The Knot was a community where poverty ran heavy, prosperity unable to reach down the narrow, winding, two lane roads riddled with blind curves and dark hollows. It was said if you went in the Knot during deep fog, you didn’t come out. The road became invisible and the drive treacherous. Most of the children from the Knot would attend school in neighboring Diggsville, but a few fell under the protection of the Franklin Hill school district. Those few children climbed aboard a school bus at 6:20 in the morning, half asleep and rarely appearing to be well fed, much less well-prepared for class.
Grace’s first priority was to appropriate an office cabinet or closet to fill with a stockpile of donated items for those who lacked pencils, notebooks and other school supplies. One of her nieces had already shared with her the story of an art teacher who had harangued a ten-year-old girl in front of the class, threatening that the girl would not be allowed to attend the class if she wasn’t capable of bringing the appropriate and required supplies. The telling factor was that the child was not only from Grave’s Knot, she was a child of color. Her father, a disabled black GI, had returned from his tour of Iraq via Germany, acquiring a pretty blonde German wife along the way. Army disability pay was a slim living with two children and a wife with only minimal English. And work was hard to come by for a man with not one but two missing limbs.
That young girl had stared at the wall, stony faced, while the teacher expressed her disdain for an unprepared pupil and poured her venom into the air, no doubt oblivious to the girl’s need for decent shoes while viciously lamenting the lack of colored pencils.
The fifth grade art class took its own measure of justice for the harshness of their instructor. The next day, as that same ten-year-old walked into class, she bumped into a large boy who then offered to pick up her fallen books. When he returned the stack to her, it included an art supply box full to the brim. Color suffused the face of the girl, but her benefactor insisted, shaking his head when she tried to return the box. “This ain’t charity,” he whispered hoarsely, “It’s ‘cause we don’t like that old witch and we don’t like how she talked to you. So we all just put in some extra stuff that we had laying around.” Then he grinned at her, a wide unassuming smile of camaraderie, and the light had come into her eyes. A friendship was formed.
Grace designed a mental picture of herself with stocks of fresh pencils and crayons, notebooks in bright colors, boxes of Kleenex at the ready, standing in the small office and handing them to the dark-haired shoplifter. Then seeing a smile on the face of that child. Of course, in her fantasy the child was dressed in a crisp orange sweatshirt with freshly washed hair and pink cheeks.
She could see herself hugging the small girl and sending her off to class, mentally adding a new backpack to the pleasant picture.
Her shoulders sagged slightly as the fantasy faded. There would be twenty or thirty or fifty little girls and boys without supplies, teenagers without gym clothes and children every day without lunch money. There would be shivering kids without coats, gloves or hats. And how many would there be needing shoes? It was not one child, it was over a hundred children, some with parents, some without. Children needing supplies, clothing, love, attention, a warm meal and the morale boost of teachers who wanted them in class and were god-willing, able, and ready to teach. Grace sighed.
The file fell from her lap, scattering its contents across the rug. She shook her head, back to reality, and reached to pick up the papers. A Post-it note fell to the floor. “Mrs. Gilmer in K-1 called again to report Gina P ‘unwashed’ in class. No report filed with Children’s Services. Noted in record.” Grace read the crumpled note, written the previous March, thinking the looping scrawl must be Homer Emerson’s. She could fairly feel the dismay in Homer’s note. The child was coming to school without a bath. Homer recorded it dutifully and moved on. He did not address the issue because he felt incapable of correcting the problem. Grace decided to assume the best of Homer. She fingered the note again and then thoughtfully placed it back in the folder, pressing out the creases. She would keep an eye out for Gina P.
In the meantime, she took the growing list she was making and added an item. “See if local churches will provide extra bag lunches.” Peanut butter and jelly here, a bologna sandwich there and a couple of kids would be fed for another day. Franklin Hill prided itself on being a church-going community. It was time to call for some good works from those that preached so loud and long. Make them put their money where their mouths were.
Grace knew that the federal lunch assistance program didn’t always reach the families that needed it. Then there was the embarrassment of carrying a bright yellow lunch card that labeled you a “free lunch” child. Grace made a note to look into how the Franklin Hill system worked and see if it could be changed to avoid embarrassment for those students. She herself had worked in the school cafeteria to pay for her own lunch when she turned twelve. The cooks in the cafeteria had saved butter and bread for her, taking her under their wing and seeing that she left the kitchen with extra snacks. These days, the school district wouldn’t allow a child to run a garbage disposal or commercial dishwasher as she had done. Those jobs were now filled by men and women who could find no other work in Franklin Hill.
Chapter Eight
Police Investigate Suspicious Activity at Elm Grove Memorial Cemetery
On Saturday, October 27, police were called to Elm Grove Memorial Cemetery on Route Z by a motorist reporting a suspicious person or persons. Sheriff Boyd Reed reported that Ms. Alice Zimmerman was briefly taken into custody after she was found in possession of a magnum of champagne, wearing a party hat and blowing a kazoo. Ms. Zimmerman appeared to be inebriated. Sheriff Boyd stated “Ms. Zimmerman, the perpetrator, was intoxicated and therefore taken into custody for her own safety.” The investigating officer reported that Ms. Zimmerman was dancing on the grave of Barber “Rebarb” Zimmerman. Barber Zimmerman, the former husband of Alice Zimmerman, died on October 1 in a tragic fishing accident involving hip waders and a trolling motor. The officer removed Ms. Zimmerman for her own protection due to the instability of the ground in the immediate area. Ms. Zimmerman was released into the custody of her minister, the Right Reverend Andrew Horstman. No charges are expected to be filed.
Grace slid into a pew in the back of St. John’s Catholic Church on Sunday and watched the mass as an observer. The church had changed little over the years. She refused to allow herself to be pulled into the drift of childhood memories today. She listened to the mass with a jaundiced ear, waiting for the priest to reach out and speak to her. The father, a nameless octogenarian, chanted the Mass in English these days, but still it did not seep into her soul. The incense was familiar, the robes of the priest drifted around his bent shoulders, candles still flickered at the altar, prayers for the dead and dying, wishes cast in red glass. She wondered if she should light a candle for her mother, who had cast her eternity into question by suicide, the ultimate sin. Years after many candles had been lit in prayer to ease Marjorie Phillips’ torment, Grace did not think it would change her mother’s fate.
As Grace sat and watched the service and worshippers before her, she sensed in herself less the need for Mass and more the need for community. But she didn’t find that welcoming spirit of community emanating from these devoted worshippers whose children played soccer together and attended the local parochial school. Grace knew Catholics who disagreed with Church doctrine and could barely mutter “Vatican II” without grumbling; those same Catholics kept their views to themselves and stepped up to receive blessed communion every Sunday.
Grace walked across the parking lot for coffee and doughnuts served by the local Boy Scouts in the small church annex. Boxes of fritters, glazed and raised donuts filled the air with a sugary wave. She searched for a plain cake doughnut which she could cut in half to dip in coffee. That could hardly be as deadly as the cinnamon twist that oozed grease onto the box but looked divine. She’d save herself for Darla’s apple fritters instead. Grace
had come here to find a familiar face or a welcoming smile but had been greeted with quizzical looks and a few whispers. If this was a “Sunday Welcome Breakfast” as the bulletin stated, her reception was not one of open arms.
“You know yourself that Alice Zimmerman has never had a drink in her life, so I could hardly believe it when I read it in the paper.” Though quiet, the comment from across the table was still audible.
“If I had been married to Rebarb Zimmerman I would have smacked him over the head with that bottle instead of waiting to dance on his grave. Poor Alice always was a mouse. He walked all over her while he slept with half the women in town and spent every dime they had. I still remember the sheriff catching him and that woman in the parking lot of the shoe factory. And Alice Zimmerman just sitting at home waiting for him.” This parishioner didn’t bother to lower her voice, willing to make her opinion known across the room.
Grace dawdled before the breakfast offerings, pretending to consider her choices as she listened to the women gossip. She picked up a plastic knife and cut a cinnamon twist in half, but before picking it up, she hesitated and moved back to the plain cake doughnut she had chosen earlier. The conversation continued.
“Alice just married her daddy all over again, that’s the problem. He was a mean one. That woman has spent a good portion of her life cowering in the corner waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not enough backbone. No spunk.”
There was a small chuckle, “Sounds like to me she’s got a lot of spunk now.” Both speakers laughed quietly.
Grace remembered when Alice Gerding had married Barber Zimmerman at St. John’s, twenty-four years before. Her Granny had commented “Now there’s the ugly duckling turned into a swan. What she wants with that good-for-nothing Rebarb is beyond me.”
Grace had always thought of Alice as pretty in an unassuming way. Alice’s auburn hair might be considered mousy by some but when she walked down the aisle that June morning it had been a magnificent mass of thick waves covered by a circlet of flowers with a flowing fingertip veil. The girl’s shy smile filled with light and the hope of what was to come in her yet-undecided life. Alice was just weeks past her eighteenth birthday, still a child, on her wedding day all those long years ago.
Barber Zimmerman, named for his late uncle, had been known as Rebarb from the day he could toddle. The day of the wedding, he had stood at the altar, a huge bulk of a man, in his powder blue tuxedo. His thick neck turning red inside the confines of the tight collar, perspiring already. Even back then, Rebarb had alternately charmed and dismayed the people of Franklin Hill with his antics.
That day he had been devoted to Alice and that devotion shone in his eyes as he looked down the long red carpet of the church and the small, smiling girl walking toward him. The two had leaned against each other as the priest held up the rings, a glint of light touching those gold bands through the saint’s windows.
Grace thought at the time that perhaps God was blessing this marriage of two young people with no thought for their prospects and no desire to move beyond the city limits of Franklin Hill.
She puzzled over what seemed to happen after people married. Ellie and Katy had both married fine men, and both had married young, delivering honeymoon babies nearly on the same day. Katy had given Christopher another child just four years ago, adding to the brood. Grace wondered if a tolerance must exist in some women that she did not see in herself. Timothy and Christopher, her brothers-in-law, were quiet, hard-working providers who still looked at their wives like they hung the moon and the stars. But living in the city, removed from the small-town existence had taught her one thing and that was that living with another person could be sometimes trying and frequently just plain difficult.
She had shared an apartment and a house with a man briefly and the assumption that she would cook, clean and shop for him all the while working more hours than he did, and keep their lives organized had been overwhelming.
Alice Zimmerman had tried and failed to live that life after Rebarb Zimmerman had saddled her with two children and a falling-down house on the far side of town. Then he became an ugly, bitter man who shouted at his children without reason, belittling Alice, begrudging any joy she found in motherhood, jealous of the two children that she raised. Grace did not ever want to walk in Alice Gerding Zimmerman’s shoes.
Grace watched the elderly priest walk amongst his parishioners, shaking hands and greeting them. He squinted at her but made no move toward her. The priest’s frame was so bent she put his age at close to ninety, if he was a day. His hands were stiff and gnarled with severe arthritis, thick glasses gave him a fish-eyed look. The breeze from the open door of the annex blew in gently past the dark-robed cleric, bringing with it the distinct smell of mothballs. Grace discarded the doughnut and walked quietly out the side door of the annex.
Chapter Nine
So Halloween came and went in Franklin Hill and November began its descent toward winter. Grace began her work at the school administration office, sorting through the jumbled mess of paper alongside Homer Emerson. Bernadine Turner, the school secretary, was employed part-time and nearing retirement. Bernadine gave Grace a warm welcome but also made it clear she was on her own with both the computer and any paperwork generated by Homer Emerson.
“Mr. Emerson tries, but he just can’t handle it all. Now, with all those new federal guidelines they put on us, he has too much to take care of as it is, poor soul.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Bernadine. That’s what I’m here for,” Grace tried to soothe Bernadine’s frowning, worried expression and packed her briefcase to take home as much work as possible.
One thing Grace did have to thank Bernadine for was her constant vigilance. She was an invaluable mix of watchdog and security guard where Nola Brayton’s presence was concerned. Grace noticed that whenever Nola appeared in the front office, Bernadine would rise gracefully and close office doors. “On a conference call with the State Board,” was one excuse. “Dealing with a truant,” fell from Bernadine’s lips another day. After Nola’s third attempt to see Grace was blocked once again with a firm smile by Bernadine, Grace had tried to thank Bernadine. But the expression on Bernadine’s face make it clear she would brook no conversation. No bones about it, Bernadine felt about Nola just as Grace did.
After a week of sitting alone in her office, in private conference with Homer Emerson’s mountains of paper, Grace was feeling a sense of satisfaction that she could so easily and efficiently deal with the forms and filing which had paralyzed the superintendent of schools and principal of Franklin Hill Elementary. She had succeeded in bulldozing her way through Homer’s immovable object. Letters were written, responses were sent to concerned parents. She made repeated phone calls, lists were started and finished. She sorted, then shredded, then filed, working with a vengeance on the backlog of paper. In the course of one week Grace had indeed brought order to chaos in the office. She grasped firmly what she was doing, how she could make it better and exactly how the school office worked. And then the peaceful quiet of paper rustling and filing came to a halt.
She could hear Bernadine’s voice through the open door, stress radiating from her responses.
“I understand, Mrs. Semple, I really do . . . but she is only in first grade. Usually Mr. Emerson,—I understand Mrs. Semple, but Mr. Emerson— Yes, she’s here and I’m sure she would help you. But Ms. Phillips has only been with us—Yes.”
Grace looked out the door at Bernadine and nodded her head. Whatever would come, this was her job and she would handle it. Bernadine looked steadily at Grace for a long moment, pursed her lips, and then turned back to the telephone, “Send her up, Mrs. Semple. Send her up now.”
Bernadine slammed the phone down none too gently. “It’s the Rodwell girl again, Ms. Phillips. She’s dirty and—” Bernadine took a breath, searching for the words “—and she smells. Mrs. Semple,” stress on the name of the culprit, “doesn’t want her in the classroom with the other children.” Apparently B
ernadine’s consternation lay not with the child but with the teacher.
A minute later, the doors to the office swung open and the dark-haired shoplifter from the IGA appeared, and halted, like a deer in a clearing, wide-eyed, staring at Grace.
“This is Gina Rodwell, Miss Phillips.” So it wasn’t Gina P. It was Gina R. So much for Homer Emerson’s handwriting.
Gina’s dark hair was a tirade of tangles and snarls, her plaid skirt, pinned together with a diaper-size safety pin, hung open slightly on the side, rent apart and pieced back together so many times the faded blue and red of the tartan print pulled threadbare, barely hanging on. The same torn tennis shoes that Grace had seen at the park showed grimy bare toes peeking through. The smell that followed the child through the door could only mean weeks-old undergarments. Grace tried to keep her face impassive and looked at the child.
“Well, we’ve met before haven’t we?” She put her hand out to the girl, offering to shake hands. “I’m Grace Phillips, Gina, nice to meet you.”
“Miss Phillips, Gina” corrected Bernadine, but not unkindly. She cast a look and inclined her head toward Grace’s office.
Grace took Bernadine’s hint and smiled at the girl who was staring at her offered hand like it was a snake, “Why don’t you go have a seat in my office, Gina? I’ll be right with you. There’s a Highlights magazine in there on the table.”
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