Roadwalkers

by Shirley Ann Grau

  Rita sat on the back steps and played with the cat who had brought her kitten out of hiding. After a while her mother called to her, “Spread the cloth, chère. I am ready with the food.”

  Rita wiped her hands clean on the kitchen towel and got the tablecloth from the little dresser under the window. She gave it a snap to shake out the crumbs that had dried on it since yesterday and carried it into the living room. The priest lifted his paper with one hand, his radio with the other, and she spread the cloth on the table. He put down the radio and leaned back in his chair, reading, while she brought knife and fork and glass and napkin.

  Her mother set down the filled plate, and the priest folded away the newspaper, his nose crinkling at the smell of food. Rita got the loaf of bread and the board and bread knife and put them at his left hand. Her mother got out the bottle of wine and put it next to the bread. The priest poured a glass, drank it, then poured a second.

  Her mother never took any wine, Rita noticed. Never. On the walk home, leaving the priest to wash his own dishes, she said, “Mama, you never take any wine.”

  “A man needs his wine,” Mrs. Landry said, “even if he is a priest.”

  Rita Landry remembered that walk home: the soft dark, the train blowing its whistle as it passed the intersection at Belleterre, the faintly sour odor of their house, which came partly from her father and partly from her baby sister and partly from the wallpaper paste.

  She could think of such things now without tears stinging her eyes like pepper. She knew she could not go back, that her mother had the old man her father to take care of, and the baby too, that there was no place for her, not anymore. But it didn’t matter. She was no longer homesick. She was content. She might even have been happy.

  So, on that Wednesday morning Rita Landry from Little Mirassou River, neatly dressed in brown with a white scarf covering her hair, finished cleaning the statue of the Queen of Heaven and began polishing the floor, carefully, on hands and knees. When the bell rang for morning collation, she stood up, stretched, rubbed her back and her knees. She took off her apron and rolled down her sleeves. She was hungry for milky coffee, sweet and hot, and yesterday’s bread to dip in it.

  “Very good work, child.” Sister Agnes, hands properly tucked in her sleeves, came to the door of her office. It was a pleasant room, just off the entrance hall, with a bright patterned rug, two big chairs, and a window that looked out on a magnolia tree where squirrels played and chattered. The only telephone in the building was on the wide dark desk, and Sister Agnes was the only one to use it. She kept all records and account books and thumped her ledgers angrily when the totals did not tally. She was tall and thin, and her skin was a very light yellow, as if she had jaundice. She had been raised in a convent in Paris, people said.

  Rita’s stomach growled. Sister Agnes put her arm around her shoulders. “We are both hungry,” she said.

  That afternoon, as Rita Landry was gathering up her cloths and buckets, the front doorbell rang. She stopped, surprised and curious. No one ever used that entrance.

  Sister Agnes herself opened the door to a patch of dazzling daylight, a rush of street sounds. Sister Agnes stood aside. Two men walked in, white men.

  Rita Landry had never seen a white person enter the building, though she’d heard that once a year the bishop came and the children sang a song for him.

  “Good day,” one of the men said pleasantly. He was short and square; his hair, when he took off his wide-brimmed hat, was thin and blond.

  “You are Mr. Tucker?” Sister Agnes’s rosary clicked softly, bead against bead.

  “We are both Mr. Tucker.” The second man, who was tall and thin, carried something wrapped in a blanket. He put it on the floor; it moved slightly and was still. “There it is, Sister. You know all about it. Leastways you know all we know about it.” He bent, took the end of the blanket, and jerked.

  A small black child rolled out. A narrow face, small shiny eyes like a mouse’s, a bald head. It wore a pair of overalls and a green sweater, both far too large. A kind of rope harness went around its chest.

  The tall man picked up the leash attached to the harness. “You might best hang on to this,” he said with a wide easy grin. “She’s mighty quick and she has led us on some wild chases.”

  The shorter man said, “Her hair’s shaved account of bugs.”

  Sister Agnes nodded. “I understand.”

  “She’s clean now though and she’s been dosed for worms. The doctor says she’s healthy enough, though he don’t exactly know how that could be possible.”

  “I have been told her story.” The words hung in the air, quiet, precise. “It is unusual for white people to concern themselves with a colored child.”

  “Well, we didn’t exactly look for her, but we got her anyway. My boss says that makes her an obligation.”

  “She is fortunate in her friends.” An edge to the quiet voice. “We will do what we can, but I would not expect too much.”

  “Good enough for us.” The tall man picked up the blanket, dropped it over the child, then picked her up. “Like that, see. Sometimes she gets a notion to bite.” He pushed the bundle into Sister Agnes’s starched wimple.

  She tucked it firmly under one arm.

  “Good day to you then, Sister.” Their shoes clacked across the polished boards, steel heel caps leaving tiny marks in the fresh wax. They opened the door crisply, closed it firmly, not quite slamming it, and clattered down the steps. A murmur of voices, a short quick laugh, a backfire as their car started.

  “Rita, my dear,” Sister Agnes said, “a bird could build a nest in your mouth, it is so wide open. Now, take this poor child for me.”

  Rita did as she was told and felt, within the blanket, something hard, a bunch of bones. “Is it dead?”

  “You saw it move a minute ago. Being wrapped in a blanket won’t hurt it.” Sister Agnes wiped her hands down the sides of her habit, then shook them as if they’d been wet. “Since you are here, you can help me. Come along now.”

  Up stairs. Down corridors. Past the infirmary—six beds on one wall, empty now, two washbasins on the other. Through a small door. Along a short narrow hall. Past a storeroom lined with cluttered shelves: folded sheets, piled and toppling to one side; a roll of dark blue paper in a box marked STERILE COTTON; bedpans; scissors; five large empty glass bottles stamped HORLICKS MALTED MILK.

  Sister Agnes unlocked a door at the far end of the hall. “This was once the contagion ward. Now we find it much easier to tend all sick children in the infirmary.”

  The room was clean and smelled of carbolic soap. Its long window, covered with heavy wire mesh, looked out on an iron fire escape. On the floor was a pallet, a folded blanket, sheet, and pillow. In a corner was a bedpan. Nothing else. No furniture, only the cracked black linoleum on the floor.

  “Set her down now.”

  Rita put the bundle on the floor. It did not move.

  “We’ll leave her for a while.” Sister Agnes locked the door behind them. “At suppertime, bring her food. Talk to her.” Sister Agnes’s rubber heels thudded, her rosary clacked. “The child seems to have no family. She has been living in the wild, like an animal.” She hesitated and looked down the wide hall toward the statue of the Virgin. “But she has a soul, just as you and I do. It will be our task to return her to God. Now come to my office. I must speak to Sister Bernadette.”

  Sister Bernadette was tall, very black, with a thin goatee of white hairs that shivered in the light. She was in charge of the youngest girls’ dormitory.

  “I know that you are very busy,” Sister Agnes said to her. “I know too that this new child is going to require a great deal of attention. Perhaps we should put her in Rita’s charge?”

  Sister Bernadette nodded. She spoke only when it was absolutely necessary.

  “Rita is a capable girl. She will be able to manage perfectly well with only a little guidance from you.”

  Sister Bernadette nodded again.

  Si
ster Agnes searched through the books on her desk, selected a small flat black ledger. “I must add the poor little one to our roster.” She unscrewed the top of her pen, shook it, tested the nib against her black skirt. “What shall we call her, since she has no name?”

  Sister Bernadette shrugged and stared out the window in silence.

  “Have you a suggestion, Rita?”

  Remembering the statue with the crown of stars, she said, “Mary.”

  “Yes.” Sister Agnes wrote; the pen stuck and spattered. She wiped it on her skirt again. “And her last name will be Woods. The place where she was found. Mary Woods.”

  After supper, when the older girls had cleared the refectory tables and grouped the younger ones into study groups, when the room filled with the sound of sniffling and coughing, of scratching pencils and weary sighs, Sister Bernadette handed Rita a tin cup of milk and a mayonnaise sandwich wrapped in a scrap of butcher paper. “We will visit Mary Woods.”

  A small group of children began chanting their addition tables. “Too loud,” Sister Bernadette said sharply.

  The children stopped, held their breaths, and began again in a whisper.

  As Rita and Sister Bernadette left the refectory, the voices increased rapidly until the chant was as loud as ever. Sister Bernadette gave a small smile, showing the tips of her yellow teeth. “I have no time for them now.”

  Again along empty corridors, through the infirmary. “Now”—Sister Bernadette lifted the open padlock from the hasp of the door—“we will see if our new Mary Woods is hungry.”

  The dim light from the hall, falling through the transom, showed them the child sitting on the folded blanket in the center of the room.

  “Hello, Mary,” Sister Bernadette said. “We have come to see you. Rita, switch on the overhead light.”

  A small face caught in the sudden glare of a bare bulb, a small, very black face. Eyes startled, wide open, luminous, with a curious bloom on them, like a ripe plum. “You are hungry,” Sister Bernadette said, “aren’t you, Mary?”

  The eyes did not blink. Metallic eyes with a frost on them, like a knife blade left out in the cold.

  “The good Lord has rescued you and given you to us.”

  On the shaved head new hair had begun to grow. It wrapped the small skull tightly and transparently, like a veil. Under it a network of veins showed clearly. One, just over the left ear, was throbbing steadily.

  “Rita, stand by the door and keep it closed,” Sister Bernadette said. “Now, Mary, here is some milk for you.”

  Cup in outstretched hand, she stepped slowly across the small room. With a flash and a rush of air, the child dodged past to throw herself against the door. The small body, like a tangle of wire under its clothes, thudded against Rita’s legs. There was a sharp pain above her knee.

  Sister Bernadette repeated calmly, “Hold the door, Rita.” She picked up the child, held it squirming in the air, and slapped it twice.

  “Bad,” Sister Bernadette said loudly. “Bad. No. Wicked.” She released her hold. The child dropped limply to the floor.

  Sister Bernadette put the sandwich next to the cup of milk on the windowsill. “Rita, we must get you a new rosary.”

  Rita looked down. The loop of brown wooden beads which she wore, nun-like, from her belt was broken. She had not noticed.

  “When she bit you,” Sister Bernadette said quietly, “the rosary got in her teeth.”

  Rita lifted her skirts for a quick look. No blood, no broken skin.

  “A bruise,” Sister Bernadette said briskly, “nothing more. Come now, the child is wet. We’ll take the clothes, you can wash them in the morning.”

  The child’s eyes were closed and her head sagged on her neck. They left her naked on the pallet of blanket and sheet.

  The following morning Rita went alone, carrying a cup or milk and a slice of bread with syrup. She opened the door carefully, slipped inside. Mary Woods sat on her pallet, wrapped in the blanket. She seemed to be shivering, though the room was very warm. Rita put the cup of milk and the slice of bread on the floor between them. The child’s black eyes, which had lost their metallic glitter, followed her. Neither face nor body moved.

  Rita sat down, leaning against the door. The room stank: there was a puddle of urine and feces in the corner. “Mary Woods, I am supposed to take care of you, but I can’t even clean up that mess, because you’ll run away if I leave the door.”

  The child waited, eyes fixed on her face. In the silence, Rita could hear pipes rattling and creaking far off in the walls. “You hear that? They have started work in the laundry. That’s where I would be if I wasn’t up here talking to you. I like working in the laundry.”

  The smell of soap so sharp it prickled your nose. The sweet smell of boiled starch and blueing. The clouds of steam that obscured everything like a warm fog. The sweat that poured off your face and ran down your body under your clothes and left you feeling washed and clean yourself.

  “I like working in the laundry,” Rita repeated. “And I don’t like sitting here with you in a room full of shit.” She crossed herself hastily, resolving to confess to the sin of bad language. And maybe the sin of unkindness too—but she hadn’t been unkind, she thought, she’d only said the truth.

  “Mary Woods,” she said, “that is your breakfast, and you’d better eat it because there ain’t going to be anything else until noontime.”

  The eyes continued to stare, unblinking.

  “Maybe you don’t like it here, but you are going to have to get used to it.”

  A faint movement as a hand drew the blanket tighter.

  “Maybe you understand what I say and maybe you don’t, but you can learn.”

  Rita sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the morning sky through the mesh of the window. Nothing moved out there, not even a bird or a cloud. “I have things to do now,” she said finally.

  At noon Sister Bernadette came with her. “This room stinks.”

  “I couldn’t leave the door to clean it, Sister.”

  “I will put on a bolt, one too high for her to reach.”

  “Yes, Sister,” Rita said.

  And thought: I have seen this before. This room. The food waiting on the floor. The locked door and mesh over the window like bars. She is an animal in a cage. Like at the circus in Stevensport, in the Little Mirassou River country.

  It was the week her mother won the numbers at Al Vauchon’s grocery store. She shrieked and cried real tears of joy while Al counted the money into her hand. She forgot about everything, her own housework, the little priest’s supper. She and her family—her daughters and the old man her husband—all crowded into the back of the grocery truck and went to the Circus Fair at Stevensport.

  It was late summer. The cotton was making, fields still and white under motionless air. The fairgrounds were right on the river, their treeless expanse crowded with parked cars and wagons and booths and tents and a slow-turning Ferris wheel shimmering in the heat. Taking her mother’s umbrella, Rita climbed the river levee to sit cross-legged in the thick clover grass on the top. She opened the umbrella and settled herself comfortably in the small round shade. She was dizzy with excitement, as if she balanced on an acrobat’s high wire. On one side were crowds and clusters of people and the wheezing whistling panting tunes of a calliope; on the other, a batture of bright green willows and a wide fast-moving river, its surface wrinkled by currents and eddies. There was always a little breeze on the river, moving like a slow-waving flag above the surface of the water, carrying smells of mud and damp and sweet decay. People said the river was warm even in winter, because of all the decaying things in it, like a manure pile.

  Jack Bourgeois was courting her sister Ursula, buying her Nehis and daring her to come with him on the Ferris wheel. She wouldn’t go on any ride, not even the flying horses, but she stuck the Nehi caps to the pocket of her white blouse, one orange, one cherry.

  Rita thought, I wish I had somebody to buy me drinks, I wish.
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br />   In the shade of a truck her mother fanned herself with the edge of her skirt and waved to Rita. “Chère, what do you do?” her mother shouted and sighed and coughed all at once. “I see you up there, like a little scarecrow, arms stuck out, turning in the breeze. You come down here to me.” Her mother held out a palm of coins. “I am too old and too fat to go pirooting with the young people. This is your share, bébé. When it is gone, then we must go back home.”

  The coins grew hot inside Rita’s clenched fist, grew wet from the sweat that ran down her arm. She bought an ice-cream cone and ate it quickly, from both ends at once, so that not a single drop was lost. She watched the bumper cars and saw that there was a couple in each one, boy’s arm wrapped tightly around girl’s waist. For a moment she thought of taking a car by herself, but the shrieking laughter of the pairs sounded threatening, and she slipped out of the waiting line. She paused at the cotton-candy booth, but her mouth was still sweet from the ice cream. She went into the circus, a tight circle of booths and wagons and tents. Her hand opened almost by itself to give up a coin to enter. The Bearded Lady, Atlas flexing his muscles, Dog Boy. And the animals. They were grouped together, sheltered from the sun by a canvas tent. There was a small elephant, leg shackled to a post, its trainer dozing in a chair alongside. Slowly, ponderously, noisily, the elephant sucked from his water bucket, raised his trunk and sprayed the crowd. Screeching and giggling they ran backward, stopped, shouted for the animal to do it again.

  Rita wiped the spray from her arm. Now the elephant squirted water on its own back; the trainer sprawled farther back in his chair and slept more soundly. The crowd grew bored and drifted off.

  Rita smelled the cats even before she saw them. Three large red-and-gold cages held unmoving lumps of spots and stripes. Electric fans blew into each cage, and a man in a dark blue uniform sloshed buckets of water across each floor. The animals did not move as the water flowed around them. The pads of their feet, stretched out toward her, were big as platters.

  Her second-to-last coin went for admission to the Hall of Wonders and Horrors. (The last coin, she decided, would go for an orange Nehi, so she would have a bottle cap to fasten to her blouse.) Inside this tent, the crowd thinned, people no longer pushed at her elbows, and she could move more slowly. It was hot, stinging with dust, stifling, and dark. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with black cloth. The only lights were directly over the animal cages.