Confused, I looked at the top of the calendar, searching for answers.
Large black numbers at the top of the page spelled out everything perfectly; the year read 1960.
My head suddenly felt light, like it had left my shoulders and was floating its way to the ceiling. The numbers of the calendar blurred and the voices around me swirled together, becoming a rush of overwhelming noise that threatened to engulf my body and carry it away.
It had to be a joke, a horribly cruel and elaborate joke. I felt my knees giving out, the weight of the bizarre situation taking me down. Trying to shut out the noise, I closed my eyes, praying this was all only a dream, or rather, a nightmare.
Most likely, I was really asleep on my grandmother’s bed and just needed to wake up. This was all a result of having Aunt Sarah on the brain; my subconscious was taking the comparisons to new heights.
Barely feeling the hands on my arms guiding me to sit down, I tried picturing something safe and familiar, someplace like home. Images of waves pounding the shore and seagulls swooping through the air helped my muscles relax. I imagined sinking my toes into white powdery sand, the salty air fresh on my cheeks. Home. I wanted to be home.
Chapter Three
Putting the Pieces Together
A sharp elbow into my side made me groan and cover my face with a pillow. “Go away, Corey,” I muttered, still tired from my restless sleep. What an awful dream, I thought, remembering my fear from the night before. It felt so real.
“Dad said you better get up now, or he’ll send Rodney up with a bucket of water,” said a little voice in my ear.
I shot up in bed, sending the little girl beside me tumbling over the edge and landing on the floor with a thud. She scampered out the door, yelping like a wounded puppy. Scrambling from the sheets, I pulled on the first piece of clothing I could find; sometime in the middle of the night, I must have stripped down to only a T-shirt and underwear. “Wait!” I yelled after the girl, stumbling as my foot caught in the leg of the pants I was struggling to put on.
Lurching down the steps, one leg into my jeans, I caught hold of the railing and swayed off balance. The back of my head throbbed and a queasy, uneasy feeling tickled the pit of my stomach. The little girl on my bed looked strangely familiar – like one of the kids from my dream last night.
I rounded the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, hoping to catch sight of the strange girl.
Instead, I came to a sudden stop, my eyes wide in disbelief. The kitchen was exactly the same as in my dream. The wood stove burning bright, the sink with no plumbing, the plain walls. It hadn’t been a nightmare. I doubled over like I’d been punched in the stomach.
What was happening?
The girl from my bedroom sat at the table, frowning in my direction. Before I could ask who she was, the woman who had found me in the barn last night entered the room, an overflowing basket of laundry in her arms.
“Janice! Outside and feed the pigs,” she ordered, a clothespin stuck between her teeth. “Sarah, if you’re feeling better now, get out and help your brothers finish the cows. Oh!” She faltered on her way through the door, “First, get the eggs for breakfast, then go out to the barn.”
Janice hopped from the table and ran to the porch, putting her tiny feet into rubber boots that were at least three sizes too big. I watched in a confused trance-like state as she made her way across the yard toward a large weather-beaten shed. Through the metal fence surrounding the shed, I spotted pigs rooting around in the soil.
Jeez, the pigs were twice the size of Janice. She had to be, what? Five years old? I shuddered to think of what could happen to the tiny girl amidst the snuffling, boorish pigs.
I felt the woman staring at me, her eyebrow raised in question. Standing there like a zombie, I was completely baffled by my surroundings, one bare leg sticking out of my jeans. I knew the woman expected me to move, to respond, but I was still trying to process where I was, let alone who I was.
Hastily, I put on my jeans properly. A quick glance at the fridge told me exactly what I learned before. The year still read 1960, and I was in the same backwoods country house with a family that didn’t even have running water. Water. Just the thought of running water sent a stabbing sensation to my stomach, telling me I needed to go to the bathroom. I looked around frantically, wondering where the bathroom could possibly be if the sink didn’t have any plumbing.
Embarrassed, I said, “I have to go to the bathroom…” I trailed off, hoping the woman would give me some sort of direction.
She sighed, running her hand through her hair in a tired motion. “Well, get out there, go! Hurry up, now before your father catches you moping around. And get those eggs to me quick.” She left me standing there, continuing to mumble to herself as she carried the laundry to the clotheslines strung up in the side yard.
Stepping out of the house, I tried to keep my fears in check. No one had hurt me yet. No one had tied me up or kept me from trying to leave. In fact, it was just the opposite. Everyone acted like I belonged here, even going so far as to expect me to jump right in and help with chores. And by far the weirdest part, which was also scary, was that they thought my name was Sarah. Coincidence? Yes. Disturbing? Definitely.
Rounding the corner of the house, I stopped dead in my tracks. I had found the bathroom. A closet-sized shack with a crescent moon cut into the door stood alone in the back yard. I fought back my instantaneous revulsion, too far past the point of holding it that I couldn’t care what the facilities were like. Inside, it was all I imagined; a wooden seat with a dark, endless hole in the middle. Spider webs graced the corners of the ceiling and my hands shook as I pushed my jeans down to my knees.
Sunlight filtered through tiny cracks of the outhouse boards and shone in muted strips across my legs. My jeans! All thought of spiders and creepy crawlies vanished as my hands brushed the knees of my eighty dollar vintage Express jeans. Patches had been sewn over the perfectly designed holes, the “worn” look now totally marred with tacky bits of mismatched squares of denim. Swearing under my breath, I tried pulling at the stitches. I had saved my allowance for three months to buy these jeans. It was one of the many things Dad and I had argued over incessantly. He refused to buy anything so expensive that looked, as he put it, like a hobo had worn already. Fashion was something a Dad would never understand.
When I finished pulling the patches off, I threw them down the hole in disdain. I looked around for the toilet roll, but the only paper in sight was a yellowed Sears and Roebuck catalogue hanging from a rusty nail. A few pages were missing, jagged edges left behind. You have got to be kidding me! I wanted to shout. I have to wipe myself with real paper? I know I’ve seen this in a movie somewhere!
Hesitant, I reached out and snatched a piece of paper from the book. Out of curiosity, I glanced at the ads on the page. Young girls, possibly my age, posed in wide plaid knee length skirts and creased, button down blouses. The girls all had shoulder length hair secured with a head band, their hair flipping up slightly at the ends. Everything around me screamed the fifties and sixties. It was as if I had gone to sleep, and instead of waking up in the future like Rip Van Winkle, I had gone back a few decades. How was that possible?
As I sat there in the stuffy confines of the outhouse, my thoughts began to run together trying to place the facts and clues into some kind of order. My family had arrived on the anniversary of my dead aunt’s birthday – a dead aunt who I resembled so much that I could have been her identical twin. During the storm, when I jumped through the hatch in the barn, lightning had flashed and I hit my head. I woke up in the barn of a family that was so similar to my dad’s that it was disturbing. Their calendar says it’s 1960 and it had my aunt’s name on it – the name they keep calling me. Could it be? Even as I thought the impossible, my head began to pound in a dizzying manner.
Could I really have gone back in time and become my Aunt Sarah?
The thought was so radical and yet, made so much s
ense that it sent my head into a spiral of confusion.
I jumped from the seat and retched into the seemingly infinite black pit.
Weak, I leaned my head against the wooden bench and held on to the seat for support. If my friends could see me now – bent over, puking in an outhouse, my pants around my ankles. God, I was in such a mess.
After patting myself gingerly with a piece of the catalogue, I pulled up my jeans and staggered out into the morning sunshine.
The weight of the world rested on my shoulders; if it was true, if I really had come back in time as my Aunt Sarah, then the next question was… why? Was I supposed to serve some sort of purpose? Or was I serving some sort of punishment? I pondered these questions as I wandered the fenced-in yard of the farmhouse.
The woman, who was quite possibly Gran – those familiar eyes and the nose – spotted my wayward wandering and shouted across the yard, “Sarah! Sarah!” Sheets snapped in her face and billowed in the morning breeze. “Sarah! Get me those eggs and quit lollygagging about. I’m two seconds from tanning your backside!” The tone in her voice led me to believe she wasn’t kidding.
I hurried across the yard, unsure of my next move. Should I go along with everything? Should I run away? How could I possibly go through with the everyday chores and be a believable version of my Aunt Sarah, if that were in fact who I was supposed to be?
I knew for certain I did not want my “backside tanned”, so I approached the fenced-in chicken coop warily, dreading the task ahead.
Chickens darted around the gravel enclosure in spastic movements. Their beady eyes and sharp beaks freaked me out – they looked sinister and calculating, eyeballing my legs like pecking posts.
Stepping into the pen, I shuffled my feet through the mass of feathers and feed toward the coop. I couldn’t help but flinch every time a chicken flitted across my path. Opening the door to the coop, a wall of musty, stale air tinged with the harsh scent of ammonia hit my nose with a vengeance, causing my eyes to tear. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and scanned the line of nests for eggs. Several laying hens still sat over their prizes, unwilling to leave their eggs unprotected. Through my blurred vision, I searched for something to help me coerce the chickens from their roost, my eyes finally locking on a long stick that leaned against the wall.
Feathers flew and chickens flapped in protest as I pushed them from their nests. “Sorry! Sorry!” I said from behind my shirt. “Just give me the eggs and I’ll leave. Ow! Dammit!” I swore as one of the agitated chickens mistakenly took my toes for feed.
Grabbing the first few available eggs, I threw them into the hem of my shirt as I held it out like an apron. My toes squished and slid on chicken scrap and I cringed as it oozed up and over my skin. I left the remaining eggs to the chaos and crashed through the coop’s door.
Bursting through the wired fence, I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have escaped with five eggs, all of them still intact.
Apparently, my efforts weren’t enough, as the woman, who I realized with startling clarity, was Gran, sent me a disapproving look as she collected the meager supply. “Get out there and get your brothers. The oatmeal’s about to burn and I still gotta cook these eggs. Can you at least do that?” She turned before I could say anything, my cheeks red with shame.
I crossed the field quickly, my bare feet moist with morning dew. The red barn looked out of place on the farm, its bright cheery color a stark difference to the rest of the drab buildings on the property. I reached the heavy doors of the great barn and stopped, a shiver of anxiety creeping down my spine.
Was this where it had happened? Did the barn have some sort of magical powers?
The thought was so absurd I laughed aloud.
Shouting came from inside.
I heard loud voices raised in argument.
“You do her cows! I’m hungry and I’m going inside! She’s milking her injury just like she does everything else, and getting away with it. I bet she won’t be too hurt to meet up with Dave later,” I heard one of the boys argue.
Dave? Why did that name ring a bell?
I screwed up my face in concentration, trying to place the name.
Rodney burst through the barn doors and strode past me, brushing my shoulder and nearly knocking me over.
“Hey! Watch it!” I shouted, puzzled at his aggressive behavior.
Rodney never turned around. He headed straight for the farmhouse, his cheeks flushed red with fury.
Bobby came through the doors next. “You owe me,” he said, staring at me. “I did all your cows today, you do all mine tomorrow.” He followed Rodney’s path to the house, stopping to drink from a bucket by a rusty red water pump.
Anxious to get some sort of feedback, any sort of clues to my situation, I called out to him, “Wait!”
I knew then that it was me the two boys were arguing about and I was clueless to what I had done. How could I know what I was doing wrong when I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing in the first place?
Bobby paused by the water pump, allowing me to catch up.
“Thanks, for the cows, I mean. I’m….” I thought for a minute, said, “I’m still not feeling myself yet after the whole accident thing, you know?”
He looked at me strangely, and I wondered if I could trust him with my secret. Suddenly, he threw his arm around my neck and pulled my face into his armpit. I fought back, screaming in revulsion. The smell of sweat and body odor overwhelmed me, causing my stomach to turn. Bobby laughed hysterically and released me into a gasping heap on the grass.
“Next time, sis, you better think about the consequences of missing chores,” he teased, pulling me to my feet.
“You’re disgusting,” I retorted, wiping my shirt across my face.
Bobby laughed again. I followed him to the house, keeping my nose a healthy distance from his nasty body.
The kitchen was a picture of controlled chaos. Children, crowded elbow to elbow, sat eagerly at the table clanking their silverware against their bowls. Gran, unfamiliar to me with her full head of brown hair and slim figure, stood at the wood stove stirring a thick, gray mass I assumed was oatmeal. Grandpa was nowhere to be seen. I glanced at the clock. 6:20 a.m. I grimaced. It felt like I had been up for hours.
I scanned the group for the boy, Dean, who was supposed to be my father. His gangly skinny body sat with folded hands, a thatch of brown hair covering his forehead and freckles dotting his cheeks. A scene flashed through my mind of a recent fight we’d had before the trip to Minnesota. I would take it all back now, if it meant leaving this hellish sentence I served, being stuck in the past. It was ironic, me playing the part of my Aunt Sarah. My entire life I had hated being compared to her, and now I was her. It was enough to make me want to throw up again.
I took the last available seat at the table, trying to figure out the “who’s who” of my temporary siblings. Rodney and Bobby were easy, as were the twins Laura and Linda in their highchairs. After running through the names and picturing their portraits from the stairway, I figured out Louise, Matthew, Patrick, Joyce, and Janice based on their size and recognizable features. It was funny how it all seemed so obvious now, what I had missed before. My father’s family wasn’t something you could quite ignore or forget.
I spooned several scoops of sugar onto my oatmeal, trying to make it edible while listening in on the conversations at the table.
Before I knew it, everyone had finished and disappeared through the door, leaving a stack of dirty dishes and two fussy toddlers. I felt sorry for whoever had to do the nasty, crusted pile of dishes. Offering the twins a spoon coated in sugar, I sat back to contemplate my next move.
Gran appeared from the pantry and took the twins from the room, hefting their chubby bodies, one in each arm, with little effort.
I sat at the table in a numb state. What was I supposed to do now? It’s not like there’s a list or anything. Maybe I could sneak upstairs for a nap.
As if reading my mind, Louise stumbled thr
ough the door hauling a five-gallon bucket of water. Some of the water sloshed to the floor, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Here,” she said, “I’ll go get the rinse water.”
“Oh,” was all I managed to say, realizing the nasty crusted pile of dishes had been left for me. I eyed the bucket with curiosity. Now what? If I couldn’t do the simplest of chores, what would the family think then? There was no way I could pretend to be Sarah, but until I could figure out why I was there, I would have to muddle my way through.
If I served my sentence, then maybe the god of time travel would let me go home.
I could only hope.
I plugged the sink with a rag and poured some of the cool well water into the reservoir on the wood stove. Waiting for the water to come to a boil, the little bubbles slowly forging their way to the surface, I let my mind wander, thinking about all the things I had heard about Sarah. Of course, I already knew I looked like her. But what about her personality? What about the details of her mysterious death?
Her death. The bare facts I learned as a child came to me all at once, weakening my knees. I grabbed the edge of the sink, the same nauseous, dizzy feeling from before overwhelming my senses.
If everything were true – if I had come back to the year 1960 and I really had taken the place of Sarah, and the family had just celebrated her fifteenth birthday last night… with all these things in place there was one thing I could know for sure. If I happened to be around in August, two months from now…. then I was supposed to die.
Chapter Four
The Bright Side?
The screen door to the porch screeched and slammed shut, startling me out of a dazed stupor. I turned from the sink and suppressed a gasp. The most beautiful boy I had ever seen was walking across the kitchen in my direction.
Linked Through Time Page 3