focusing will.”
Willow concentrated on the seat until the wave of nausea passed. “It worked. I feel better,” she whispered back.
Wordlessly, Chad took the bucket from her and passed the bottle of water. “Do you still want to try to go?”
“I don’t think I can stand. I’d rather wait until it’s over if I won’t get sick again.”
Chad showed her how to predict which scenes would send her stomach reeling. “The camera… when it starts whirling like that, look down. It’s making you motion sick, I’ll bet,” Chad murmured, ignoring the shushing of a few nearby moviegoers. As for Chad, he’d never seen anything like it. If she were this ill in a chick flick, she’d never make it through an action film.
The lights blinked and then glowed as the credits rolled. Willow stood and collapsed back into her seat. “I don’t know what is wrong with my legs and ears.”
“Ears?”
Willow shook her head like a puppy doused with water. “Yes they’re buzzing and ringing and my head feels mushy.”
“Maybe now lay back and rest your head on the back of the seat and close your eyes?” The cleanup crew entered, visibly irritated to see people still sitting there, but Chad ignored them.
Ten minutes later, she sat up gingerly. “I feel better. Let’s try to get out of here before those girls get any angrier at us.”
She stood, holding onto the backs of the seats, and shuffled down the row to the aisle. Behind them, the girls made snide comments about their slowness and the mess of popcorn at their feet. Chad tried to keep his cool, but when the quips turned crude, he lost his patience.
“You had a choice between vomit and popcorn. I chose popcorn. Next time I’ll let her toss her cookies over the floor for you to clean up.”
At the front doors, Chad left Willow leaning against the glass wall and hurried back to find the girls. “Hey, I’m sorry. I had no right to snap at you like that.”
One attendant passed him without a word, but the other said, “That’s really cool, apologizing when we’re the ones who trash talked you. I hope she feels better. Flu?”
“Motion sickness.”
“In Eight Cousins?” The incredulous look on the girl’s face was priceless.
“First time at the movies.”
“What!”
The other girl shook her head as Chad pushed open the heavy door. “Wow.”
They walked along Elm Street to Main and back to the town square where Chad had parked his truck. Each step in the balmy night air seemed to strengthen Willow, until a relieved chuckle escaped. “I can’t believe I got sick in the movies!”
“Well, it was a first for me too,” Chad began. Once he knew she felt better, he regaled her with details of his popcorn bucket retrieval adventure.
They sat on his tailgate sipping water from bottles and watching the teens cruise by on their way home from Rockland or the theater. Chad pointed out how they’d make a pass one direction, double back, and then head home. “They’re not allowed to actually ‘cruise’ the streets, but they’ll make a double pass.”
“Why can’t they cruise?”
“The chief and his cronies at the city council think it encourages disreputable behavior.”
Willow stared at him confused. “Driving up and down the street at slower than normal speeds is disreputable? They’d rather the kids go find some place to break in and party perhaps? At least on the street you know where they are and what they’re doing!”
“We need you to be their advocate with the chief. I don’t know what the appeal of cruising is, but I loved it when I was a kid, and my dad did it when he was a kid; there is just something cool about making that loop with a car full of your friends.”
She pointed at a Beetle convertible that crawled past and then made a loop. “Didn’t that one go past a while ago?”
“I’ll bet he took the girlfriend home. He’s probably heading home himself, but he’ll make a double pass because he can.”
“Do they get tickets if the police come around?”
Chad’s head nodded. “Yep.”
“What for?”
“Endangering other drivers, and if the car sits in one spot idling for more than five minutes, loitering.”
Indignant, Willow jumped from the tailgate and tossed her empty bottle in a nearby garbage can. “I think that’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard anything so inane. Mother always said that if you treat a kid like he’s going to get into trouble, he usually will.”
Chad’s eyebrows rose in question as he opened her car door. She slid into her seat talking as she buckled the seatbelt. “Well, Mother said that people had a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude, and it fed the actions that prompted the statement in the first place. I remember her being very incensed at something someone did when she was in town once, and she talked about it all the way home.”
“What happened?”
“A couple of little boys chased a little girl and pulled up her dress and laughed at her tears. The child ran to her father, crying, and the father told her mother, ‘boys will be boys, no harm done.’”
“I’d thrash any boy of mine for that kind of—”
Willow interrupted, shaking her head in agreement. “That’s what Mother was talking about. She said that if that father had expected his sons to protect little girls and treat them like beloved little sisters rather than objects to ridicule, the chances of that happening were much slimmer.”
The truck started, and Chad backed into the square and joined the slow procession of cars. He made the obligatory loop and backtracked once before he turned toward the highway. “I think your mom was right.”
The night sky was pitch-black as they drove toward the Finley farm. The new moon allowed the stars to shine brighter than ever as they sped along the highway. “Two firsts for me tonight. Well, three actually.”
“Three?”
“I went to a movie and I went cruising.”
“That’s two,” Chad protested.
“I got motion sick.”
“Will you try another movie some time?” Chad’s curiosity got the better of him and as the words left his mouth, he realized it sounded like another invitation.
“Oh, movie. Yes, I’ll be going back. Probably next week. Didn’t you say that you can see them in the afternoon?”
“The matinee, yes. They’re cheaper then, too.”
“I’ll go next Wednesday when I meet Bill and Ms. Freeman, Mother’s lawyer. It’ll be a nice diversion after all that stuff.” She grinned. “Now I know how to watch without getting sick.”
At her door, Chad looked out across the pasture in the direction of the grave. “Does Othello still sleep out there?”
&nb
sp; “Every night, the moment it gets dark, he barks a few times and then trots off. He’s back at daybreak, waiting to go with me to milk Wilhelmina.”
“Think he’d handle another dog?”
She eyed him curiously. “Probably a younger dog, why?”
“I’d feel better if you had a dog around here. We don’t know if Othello would come back if someone was prowling—”
“I’ve got the gun.” Willow sounded flat—matter-of-fact.
“And a dog’s bark would probably scare off anyone before they got close enough for you to shoot.”
“I’ll think about it. Thank you for the movie; I had a great time. Goodnight.”
Without another word, she slipped inside the door, shut, and locked it behind her. He jogged down the steps and climbed back into his truck. Lord, having her as a friend might not be so bad. I thought she would be more clingy or something, but she’s not, thank heaven. Maybe this won’t be too bad.
Willow undressed and pulled on her camisole and bed shorts. After brushing and braiding her hair, she tidied her room praying, Lord, Chad’s a nice friend. I enjoy having him around sometimes, but he’s kind of clingy. Please give him something to do somewhere else a little more often. I’m starting to feel a little smothered. She pulled the covers over her and turned down her oil lamp. At least he didn’t invite himself along to my next movie. Although, if he hadn’t invited himself to this one, I might have been in trouble, so that was good.
While the cicadas’ songs drifted through the window, Willow lay in bed thinking. Her mother had spoken once of hating to feel like someone’s “project.” She’d warned Chad of it once, but it seemed as if he had ignored or forgotten it. However, knowing that someone out there cared enough to make her a project felt better than the extreme loneliness that came in those moments when she realized that without a few near strangers, she was truly alone. Shame filled her heart as a sense of the Lord’s presence washed over her. Ok, not quite alone...
Chapter Eight
Tuesday morning, Willow opened her mother’s door and stood in the doorway. She’d put off this moment as long as possible, but the time had come. She needed her mother’s private journals.
The more days that passed, the harder it had become to enter the room. She glanced at the bowl by the bed and grimaced. The peonies were withered and dry. The bedspread still lay folded on the bed waiting for her to shake it into place. The breeze fluttered the curtains in the windows and the sun sent the dust dancing in a shaft of light across the floor.
A high shelf between the closet and bedroom door boasted a row of twenty-one journals and a hand-painted hatbox that doubled as a bookend. Willow stared at the shelf. She’d never been allowed to touch her mother’s private journals. “You’ll know when it’s ok, Willow. You’ll know. Until then, leave them alone,” her mother had always said when she asked what her mother wrote in them. She glanced at the bedside—there was one for that year in the drawer there.
Willow reached for the first one. Thumbing through the months, she found July. The sight of her mother’s cramped writing wrung her heart, squeezing it until it felt as though no blood was left. Different paragraphs jumped out at her causing her to realize she wanted to read them from the beginning. Among those pages, a side of her mother she’d never known emerged.
I’m contracting again. My brilliant plan to walk into Fairbury when the time came wasn’t so brilliant. It’s pouring rain out there. Rain in July. Just my luck. Ouch. That one hurt. Do I try to stay here? Should I try walking and just accept a ride. Pray I’m not killed? I don’t know.
Well, that was gross. Why did it never occur to me that my water breaking would be like wetting my pants? I’m gathering things between contractions. I just hope something doesn’t go wrong. We could die here. Maybe a phone wasn’t a bad idea after all.
I’m scared.
Tears splashed onto the page and Willow brushed them away. She’d been alone, frightened, and had no way to call for help.
“If she’d only had a cell phone,” Willow muttered to herself. The next entry caught her eye and she continued reading, fascinated.
Willow is perfect. I knew it was a girl. I just knew it. I’ve prayed about names for six months, and Willow is my agreement with the Lord. I just hope He accepts it. I’ll raise her to be like the man in Psalm 1. I will raise her not to accept the counsel of the wicked, to stay out of the path of sinners, and to keep free of mockers. I will teach her to delight in the Law of the Lord and make it hers as well. She will, if love, instruction, and prayer can make it happen, be like a tree planted by our stream bearing fruit for His glory.
And God will allow her physique to fit her name. She will not be a short, squatty “Willow.”
Labor was horrible. I will never have another child. I will not marry, and I won’t ever allow myself to be vulnerable to a man again. Childbirth is truly the curse that God promised.
I’m still bleeding. It’s been a week. I thought it would stop by now. Anytime I try to do anything, it gets worse so I’ve been sitting a lot. I hold Willow and tell her all my plans for us. I need to pull out the medical book and reread that section.
I was afraid I’d resent her. I gave myself permission to call social services if I couldn’t handle it, but she’s the only thing that feels right about this whole ordeal. She’s so tiny and helpless. We’re going to be good friends. Like Mom and I were. I miss my mom. I need my mom.
Tears washed over her cheeks. Willow mopped them up anytime they threatened to fall on the page. Once her vision blurred, she blinked them back and read some more. The morning passed as she read of those first years of her life.
Her little footprints are so adorable. I put them in here, but I doubt they’ll be good for anything. I don’t know how to get a birth certificate. I don’t even know if I want her to have one. She’s safe if she isn’t traceable. But what if something happens to me?
She has a birthmark. It’s on her right shoulder at the back. Maybe that’ll be identification enough later in life. Surely, we’ll see a doctor sometime. That’ll be proof of her existence.
November’s entries were fascinating. Willow read of learning to survive and thrive in a life that she’d always known. The most basic survival skills were new and difficult for her mother. Things she took for granted, her mother had to learn the hard way.
I have to start chopping wood in the mornings while Willow naps. I keep running out of wood at night. I’ll have to light the furnace if it gets any colder. I need to get ahead. I’ve started a “journal of living” for ideas of when to do what tasks. Wood chopping needs to start in September at the latest. It was cold by the middle of October. Froze twice.
I need a cow. I don’t know what to do. I can’t use all the milk I’d get from one, but Willow seems to need more than I can produce. I keep eating oatmeal and taking the herbs recommended in my book, but it isn’t working. She’s not getting enough. Maybe the book I ordered on natural living will come today. Maybe it’ll have another idea. Maybe I should order canned milk. Maybe I should give up. I don’t think I can do this. Maybe.
The pages turned slowly under Willow’s fingertips. Her mother’s research was painstakingly slow and methodical. The hunt for a lactating goat in the middle of winter nearly failed, but by January, Willow played in her walker as her mother built an outdoor pen for Cleopatra—their first goat.
The bottles arrived today, and today I milked Cleo for the first time. The pen is almost finished, but Cleo doesn’t seem to mind the barn too much. Willow didn’t care for the milk, but she was hungry enough to drink some. I think I’ll stop offering her the breast. It’s clear she’s not getting enough from me, and if she rejects a bottle in favor of inferior food…
I got behind on wood chopping while building the pen. There is a balance to all of this work. I think I need to be careful just how much of it I plan for myself. I have to make sure I don’t leave us floundering like this.
I hope I’m doing the right t
hing. I miss Mom. I miss breakfasts with Dad. I want to share Willow’s latest tooth and her giggles, but I can’t. I have to protect her—and them. I don’t trust Steve’s father.
Do they worry about me? Have they looked for me? Will some detective show up on my doorstep and tell them where I am? Maybe I should change my name. Or would that be even more obvious? I should ask Mr. Burke. I’m so glad I found him.
Willow remembered the kind Mr. Burke who brought her interesting books and toys on his annual visits. She had an entire shelf of gifts he’d brought her stored in the attic. He’d been the closest thing to a grandfather Willow had ever known. She’d cried when Nolan Burke showed up at their door on one September day and told them his father had died unexpectedly in the night.
She read faster. It was only 1987. She needed to find anything that referenced her existence before her trip to town the next day. Slips of paper marked places where she could reference other journals.
By milking time, she’d waded through the nineties and was working in the new millennium. These she remembered vividly. The fingerprints in her mother’s journals had always seemed like a growth chart that made no sense. Now she understood. This year, her birthday would arrive, and she’d be fingerprinted to prove she was the baby of long ago.
“So Ms. Freeman—”
“Renee is fine.” Renee Freeman glanced over the journals Willow had spread before her. “Kari did a good job documenting.”
Bill nodded absently. “So this is good?”
“I think with this information, the affidavit, her medical and dental records, and possibly a DNA test submitted to the judge, we’ll have a declaration without too much trouble.” Renee’s voice sounded confident.
“How long will it take?” Willow’s voice sounded insecure for the first time since she’d opened her mother’s private thoughts to scrutiny.
“We’re on the docket for Friday morning in Rockland. You should be there by eight-thirty.”
Past Forward Volume 1 Page 7