by Leisha Kelly
“Then you’ll have to let me do more for you.”
“I’d ruther you never even tol’ Samuel or the children ’bout this, now,” she told me. “No sense a’worryin’ ’em. That Sam might want to run us to a doctor tonight, but I don’t need it. I’m fine as lamb’s wool. You’ll see.”
“I don’t keep things from Sam,” I told her. “But I would from the children, if that’s what you want.”
“’Course it is,” she said sternly. “No sense worryin’. I’m feelin’ better, anyhow.”
And she truly did seem to be. She ate heartily that night and sat in happy attention as I read Peter Rabbit, a couple of Bible stories, and a lovely poem before putting the kids to bed.
When I came back downstairs to clean up the kitchen, she asked me to read her more of the poetry.
“You like Dickinson?” I asked.
“I surely do. She’s got such a purty way a’ sayin’ things, you know?”
“I never would have expected us to be so much alike.”
“God arranged it, he did. Knowin’ I always wanted a daughter.” She spoke with certainty. “I couldn’t have no more, you know, after Warren. Don’t know why. We lost three in the tryin’. Don’t know for sure what was wrong with me.”
“I’m so sorry, Emma.”
“It weren’t your fault. God had his plan, that’s all, knowin’ we’d find each other one day. You don’t mind if I like to think of ya as mine, do you now?”
“No, I’m honored.”
She turned toward the window. “What’s your Samuel doin’ in the barn again tonight?”
I looked out the window to where a faint glow was barely visible through the cracks of one barn wall. “He didn’t say. But I think he may be working on that porch swing for us.”
TWENTY-SIX
Samuel
It felt good to be pounding on something. With some smaller nails I’d gotten from Barrett Post, I hammered together the whole frame of Emma’s chair. There’d be no pulling those nails out. I whacked every one of them till there was nothing sticking up enough to hit.
I’d talked to Dewey that day over the telephone stuck in a corner at the lumberyard. I hadn’t told Julia about it yet, but Dewey had told me he was trying to sell his house—if he couldn’t get work in the mines around West Frankfort, he’d be heading east. We had family back there, he said, and ought to be closer to them.
Thoughts of my mother and stepfather, Dewey’s mother, and our cousins Louis and Baynes, were enough to sour my stomach. Not one of them would turn a tap for me. I’d wished Dewey luck, and he’d done me the same, and that was the end of it. Go to my family back east? I couldn’t imagine it. Going back to my mother would be like volunteering to step down into a mire pit.
I could still picture Miss Hazel charging at us in Dearing, and right then memories of my mother and Dewey’s mother, June, were not that different. They’d snipped and snarled at every turn, nothing ever good enough for them. But they didn’t hide their crotchetiness under a churchy coat. They’d cuss you like a sailor to your face. It made my head hurt.
But I’d come to Illinois thinking of family, mine and Dewey’s. Sure, I’d let myself get stopped here at the farm, but I still wanted to see him, and I didn’t like the notion of him going so far. I’d suggested we get together, that he come and see us, but he wouldn’t promise me anything. He even said he thought I shouldn’t have come to Illinois.
I guess nobody thought much of us being out here except Emma, and maybe the Posts or Rita McPiery. They’d been good to us, but the weight of everybody else was a little hard to bear. Hazel Sharpe had beaten herself into my brain, and yet Julia and Emma and even Robert were anxious to get back to church next Sunday. I would be happier being isolated, to just dig in my heels and never leave this farm, except to work for Post.
But this farm was a big part of my worry. I knew we’d have to do better to make a decent time of it for winter. And how would my kids react when the day came for Emma to be leaving us? I wasn’t fool enough not to notice how pale she looked. And she wasn’t moving around much either. Sometimes people in that condition don’t make it through till spring. That would make the winter even more difficult for me, wondering if we’d be burying Emma in the cold, hard ground.
Such thoughts weren’t good for anything, I well knew. But still I couldn’t shake them. What would we do when Emma died? Where would we go? How would my kids handle the grieving? What if one of them was the first to find her gone?
I pulled a wheel axle down loose from the old wagon and sat for a minute, thinking about the hard task of shortening it. I finally decided that the wagon axle was too heavy to put on a chair, and that gave me the problem of how to mount the wheels without it.
I walked to the shed, thinking that Willard Graham must have been a pretty handy man. He had stuffed lots of different tools in his old shed, plus wire and some various metal scraps. But nothing ideal for a purpose like this. Lord, help me figure this out.
From nails on the wall hung Mr. Graham’s handsaws, three of them. And the newest-looking one, the hacksaw, would cut metal. I took it from its place and went back to the barn, studied that axle for a minute, and then started to cut. I didn’t need an axle, long or short. All I needed was the ends that the wheels fit to, somehow mounted one on each side of the underside of the chair.
Now I knew I could finish this thing. And maybe that’s what Emma was waiting on. She hadn’t been to the grave yet, didn’t even seem to want to go, though we’d asked her a couple of times. She surely knew the distance was too far to hobble with those canes and didn’t want to ask to be carried. I’d have to make sure this chair could handle the tough terrain. I’d push her. I’d make sure she got there. With a lap full of flowers and the sweetest of memories sweeping over her heart. She’d smile, she’d cry, and it would be worth all this effort.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Julia
Before old Jack the rooster crowed the next morning, I heard Emma moving around downstairs. The kids were still asleep, and I thought Sam was too, but as I started to sit up he reached his hand to mine and sighed. “You suppose she’s making root coffee already?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out and see if I can help.”
“Sick yesterday, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. She was sick, but I don’t think it was too bad.”
“What if she has one of those naps sometime, Juli, and Sarah runs in to see her and finds her dead?”
“It’s not going to help anyone to think of things like that.”
“It could happen.”
“No. The kids know to leave her alone when she’s napping. But she’s strong, Sam. She could live a lot of years.”
He sat up, his eyes looking dark and pained in the new dawn light. “I hope she does. I like her as much as you do. I’d just as soon she live forever, but she’s past eighty with a bad heart, Juli. She could die tomorrow.”
I wanted to get downstairs and see if Emma was all right. More than that, I wanted to end this kind of talk because I didn’t want it swirling around in my mind. “If she goes, she’ll be with her Willard. I think that will suit her fine. And we can’t be worrying about it.”
“What’s it going to be like, though, honey? Having to tell neighbors and church people? Are we really going to be able to handle everything that’ll come, us staying here?”
“What would Emma do if we don’t? We’ve got her started now! To hear her tell it, she has all she wants. It’d be plain cruel to back away now. Don’t you think?”
He sighed again, plopped down on his back, and stared at the ceiling. “We’ve been through this before, haven’t we?”
I got up and started buttoning my old work dress. “Yes. And I don’t blame you, but we can’t be changing our minds every time she gets sick. Hazel said she might have relatives coming. If we’re leaving, that would be the time to go, once she’s in their hands. If we’re staying, we ought to be resolved to it, no matter what
, for Emma’s sake. We can’t just abandon her when we had an agreement.”
“You’re right.”
He was quiet for a moment, and the sounds from downstairs stopped. I leaned and touched his shoulder. “I’m going to go check on her.”
“Okay,” he whispered and leaned and kissed my hand. “I want to stay,” he said. “But it’s an awful thought, saying good-bye to her, even if it’s years away.”
“It’ll happen with all of us.”
“Maybe so. But I’d rather not think about it.” He stood up and reached for his shirt. “I love you. I could hold you all day, but you better go on.”
I gave him a quick kiss and went to the stairs, tying my hair with a scarf as I went down. I could hear her again, and this time it was the shuffle of her canes against the hardwood floor. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I could see her on her way to the kitchen, dressed in a pair of Willard’s old overalls.
“Good morning, Emma.”
She turned her head. “Oh, did I wake you?”
“It’s time to be up. I ought to be milking Lula Bell before long.”
“Thought I’d do that m’self this morning.” She turned around and went back to making strenuous progress toward the kitchen.
Lula Bell would be lowing before long, no doubt ready for the milking, and we were ready for the milk. But I could not picture Emma heading out there on her own, handling the bucket, the stool, the cow, and her canes, all at once.
“Emma—”
“She knows me. She ain’t gonna give me no trouble.”
“But when you do too much, remember? I can do it, and it’s no trouble at all.”
“It’s a trouble to me, thinking of you doing all the work around here, and me sittin’ in one place so long and never gettin’ out with the stock. I always did love ’em, you know. ’Specially m’ milk cows.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Who was I to tell her no? But I didn’t want her overdoing it and ending up in bed again either. “Sit with me a minute,” I finally said. “Let’s have some tea.”
“I want flapjacks for breakfast. How ’bout you?”
“Sounds wonderful.” She let me help her the rest of the way to the table, and I poked at the coals in the cookstove, threw in a couple of dry cobs, and soon had the fire started.
“You think I’m just bein’ foolish, to think a’ doin’ some milkin’ m’self?” she suddenly asked, almost daring me to disagree.
I set a pot of water on the stove and turned toward her. “Not foolish,” I said carefully. “It’s perfectly understandable. A little hasty maybe, after being sick yesterday. I wish you wouldn’t work yourself too hard. Rest today.”
“I didn’t do nothin’ yesterday. And I don’t like sittin’. You get sick of that after awhile. I used to do ever’thin’ and go wherever I pleased.”
She was suddenly quiet, perhaps thinking of those times. And I didn’t know what to say. What would I be like if I’d lost one leg and someone younger tried to tell me not to do so much? I probably wouldn’t handle it well, not with half the grace that Emma had.
“You know,” she said, “I got me a bike in the cellar. At least, I reckon it’s still there. That’s where Albert put it last time he come down. I didn’t want to get rid of it, but that just goes to show you my ol’ hard head. It’s plain to a blind man that I ain’t gonna be usin’ it no more. Oughta have Sam pull it outside for Robert. He could be ridin’ a bike to school.”
Emma had a nice idea, generous as always, but it struck me as terribly sad. She was closing another book she didn’t really want closed.
“He’s fine walking, Emma,” I assured her. “That’s what the neighbor boys do.”
“Ain’t no use that bicycle just sittin’ around doin’ nobody a bit of good! If he wants to walk with the Hammonds, that’s fine, but I sure s’pose he’d like ridin’ sometime, don’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose he would.”
“Fine. You let me bless the boy, then. Closest thing to a grandson I’ll ever have.”
Her words pained me, but I couldn’t put a finger on why. I almost felt like crying as I measured the cut tea leaves into Emma’s cup strainer. I ended up spilling some of it on the counter, so I brushed it off into my hand and added the spilled stuff to my cup, not wanting to waste.
I brought Emma the sugar, and she spooned some into her cup. I realized that I hadn’t told her what Hazel Sharpe had said yesterday at the grocer’s. Last night I’d been so concerned over her not feeling well that I didn’t want to burden her with the unpleasant encounter.
“Emma,” I said quietly. “I’ll go do the milking if you’ll let me, but first I need to tell you I saw Miss Hazel at the store yesterday. She said you might have relatives come to visit.”
Emma straightened herself in her chair. “Did she? Well, ain’t that funny, them tellin’ her and not even writin’ to let me know!”
I took a deep breath and sat beside her. “She’s upset with us, Emma. She still thinks we have your thinking all turned around. She said she asked them to come and run us out of here.”
She was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t know what to expect. But then she laughed. Actually laughed, while I was sitting there worrying that such news might upset her. Obviously, she was looking at the situation from a different direction than I was.
“Well, now,” she began when she was able. “She’s got a surprise comin’, don’t you s’pose? It’ll be just fine seein’ some a’ m’ folks again. Wonder who it is comin’? Prob’ly Albert. She knows him the best, and he’d be willin’ to come down from Chicago for a real ’mergency. Always said he would be, anyhow.”
“Emma, don’t you think it’ll upset him, finding us here?”
She nodded and gave me a kind smile. “He’ll be upset a’ready, if Hazel’s been talking at him. Folks that don’t know her good sometimes listen too much.” She leaned over and started rolling up her one flopping overall leg.
“Emma, doesn’t it bother you at all?”
She glanced up at me. “Not a whit. And don’t you let it bother you neither. It’ll be just fine, seein’ him again! An’ I’ll be tickled to introduce you. He’ll like you fine. I’ll make plain sure of that.” She took hold of one of her canes. “Cup a tea’s a fine thing, but chores is waitin’. If you want to tend to Lula Bell, then I’ll make breakfast. I ain’t dead yet, and I ain’t gonna act like I am.”
That pretty well settled it. I put everything that Emma might need in easy reach, and then she shooed me outside, saying she could handle flapjacks by herself.
Lula Bell was already lowing from the barn by the time I got outside. I took the time to rinse the milking pail at the well and then hurried on.
Emma was like Grandma Pearl in a lot of ways. So independent and practical. Grandma had loved milking, not for the work but for the fresh milk and what a person could do with it. She used to churn fresh butter on Tuesdays and Fridays, and even sold a bit of it to the doctor’s family in town. I would be glad when we had milk enough to make me want to churn. Maybe we’d have butter to spare too, one day.
I sat on the old three-legged stool and stroked Lula Bell’s side. She turned her head to look at me as I wrapped my fingers around an udder. I remembered the first time I’d ever done this, back in Grandma’s barn, with Grandma standing there, giving me pointers. “You can’t just squeeze,” she’d say. “You’ve got to work it a little to make the milk come.”
Sam came in the barn, gave me a kiss, and told me he was going to shore up the outhouse after breakfast. I could hear him tinkering in the west end of the barn, and then there was silence except for the mew of a cat and the happy splash of milk against the pail. We would have more than what Sarah and Robert could drink with breakfast this morning. Maybe we’d be lowering some into the cool pit for the first time.
I was turning the cow out to graze when I heard voices from the timber. As I walked around the side of the barn with my milk pail, I saw two girls slip into
the yard and head straight for the strawberry patch. Hammonds, almost surely.
One girl was nearly as big as me, and the other was Sarah’s size. They bent down, looking for ripe berries, somehow not managing to notice me.
“Good morning,” I called, and they both jumped.
“Ma sent us,” the biggest girl hurriedly explained. “She’s got an awful cravin’.”
“For strawberries,” the little one added, looking just a bit fearful of my reaction. They told me their names were Lizbeth and Rorey Hammond. And I told them what Emma had said, that they could have a couple of bowls full this year, but they wouldn’t be able to have them all.
“Tell you what,” I offered. “Your mama’s timing is excellent. They’re coming on beautifully. I was going to pick some more today. But I’ll help you pick. You can have whatever we find. Then in two or three days, I’ll help you pick the patch again. But the rest is up to Emma to decide.”
I got down on my knees, hunting the ripest berries with the girls, when I should have been taking the milk in or getting the eggs. And the gesture didn’t go unnoticed.
“We didn’t ’spect you’d be nice,” Rorey remarked. “Ma said you might run us off.”
“Neighbors are supposed to be neighborly,” I told them. “And do for each other when they get the chance.”
I got to thinking about that and about these two girls, neither of them clean, in clothes worn out worse than mine. The Hammonds had needs—that was always Emma’s reason for being so lenient with them. And whether she had the wisest approach or not, she knew what she was talking about. Maybe I’d been too hard. Not for George’s sake, but for his children’s.
“Does your mother need anything other than strawberries?” I asked timidly, not sure how they’d react to the inquiry.
“Sassafras tea,” said the little one. “With honey in it.”
“Hush, Rorey,” her sister told her. “I’m gonna see to that.”
“Well, if you go hunting sassafras anytime soon,” I said, “I’d like to come. There’s enough in these woods for two families, don’t you think?”