Granddad slid close to her and put his arm around her. He felt warm and smelled of perspiration, cigar smoke and Fels Naptha soap. “Emma, no. Of course not. Your mother’s ill from fatigue and worry. But she’s alive as can be. Dr. Rose gave her some medicine that makes people sleepy. She’s sleeping now. And, now that you’re safe . . . well, everything will be fine.” He stroked her hair. “She told me you had cut it,” Granddad said. “Your beautiful hair.”
Relief rippled through Emma. She couldn’t care less about her hair. Mother was not dying. Mother was not dying!
Emma sobbed so hard she shook. Her nose ran with snot. Granddad handed her his handkerchief and she blew and blew some more. Granddad continued to hold her until her gasps stopped and she breathed slow and even. She concentrated on her breath, and the smell of leather, and the smell of soap, and the smell of sweat and cigar, and the warmth and weight of Granddad’s arm on her, and the sound of breathing, in and out, in and out. She was alive and Mother was not dying, and Emma had not killed her. And everything was going to be fine. But Emma knew…no, it was not. Not until…
“Emma?” Granddad’s voice was soft. “We need to talk about something. And then you can see your mother.”
Emma’s heart skipped a beat. Her head still bent, she opened her eyes that felt all puffy and stared at her hands, one clutching Granddad’s damp handkerchief, the other the scrapbook resting on her lap.
“What’s this?” Granddad asked, tapping his fingers on the scrapbook.
“The circus boss gave it to me. It belonged to Mother.”
“May I look?”
“Should you ask Mother? Maybe?”
“You’re right,” Granddad said. “Oh, child. I wish you knew how much anguish you have caused your mother.” Emma thought she did know.
Granddad lifted his arm from her and sat up. “When she thought you had run away with the circus…well, let’s just say I’ve never seen her so distraught and your mother is a very strong woman. Look how she takes care of Dr. Rose’s house and ours. How she cared for your Aunt Grace when she was ill, taking in Clarence and Teddy when she died and their father lost his farm. Doing laundry to make ends meet. She is an amazing woman, Emma. I hope you appreciate that.”
Emma knew about the things Mother did, but had never thought much about them. Mother was just Mother, so often tired and crabby. But every evening when Emma came home, she was there. She cooked their dinners and washed their clothes, signed their school papers, and had conferences with their teachers. Mother, who sewed Emma’s clothes and braided her hair, who kept house for Dr. Rose and took in other people’s laundry, other people’s thrown-away kids, and dogs. Mother who gave up a life in the circus because…because she had a baby and that baby was her.
Emma said nothing, just kept staring at her hands on the scrapbook, counting the knuckles—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—who do you appreciate? The silly jump rope rhyme. The mosquito bite on her arm started itching like crazy. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. She watched the blood ooze. Could people die from mosquito bites?
“Come,” Granddad said, patting her leg. “When your mother wakes up, yours will be the first face she’ll want to see. Want to go and wash up at bit?” He smiled, his blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses.
Emma nodded.
When Emma finally walked into Dr. Rose’s living room with Granddad next to her, the first thing she noticed was how peaceful Mother looked, how beautiful, lying there on the sofa—like Sleeping Beauty. Emma stared at her, searching for the girl in the scrapbook pictures, the young girl on the flying trapeze. What had become of her? She was gone, of course. Dead. Clarence was right after all. Emma had killed her. By Emma simply being born, Sapphira, the happy girl on the flying trapeze, had died just as certainly as if she had fallen from a trapeze. And she didn’t go to heaven either. You couldn’t call taking care of a bratty tomboy like Emma, heaven. Or doing other folks’ laundry, cleaning other folks’ houses, taking care of other folks’ kids and thrown-away dogs.
Even though the room was hot and sticky, Emma started to tremble. What was going to happen when Mother opened her eyes and saw her—dirty, sweaty, and now wearing Clarence’s knickers? Emma clutched the scrapbook tight and waited.
Chapter Eighteen
Truth
The grandfather clock near the living room door chimed nine times. Mother still hadn’t opened her eyes. Granddad slipped his arm over Emma’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head, then pulled a chair close to the sofa. “Here. Sit down. Did you want to wake her?”
Emma shook her head. She wasn’t ready, not yet. “Are you sure she’s going to be OK? She looks so pale and she’s hardly breathing.” She wished she could put a mirror under Mother’s nose and see a white cloud appear. Then she would know…know she was still alive.
“Emma, believe me. When she sees your face, she will be more than OK.” There was a smile in his voice. “I’ll leave you alone with your mother. Besides, the fireworks will be starting soon.” He winked at her.
Granddad laid his hand gently on Emma’s shoulder and left the room.
She opened the scrapbook to the first page.
Council Bluffs, Iowa. 1917. Rain didn’t stop us!
A photograph of Mother holding an umbrella, while a young man—Paolo…Emma’s father—carried Mother piggy back over a muddy field. Both were smiling, both dressed in costumes for their trapeze act. Mother wearing the headband with the feather, the one Emma had found in the box in Mother’s bureau. Emma wondered who took the photograph. Maybe Filippo. Maybe Boss Man. She couldn’t take her eyes off Paolo. Her father! What would he have thought of her? Would he have taught her to fly? Would he have loved her? To my sweet baby girl, with all my love, Papa—the writing on the photo had said.
A big, black fly buzzed inside a lampshade. The grandfather clock ticked off the seconds. Fireworks sounded over the lake. Emma slowly turned the pages of the scrapbook studying the faces—clowns, acrobats, bareback riders. They all looked so joyful, so proud—like they were one big, happy family. So why didn’t Mother stay? But Emma knew the answer—because of her, that’s why.
When Emma turned to the last page, she couldn’t help but smile—a newspaper clipping of Tina the Fat Lady in her satin rompers, white anklets with lace trim, and ballet slippers. Next to her stood Boss Man sporting his white cowboy hat. She felt a hollow spot in her stomach thinking she may never see him again. Still, now when she thought about it, how much more she would have missed Mother and Granddad had he let her go with him. She closed the scrapbook and set it on the side table.
Emma stared at Mother, lying so still, her beautiful auburn hair cascading over the pillow. She reached closer to feel its silkiness between her fingers. Then she gently touched Mother’s cheek, and then her own cheek, the place where Mother had slapped it. She had deserved it.
“I’m sorry, Mother.” Emma said the words fast, like she had to say them quickly or maybe she might not be able to say them at all.
An explosion of fireworks over the lake shook the windows.
Mother’s eyes opened. “Emma?” she whispered. She tried to sit up, but collapsed back onto the pillow. “You’re safe. Thank God.” Mother shut her eyes again. Tears leaked from the corners and slipped onto the pillowcase.
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, easier this time.
“You didn’t run away with the circus.”
“No. I just had to find out…about my father.”
“And you did?”
“Yes.”
Silence. The fly buzzed again, banging stupidly against the inside of the lampshade.
“I should have told you, but—”
“I know. Boss Man told me everything.”
“It should have been me.” Mother took Emma’s hand.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Emma said. And it didn’t.
> “You were so beautiful. I loved you instantly.” Mother smiled. “I named you after my mother who died when I was only ten. I wanted you to be like her, kind and good. Not like me, wild and selfish, running away to join the circus.”
Love. The word leaped out from all the others and danced around Emma’s heart. Mother loved her…but that was when she was a baby! Babies are easy to love. They have no mistakes in them yet. What about when they’re older? Did Mother love her now with all her mistakes? She wasn’t kind or good. She was wild and selfish and…
Mother shook her head and took both Emma’s hands. “Emma, you have my mother’s name, but…” She gazed into Emma’s eyes as if she could see into her heart. “When I look at you, I see myself and I’m…afraid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want your life to turn out like mine.”
“Sapphira,” Granddad stood in the doorway, smiling. “You’re awake.”
Mother turned to look at him. “Emma’s come home.”
“I know,” Granddad said.
Granddad sank into the sofa next to Mother and slipped his arm over her shoulders. “How do you feel?”
Mother squeezed Emma’s hand softly. “Honestly? Something like I’ve just finished a high-flying act and I’m standing on the ground, alive.” She smiled at Emma.
“And you?” Granddad asked Emma.
Emma stared at Mother and Granddad and shrugged. She didn’t know how she felt, confused mostly. Did Mother love her still, now that she was no longer a baby with no mistakes?
Granddad lifted his arm from Mother’s shoulder and held her hand, the one Emma wasn’t holding. He took Emma’s other hand. She and Granddad and Mother were a little circle connected by hands. She swallowed a giggle thinking of the three of them getting up and playing Ring Around the Rosie—Dr. Rosie. And then she did start giggling. She couldn’t help it.
Mother smiled. “What’s so funny?”
Emma didn’t know, but suddenly everything seemed hilarious. The fly buzzing like mad inside the lampshade; Granddad’s red, white, and blue bowtie all crooked, the smeared lenses of his glasses; Mother’s bare feet. She thought of the photograph of Tina in her silly rompers and Boss Man in his cowboy hat, how she thought she had fooled them; the elephants snatching Granddad’s fedora and spraying her with water; how she peed on the circus grounds; the clowns kidnapping her and making her part of their act; the circus costume she had tried to wear, and the strap that broke; cutting off her hair; the French postcard with the bare-bosomed lady; and Filippo, who she thought was her father. Emma laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks. Everything in the whole world was so hilariously funny, one big clown act!
When she finally stopped laughing, Mother and Granddad were staring at her with strange looks on their faces. But this time Emma didn’t laugh, even though Mother and Granddad looked so silly. They both kept holding Emma’s hands, tight. More fireworks exploded over the lake.
“I have something I need to tell you,” Emma said. She swallowed and brushed an imaginary crumb off her knickers. “I’d like to be a flyer…like you were, Mother, in the circus.”
Mother and Granddad looked at each other. They said nothing.
“Someday,” Emma added.
Mother sighed and her shoulders relaxed.
“And next summer when the circus comes to town, I want us all to go,” Emma said.
“Sapphira?” Granddad said.
“Oh, please, Mother! I want Granddad to meet Boss Man and Filippo . . . my uncle,” Emma said. “No more secrets.”
Mother looked into Emma’s eyes, squeezed her hand and smiled, I love you. Emma squeezed Mother’s hand back, then Granddad’s. I love you.
They were still a circle connected by hands. No one had let go.
Emma heard noises at the window and turned to look. Teddy had his nose and mouth pressed against the window making a hideous-looking face squished on the glass. Behind him gawked Clarence and Nan. Lucky, on his haunches, scratched at the window.
“What a bunch of Nosey Nells!” Emma said.
But when Nan waved and her cousin Clarence smiled and Teddy did a goofy dance, she suddenly felt light and giddy, as if she had let go of a trapeze and was sailing through the air.
She felt the hands that would catch her when she fell.
Catch Me When I Fall Page 10