All in One Place

by Carolyne Aarsen

  I knew we didn't look the same. Having different fathers didn't help. Nor did the feather earrings or the stiletto boots that made a clacking sound every time I walked across the worn linoleum.

  I heard a beep from a room off the kitchen. Sounded like a washing machine had finished its cycle. Leslie was about to get up when I held up my hand. “I'll throw the clothes in the dryer,” I said, glad for something constructive to do.

  “I usually hang them up on the clothesline.”

  “I'll help you,” Tabitha offered, pushing her chair back. She grabbed her coat, then scampered off to the laundry room before Wilma or Leslie could object.

  When I got there, she was yanking wet clothes out of the machine and heaving them into a laundry basket.

  “The clothesline is outside,” she whispered, grabbing the basket.

  I followed her through another door leading outside.

  She closed the door behind her, peering into the window. “Good, they're talking again,” she said, pulling out a plastic bag from her back pocket. It held two squashed-looking cigarettes and she offered one to me. Second time in one day.

  “Are you kidding?” I said, hefting the laundry basket onto a stand by the clothesline. “I've more than exceeded my vice quota for the day.”

  “I've been dying for one for the past hour.” She took another puff, the sharp, acrid scent of the smoke wafting past me as she perched herself on the veranda railing.

  “Kinda young to be smoking, aren't you?”

  “I'm seventeen.” Tabitha laughed. “When did you start?”

  Thirteen, but I wasn't about to tell her that. A brother of a friend had gotten them for us.

  I had quit years ago, but I could still feel the bite of the smoke in my lungs, the faint rush of nicotine in my system, each time I smelled a cigarette burning. And each time, it annoyed me that something so small could create such a longing.

  I pulled a shirt out of the tangle of laundry in the basket, untwisting the arms. As I held it up, my plan to help hit its first snag.

  “You don't know what you're doing, do ya?” Tabitha asked, swinging her legs.

  “Not a clue.” My basic method was: Drop clothes into all available washing machines in the Laundromat, pull wet clothes out, stuff into dryer, drag into laundry bag, haul home, make dirty, and start all over again.

  The only time I had hung clothes up was when I draped them over the backs of chairs when the dryers at the Laundromat were full or broken down.

  Tabitha stuck her cigarette in her mouth, hopped off her perch, and took the shirt from me. “You shake it out like this, grab a couple of clothespins…”

  The door behind us opened.

  Tabitha yanked the cigarette out of her mouth.

  “Who is smoking out here?” Wilma asked.

  I plucked the cigarette from Tabitha's hands and turned to face her, holding the burning cigarette between my fingers.

  “Sorry,” I said, giving Wilma my best sheepish smile.

  She frowned. One more sin to add to my résumé.

  “Tabitha, we're going for a walk. Elsa would like you to come along.”

  Tabitha sighed. “She barely speaks English, and Terra needs my help.”

  “I'm sure Terra can manage the laundry just fine.”

  “I'm the laundry queen,” I said with an airy wave of my hand, forgetting about the cigarette burning between my fingers.

  Wilma delicately waved the cigarette smoke away, staying behind as Tabitha let the door fall shut behind her. “It's very kind of you to help Leslie,” she said once Tabitha was gone. “I'm sorry that she's so busy right now.”

  I tried to decipher a hidden meaning behind her careful words. The Wilma I remembered had an edge that could cut with the slightest provocation. Of course, I was in quite a provocating mood the last time I saw her. My little sister was getting married and moving out of the apartment we had shared for two years. I was still single, with no matrimonial hopes on the horizon. I was depressed and looking for an outlet.

  Wilma, with her pinched mouth and general air of disapproval of my sister and me, had been a worthy adversary.

  We almost hit it off, in the literal sense of the expression.

  Now Leslie was calling her “Mom,” and Wilma was thanking me for helping my own sister. How things changed.

  “I'm sorry, too,” I said, holding the cigarette down and away from her.

  Wilma followed the direction of my hand, her nose wrinkling ever so slightly. “Leslie doesn't like smoking in the house. She still has some concerns about Nicholas. He was quite sick last summer. That was a very hard time for your sister.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, then.” Wilma brushed some nonexistent dirt off her pants. “You are welcome to join us, if you wish.”

  “Thanks, but I should finish hanging this up.”

  Wilma lifted her hand to open the door, then turned back to me. “I would like to say… I don't know how else to tell you… but Tabitha is a very young, innocent but impressionable young woman.”

  Boy, did that impressionable young woman have her gramma fooled, I thought, as Tabitha's cigarette smoldered between my fingers.

  “She is easily led,” Wilma continued.

  I got the gist of where she was headed. “And you think I'm leading her where?”

  “I sense you would be a person she might want to emulate,” Wilma said carefully. “Tabitha has had her problems in the past. I don't wish to discuss them with you, but you need to know that, well, her parents and I worry about her.” Wilma stopped there, and I'd swear I heard the faintest hitch in her voice. “We pray for her. We pray that she will make good choices.”

  Full-on belligerence from Wilma would have me coming out with all guns blazing, ready to take her on. But this little crack in Wilma's facade caught me off guard.

  But what really stuck in my mind was the simple phrase we pray for her. I didn't know people who did that anymore. There sure wasn't anyone praying for me.

  I was about to tell her that I didn't want Tabitha to emulate me either when Leslie joined us on the porch.

  She frowned in puzzlement, then deflected the frown to me as Wilma hurried past her into the house.

  “What happened to Mom?” Leslie glanced at the door again before advancing on to me.

  “I don't know.”

  “Oh, c'mon. You come out here to hang up laundry, and first Tabitha comes inside smelling like cigarette smoke, then I meet Mom looking all distraught.”

  “And you think I did that?” How much power did these people think I had?

  “What did you say to her?”

  “How about what she said to me? She came out here practically accusing me of leading her granddaughter astray.”

  “Tabitha is easily influenced. Last summer she ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.”

  “She's older now.”

  “And not much wiser. And she thinks you're pretty cool.”

  I mentally skipped over the connection between the two comments. “Wow, first positive stroke I've gotten since I got here, and it had to come from a teenager…”

  “Terra, please. She's a young girl, and she's made some bad judgments before.”

  “Before me, you mean.”

  Leslie shook her head. “No. That's not what I said.”

  “It's what you meant.” I beat back the sharp sting of disappointment. “Ever since you picked me up in Harland, you've been jumping to conclusions about me.”

  “And where else am I supposed to jump when I find out you've been drinking before the sun is even over the yardarm?”

  “It was happy hour somewhere in the world.”

  Leslie's patronizing look tipped me over the anger barrier.

  “C'mon, Sis. As if you've never drunk before, or smoked substances both legal and illegal.” The conversation was taking on a life of its own, moving from misunderstanding to anger and frustration. I needed to ramp it down, or words would spill out that we wo
uld both regret. Leslie and I had always been close, but like sisters the world over, we knew exactly which weakness to exploit when the gloves were off.

  “I've changed. I've found a meaning and purpose to life. You could change, too.”

  “Really?” I laughed. “You don't know what I've had to deal with…”

  “And how am I supposed to know if you don't call? Or send letters, or answer e-mails? Or even, I don't know, send smoke signals. Something. You drop completely off the face of the earth, then suddenly reappear in Harland and end up in the sheriff's office. I have no clue what's been happening in your life for the past half year or more.”

  I wondered if my sister, who had discovered purpose and meaning to her life, would understand.

  The door opened again and Dan stuck his head out. “You girls coming?”

  I turned away. “You go ahead. I want to finish hanging these clothes up.”

  “We can wait. I'd like to show you around as well.”

  I shook my head. “I'm tired. I might take a nap while the house is quiet.”

  “I'll see you later, then.” The door clicked and I was alone again.

  I pulled a couple of clothespins out of the bag and clipped the shirt onto the line. In the background, I heard the voices of Leslie and her guests leaving the house, the quiet around me growing as their voices faded away. Tabitha was right. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. But I was a fast learner. In this family, you had to be.

  I shifted, pulling the blankets up under my chin, which then exposed my feet. Leslie's leather couch was comfortable enough, but I couldn't settle down.

  It had been a busy day.

  In the space of an hour, I had been accosted, accused, and arrested. I owed my sister money for the bail she'd posted, and I had none myself.

  I wasn't even five days into my five-year plan, and things were going south faster than Canada geese being chased by a snowstorm.

  I flipped onto my side, wondering when Jack the Cop was going to call. Wondering what happened to those two little girls he was transporting in his car.

  Wondering if he was single.

  He was cute enough in a rough way, and he had that air of confident authority that some of the better cops seemed to wear like a second skin. A girl could feel safe around a guy like him.

  And you are officially an idiot. Not learning your lessons very well, are you? Remember Eric? No more guys. No more complications. No more being vulnerable.

  The care and feeding of relationships required more than I was willing or capable of doing. I couldn't even be a good sister.

  Guilt slithered through my gut as I remembered Leslie's look of disappointment in the sheriff's office. Like a mother picking up a stray child.

  I flipped again, restless, then sat up.

  What was taking cousin Femmelies so long in the bathroom? I knew the Dutch were clean-crazy, but this was taking personal hygiene to a stratospheric level.

  I snuck upstairs to Leslie and Dan's bathroom. If I was quiet, they wouldn't even know I was there.

  I was about to turn on the tap when I heard Dan's muffled voice. I would have ignored it, but he mentioned my name.

  “Why did you have to help her?” The rest of Dan's sentence was lost. He must be lying with his back to the door.

  “She'll pay me back.”

  “With what, if she can't even afford to bail herself out of jail? Putting in the crop tapped us out, Leslie. I need to spray yet, and we need every penny.”

  “I can work a few extra shifts to cover that, Dan.”

  “You don't need to cover for the farm. And you don't need to cover for Terra.”

  “She's my sister.”

  “You wouldn't know, the way she's behaved.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Leave her to cool her heels in jail?”

  “It might not have hurt her to stay in one place for longer than a week.”

  Dan's little snippets of conversation bulleted at me, enough truth mixed in with his frustration to hurt.

  I knew Dan wasn't crazy about me, so it was a safe bet that Leslie's pulling money out of the household account did not endear me to him. I had to find a way to repay them.

  Using my ATM card to pull money from my bank account would be a surefire way for Eric to track me down.

  Once I got to Chicago, I could cover my tracks a bit better, but until then a posting from Harland Savings and Loan would give him a good idea of where I was.

  What about a job?

  I tested the thought. Might be worth a try. Leslie was busy with her visitors, and she didn't really have room for me. I couldn't leave Harland, but I might be able to find a place to live in town.

  I crept to the bottom of the stairs and then, finally, the bathroom door opened and Femmelies came out looking all shiny and polished.

  “Hello, Terra,” she said with a smile. “You use badkamer?”

  “Yes. I use badkamer?” I said, then hurried past her, unable to wait much longer.

  Neck, Sore.

  Awareness seeped into my mind as my body slowly became cognizant of where each part lay. One leg hanging onto the floor. Arm twisted underneath. Blankets askew.

  A couch. A living room. Leslie's house.

  And then all the events of yesterday brushed away any remnants of sleep with an abrupt hand.

  I glanced at the clock, whose ticking had kept me awake half the night. I thought Dan would have been up at first light slopping hogs, gathering eggs, feeding cows, or whatever it was farmers did at the crack of dawn, but so far it seemed as if the entire household still slept.

  Within a few minutes, I had the blankets folded and my clothes packed up again. I slipped my coat on and then my backpack. Time to go.

  Remembering Leslie's admonition about communication, I tried to find a pen and some paper, but all I managed to scrounge up was an envelope from a utility company and a worn pencil.

  What eloquence could I fit on a 4 × 11—inch piece of paper?

  “I'm leaving to make my fortune to pay you back”?

  “Sorry about the money. I'm going to make some more”?

  “Bye”?

  “Where are you going, Auntie Terra?”

  I slapped my hand over my mouth, stifling the scream that jumped into my throat.

  Anneke stood in the doorway, hugging a tiny body dwarfed by an old ratty sweater covering a faded flannel nightgown. Her hair was a nest of wispy blond, and her cheek still held the sleep imprint of a hand.

  “Are you going away?”

  I nodded.

  “You aren't going to stay?” I saw a glint of moisture at the corner of her eye. Her lips pooched out in a pout that made Angelina Jolie look positively thin-lipped.

  I remembered from previous visits that Anneke could turn on the tears and the accompanying drama quicker than a director could holler, “Action.”.

  I dropped my knapsack and ran to her side, hoping I could forestall the coming storm that would probably wake my sister. “It's okay, honey,” I said, holding her little body close to me. In spite of the woolly sweater, her shoulders poked through the knit like little knobs of wood, giving her a vulnerability that made my heart clench.

  “Anneke, honey, I'm only going to Harland.”

  “But I want you to stay here,” she cried, her voice muffled as her tears dampened my neck.

  You're one of the Jew, I thought, indulging in a moment of self-pity. Poor Terra Froese. The people you want don't want you, and Eric, who you don't want, does want you.

  “I'm just going to Harland,” I whispered again.

  Anneke sniffed and pulled back, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand. “Will you come and visit us?”

  I smoothed her sleep-snarled hair back from her face. “Of course I will, honey.”

  “Then you can bring me candy.” She gave me a watery smile. “You didn't bring me and Nicholas a present. Karl and Femmelies brought us presents.”

  The innocent words piled yet another brick on my b
ack. “Maybe next time I come…” I was as lousy at this auntie thing as I was at the sister thing.

  Anneke wiped her hand over the stomach of her nightie, rumpling the ghostly pattern of a tiny horse.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  Anneke ran her hand over her nightgown with a proprietary gesture. “My mommy had it.”

  She had it because one day our mother decided that we needed new pajamas and we were allowed to pick them out ourselves. Leslie's had flowers; mine had horses. Then we went to McDonald's for lunch, and we were allowed to order burgers and milk shakes and fries. I remember our mother laughing out loud that day. I remember that her eyes were clear and her breath fresh and her smile pure and lovely.

  Every time Leslie and I wore those pajamas, the memory of that day was like a beacon in the darker days when our mother was not cheerful or fun or lucid.

  I wondered where Mom was and what she was doing. Leslie seemed content with her new life and with Wilma as her “mom.” But I wasn't as able to dismiss our mom from my life. Now and again, I would wonder if she was happy, if she had found someone to take care of her. Wonder if she had put herself in as bad a situation as I had.

  “I used to wear that nightgown, you know,” I whispered, caressing her tiny shoulder with my hand.

  “Mommy said you liked it the bestest of all your clothes.”

  I claimed the memory like a greedy gold digger seeing the flash of gold in a pan. Leslie had shared a piece of our childhood with her children. A connection. “I wanted to wear it to school, but my mommy wouldn't let me.”

  “Where is your mommy?”

  Funny how those innocent words could hold so much. My mommy was as much of a grandma to her as Wilma was, but she didn't see any connection.

  “I don't know where she is, sweetheart.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Did you know that my mommy is your grandma too?”

  Anneke shook her head as she frowned. “I have a gramma. Oma Wilma. Mommy says she's a good gramma.” Anneke delivered the information in a matter-of-fact tone that neatly sheared away any bit of family connection I shared with Anneke, Nicholas, and Leslie.