by Jessie Haas
“Yes.” I felt miserable, in fact, not just my hands but my whole body. I had blotchy bruises all down my front. My arms and shoulders and back and neck ached. But they ached no matter whether I sat or stood or lay down. The only thing that helped was distraction.
Aunt Sarah looked me up and down. “I can’t help that dress,” she said, “but I’ll do your hair again. I made a poor job of that.” She was different this morning, firmer, concealing more.
We paced slowly up the street. I thought I must look strange in my crumpled, grass-stained calico, with my arms crossed in front of me and my hands bound up in white mitts. Aunt Sarah was definitely out of place. Every woman we met wore a dark skirt and white shirtwaist and had her hair swept up in an abundant-looking knot. Aunt Sarah was unmistakably of the hill farms, dressed in dirt-concealing brown from top to toe, her thin hair scraped back. She was frowning.
Why did she want to see the Mitchells? It was the last place I would have expected her to go. I wasn’t afraid she’d say something awful. I had more faith in her now. But by the light of day I couldn’t ask her questions the way I might have last night.
In the gardens delphiniums and roses lay on their faces in the wet grass. Broken branches littered the street. The Academy bell tower stood white and crisp against the blue sky, and the Mitchells’ house seemed softer, pinker, grander than usual.
“Here,” I said as Aunt Sarah was about to pass.
Her lips tightened as she looked the house over. A flush came up in her face, and I felt her expand with a long breath. Then she pushed the gate open and walked up to the front door.
She knocked. They would never hear that. This house was so large, so protected by its front hall, that they only heard the bell. Aunt Sarah might not see the bell, and we could go away.
She knocked again, and then her large red hand went to the bell handle. She gave it a firm, scornful twist. I heard the buzz deep inside the house, and footsteps. The door opened.
“Put it—” Mrs. Mitchell said, and then she stopped with her mouth open.
She was swathed in an apron, splashed from dishwashing, and her hair was up in her early-morning knot, slightly askew. Her face grew pink as she looked at Aunt Sarah, and her hands went on drying themselves mechanically. At last she glanced down at me.
“Harriet Gibson, my goodness gracious! What on earth have you done?”
“The horse got away from her,” Aunt Sarah said. “May we—”
“Oh, come in, come in! Lu!”
Luke appeared from the direction of the kitchen, drying a frying pan. She dropped it. “Harry!”
“How badly— When—” We were all crowded in the hall, and Mrs. Mitchell was pushing at her hair distractedly.
“Yesterday morning,” Aunt Sarah said, sounding matter-of-fact. “The young horse pulled away, and she got a rope burn. And that’s why we’re here. It’s plain she’ll never get the animal trained before school starts, and I concluded I should come talk to you.”
Luke and I looked at each other.
Mrs. Mitchell seemed to marshal her forces. “Yes, I—Lu, will you take Harriet upstairs? Mrs. Hall?” Aunt Sarah followed her into the sitting room.
We started upstairs. “Harry, are you all right?” Luke whispered.
I looked down over the banister, at the black and lonely frying pan on the polished floor. “I’m— It hurts a lot,” I said as we reached the landing. “It hurts a lot.”
We heard Aunt Sarah’s voice in the sitting room. “Come on,” Luke said, and pushed open the door of her sister’s room. She crossed softly to the grate in the floor. I followed and looked straight down onto Mrs. Mitchell’s untidy bun.
Luke knelt. I didn’t dare. My hands’ helplessness seemed to uncoordinate my whole body. I stood close and heard Mrs. Mitchell say, “We wouldn’t dream of taking money. Harriet eats nothing.”
“I’ve seen her put away a man-size supper,” Aunt Sarah said dryly, “but that was after haying.”
“Yes, but we—” Mrs. Mitchell paused and looked up.
She didn’t speak, and her expression didn’t change, but Luke sank back from the grate with a red face. “Come into my room,” she said.
We sat on the edge of the bed, quiet for several minutes. “I never got a letter from you,” Luke said finally. “Won’t she let you write?”
“Of course she lets me. I just … didn’t.” Luke flushed. “I’m sorry. I felt … I can’t explain. I … felt too bad.”
Luke sat looking at me. At last she nodded, as if she understood. “You’re here now,” she said, putting her arm around me. “Tell me what happened.”
“He … bolted.” I didn’t want to talk about it because I’d been abusing him, really. I made him bolt. “He dragged me, and then the rope slid through my hands, and he ran down into the bean field.”
“Were they mad?”
“No. No, they were—” They were nice. All three of them. They all jumped to help me just as if I were their child.
As I was.
Why this should cause sorrow to swell in my throat I didn’t know. Luke didn’t ask any more questions. We sat side by side on the bed until her mother called us down.
Aunt Sarah looked— I don’t know how she looked. I didn’t know what to make of her expressions anymore. Mrs. Mitchell looked to her as if expecting her to speak, but she didn’t.
“Harriet,” Mrs. Mitchell said finally, “we’ve been discussing this coming school year. Would you like to stay here with us?”
Aunt Sarah stirred. That I understood. In her mind it was all settled, and what was the use of asking me? I was a child and would do what I was told.
“I … thank you,” I said. “I’d like that very much.” My voice sounded small and prim. It would have drawn a frown from Mother. She’d have wanted a bigger, warmer reaction.
“You’re to bring us a dowry of butter and potatoes,” Luke’s mother said, with a nervous laugh. She hadn’t even consulted her husband, and the interview with Aunt Sarah had rattled her. I should come to the rescue.
“But no beans,” I said. “After what my horse did to that bean field, there won’t be any to spare!”
That had been the right thing to say. They both smiled and relaxed a little. Inside me Mother approved. Oh, hello, Mother, I thought.
But where did I live now? Where did I belong? My heart ached, strangely, for Vinegar Hill and the two old men up there worrying.
Aunt Sarah had friends to visit, and I spent the day with Luke and her mother. They’d been about to embark on a lesson in puff pastry. The butter was on ice, and something extraordinary had been promised Mr. Mitchell when he came home to supper, so the project could not be put off.
I watched awhile. They were scratchy with each other, a little more so when I left the room and went to rest on the sofa. “I can’t do it,” Luke wailed once, and her mother’s sigh carried all the way to the sitting room.
“Watch me one more time.”
It was past noon by the time Luke came in with a tray of sandwiches and lemonade. “I hate puff pastry. I wish I’d never said I wanted to learn!”
“Did it come out all right?”
“Oh, Mama says it did! I think it looks awful!” She took a big bite of sandwich and then looked at me, pop-eyed, over bulging cheeks. Swallow. “Oh, Harry, you can’t eat! I forgot!” She picked up a sandwich, dripping chicken salad, and pushed it at my lips.
“Wait. Slow down.”
A bite for me, a bite for her, we worked through lunch. Sometimes Luke mixed up the sandwiches. When she gave me lemonade, it sloshed down my front, and we laughed. But inside I felt hollow.
Mrs. Mitchell had gone to see her husband at his office. We waited for her. We couldn’t climb trees. We couldn’t play cards. I didn’t want to walk; standing made my hands hurt.
Finally we went out to the big hammock. Luke steadied it while I got myself balanced in the middle, and then she gently pushed me. That hammock was treacherous; it could buck you off li
ke a wild horse if you weren’t careful. Now Luke kept her hand on it at all times, and we didn’t speak.
The gate latch clicked. The hammock shuddered as Luke looked up. Then she ran to meet her mother, and I lay absolutely still, feeling the hammock sway. If it tipped, I would either catch myself with my hands and hurt them, or not use them and hurt the rest of me. I hardly dared roll my eyes.
Slowly Luke and her mother came into view, arms around each other’s waists, heads close together. Two dark heads, two sets of dark eyes, two smiles shaped the same.
“Oh, Harry, I forgot!” Luke rushed to me. The hammock trembled and lurched, and she firmed it again. “Papa says yes, of course, and he’s very happy you’re coming to stay!”
Mrs. Mitchell put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “We’re all happy, Harriet. My only regret is that I misjudged your aunt so badly.”
“Yes. I mean, me too.” I couldn’t look away from her hand on Luke’s shoulder, the wedding ring glittering in the sun. Luke and her mother. You must be very careful, Harry, a voice inside me said. You must never come between them.
I smiled and said the right things, and thought, I want to go home.
twenty-one
“This is your home now, Harriet,” Mrs. Mitchell said, giving me a kiss at the door.
Mrs. Vesper said after the rebandaging, “You’ll stop in for ginger cookies this winter just as if this was home?”
After Althea Brand had assured herself that I’d be all right and had reassessed Aunt Sarah, she told me, “Now, Harriet, this is your home, too. You come right in whenever you need to.” She hugged me when we left and shook hands with Aunt Sarah.
We drove past the gray house. I turned my face away but heard the little girls’ voices: “You be the driver!” “No, you! I want to be the horse!” I felt scalded all down my center.
But as we climbed above the sound of the sawmill, Whitey’s head swung up and he stepped out eagerly. The sun was in our eyes, but by turning my head and squinting, I could see how fresh the grass looked, how everything sparkled.
Up the long hill between the fields, between blackberry pastures white with blossoms, through groves of birches. I didn’t know the road well enough to be sure of each landmark. Three times we crested a rise and I expected to see the big pasture and the goldenrod-colored house.
But at last there it was. The air was so clear that every detail stood out, even the tiny weather vane horse silhouetted against the brilliant sky. Milking was over. The last cow lumbered through the gate and followed the rest downhill. A small, slope-shouldered figure put up the bars behind her, gazed down at the road, then turned and motioned. A second figure joined him.
“Look! There they are!” I almost pointed. One bandaged hand lifted involuntarily, and it hurt, but not as much as I’d expected.
“Now what kind of a mess do you suppose they’ve made of that kitchen?” Aunt Sarah asked.
As we turned into the lane, the colt saw us. He galloped up the hill, then trotted with us along the other side of the fence. His step was bouncy, and he carried his tail high. It flowed out behind him like the weather vane horse’s tail.
“Not a notion in the world of the trouble he’s caused,” Aunt Sarah said. She almost sounded admiring.
I could hear the hens now. Tippy sat in the yard, wiggling all over and flattening her ears as we approached. Truman and Uncle Clayton seemed to hold back for a moment, as if they felt shy. But as Whitey stopped with a last ca-thlop and a heavy sigh, Uncle Clayton came to my side of the buggy and just stood looking at us. He seemed worn, almost transparent. His eyes shone, and I felt tears in mine.
“Harry. Sarah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Didn’t think you’d stay so long.”
“Andy wanted to keep her overnight. Help her down now, Clayton.”
I wiggled to the edge of the seat, and he scooped me out, one arm under my knees and one behind my back. For a second it felt like a hug. Then he set me on my feet.
Truman still hung back, his hand twisted into Tippy’s collar. He looked shabby and tired. “Hush now!” he said when Tippy barked at me. “She can’t pet you.”
I felt shy with him. I’d have patted Tippy if I could, and brushed Truman’s hand with mine, but that wasn’t possible, and already Aunt Sarah was herding me into the house.
The familiar smell of vinegar greeted my nose. Aunt Sarah paused on the threshold, looking around critically. The kitchen looked clean enough to me, and ugly, and pleasantly familiar. But I wasn’t home yet. “I’ll be right down,” I said, and climbed the dark, narrow stairs.
Behind me I heard Aunt Sarah step to the pantry to check on the milk, pause at her stove, and say, “Good gracious, Truman, don’t you know how to clean up any better than this? Is there any more kindling? And get Clayton to pick me some green beans.”
The last sunlight just slanted into my room. The cigar box was on the bureau.
I picked it up between my two sets of bandaged fingertips, carried it to the window, and sat down. It had been easy to flip the lid up before. Now it slipped away from the gauze once, twice. The third time I pressed harder, which hurt, but worked. Mother smiled up at me.
I felt myself flush, and tears prickled the backs of my eyes. “Hello,” I said.
I reached into the box with my huge white hands. They pawed at the stiff cardboard, catching under one edge, dropping the other, then catching up the thinner papers beneath, and all the while burning hotter. At last I had the photograph pressed between my mitts, and I propped it in the window.
From there she seemed to lean toward me, as carefree and daring as a schoolgirl. The picture was miserably small and still, nothing but a pattern of gray tones on paper. I wanted Mother—real, warm, and bigger than me, hugging, laughing, answering questions. There was no getting around that.
Still, meeting her photograph eyes, I felt the love, though the line was tiny, thinned, and stretched, though I was going on in time and Mother wasn’t. The warmth that had flooded me, the inner light that had come from my dream on the night she died, surrounded me again. “Hello, Mother,” I whispered.
I looked at Father now. I wished I could remember him. I could see him only as a stranger, with a chin like mine and Aunt Sarah’s, with exhausted eyes and that hand clinging to Mother’s hand. I felt so sorry for him.
Where were the shame and hurt I’d been tangled in only yesterday morning? They were gone, skinned off with my palm prints. It’s not supposed to work like that, I thought. You’re supposed to think things through, come to conclusions. All I knew was that the bad feeling was gone, so far gone that I couldn’t understand it anymore, and that I loved them. They were people, weakness and strength mixed together, and whatever they did, they did out of love. They’d loved each other, and they’d loved me, and somewhere in the unknowable universe maybe they still did.
“Harriet?” Aunt Sarah’s voice at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you all right up there?”
I heard the step creak under her foot. “Be right down!” I said. I didn’t want her to come up and see them now. But I left them on the windowsill, and I whispered, “See you later.”
Truman had just brought in a basket of kindling, and Aunt Sarah was bent over the firebox. “This stove is stone cold! What did you two eat?” She didn’t let him answer. “Harriet, are you tired? You can rest in the sitting room.”
“I’ll … go outside,” I said. I was tired. My eyes prickled with it. But I’d had a lot of sitting today, a lot of being cared for, a lot of Aunt Sarah, though I felt guilty even thinking that.
Uncle Clayton was bent over in the garden. Whitey grazed near the pasture fence, the marks from the harness still wet on his body. The colt stood sniffing him, pricking his ears thoughtfully. He raised his head when he saw me.
I went to the fence. He hesitated for a moment, then came to me, sniffed my bandages, flared his nostrils at the smell of carbolic and ointment. He lifted his muzzle to my face. I felt the prickle of whiskers, the strong muscular l
ip against my cheek, the sweet, warm breath. I couldn’t pat him, couldn’t do anything but kiss the velvet skin at the corner of his mouth. “Hi, Kid,” I said. “Hi. I’m sorry.”
He sighed, sending the breath tickling into my ear and down the back of my neck. His eye was dark and soft, half closed, and he seemed very young.
Too young. I’d made the same mistake Mother made: pushed too hard. Thought I could control a horse by sheer strength of will, whereas it took something else: time, understanding, and probably other things I hadn’t learned about yet.
“You’re just a baby,” I said. His lips opened against my cheek. He was about to experiment with a nip, and I stepped back.
“All smoothed over?” Truman was there behind me. He stepped up to the fence and rubbed his hand along the colt’s neck.
“It was my fault,” I said.
“Usually is. Any fight between a horse and a human, I blame the human every time.”
“You told me—”
“I know I did.” He leaned over the fence and scratched the colt’s chest. The colt raised his nose high in the air, grimacing and working his upper lip. “Blame myself,” Truman said in a lower, gruffer voice. “Ought to have stopped you when I seen the state of mind you were in. What was it, Harry? Some trouble with Sarah?”
He looked quite grim suddenly, and I didn’t want him angry with Aunt Sarah for no reason. “No. I … found out. About my parents.”
“Found out what about your parents?” He looked baffled, and my heart lurched. Had I made another mistake?
“You know … when I was born.”
He shook his head slightly.
“Eight months,” I said. “Not nine. I counted.” He continued to stare at me, those clear greenish eyes huge in his bony head. Surely he knew how long babies take—didn’t he? He was an old bachelor, but he must know that. “I don’t care about it,” I said. “I don’t mind anymore.…”
All at once Truman seemed to understand. His eyes widened, he drew a deep breath, and then he laid his arm along the fence rail and bowed his head on it.
When he straightened, the skin above his beard was rough and red. “Now listen to me, Harry!” His voice was lower than I’d ever heard it, almost strangled sounding. “Your mother fell in the barn the day you were born. That’s why you came a little early. She never told Walter because he felt bad enough already, her doin’ his chores in her condition. And she darn sure never told Sarah, for the same reason!”