Almost Paradise

by Corabel Shofner

  * * *

  We had soup for dinner, and not a single word. I don’t remember ever going that long without talking. I asked if I could be excused and go to bed early and she nodded. I was sore all over from sleeping in the car and sleeping on the ground. I couldn’t wait to get in a real bed.

  I put on my blue balloon pajamas and crawled into bed with Bunny.

  Then I began to read Oliver Twist to my pig. That long version was longer, more words, more of everything. I wasn’t sure I could finish such a big book. But I launched into it.

  When I got to the line For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, Bunny stabbed me with his foot.

  Bunny pulled his hoof under his chin like the story about the orphan made him sad.

  “You’re right about that, and it gets sadder. But, Bunny, remember this: if Eleanor Rose keeps us we won’t ever be orphans.”

  Before I got caught up in the story, I wondered about Mr. Charles Dickens, who was dead and gone. When he wrote that book, he would have never thought it would be read by a little girl in bed with her pig. Never in one million years would he have imagined that Oliver would travel to Texas—if there even was a Texas when he wrote that book.

  But I soon forgot all about Mr. Charles Dickens. All I cared about was poor old Oliver. (He was a nice boy, but he wasn’t like me. He didn’t know how to get things done. Adults had to do it all for him. But that kind of luck only happens in storybooks. If there was one thing I had learned it was that you have to take care of your own self.)

  Bunny’s foot quit wiggling and his breath evened out. I read until Oliver Twist asked, Please, sir, I want some more, then I closed the book.

  I turned off the bedside light and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Sleep was falling on us fresh and simple. Dogs barked in the distance and something unknown scurried in the yard.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Breakfast,” I heard. For the third morning in a row, I had to figure out where the heck I had been sleeping. Bunny was already up and gone. By the time I got down to the kitchen Eleanor had loaded my plate with eggs and potatoes. Bunny had his snout in his food bowl.

  Somehow, the idea of telling Eleanor who I really was drifted away. Brains are like that. I was worried sick about my mother, but I created a world where all I had to do was wait for her to come back to me. Her job was to return; my job was not to get kicked off Paradise Ranch before that.

  It took me a few days to get to know Eleanor Rose, but her odd ways grew on me. It didn’t take her any time at all to get used to me. She just put me to work. Mostly by handwritten note, because she didn’t like wasting words.

  For Sister Eleanor, thirty words seemed to be the daily limit, not counting prayers, which she said quite often, always playing with that string of beads.

  Every day her breakfast was bran and figs. During the morning hours, while it was still cool outside, she’d work in the vegetable garden and ride a tiny tractor around, spraying bug poisons on the peach trees. She might kill some squirrels; Sister Eleanor could throw rocks at squirrels and knock them right out of the tree. That was like me too.

  Then she’d come inside for a lunch of bread and cheese and water. She’d do more praying and psalm singing.

  In the heat of the day she went to her desk and fired up her computer. She’d sit there for hours, digitizing records for the Library of Congress. “What’s that you’re doing?” I’d ask, but she wasn’t about to waste words answering me, so she wrote it down on an index card: digitizing records for the Library of Congress. What that had to do with nunnery, I never knew.

  I’ll tell you a little secret too. I watched her digitizing those records, and the whole time messages from other solitary nuns were popping up on her computer and she’d answer them. She also did the whole e-mail thing. She did a whole lot of electronic talking. True, she didn’t make much noise with her mouth, but—is that solitary enough? I couldn’t answer that, because it was beyond me why anybody in their right mind would give up talking. Why, talking is one of my very favorite things to do. It’s the reason God made Adam, so God’d have somebody to talk to in the universe. It’s the reason God split Adam into two people—so Adam would have somebody to talk to in the Garden.

  Anyway, we’d have soup for supper, more bread and more water. We’d chew and look at each other across the table. Have you ever noticed how loud chewing is when you are not talking? It’s real loud because it is between your ears.

  After dinner she’d walk out on the ranch. Then, after her walk, she’d hop into the bed and sleep, flat on her back, until morning.

  Some days she left for the afternoon, but other than that, we settled into a routine. Routine was very important to Sister Eleanor. Marching through her days was simple, straightforward, and restful. I enjoyed our lopsided ways. I never even thought about going home anymore. That ranch was everything I ever wanted in a place. I couldn’t wait to bring Mother there, but I hadn’t made any progress in getting that to happen.

  I talked about everything except my identity. I’d say for Sister Eleanor to look how pretty the roses were, and she wouldn’t even look. I’d ask what we were having for dinner, but she’d swish right by. I asked if she wanted me to bury the squirrels that she killed in the peach orchard, and that was about all she could take.

  “You are just making noise,” she said. “Don’t talk unless you have something to say.”

  I tried not to talk after that, but failed. She’d hear me talking, I knew it, but she’d just look off in the peach orchard with one side of her mouth curled up in exaggerated patience, like I was a dog who refused to learn to sit and stay.

  * * *

  Finally I chose a day to tell Sister Eleanor about my true identity.

  She had invited me to walk the ranch, and she had used many spoken words to do it. I thought, Ah-ha, that’s a good sign. If she was speaking to me, certainly that meant she liked me. I had proved myself helpful around the ranch. She would keep me for sure, like I wanted her to.

  Bunny came along on the walk, trotting like a dog. I trailed alongside Sister Eleanor, then skipped ahead through the dust and rock and ground brush, twirling instead of talking. I even found a clearing and did a couple of cartwheels, which pressed little pebbles into the palms of my hands—anything to avoid telling her who I was.

  “Child,” Sister Eleanor said, stomp stomp stomping along in her blue boots. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A nurse,” I said.

  She stopped and looked me up and down, like I’d said I wanted to be a Martian. It was clear she was not the kind of nun to work in a hospital. Why, that woman didn’t even want to talk to people, much less wash their bodies and dress their wounds.

  “I’m a healer,” I said. “I do it with my hands. My hands are real special.”

  Her eyes turned inward and she caught her stomach like it was falling off. She didn’t seem to like the idea of me being a healer. Some people think healers are witches, but that’s stupid. Then she said, “Come here, girl.”

  I did.

  “Stand here,” she said. “Right beside me.”

  I moved in a little closer. She took my hand and placed it on her belly. “I’ve got something wrong here, see what you can do with it.”

  There was so much fabric between my hand and her belly that I wasn’t certain. But if you think about it, how could fabric block healing powers? I closed my eyes and relaxed, sending healing through my hand. No adult had ever asked me to heal them of anything. After a time, I took my hand back and asked, “Did that help?”

  She started walking again. “Who knows? I believe in the power of prayer, but I have a good doctor too.”

  I kept up with her, fast or slow. I adjusted my pace with hers. Bunny fell in step too, just like a well-trained dog, but he was a pig.

  Finally, I screwed up my courage to tell her who I was, but when I opened my mouth—lo and behold, no words. I walked on a little farther, the
n I got up my nerve. One, two, three—just tell her.

  “I have got to tell you something important,” I announced, ready to pour out my whole story, get it off my chest, take my chances.

  Suddenly, Sister Eleanor elbowed me out of the way. She lurched forward, lifting a huge rock with both hands, and slammed it down on the head of a rattlesnake, a hideous side-slipping monster that was crossing my path. His head smashed under the rock; his long nasty tail whipped around, slashing the air, shaking those rattles. And he spewed out stink like a mildewed sock. Sister Eleanor kept her blue boot on the rock until the snake stopped writhing. Then she kicked the rock aside, examined the bloody skull, picked up the limp body, and turned to stomp back to the house, her skirts swishing against her legs. She skinned that snake and hung it on the porch railing to dry.

  Smashing that rattlesnake was a sign, if I ever saw one. That’s what I thought. It was a sign that I was not supposed to tell her who I was. Besides, it was her fault, she never asked me. Not once. And that was the last time I tried before she caught me.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sister Eleanor never looked healthy to me, but I didn’t worry about it until the day I found out just how sick she was. Sure, there was a question in my mind—her asking me to heal her belly—but Sister Eleanor never said anything about being really sick, and she was very active when the other nuns came over to harvest the peaches. So I set the question way back in my mind.

  When the ripe peaches hung heavy on the branches, the nuns rolled up, all sitting in the back of a flatbed truck. Their benefactor, Mr. Gaylord Lewis, drove the truck and let them out before leaving. Must have been eight or nine of them. The wind blew their extra cloth out behind their shoulders like banners.

  Sister Eleanor heard them coming up the drive and walked onto the porch, letting the screen door slam behind her. The nuns hopped out and started scampering about, chattering to one another. Sister Eleanor leaned off the porch and yelled, “I hope you left your big mouths at home.”

  “You be silent if you want, old girl,” Sister Joan hollered. “We’re the verbose nuns.”

  It was hard to keep them all straight since there was such a sameness in their habits (why anyone would call a dress a “habit” is beyond me)—all you really saw were those little square faces. They swirled out into the peach orchard and began setting up ladders and baskets. Then they were in and out of the trees like big brown birds. As the baskets filled with fruit, the nuns sang psalms.

  I ladled drinking water from the barrel on the porch into a small bucket, then Bunny and I took it up and down the rows of trees. Some of the nuns stepped down off the ladders to drink. One said, “I’m so glad you are here to help Sister E, stubborn old coot. She won’t take help from any of us.”

  All the nuns wore cowboy boots under their dresses, but only Sister Eleanor’s were blue. You could see all their boots on the ladders. One sister said tall boots fought off snake bites. Texas snakes would not rise up six inches to get your flesh, she told me, they would just hit the leather and fall away.

  “Don’t tease me,” I said, but another sister said she’d been hit in the boot twice by snakes and she wasn’t the teasing kind. So I wondered if my cowboy boots were tall enough since I was not nearly so tall as the nuns. I imagined snakes clamping down on my knee.

  “Snake!” Sister Joan cried, and I jumped.

  “Leave that child alone,” another sister said and then assured me, “Any snake in this orchard is long gone.”

  “Don’t worry, child,” another one said. “Pigs are the greatest protection against snakes. My father always kept pigs on our ranch for that very purpose. Best snake stompers on earth.”

  After that I kept Bunny by my side. If he stopped to eat a fallen peach, I’d wait. If he trotted ahead, I’d trot along behind him sloshing water. If one of the sisters tried to scare me, I’d just say ha ha and walk on. But I was so happy there in the peach orchard with Sister Eleanor and all the nuns teasing me. Some days I almost forgot anything was wrong in the world.

  Those women were like a whole flock of mothers watching over me, and they were watching over me in Paradise, a wide-open sunny ranch with peaches growing all around us.

  The best part of the day was the smell—ripe peach smell so thick in the air that when I inhaled I could taste it on my tongue, sweet and velvety. I ate one very ripe, dripping peach and made a terrible mess; the juice leaked all over my chin and on my hands and the sticky sugar attracted bees. I jerked my hands away but the bees kept circling back and dive-bombing me. Two hit my chin. I ran around a tree, but they kept up, buzzing in my face. I swatted the air, dashed for the house, and slammed the screen door.

  Snakes! Bees! No place is ever totally safe, but I’d rather be in danger from animals than people, that’s for sure.

  In the kitchen, I washed up, then made a glass of ice water and sat in the pantry to drink it. I loved a shady pantry; it opened up my imagination. One second I was thinking giant bees, the next it was snakes, then I recalled Mr. Upchuck’s reflecting eyeglasses, then Mother at the campfire back in Hot Springs, her beautiful hair falling around her shoulders. My unleashed mind was better than a slide show.

  Suddenly Sister Eleanor came in out of the heat. The door banged and she marched to the kitchen sink where she took off her wimple.

  I mean to tell you, she was completely bald.

  I didn’t make a peep.

  She leaned over the sink, holding her bald head under the running water, cooling off from the heat. She looked like a giant baby hamster. (I saw my friend Bunny’s hairless baby hamsters once, before the daddy hamster got in the cage and ate them.) Sister Eleanor twisted her bald head to one side, then the other, letting the water run over it. Then she stood up and wiped her head dry with a dish towel.

  Have you ever seen a bald-headed woman? It’s not normal.

  There was a song the Catfish used to sing about an old maid: She took out her teeth and her big glass eye and the hair off the top of her head. If I remember correctly, a burglar came into her bedroom and she shot him. That burglar couldn’t have been any more surprised than I was to see that Sister Eleanor was bald—naked skin from ear to ear.

  She put her wimple back on and went back outside to work.

  I sat there for a long time digesting what I had seen. The pantry had been so safe, away from all the killer bees and snakes. Suddenly, I didn’t give a whit about bees or snakes. Something more real buzzed my face, coiled in my brain, rattled its tail. What was wrong with Eleanor Rose?

  When Sister Eleanor was good and gone from the kitchen, I did something I would have been very ashamed of if I’d been caught, but since I wasn’t caught, I wasn’t ashamed at all. It works that way, you know. I’m not sure why. It is easier to be ashamed of yourself when someone else helps you.

  So, what I did shameful was this: I went to snoop in Sister Eleanor’s room. Her writing desk looked out on the peach orchard where I could see her picking, so I felt sure she wouldn’t walk in on me.

  Sister Eleanor’s room was almost empty, but the books on her bookshelf told me what was wrong with her. Cancer. The books had titles like Unlikely Survivors, Cancer: A Blessing in Disguise, The Sisterhood of Cancer, The Cancer Diet, Radiation Poisoning, and God Knows Your Fears. (You know my poor opinion about God knowing my fears, but that’s beside the point.)

  It all made sense and I hated the sense it made: my aunt had cancer for sure. I did not know much about cancer except that it pretty much kills you dead. That was such bad news to me that I backed up and sat down on Sister Eleanor’s bed. Outside, my flock of mothers sang psalms while they picked peaches. Inside, I knew that my life there in Paradise was going to be taken away from me, like everything else I loved.

  * * *

  That night after I put on my pajamas, I asked Sister Eleanor if reading from a book counted as talking. She thought about that for a while and said no. So I gave her Oliver Twist and led her to my bed. I crawled in and she crawled in beside me,
plumped up the pillows, and snuggled close. Sister Eleanor picked up reading where I had left off:

  “I haven’t any sister, or father and mother either. I’m an orphan; I live at Pentonville.”

  “Only hear him, how he braves it out!” cried the young woman.

  “Why, it’s Nancy!” exclaimed Oliver, who now saw her face for the first time, and started back in irrepressible astonishment.

  “You see he knows me!” cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. “He can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s good people, or he’ll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!”

  I knew, from reading the short book in lower school, that it wouldn’t end well for Nancy or Fagin or any of the other characters Sister Eleanor read about that night, except Oliver Twist; he found happiness in the end.

  But happiness was not possible if Aunt Eleanor died of cancer.

  NINETEEN

  All the next day I worried. I knew I needed to lay my hands on Aunt Eleanor again and try to heal her some more. But first I had to screw up my courage. I checked on Bunny at the base of the front porch stairs. He pointed his nostrils at me and twitched. His snout had a ring of muddy dust on it where he’d been eating peaches all day. His belly hung down low from pigging out. I sat beside him and whispered that I had to heal Aunt Eleanor of her cancer, and that I had never healed anything that big but I had to try. Talking to Bunny was a little like talking to Sister Eleanor and, come to think of it, like talking to God. Maybe they hear you, maybe they don’t. Either way, you have to carry on the whole conversation yourself.

  If only that ranch could have been my home. I would take care of the house and work in the peach orchard. I would go to school somewhere close by and make new friends. If Sister Eleanor got sicker from her cancer, I could practice my healing on her. She would get well and thank me for it. She would want me to stay with her forever.

  Finally the flock of mothers drove off with that day’s harvest. The sun was setting like a giant peach. Darkness eased into the orchard. The fruit, the leaves, the limbs faded in the shadows. I dragged my boots up the steps of the house and stood by the screen door.