I Love You, Jilly Sanders

by Cindy Lou Daniels

  Jilly kicked him. “Tell her!”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That you—that I—” She glared at him and turned to give Gwen the same fierce look. Gwen simply sat there, smiling her beatific smile. Jilly stood up. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this nonsense,” she said with dignity. “I’m going inside.”

  She left them on the porch and hoped they heard the pounding of her footsteps on the stairs. At times like this, a girl needed a mother. She threw herself onto her bed and pushed her face into her pillow.

  *

  Two weeks later Cat and Gwen ganged up on her.

  “School starts Monday,” Cat said. Her slinky body eased itself down beside Jilly on the couch. Gwen sat down in the easy chair to her left, her rounded stomach poofing out her blouse slightly.

  Jilly crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not going back to school! There’s nothing either one of you could do to me to make me.”

  Gwen and Cat sat quietly.

  “I mean it!”

  Cat tucked her hair behind her ears and peered at Jilly, her face downcast. “Why not?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong with school?”

  Jilly would have preferred yelling, not the soft reasonableness of Cat’s musical voice.

  “I’m not going to a school where I don’t know anyone! I’ve done that my whole life, and I’m all done with it!” That was the most she’d revealed about her past to any of them, but she was desperate. She only hoped they didn’t question her.

  Gwen tapped her fingernail against her teeth, before she sat forward. “We could home-school her,” she said.

  “Us?” Cat said, doubt clear in her expression. She reached over and stroked Jilly’s hair absentmindedly.

  “It’s not that hard. They used to do it at the commune all the time. No kid raised at the commune ever went to regular school.” She looked heartbroken for a minute. “And I doubt any ever will.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Sure,” Gwen said. “I think there’s some paper you file at the clerk’s office, and then presto! Your house becomes a school.” She inched forward on the chair in her excitement, the ridge bones of her cheeks turning pink.

  Jilly let out a huff of breath. They were talking right through her, over her, like she wasn’t even in the room with them!

  “Tage could help,” Cat muttered, deep in thought. “And Otto, of course, since he insisted Jilly had to attend school now that she was living with him. Then there’s you and me, too.” She clapped her hands together. “I think we could do it!”

  “Wait a minute,” Jilly interrupted. “Don’t I have any say about this?”

  Cat looked at her, her dark eyes two black glitters in her face. “No.”

  Gwen laughed and Jilly gave her a dark look.

  “Well . . .” Cat relented, “you can go into town with me to get some school supplies. And we’ll go to the library and check out some books, too.”

  Jilly rolled her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she was up to another visit with the killer-librarian; when she’d returned her books the last time, the old biddy had leafed through them for ten minutes checking for damage.

  She released a long drawn out sigh. Still, if she refused to go to school and she refused to be home-schooled, they wouldn’t let her alone for a minute.

  Strangely, the idea made her feel like smiling.

  “Let’s go now,” Cat said, as though sensing Jilly’s weakening resolve.

  “I don’t have any money,” Jilly said.

  “That’s okay. I’ve got some,” Cat told her. “Come on.”

  So the two of them walked to town, taking turns pulling Otto’s Radio Flyer behind them.

  Jilly was surprised at how little time it took to get decked out with supplies, especially since the only place to shop was the grocery store. She kept telling Cat to stop buying things, that paper and pencils cost too much at Digg’s. “There’s got to be another store around somewhere!”

  Cat grinned at her. “We’ll teach you geography, too. That’ll be Otto’s job. He can remember all that stuff.” She reached out and tweeked Jilly’s nose. “Stop looking like you’re sorry you ever took me home with you.”

  “I’m not sorry for that,” Jilly said, her voice disgusted. “I’m sorry you’re so school-crazy.”

  She followed Cat out of the store, ignoring the older’s woman laughter until it stopped abruptly. She looked up into the face of Reuben Payne.

  Shit! She was stunned. So, apparently, was Cat. For a minute.

  “Get out of our way, Reuben,” Cat demanded. She brushed past him and plunked the two grocery bags into the wagon.

  “You’re going to be so sorry you ever got involved in this, girly,” Reuben said to Jilly, temporarily ignoring Cat.

  Jilly’s tongue clicked against the back of her suddenly dry throat.

  “Come on, Jilly. Just ignore him. He’s a bully.”

  She couldn’t move. Her feet felt nailed to the sidewalk.

  “I said come on!” Cat said. She reached out and tugged on Jilly’s arm.

  “Don’t worry your pretty face, Cat,” Reuben said. He reached into his pocket and drew out a slim silver pocketknife. He flicked it open. “I know where you’re at now—living with all them freaks—and I’ll bide my time.” He ran the knife blade down the side of his finger, then snapped it shut. “I’ll bide my time.”

  Cat snatched the handle of the Radio Flyer and took off walking fast. “Just keep moving,” she said to Jilly, her voice small. “And don’t look back.”

  Jilly walked, her back stiff with fear. The hardest thing in the world was not looking over her shoulder to see if Reuben was stalking them.

  She thought she felt his fingers brush the length of her spine and she whipped her head around but he wasn’t there.

  He was standing back at Digg’s, the silver glint of his pocketknife cutting the air.

  Chapter XIII.

  “Don’t you worry none,” Cat told Gwen a few days later. “If anyone strange comes to town, they’re bound to stop into the diner.” She was still dressed in her waitress uniform, a hideous green polyester dress she somehow made to look stylish. The whole family was sitting at the kitchen table, everybody except Jilly having a cup of coffee. She was drinking lemonade and making an effort to finish the math problems Tage had assigned to her before he left.

  Jilly stared over at Cat, willing her to tell Gwen and Otto about their run-in with Reuben. It seemed to her Cat should have been at least equally concerned with him, rather than concentrating on Kane.

  But she knew Cat wouldn’t say a word. She’d made Jilly promise not to say anything either.

  “I even ask the other workers if they’ve seen anybody lurking around, so we’ve got all the shifts covered. There’s no need for you to talk about running off, especially with that baby popping up like a blooming flower.”

  “I don’t know,” Gwen said. “If he finds me—” she broke off. “Besides, I can’t go on living here when I don’t have a job. That’s just not right.”

  “We’re not going to let him take you anywhere,” Otto said. “I promise. And as for working, we have enough of what we need. As they say, enough is as good as a feast.”

  Jilly chewed on the end of her pencil, glad that Cat was asking about anyone lurking around. People would be sure to tell her if they saw Reuben, so she supposed Cat had the right idea. It wasn’t like she could quit her job. They needed the money.

  “Did you ask them if they needed any other help at the diner?” she asked. She wanted to get a job herself to help out with their meager finances.

  “You got enough on your plate,” Otto said firmly. “You finish that essay I assigned yet?” He took his part of her education seriously. The only problem was that any assignment he gave to her he expected her to finish the same day. He took it upstairs with him at night and corrected it before he went to sleep. That way, he said, he wouldn’t forget his original intent, which changed day by
day.

  Jilly pawed through the assorted notebooks she had scattered on the table, searching for the one she had marked ‘Geography’.

  “The job situation in Briar Rose might as well be non-existent,” Cat said. “It doesn’t matter if you or Gwen want to work—there’s not too much call for a teenaged girl still in school or a pregnant woman.” She sipped her coffee. “I think Otto and I should be the ones to take care of financial matters, at least for right now. Jilly’s job is school, and Gwen . . . you can keep taking care of the house. That’s a full-time job in itself.”

  “Good idea,” Otto said.

  “But—” Gwen began.

  “No buts,” Otto told her. “I don’t know how I managed before you girls came along.” He called them all ‘girls’, although the only who truly qualified was Jilly. He widened his eyes. “And that’s the truth. I really don’t know,” he said, his idea of a small joke.

  “I don’t know why you thought I needed all these notebooks,” Jilly said to Cat. “What’s this one for?” She held up a marbled composition book.

  “Oh!” Cat said, her face lighting up with a smile. “I’d forgotten all about that one.” She reached out and took the book from Jilly. “That one’s not for you! It’s for Otto!”

  “For me?” Otto said. “You plan on making me go to school, too?”

  Cat laughed. “It’s for your memories,” she said.

  They all stared at her.

  “You can write down the most important points of the day right before you go to bed, and in the morning, you can read them and they’ll be right there with you.”

  Otto’s face lit up. He sat forward in his chair and slapped his hand on the tabletop. “My God! I should’ve thought of that myself.”

  “It’s just like the letter from the doctor,” Jilly added. She wished she had thought of the idea, too. Otto’s face was diffused with joy.

  His hand shook a bit as he took the notebook from Cat, flipped open the cover and stared at the blank white page.

  “Here’s a brand new pen,” Jilly offered. “Put the date at the top of the first page. “And you can keep track of that, too.”

  Otto accepted the pen and wrote the date in an elegant scrawl. He looked up at them and his sky-blue eyes were bright with moisture. “I think I’ll take this outside, if you all don’t mind. There’re a few things I’d like to record.”

  He looked right at Cat when he said that, and Jilly thought she detected a faint flush in Cat’s brown face.

  After Otto left, Jilly grinned at her. “You’re blushing,” she teased.

  Cat stood up. “Black people can’t blush. Our skin doesn’t show it.”

  “Hmmm,” Jilly said. “I think it was showin’ up in your eyes.”

  “I’m going to change,” Cat said, refusing to be drawn in. “You best all finish that homework before your young man comes back.”

  “He’s not—” She tilted her head at Cat, who looked back at her with a guileless expression. “Ain’t you the pot callin’ the kettle black, Miss Cat?”

  Gwen’s tinkerbell laughter floated like fairy dust across the kitchen. “The two of you better be careful,” she warned. “Look what happens when you think you’re in love.” She stood up and arched her back so her belly protruded comically.

  Cat’s eyes went big, and Jilly snorted. The thought of either Cat or herself growing a baby was enough to make all three of them burst into laughter.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Gwen darling,” Cat said, “I’ll settle for sharing your little one.”

  Gwen’s smile was automatic, but Jilly saw the remorse that crept into her eyes. Gwen didn’t like thinking about the commune, she knew, and the idea of sharing a baby must have reminded her.

  Cat caught the look of sadness, too. “I meant sharing in a good way, sweetheart,” she said. She patted Gwen’s hand. “There’s nobody here going to take that little one away from you.”

  Gwen nodded. “I know that,” she said softly. “It’s just that sometimes I can’t help but think about—”

  “Well, don’t,” Cat said. “Like Otto said, we’re all here, and we’re not about to let anybody harm you or your baby, okay?”

  “Maybe I’ll get Tage to teach me how to fight,” Jilly said, her tone half-serious. “I’d knock some people into next week.” She stood up and took a couple jabs into the air. “What do you think?” She hoped she looked tougher than a broomstick with arms.

  “I think,” Gwen said, “you ought to concentrate on your scholarly studies.”

  Jilly grinned at her. “Yeah, yeah.” She scooped up her notebook with the math problems Tage had carefully written out for her. “A girl can’t even get a little action around here,” she complained. “I’m going outside to finish these.”

  The sun had lost a bit of its heat in the past days, and she noticed the change in the air. Fall was her favorite time of year. Feeling her usual twinge of guilt, she nonetheless made her way toward the abandoned car. She felt like a moth to flame, like a bee to honey, like a hundred other clichés, when it came to that car.

  She pulled open the back passenger door, the screech less noticeable than it had been when she first opened it, and climbed into the cushiony back seat.

  In three months, her life had changed completely. She felt happy now, felt a deep inner contentment so new she was almost afraid to jar it for fear of it crumbling away. But there were times, like now, when she allowed herself to think about Jane Sandra—and to acknowledge she wasn’t any closer to finding her mother now than she had been the night she ran away from Lester and Lynette’s.

  Eventually, she was going to have to face facts. Eventually, she was going to have to have to ask Otto about his daughter. Eventually . . .

  She’d wait until Gwen’s baby was born, she decided, before she stirred things up. That was only a few short months away. Until then, she’d let whatever was going to happen, happen. Maybe if she was lucky, things would take care of themselves.

  She bit down on her bottom lip hard enough to make herself wince, but the thought still rose unbidden in her mind: She’d never been lucky.

  *

  Three nights later a jagged rock crashed through the living room window, and a piece of flying glass caught Cat on the temple.

  Blood spurted delicately and before anyone could react, half her face was wet and silky-looking.

  Otto bolted for the stairs.

  Gwen darted into the bathroom and returned immediately with a cold cloth. “Here,” she said. She sat down beside Cat on the sofa. “Press this over the cut.”

  “What the hell was that?” Jilly asked, finally coming out of her comatose state. She stared in shock at the litter of glass on the floor.

  “Kane,” Gwen said flatly.

  “Reuben,” Cat said at the same time.

  Neither one of them appeared the least surprised at the fact they knew men capable of such an act. They looked at one another and smiled grimly.

  Otto charged back down the stairway carrying the old shotgun he’d taken from Tage.

  Cat leaped up. “Wait just a minute!” She stepped in front of Otto. “You’re not going out there with that thing.” She dropped the cloth and moved closer to him. “You’re not going out there at all.”

  “Whoever that was might be hanging around out there. I’m not going to cower inside here and do nothing!”

  “You’ve never cowered a day in your life,” Cat said.

  Blood seeped out of her temple, and Otto stooped to pick up the cloth she had dropped near his feet. He placed it on her skin and held it there.

  She didn’t reach up to take it from him; she let him hold it there.

  Tage burst through the kitchen doorway, and they all flinched. “What happened?” he gasped. “I was comin’ over to visit and I heard the glass break. Then somebody was running away from the house. I tried to follow whoever it was, but he slipped away in the cedars.” Tage sucked in a breath. “I knew I’d never find him in there, so
I figured I better come see if all of you were all right.

  “You all right, Cat?” he asked. At her nod, he said, “You got a flashlight, Otto? I’m going to follow—”

  Otto sighed. “He’s gone. We’ll take a look in the morning.” Cat had taken the cloth from his hands, and he stood there with the gun. “I’m rather glad I borrowed your shotgun, Tage. Makes me feel better to have it in the house.”

  Tage nodded. “Anyone else hurt?” he asked.

  Jilly shook her head. “Just Cat.”

  “I’m going to put this gun back,” Otto said. “It’s a good thing I keep it in the corner of my bedroom where I see it every morning.”

  His footsteps sounded heavy and weary on the stairs.

  “Why don’t I get us some of that cake I made today?” Gwen suggested.

  “Good idea,” Cat said.

  They ate cake, its sugary stickiness sticking in Jilly’s throat. The others must have been feeling the same sickness she was feeling; in a short while they went to bed, each quiet with their own thoughts.

  Tage ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room, and in the morning he and Otto searched the dense cedars, but they found nothing except a few footprints. They were large and square-toed, which seemed to indicate a male, but there was nothing conclusive to prove whether Kane or Reuben or some other lost soul was the perpetrator of the rock through the window.

  Jilly wondered which of the two, Reuben or Kane, would be the lesser of two evils, and learned that when it came to choosing trouble there was no such thing.

  September disappeared into October, the leaves turned scarlet and orange and yellow, and Cat came lugging home a pumpkin to carve for the front porch. Jilly regressed into a seven-year-old at the idea of making a jack-o’-lantern. She’d never participated in the activity before and she almost sliced off her index finger cutting out the top.

  She pulled on the dried curved stem and the smell of fresh pumpkin wafted out. She peered inside. “Look at that!” she exclaimed. The tangled mess of guts and seeds had to be scooped out by hand, the slippery seeds squirting away from her fingers. Gwen collected all the seeds in a colander to save for toasting. She said they were delicious.