Unbroken

by Jessie Haas

  The house was as familiar to me as my own. Luke and I have been best friends since Mother first began to sew for Ida Mitchell. We were three years old, and we can’t remember a time when we didn’t know each other.

  Still, I opened the front door a little timidly. Luke hadn’t been waiting in the yard. Dr. Vesper drove off with a cheerful “Good luck!” and I was alone again.

  “Hello?” I said, into the fern-filled front hallway.

  Upstairs something banged, and Luke looked over the banister. Her dark braids hung past her face. “Harry! Hang on!”

  She cascaded down the stairs, and I saw the exact spot, halfway down, where she remembered that things were different. She flushed and came more slowly. Is she afraid? I wondered. She looked afraid.

  “Harry,” she said, and stopped. She still had her mother and the big brick house, and she didn’t know what to say to me. I felt sorry for her, a little.

  “Hi,” I said. “Were you studying?”

  She nodded. “Algebra.”

  “I haven’t even looked at it. Can we drill?”

  Luke looked—what? Disappointed? “Sure,” she said after a minute, leading the way upstairs.

  Algebra, Latin, and history got us through the afternoon. Supper was harder. Beautiful Ida Mitchell, in the skirt and shirtwaist Mother had made her, dark hair swept up the way Mother used to wear hers, made me want to cry. I had to brace, make my words curt and few. She kept looking at me, and I could see her love and concern. I stared at my plate. I never had this problem with Aunt Sarah.

  After supper we studied until Mrs. Mitchell made us go to bed. Then we laid out the corduroy-covered floor cushions I’ve been using since I first slept here, at age seven. I cried that first night, I remember. I was homesick, and even a hug from Mrs. Mitchell didn’t help.

  Now I lay in the dark with my eyes open. My heart hurt. I dug my fingers into the blanket. I always thought heartache was a figure of speech. I never realized it was literal.

  “Huh!”

  A hushed, gasping sound from Luke’s bed. I listened. Her breath trembled. There was a tiny sniff and then another “huh!”

  “Luke?”

  Her breath stopped entirely for a second. Then came a big sniff, and she asked, “What?” in a steady, muffled voice.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No,” she said, and gave another hiccuping sob.

  I sat up. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nu-nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  I started to lie back down when Luke suddenly burst out, “Are you still my friend, Harry?” I leaned, frozen, on one elbow. “Because—you haven’t said anything to me! I’ve cried every night, I feel so bad for you, and—and you just want to do algebra!”

  She sat up among her tumbled white sheets. The moon was bright enough to show the dark flow of hair down her back. Tears glittered on her cheeks.

  “Luke …” It’s too much if I have to comfort her, I thought. It’s too much.

  “I’m sorry,” Luke whispered. “I meant—I wasn’t going to—” She threw herself facedown on the pillow. Her whole body shook with crying, and before I thought, I was on the bed putting my arms around her.

  As soon as I touched her, I started to cry, too. I knew how bad she felt for me, and I knew that I felt so much worse than she could guess, and that she was full of relief not to be in my shoes and was ashamed. It was all one pain, and we cried into the same pillow with our arms around each other.

  When we finally stopped, we both needed handkerchiefs—two each in fact because Luke uses dainty linen squares. They made me think of Truman’s bandanna. With a hiccup I said, “My uncle—”

  “Wait,” Luke said. She went to her door and listened a moment. “Be right back.”

  It was several minutes before she returned and closed the door behind her. Something clinked when she sat down on the bed. In the moonlight I made out a tray, glasses, and a decanter.

  “Mother’s cherry cordial,” she said. I heard the sound of pouring, and then she pushed a glass into my hands. “It’s very res-restorative.”

  I sipped. The cordial was sweet in my mouth and hot all the way down to my stomach, and only after I’d swallowed did I taste the cherries. “It’s good.”

  “Is it?” Luke took a swallow and choked. “Well! Kill or cure!” We sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the wall with our legs stretched across the bed, and I told her nearly everything, beginning with the house and ending with the colt.

  “I have to train him. It’s the only way I can keep coming to school—if I can even afford it. But he’s afraid of hens, Luke!”

  “What if you meet an automobile?” Luke whispered.

  Then I’ll see Mother sooner than I expected! I thought. Taking a moment to steady myself, I said it out loud. Luke laughed, and sniffed, and sloshed more cordial into our glasses.

  The tray, glasses, and cordial were gone when we awoke. We went apprehensively to breakfast, but Mrs. Mitchell only said, “Another time, girls, get up and make cocoa.”

  We went out onto the sunny street. We were both nervous about exams, but beyond that I dreaded walking through the Academy door. The last place I was happy was in Miss Spencer’s classroom, in the moments before Reverend Astley walked in.

  But we met Billy halfway there, and then some others. After the first moments, when each person flushed and looked down and my insides burned, they were glad to see me, full of questions that skirted around Mother and centered on my new life and future. There were exams to worry about, tips to exchange, and all the while Luke stood shoulder to shoulder with me. We’d shared all that could be shared. I felt strengthened.

  The two days passed quickly. When Latin and algebra stared me in the face, I had to forget everything else. The rest of the time Luke and I were together. We walked by the river. We climbed trees. We cleaned an unused stall in the Mitchells’ stable and mended the fence of the second paddock, so the colt would have somewhere to stay while I was at school.

  We were surrounded by other projects that had started with a bang: a board across the crotch of a maple that was going to be our tree house, a wavering line of stones and rough earth that was our rock garden. I could see the paddock staying empty, the boards falling down again.

  But if the colt never got here, then I wouldn’t, and when would I see Luke? I pounded nails fiercely and tried to believe we weren’t just playing.

  After the last exam we walked to the graveyard. I wasn’t prepared for the rectangle of bare earth, the threads of sprouting grass. It had not been very long, not as long as it felt. No one had carved the final date after Mother’s name. Whose job was it to hire that done? I wondered. Beneath my father’s name—“Walter Gibson, 1873–1899”—hers looked unfinished, as if no one cared.

  I felt a hot rush of tears coming and looked quickly away. The nearest row of gravestones caught my eye. They were all Gibsons, like me: “Melinda, wife of David Gibson, 1843–1873. David Gibson, 1842–1876. Edward, 1867–1890. Lettice, 1870–1892. Violet Anne, 1871–1895.”

  “Who are they?” Luke asked.

  I shook my head. “David and Melinda—they might be my grandparents.”

  Luke counted on her fingers. “They all died young. Lettice was only twenty-two.”

  “I don’t know anything about them,” I said.

  Luke glanced at me curiously but didn’t say anything.

  It had always been a given that I had no family but Mother, orphaned in a fever epidemic, and Aunt Sarah, who hated us. The family was here apparently. The dates, the names, the stones began to weigh on my heart like gray storm clouds. “Let’s go!”

  When dusk fell that evening, we were in a tree again. We could see Mrs. Mitchell, a white blur in the front yard, weeding her flowers. The window of Mr. Mitchell’s study glowed yellow. We listened to the birds and frogs and the sound of an approaching buggy.

  It stopped at the front gate. Mrs. Mitchell went to the fence.

  “Hello
, Ida,” Dr. Vesper said. He sounded tired. “‘Fraid I can’t get Harry up the hill tomorrow. Spent all day delivering a baby—”

  Did he deliver me? I wondered. He’d know if I came too early. I imagined asking him. I couldn’t imagine asking him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Mitchell was saying. “She’s perfectly welcome to stay here.”

  Dr. Vesper hesitated. “Thing is, I don’t want to get her in Dutch with Sarah.”

  “I see. Then I’ll drive her up. We can take a picnic.”

  “I appreciate—whoa!” The hungry horse had made a move toward home. “She talk to you any, Ida? She was kind of mum with me on the way down.”

  “She’s talked with Lu,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “I’ve tried not to interfere. Nothing but time can heal Harriet, but Lu’s been good for her. They’ll remember this time together all their lives, I think.”

  Dr. Vesper made a grumbling sound. “That doesn’t tell me what’s going on up there.” He leaned out of the buggy, pitched his voice low, and for a few moments the words didn’t reach us. Then he sat up. “Tell her I’ll be up soon and we’ll have a business session. And will you stop by Althea Brand’s on your way up? Thanks.”

  He drove up the street. Luke and I slipped quietly down the tree and through the back door, ready to be told the news.

  It seemed a pleasant plan: a drive behind Tulip, a roadside picnic. It was only after we’d blown out the lamp and stopped talking that I began to see it happen: Luke and her mother meeting a car, the horse running down that steep hill.

  That won’t happen. Tulip’s very calm.

  But the buggy kept tipping over. Both of them were killed. Luke was killed. Her mother was killed. Always I was the one left alive.

  It was my turn to stifle ragged breath and try to keep from sniffing.

  In a few minutes Luke said, “Harry?”

  “What if you meet a car?” I sobbed. “What if your mother dies, too?”

  Luke started crying instantly. “I know, I know. I keep thinking that—”

  We were crying too hard to stop ourselves. Luke got out of bed and took my hand. We went downstairs into the parlor, where Mrs. Mitchell was just rising, alarmed.

  She put her arms around us and drew us down on the sofa. “Oh, babies,” she said. “Oh, babies.”

  “What’s the matter?” I hadn’t even noticed Mr. Mitchell in his chair.

  When we could make ourselves understood, when we’d been given handkerchiefs and had blown our noses and only sobbed from reflex, we all sat on the sofa together. Luke’s father hugged her, and Mrs. Mitchell kept her arms around me. Patiently they explained how Tulip had been taught not to fear automobiles. They had a Model T of their own and had spent hours on the job.

  “I was just as afraid as you girls are,” Mrs. Mitchell said, “but Tulip is well trained now, and he’s the calmest animal God ever put breath in.”

  “But you can’t guarantee,” I said.

  “No,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Nothing’s guaranteed. But we’ve done everything we could.”

  We went to the kitchen, all four of us, and made cocoa. Then Mrs. Mitchell settled us back in bed, as if we were indeed babies. Tomorrow I’d be back on the hill, a grown-up among grown-ups.

  I wished I could always stay here.

  thirteen

  Before Mr Mitchell went to his office, he took us out to the pasture. Tulip crunched oats, and Mr. Mitchell drove the Ford in circles around him. Tulip tossed his head, looking annoyed.

  “You’ll have to train your colt this way,” Luke said, turning to me with wide, serious eyes. “Bring him down here, and Papa will help.”

  But how would I get him down, I wondered, when I couldn’t lead him past a scratching hen? It was going to take so much work. I felt a stir of impatience to get home and get started.

  We reached West Barrett just as the mill stopped for lunch. I saw Luke’s mother struggle not to look at our house. Tears glittered on her lower lids.

  Althea popped out the door as soon as we stopped. “Harriet!” She squeezed my hands gently, with a quick look at my fingers. It took me a moment to remember how I’d stabbed them on the screen.

  The kettle whistled on the stove, and the green teapot stood ready on the table. Althea poured boiling water over the tea leaves. Then she said, “Ladies, I need to show Harriet something. Will you excuse us a moment?” She led me upstairs and opened the door of her spare bedroom.

  Althea’s spare room had been very spare: one old bedstead, one thin rug, one washstand. Now the bed was crowded with books, rolls of fabric, framed prints. Here were the pitcher we put wildflowers in and, next to that, our rotary eggbeater.

  “Two o’clock every single morning,” Althea said, “I sit straight up and think, ‘But we never took that! She’ll need such and so.’ And along toward daybreak I walk up and get it. I told Andy Vesper, we didn’t have time to think before, any of us, but I just couldn’t square it with my conscience if I didn’t rescue the things Harriet ought to have.”

  I touched the pitcher. Just a few weeks ago Mother had filled it with lilacs. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “I thought it’d be just you and Andy,” Althea said, “and more room in the buggy. But you take what you want right now, and the rest’ll be here.”

  I looked at her, dried up like a raisin in her patched old dress. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know the words. I felt … proud of her, but a girl can’t say she’s proud of an old woman. I reached for her hand again and felt her hard old fingers squeeze mine.

  After tea I made my choices. Luke came up with me, looking sober. She would be thinking of the brick house on Main Street, with its rugs and ferns, its furniture and knickknacks. A house seemed permanent, but here was our house turned into a forlorn pile of objects. That could happen to anyone.

  I took my rug, my quilt, a small pile of books, and the flower pitcher. Later we passed a rosebush blooming beside the road. I filled the pitcher with white roses, nourishing them with lemonade from our jug.

  Tulip was a slow horse, and Mrs. Mitchell didn’t hurry him. We stopped in one of the blackberry pastures and lingered over our picnic. Still, we got closer and closer, my stomach got tighter and tighter, and then we arrived.

  I heard the clink of hoes on stone and found them in the potato patch. Aunt Sarah came toiling up the hill, like a potato herself in brown gingham. I looked at Mrs. Mitchell, light, slender, and graceful in dotted Swiss. She looked like Mother. There would be trouble.

  She shook Aunt Sarah’s hand. “Mrs. Hall, I’m Ida Mitchell. Harriet’s mother was my dear friend. And this is my daughter, Lucretia, who is Harriet’s dear friend.”

  Aunt Sarah stiffened, and I knew why. Behind her words Mrs. Mitchell was saying, clear as paint: This girl is not alone in the world. I take an interest in her.

  Aunt Sarah didn’t speak. Mrs. Mitchell went on. “My husband and I wanted you to know that we’ll help when Harriet decides how to manage school. The horse can stay with us during the day, and Harriet herself can stay anytime she needs to.”

  “The horse isn’t trained,” Aunt Sarah said.

  “He will be. Also, we spend two weeks at the seashore in August, and we’d like Harriet to join us this year.”

  Luke and I looked at each other. We’d heard nothing of this.

  Aunt Sarah seemed to swell on one of her long breaths.

  “Go help Harriet bring in her things, Lu,” Mrs. Mitchell said. Color was beginning to glow on her cheekbones. I strained to hear as Luke and I collected my belongings and went inside.

  I could make out nothing until I’d reached my room. Luke stopped at the top of the stairs, but I rushed to the window. They were right below me, and their voices came clearly.

  “I’m to have the care and feeding of this child, but apparently I have no say in what happens to her!”

  “Of course you have a say in what happens to her. But at her age and in her situation she must have a great deal to say for herself
, especially about her education.”

  “I know what education did for her mother!” Aunt Sarah said.

  I turned quickly from the window. Luke mustn’t hear this. “What do you think?” I asked in as carrying a voice as I could manage. As I’d hoped, Aunt Sarah’s voice sliced off.

  “Oh, Harry, it’s awful!” Luke looked around with tears in her eyes.

  I shook out the rug beside the bed. “There! This helps, and the quilt.” I folded it over the back of the chair. “And the roses, of course.” I put them on the windowsill, and glanced down. Aunt Sarah and Mrs. Mitchell had stepped apart from each other.

  Mrs. Mitchell called, “Lu! I’m ready to go!”

  Luke said, “We’ve got to get you out of here!”

  When the rattle of the buggy wheels had died away, the place seemed still and empty. The afternoon was hot. Aunt Sarah had gone back to hoeing, and I was alone in the kitchen.

  My footsteps were loud as I crossed to the pantry. I lifted the lid of the spring box and took out the dripping pitcher of buttermilk. I drank down a glass of it, rinsed the glass, dried it, and put it away. There! I’d left no trace. Nothing in this kitchen showed that I had ever been here. No task awaited my finishing, no book was left open on its face, no spot of color or life appeared; just drab cleanness and the smell of vinegar.

  Vinegar Hill! I thought suddenly. That’s the name for this place! It cheered me immediately, as if I’d struck a secret blow for myself. My unfinished task awaited me down in the pasture. I changed my clothes, went down, and caught him.

  After Tulip the colt seemed extravagantly beautiful. His nostrils flared wide and thin like bone china teacups. His red-gold coat, with the veins close to the surface, seemed to promise a hot, sensitive nature. Mother and I had loved to look at him. He’d be just like Belle in a few years, we thought.

  “Right now I’d be happy if you were a little more like Tulip,” I told him. He snorted at hens. He shied violently at the currant bushes, which I could understand, because they had been veiled in white netting. But being terrified of an apple crate and the hay rake made no sense at all. I couldn’t make myself say “whoa,” and praise him when he balked and bugged his eyes, not when, from the potato patch, Aunt Sarah could see it all.