Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  For Christ’s sake.

  Amen.

  Help yourself. Loden, pass the carrots.

  Can’t someone shut that baby up!

  He misses his mum.

  Tru, go warm the milk. And the rest of you — what are you waiting for? Eat.

  Spinning on this, the second night of her new beginning. Cool breeze hardening into a frosty stillness. Low sun filtered by the trees. Creek burbling on its descent. Awareness growing of pain hardening in her right breast, and no one to help her. No one to comfort her. No one to save her from herself and the harsh night. She would drift away. Drifting, she would lose track. She would give up. She would forgive. She would forswear and forget, and life would fade into the dream of life, a woodland scene, Sally Werner huddled on the ground, birds chirping and whistling, indifferent to her plight, and a red cap bobbing up over the rock.

  “P-poor g-g-girlie.”

  It was the stuttering man named Mason. Without his shotgun.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you s-s-stand?”

  Though a small man, with white hair bristling from beneath the sides of his cap, he was wiry and sturdy enough to support her as she rose to her feet. He didn’t appear strong enough to carry her, though he offered to try. She draped her arm over his shoulders and leaned against him.

  “You d-don’t look all right, g-g-girlie.”

  “I guess I don’t feel all right,” she said, and as if to prove it she collapsed in a faint.

  The woman was murmuring, saying something that Sally didn’t understand, and something else, and as clear as a bell, “She’s sure been through it.” And then the stuttering man was asking the woman w-w-what happened to the girl. But the woman said she needed hot water, and she directed the stuttering man to put a pot on the stove. The man continued to stand in the doorway, squeezing his cap in his hands, waiting for an explanation.

  “What’s your name, honey?” the woman asked gently.

  Sally wanted to answer, but somehow her name came out all wrong, a string of complaining syllables that didn’t make sense. The woman took it upon herself to interpret. She told the stuttering man:

  “She’s calling for her mama. She doesn’t know where she is. Honey, you’re here with us, with friends. We’ll take care of you. You don’t need to worry yourself worse off than you already are.”

  “She need a d-d-doctor?”

  “You go get the water boiling, Uncle, if you will. And could you bring Stevie in? He’s out back with Daryl. Send Daryl home, and bring Stevie inside.”

  “How ’b-bout Swill’s wife?”

  “We’ll start without her. I’ll let you know if we need help. Honey, here’s a sip of water. You like that? You’ve been through it, haven’t you? Uncle, go on, please.”

  “I’m g-g-going.”

  “That Uncle Mason,” the woman said, shaking her head. She explained to Sally that he only ever wanted to do good, and she didn’t have to be afraid of him. “He says you’re an angel. An angel visiting from heaven. He says your wings are broke, and he carried you all the way down the mountain. I can’t hardly believe it, but Uncle Mason would never tell a lie.” She lifted the glass to offer Sally another sip of water. And how about a bite to eat — a cheese sandwich and applesauce? Did she want to try? No, not yet? That was fine, they weren’t in any hurry. She needed to rest a bit, and then she’d be hungry.

  “There you are. Now let yourself get better. Don’t fight it. I suspect you’ve been fighting something for a while. Just relax. You can tell me your story later. Don’t worry about anything. You’re not the first stray we’ve taken in, believe me. And don’t you think we’re going to blame you for something we don’t even know about. I assure you, honey, I’ve had my own share, if you know what I mean. Who hasn’t? Well, what matters now is making you comfortable.”

  She introduced herself as Georgina but went on to explain that she was called Georgie. The appropriate response from Sally would have been to offer her own name. Instead, she closed her eyes and basked in Georgie’s words and Georgie’s kindness. Everything was permeated with the grassy smell of witch hazel from the cloth draped across her forehead. As her thoughts moved idly through comprehension and comparison, she imagined that she was fully submerged in a bath of witch hazel, breathing through a straw. Somewhere in a corner of her mind she remembered to be wary, yet mostly she felt herself settling into a warm feeling of gratitude. She had a vague sense that this woman named Georgie was saving more than her life. She gave her the best smile she could muster to show her thanks.

  “You sure look worn out,” said Georgie. “Now don’t mind me, we’ll put you in dry clothes, slip your arm out of the sleeve like that. There, that’s a good girl. And here we go, you’ve got a hot spot there. I bet it smarts.”

  The hot spot was a boil deep inside Sally’s right breast, and Georgie was right, it smarted plenty.

  “Hey, Uncle,” Georgie called toward the kitchen, “fill a basin with the water off the stove, thanks, and leave it outside the door. Here you go, honey, slip this on. That’s a good girl. Maybe we could use… you know, Uncle Mason, if you don’t mind making a trip to Lawson’s to pick up a couple of things we’ll need, I’ll give a call ahead. And you, Stevie,” she said, motioning to a young boy standing in the doorway, “make yourself useful right now. Go find me some towels. Go on now, do as I say.”

  After she’d closed the door, Georgie draped a warm washcloth over Sally’s infected breast. She fell silent for a few minutes. Sally watched her face through the witch hazel cloud of her fever and decided that she had no cause to feel wary. Here was a woman she could trust, at least for now. It was a luxurious conclusion, and it gave Sally a sweet, dreamy contentment, as if she’d just been told that she’d come into a great deal of money.

  When the washcloth turned clammy, Georgie exchanged it with another one. She called her son to come into the room. A moment later a boy’s voice right next to Sally’s ear said, “Who’s she?”

  Sally blinked her eyes open.

  “Hello. Uncle Mason says you’re an angel.”

  “I’m Sally.”

  “Are you Sally Angel or Angel Sally? There’s a difference.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Oh, don’t bother with him,” said Georgie. “Stevie, wring this cloth out in the sink and bring me another clean one.”

  “No, wait a second.” Sally wanted to know the difference between Sally Angel and Angel Sally.

  “If you don’t know, I ain’t gonna tell you.”

  Sally corrected him: “I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “You shouldn’t say, I ain’t. You should say, I’m not.”

  The woman named Georgie used this as evidence to prove to the boy she called Stevie that Sally was an angel. Angels knew everything, and soon she’d be teaching the boy all about the secrets of heaven. “But first we want to make her better.”

  If she was an angel, why was she sick? The boy addressed the question to his mother, but Sally answered. “Because I fell from heaven.”

  “Really?”

  “Right out of the blue sky.” As she said this, she gazed into the blue of the boy’s wide, staring eyes, a thick, creamy blue that she imagined would help to soften the impact of her fall. She understood that these strangers were offering her a place of refuge. Not another home — it was better than home. Stevie, Georgie, Uncle Mason. They were ready to provide her with the aid she needed to start over again so she could continue on her way.

  The little blue-eyed kid with a mop of thin, almost whitish hair, like an old man’s. Like Uncle Mason’s hair beneath his red cap. The kid and Uncle Mason led by Georgie, who looked too young to have such deep lines around her eyes — they were going to take care of her. She’d fallen from the sky, and they were going to make her better.

  “Go on, Stevie,” said his mother.

  “Thank you,” Sally said, and the boy nodded wi
th a strange solemnity, as though until then he’d been testing her and now he was satisfied that she’d told him what he’d been waiting to hear.

  By the next morning she was sitting up in bed and eating Georgie’s canned applesauce, which through its sweetness tasted slightly bitter, reminiscent of the witch hazel that still saturated everything — her skin, her thoughts, the walls of her room. Everything in Georgie’s house seemed to have been soaked in witch hazel, even Georgie, whose face had a wet gleam in the gray morning light.

  “It looks like the rain is here for a while,” she said as she watched Sally eat.

  “Mmm.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “The rain?”

  “The fruit sauce.”

  “It’s tasty.”

  “How are you feeling there?” She pointed to Sally’s breast.

  “Much better.”

  “That can happen in the first week, when your milk comes in,” she said gently. But Sally was more clearheaded now, and the comment made her feel suspicious, as though she’d just realized that she’d left a door unlocked — the door to her room full of secrets. While Sally had been disoriented from her ordeal, Georgie had gone inside without asking, and she knew all about what Sally was trying to hide.

  “What do you mean?”

  Georgie looked perplexed. She must have expected her guest to begin telling her story right then. But Sally, as grateful as she was, had already told the only story she wanted to tell: she’d fallen from the sky. She was Sally Angel, or Angel Sally, whichever the little boy named Stevie preferred.

  “Well…,” said Georgie. Her voice was timid, and yet Sally sensed a stubbornness there, even a wily ingenuity.

  “Well what?”

  “The same thing happened to me shortly after my boy was born, and I tell you, it was like a knife cutting through me.”

  Sally didn’t reply, just licked her spoon clean and replaced it in the empty bowl. She felt a disturbing impulse to be rude to this kind woman, to prove to her that she wasn’t as pathetic as she appeared to be.

  “Say, where are you from?” Georgie asked abruptly.

  “Rondo,” Sally said with equal abruptness, surprised and proud to have thought of an unreal place so quickly.

  “Where’s Rondo?”

  “Downriver.”

  “North of here?”

  That confused her for a moment, and she wondered if Georgie had a hunch that she was misleading her. Maybe she should have said upriver instead.

  “Sort of,” she hedged.

  “North along the Tuskee?”

  Sally had only a vague sense of the Tuskee. It didn’t widen into a significant river until the Southern Tier, and it didn’t figure in importance for the farmers in the Peterkin Valley.

  Sally shook her head no, then changed her mind and nodded yes.

  Rondo, huh? Georgie had never heard of it. She looked Sally over as though she were searching her, head to foot, searching her face, her scratched arms and hands, and the contours of the bedsheet for some indication that there was more to disclose.

  “Okay,” Georgie said with a shrug, either with real fatigue or just worn out by the effort to separate truth from lies. She lifted the bowl away from Sally and quickly exited the room, leaving behind the stark impression of her disappointment and with her absence giving her guest time to consider that by forfeiting this opportunity to confide, she was in danger of losing the best friend she might have made in Fishkill Notch.

  A child’s voice came to her then, traveling up from the porch below her window, rattling in play as the light rain dripped over the eaves, the mingling sounds reminding her of the gurgling creek she’d walked and slept beside, that clear, beautiful water and the music of its current. Chortling, gurgling, roar and giggle, words rattling, threats growled. Hurray, hurray! Don’t you come near! Quick, hide! Jumping, crawling, hiding, warring, cheering in play, in dream, in fever. The boy was the creek turning into a river — Georgie’s boy growing up in the close range of his mother’s eyes and ears. She was always watching, listening, ready to hear and respond to a signal of danger. Unlike the mother of Sally’s boy.

  Sally’s little boy.

  She unbuttoned the collar of the nightie Georgie had dressed her in, squeezed the nipple of her left breast, and squirted a syrupy milk — the milk for her own boy, whose name she didn’t even know.

  A year ago she’d been a fifteen-year-old girl earning three pounds of sausages a week. Now she was a mother with swollen breasts who didn’t know her own son’s name. And that was as good a reason as any for telling a lie. She’d never let herself need anyone. If she was an angel, she was the fiercest kind, wielding a fiery sword in revenge, in destruction, in righteous fury.

  Crash. Grrrr. You spy, you are my enemy. I will slay you with my magic sword. Slice, slice. Roar.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Georgie called in a plain voice, the voice of easy routine, from the kitchen. “Lunch is ready.”

  Sally let the pillow absorb her sobs. Raging, wretched Sally.

  One thing Sally Werner would say about herself was that she didn’t like to be idle. As a young girl she’d usually been the first one up in the house. She loved tiptoeing around in the winter darkness of the downstairs rooms, looking for treasure, pretending to be a princess aprowl in a castle. She learned to light the stove when she was just short of seven years old, and by the time she was ten she could cook a nice fried egg. When she went to work for the Jensons, she made herself valuable by doing more than she was asked. And back at home, she’d kept herself busy with chores that the rest of the family preferred to put off.

  She woke later than her usual time after the second night at Georgie’s house. Lying in bed, she took a long look around the room. The morning sunlight brightened the blinds and turned the unpainted walls golden. The three shelves of an old bookcase were empty. Next to the bed was a freestanding lamp without a shade. There was no bureau, but a single open drawer set on the floor held towels and sheets. She noticed that plaster chips had fallen into the drawer, and she looked up to see the big cracks in the ceiling and a hole around an empty light socket. It might have looked like work was being done on the room, but there was a thick dusty feel to it, and Sally figured that it was a room no one had bothered with for years.

  She was wearing a baggy old cotton nightie sized for a fat woman. She wanted to change into clothes, but not into her own clothes. Putting on her own dingy dress would have been like going backward in time, and she didn’t want to do that. Anyway, her dress wasn’t even there in the room.

  The rest of the house was so silent that Sally wondered if she’d been left alone. She got up out of bed and went to investigate. Across the narrow hall was a closet with a toilet and sink. She stopped there first, used the toilet, washed her face as best she could, and retied her hair in a ponytail. Then she headed down the hall that led to the kitchen.

  Georgie was at the stove, stirring something that didn’t smell like anything Sally recognized. The man seated at the kitchen table was facing the entranceway where Sally stood, and he let out a low chuckle at the sight of her.

  “There she is, the she-demon.”

  It was Swill. Swill of the pigsty. Ugly old Swill, capless now, the grizzle on his head and face thick and short and white, like a coating of paste. She was embarrassed to see him, or, rather, to be seen by him. But she also resented him for announcing her arrival as though she couldn’t hear.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” said Georgie, turning, holding a spoon that dripped a thick, brown porridge onto the floor. “Are you feeling better?”

  She was, yes, thanks, she said, and added that she didn’t know what she would have done without, without… Unsure who to thank, she just let her voice trail off.

  Georgie didn’t notice the porridge on the floor. Neither did Swill, who rose from the table, fit his cap back on, and said he’d best be going.

  “You haven’t had your breakfast yet,” Georgie said.


  With his eyes fixed on Sally, who stood there in her fat-lady’s nightie, Swill announced that he’d lost his appetite.

  Sally decided he was an enemy for life. She no longer regretted bringing up the pigsty comparison. She wished she’d thought of something worse.

  “We’ll be seeing you, then,” said Georgie.

  He said he had to stop by the A&P before he headed out to work at the Baker place. There was stuff he needed. Stuff — whatever that meant.

  “Sure. See you later.”

  He was reaching for the back door when Georgie’s boy squeezed past Sally through the entranceway and jumped toward Swill, who caught him in a swift hug, twirled him around, and set him standing on a chair.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  The boy raised his arm and pointed a finger. “Pow, pow.”

  “Aw, you got me good that time,” Swill said, rubbing the boy’s hair.

  Sally looked on, feeling an unfamiliar envy for Swill’s tender manner, along with a fair amount of anger at his deception. She guessed from the way he’d acted in the woods that he wasn’t always a gentleman.

  “I gotta go now, buster. See you later.”

  “Pow, pow,” said the boy, shooting a couple of farewell rounds at the ceiling.

  Sally walked into the small space of the kitchen and said, “Hey, buster.”

  “Steven,” said his mother firmly, which Sally took as a signal that she should use his proper name, “say hello to our guest.”