Until She Comes Home

by Lori Roy

  “Malina?”

  It’s a deep whisper. Malina can’t stop the shiver that travels up her spine and into her neck. The word seems to echo in the dark room.

  “Malina?” Again, no louder.

  When Malina wakes in the morning, she hopes he’ll be gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It’s long past dark and Grace should be sleeping. Instead, she is listening. The colored men have already come and gone. Every night around ten they pass, although now, because Orin Schofield sits in the back alley, the men walk down the middle of Alder Avenue. She’s glad Orin’s there. She even finds herself hoping, wishing he would find those men out on the street. Something is different since she told the police no woman was attacked in her garage. Saying it never happened is different from not telling. It’s worse. It means those men—that man—can come back.

  The year Grace turned eleven, she again stood in line on the Fourth of July to board the Ste. Claire, but rather than entertaining worries over soiled brass railings, she had thought of the boy, young man, with the easy laugh and dark hair. Or she likes to believe she thought of him, that she remembered him from the year before. The ladies’ shoulders were still fortified by pleats and pads, their waists still sculpted, their frames tall and proud. But when the ship’s horn called out, Mother said nothing about it being no time for sorrow.

  It was a different girl in James’s arms that year. Grace stood on the edge of the open-air dance floor, holding her hair at the nape of her neck, and she heard him before she saw him. He spun by, holding a dark-haired girl this time, spinning, twirling, faster with each pass. Grace had watched him, imagining how happy the girl in his arms must have been. She must have felt safe in his hands. Mother and Father danced that year too. It was the only year Father took Mother in his arms.

  The floor pulsed underfoot as Grace watched the dancers. James says he remembers a little blond girl standing alone, the wind pulling at her hair. He says he spun by and ruffled that head of hair because even then, he knew she was special. Grace doesn’t remember him ever catching her eye or giving her a wink or a nod. But she smiles when he remembers and says she remembers too.

  That was the last year Father would board the Ste. Claire. He, like others, like James, went to war in the months that followed. This is why the whole country had been bracing itself. This is why the ladies loosened their hair and wore stout shoulders in their suits. Wives and mothers rode streetcars to Michigan Central, waved good-bye to their husbands and sons as they boarded outbound trains, so many of them never to be seen again. By the next Fourth of July, Grace knew Father would never come home.

  Downstairs, James bangs about in the kitchen. He came home an hour ago and will have made coffee and read the newspaper. It’s what he does every night. Grace has told him he’s drinking too much coffee and smoking too many cigarettes. There’s all that food, she says, knowing the ladies are filling the church tables every day and night. Eat. You’re wasting away. He’ll watch a ball game if there’s one showing. More and more of the games are airing on the television. Hardly any reason to go to the ballpark anymore. Grace blinks when the bedroom door opens and light from the hallway brightens the room. She slides into a sitting position, her back resting against the headboard.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you,” James says, yanking out his shirttail and unbuttoning his shirt.

  Grace doesn’t have to ask. She need only inhale as if she’s about to speak.

  “Nope, nothing,” James says, and lays a hand on Grace’s stomach. “How’s my little guy tonight?”

  “She’s fine,” Grace says. Her smile comes easily and for a moment, things feel as they are meant to.

  Pulling his black leather belt from his trousers, James hangs it from a hook on the back of the bedroom door and sits on the edge of the bed. Propping one foot on the opposite knee, he pulls at the laces on his boot.

  “Did you have a good evening?” he says, not mentioning the police who visited at suppertime.

  “I wish I could do more. It’s so quiet here on the street. Everyone’s helping but me.” Because she’ll go again another day and doesn’t want James to forbid it, she doesn’t tell him about the trip to Willingham or the pierogi or the women.

  After taking off his first boot, James removes the second, bends to the closet floor, and hooks both on the shoe rack—right boot on the right side, left boot on the left. When he rises, a white leather shoe dangles from one finger.

  “It was yours?” he says. “That shoe in the garage was yours. Here’s the mate.”

  Grace doesn’t remember returning the single shoe to the closet. It should have been thrown away with the other clothes. It must have been there, hanging from the shoe rack since the night the man came for her.

  “How about that?” Grace says. “I guess it was.” She smiles and shrugs because she is always the one to misplace the keys or her favorite hairbrush or one of Mother’s recipes.

  It seems that it happened so long ago, that several weeks and months have passed since the men came. But it’s only days. Grace can count them on one hand. She wakes every morning, thinking so much time has passed. Things she should remember, memories that should be clear and sharp, have faded, even disappeared, as if many months separate then from now. It must feel this way because time is supposed to heal her. That’s what Mother said, so Grace’s mind is speeding it up, tricking her into thinking weeks and months have ticked by. But the slipping away isn’t because of the healing. That moment and those men seem far away, distant, because Grace is so changed. Not in a small way. Not in a passing way that happens over a day or a week. She is entirely changed. She is changed in a way so large it would usually take months and years to emerge. Surely something so huge must show through. Mother said not to tell, but surely James will see it.

  The shoe dangles from James’s finger. He rotates it from side to side, inspecting it from all angles. He’s thinking, perhaps wondering about the police who said something terrible happened in the garage, perhaps remembering what the officer with the soft curls said about a woman suffering a horrific attack. Without saying anything else, James lowers himself to one knee and slides the shoe onto the round wire that will hold its shape.

  “Shame,” he says. “We’ll buy you a new pair.”

  Grace scoots down between the sheets, and James slides in next to her. Tomorrow, she’ll go to Willingham Avenue again. If the women ask, she might tell them what really happened. They would look at her a moment, maybe sigh, and then say it’s not so bad. Seen worse. Resting one hand on James’s chest where she can feel it rise and fall, Grace nestles against him in such a way that her head fits perfectly on his shoulder, and she thinks of Orin Schofield sitting in his chair in the back alley, waiting, maybe even hoping, the colored men pass. Earlier this evening, after Mrs. Williamson would have washed up her supper dishes and Mr. Williamson would have fallen asleep listening to the radio, Mrs. Williamson tied a blue scarf around her thinning hair, walked out her back door, across the alley, up to Orin Schofield’s house, and returned to him his rifle.

  • • •

  The twins have been asleep for a few hours and still Bill isn’t home. Since the search for Elizabeth first began, all of the husbands have been coming home late, but tonight Bill is later than the rest. Well over an hour ago, Julia heard the thud of car doors, footsteps on concrete, front doors slamming and locking as the other husbands came home. Still, no sign of Bill.

  A new kind of worry settled over the ladies cooking and serving at the church today. All day they whispered about visions of a colored man wrapping a large hand around Elizabeth’s thin wrist, dragging her into a car, leaving her somewhere to die. With word of the arrest, the ladies could no longer assume, even pretend to assume, Elizabeth wandered away. It wasn’t a tragic accident. Whatever happened to Elizabeth could happen to any one of them.

  The dining-room window has been fully dark for at least two hours when a stream of light flashes across the small window
in the front door. Julia only guesses at the time. She never checks the clock. Better not to know. Overhead, the girls’ room has been quiet for some time. A car engine rattles in the driveway and falls silent. The light disappears. Keys jingle in the lock. The front door swings open.

  During the year following Maryanne’s death, Julia learned to leave supper in the oven while she waited for Bill to come home at night. Those were the months he was drinking and everyone knew it. Too often, his food would grow cold and he wouldn’t bother to eat. She learned it was always best he eat a little something, if only a few bites.

  “Sorry,” Bill says, stumbling through the front door.

  It’s as if the last two years, the better years, never existed.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Julia pushes back her chair and rushes to catch him before he falls. He throws his arms around her shoulders. She braces herself to carry his weight and pushes against his chest to steady him. It all comes back to her as if no time has passed.

  “Come eat,” she says, wrapping an arm around his waist after he has regained his balance. “Supper’s hot. Fresh out of the oven. Made those biscuits you love. Any word of Elizabeth?”

  When Julia first met Bill, she was two inches taller than he, but that didn’t last long. Her family had only just moved from Kentucky. She had a slow, thick drawl that she worked to be rid of every day. She knew Bill before his beard came in, when his shoulders were narrow and frail, when acne glowed red on his cheeks and forehead. He was a boy when they fell in love.

  “Shouldn’t be staying out so late,” he says, then drops into a seat at the table and picks up the closest glass.

  “Let me fill that.” The more water she can get down him, the better. “Is there news? I heard they arrested someone.”

  Talking is good. She learned this in the early months after Maryanne died too. The more she talks, the longer he’ll stay awake, the better chance he’ll eat a decent meal.

  “Kansas City is too damn far.” Not seeming to hear Julia, Bill sips from the glass and sets it down, sloshing water on the white tablecloth. “Too damn far.”

  Julia soaks up the water spot with a linen napkin and holds the glass out to Bill. “Don’t you worry about that. Take another drink.”

  “Too damn far,” Bill says, crossing his arms on the table and laying his head on them.

  Julia shakes his shoulder so he won’t fall asleep. “Sit tight. I’ll fix you a plate.” She stands to fetch supper from the kitchen. “I boiled fresh corn,” she says. “Your favorite, and the girls and I made a banana pudding.” She stops when Bill says something. Because his face is buried in his arms, she can’t understand him.

  “What’s that?” she says.

  “Remember how much she cried?”

  “Who?”

  “The baby. You remember?”

  “Colic. The doctor called it colic.”

  “Goddamn, she cried. All the damn time.”

  “Babies cry.”

  Julia stares down on Bill, his head lying on the table so she can see only one side of his face. A dark shadow covers his jaw and upper lip.

  It started when Maryanne was two weeks old. At first she cried for only thirty minutes or so after her bottle. Julia would swaddle her and pace the upstairs hallway, gently bouncing her. When that didn’t work, and the crying stretched to more than an hour, she tried removing the blanket and sitting motionless in the rocking chair with Maryanne cradled in her arms. By the time the baby was four weeks old, she cried every night for two hours, a hard cry that made her cough and sometimes choke. “Colic,” the doctor had said. “Burp her good. She’ll outgrow it in a month or so.”

  So Julia burped her baby and walked with her, rocked her, sang to her, left her alone in her room, drove with her in the car. By six weeks, Maryanne cried every waking minute, her body growing stiff, like a block of wood or cement, not even living, not like a baby at all. She screamed. Her face glistened and red splotches covered her cheeks and neck. Bill and Julia never slept. Bill’s eyes swelled. His hair grew too long. He lost weight. The joints in Julia’s fingers and arms burned. Pain pounded constantly behind both eyes. Tufts of her hair fell out in the bristles of her brush.

  “Why are you saying this?” Julia asks.

  Bill doesn’t answer.

  She shakes his shoulder. “Tell me.”

  “Christ but she cried. Didn’t you get tired of all the crying?”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “I did,” he mumbles into the crook of his arm. “Got damned tired of it.”

  Julia begins to back toward the stairs that will lead her away from Bill. “These are horrible things to say.”

  “Had my fill,” Bill says, his head lying on one arm while the other hangs limp at his side. “Damn sure had my fill.”

  At the base of the staircase, Julia stops. “Is this why you don’t want another baby?”

  No answer. Bill might be asleep. Julia stares at him, thinking she doesn’t know him at all.

  “Is that all you remember of her?” she asks again. “The crying?”

  He mumbles something.

  “You’re never going to want another baby, are you?”

  His eyes are open now, but his head hasn’t moved. He stares across the dining room into a blank wall. Julia starts up the stairs, slowly, one at a time.

  “Julia.”

  She stops.

  “I sure am sorry,” he says.

  Now she turns, looks down on him slumped over the table.

  “Sorry about what? What do you mean by that?”

  “Sure am sorry,” he says. “Sure am.”

  Clinging to the banister, Julia walks down two stairs. “What did you do, Bill?”

  His eyes are closed again. He doesn’t answer.

  She walks down two more stairs. “Bill. What is it? Tell me.”

  For days, there has been talk of Jerry Lawson’s troubles. Many of the ladies have wondered aloud if Jerry Lawson was fired because he killed that colored woman down on Willingham. Studying her own husband now, Julia wonders if the rumors will next begin to swirl about him.

  “What did you do, Bill?”

  She waits for an answer. The house is still. The girls are sleeping. The neighbors have settled in for the night. Somewhere nearby, a radio rolls over static and stops on an announcer calling a baseball game. Traffic on Woodward hums even at this late hour. Bill’s breathing becomes rhythmic and shallow. He’s fallen asleep. Julia walks slowly up the stairs.

  “I damn sure had my fill,” she hears when she reaches the landing and can no longer see Bill.

  The night Maryanne died was the only night of her short life she didn’t cry.

  Day 6

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Izzy squints into the morning sunlight that bounces off the bathroom mirror and after counting out one hundred strokes of her hair, she sets aside the brush. Her cheeks and chin are red from her having scrubbed her face with a soapy washcloth, and her hair falls smoothly over her shoulders. Next she brushes her teeth, tucks in the white cotton blouse that had the least wrinkles when she pulled it from her drawer, and slips on a blue headband to keep the hair out of her face. No wonder Arie spends so much time in the bathroom every morning.

  From out in the hallway, Arie bangs on the door for the third time because if Izzy doesn’t hurry up, Arie won’t be ready to leave for the church on time. Aunt Julia insisted both girls take a bath even though they took one last night because they spent all morning scraping paint off Uncle Bill’s garage. After Izzy complained at the breakfast table that the television was nothing but gray fuzz and the house was hot and they knew every single record by heart and why couldn’t someone take them to Jefferson Beach, Aunt Julia had handed Arie a three-inch putty knife and Izzy a wire brush and said if they were so bored, she would be happy to give them something to fill their time. Taking one last glimpse in the mirror, Izzy throws open the bathroom door, lowers her head, and rushes down the hall before Ari
e has a chance to notice Izzy has made herself up to look just like her twin sister.

  Downstairs in the entryway, the front door stands open. A car trunk slams and Aunt Julia marches up the sidewalk and onto the porch. Though Izzy knows it isn’t possible, Aunt Julia’s chest looks bigger today than it was yesterday. Every day, Aunt Julia’s curves appear to grow, making Izzy certain hers never will. Ducking her chin to her chest, Izzy digs at the linoleum floor with the tip of one toe because that’s what Arie would do if she got caught staring at the gap in Aunt Julia’s blouse.

  “Would you tell Izzy to get a move on?” Aunt Julia says, walking through the door and toward the kitchen, a sweet, perfumed smell following her inside. “We’re going to be late if that child doesn’t get going.”

  Izzy continues to stare at the floor and tries not to smile. “Aunt Julia,” she says, pitching her voice the slightest bit higher so she’ll sound like Arie. “Could Izzy and I stay home today?”

  Aunt Julia stops and crosses her arms over her chest. She thinks Izzy is Arie because Izzy has brushed her hair with one hundred strokes, scrubbed her face until it burned, and wears a tucked-in blouse that isn’t wrinkled.

  “I promise to make Izzy behave,” Izzy says. “But I’d rather not go to the church. It scares me to be there.”