by Leisha Kelly
Rorey’s Secret
Rorey’s Secret
A Novel
Leisha Kelly
© 2005 by Leisha Kelly
Published by Fleming H. Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelly, Leisha.
Rorey’s secret : a novel / Leisha Kelly.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8007-5985-0 (pbk.)
1. Depressions—Fiction. 2. Neighborhood—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3611.E45R67 2005
813p.6—dc22
2005006064
The song lyrics are from “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” by Thomas O. Chisholm © 1923, Ren. 1951 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
With much love to my brothers and sisters:
Curtis Scheuermann
Sue Minton
Carla Steinbeck
Grant Scheuermann
Eric Scheuermann
Sean Scheuermann
And their families. God bless you all.
Contents
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1
Julia
October 15, 1938
I had chicken to fry, lots of chicken, because it was Willy Hammond’s birthday and all the Hammonds would be over for supper.
Lard was sputtering in the skillet, and I was flouring the chicken pieces when I heard the crash behind me.
“Oh! Mama, I’m sorry!” little Emma Grace wailed.
She was the youngest Hammond, too young to remember her own mama, and she’d been calling me that ever since she could talk. Now she was looking at me with her big brown eyes all teary. All I could do was sigh as broken glass and globs of home-cooked applesauce spread in a lumpy puddle across the floor.
“Oh, Emmie.”
“I didn’t means to, Mama. I’ll clean it up.” She jumped down from the chair, not quite missing the mess. She was always willing to help. And she was seven and a half already, though she still seemed far younger.
“You’d better let me get it, honey. The broken glass could cut your fingers.” I handed her a dish towel. “Step back, okay? And wipe your shoe.”
She smeared the applesauce around on her toe a bit and watched me scoop most of the mess into the dustpan. “We got more applesauce?”
“Yes, we’ve got more,” I assured her. But we didn’t have another bowl like that pretty one. It was simple enough, nothing that would have cost much, but it had been Emma Graham’s, little Emmie’s namesake. Everything that was Emma Graham’s was precious to me, and it hurt just a little every time another piece of her was lost. But the broken bowl had been an accident, and I wasn’t about to say anything more.
“Can I frost the cake?” she asked me, grabbing another bowl off the counter without waiting for my response.
“You can help with that in a little while,” I said quickly and set the butter frosting back on the counter carefully. Then I noticed that the tears in her eyes hadn’t faded away.
“Am I a dummy?” she asked, her little lip quivering into a pout.
“Oh, Emmie, no. You’re not a dummy. Accidents can happen to anyone. It’s all right.”
“But Teddy Willis says I’m a dummy. Like Franky.”
Teddy Willis was only six and a little big for his britches, but this news bothered me just the same. I already knew how much teasing Emmie’s brother Franky endured. At fifteen, he still could hardly read, but he kept on trying valiantly. He was tough skinned enough to endure even the taunts of younger children. But Emmie was a tiny thing, and far from tough. Elvira Post, her teacher, had already told us that she wasn’t catching on to much of anything. I hated to think of little Teddy, or any others, picking at her over something she couldn’t help. It didn’t roll off her the way it did Franky.
“Emmie, you know Franky’s no dummy. He made that chair you were just standing on and quite a few other things around here, he and Samuel. He’s already working, and working harder than some grown men. He’s good at a very lot of things, and so are you. You don’t have to worry about what anybody says.”
“But I can’t read, and Teddy can! He read three whole sentences today, an’ Mrs. Post said he was comin’ along swell! She don’t never say that ’bout me.” She looked down at her shoes. “She said I might be like Franky.”
“Well. Both of you are kindhearted and helpful. You’re alike in that, which is more important than a lot of things I could name. Would you mind counting out the silverware for me?”
She scrunched up her face. “How many?”
“All of you are coming for supper, except Joe, of course. Even Lizbeth and Ben will be here, and Sam and Thelma and little Georgie. You lay out enough for everybody and tell me how many.” I knew she could do it. Because just like with Franky, for Emmie, numbers weren’t a problem. Unless they were written down. Both Franky and Emmie could cipher in their heads and remember what someone had read to them. But Mrs. Post had long ago despaired of Franky ever reading a line on his own and had asked us to school him at home so she could concentrate on the other pupils in her one-room school. And now she was wondering about Emmie too.
I could hear the thundering footsteps of one of the boys running across the porch. Ten-year-old Bert came bursting in the back door with two tiny kittens in the crook of his arm. “Look, Mom!”
Bert was second youngest and the only other Hammond child who didn’t call me Mrs. Wortham most of the time.
“Cute,” I told him. “But where’s their mother? She won’t be too pleased with them disappearing, now will she?”
He didn’t pay the slightest attention to my question. “Why wasn’t they born in the spring, huh? Like calves an’ pigs? How come cats’ll have kits any old time? Seems foolish, them birthin’ ’em whenever they do, even when it’s gonna get cold! At least these’ll have a month or two ’fore the snow comes.”
“God will take care of the kittens, Berty. They always seem to manage just fine. Take them outside, please, so I can finish dinner.”
“Harry’s started the milkin’,” he told me, still standing there petting those teeny kittens.
“Well, good. That much less for Mr. Wortham to do when he gets home.”
Behind Bert, Sarah came in the back door, carrying a basket of freshly dried clothes. She eyed Emma and the dustpan still in my hand and the chicken needing attention on the stove. She smiled. “Need some help, Mom?”
“Please. Or Lizbeth’ll come breezing in here thinking we’ve had our feet up all day.”
Emmie laughed. “Why would we put our feet up?”
Sarah put the clothes down by the sitting room doorway and turned her attention to the chicken. She looked so tall for thirteen. Taller than me already, but I thought maybe she’d stop growing like I did at her age. She had my straight brown hair, and people in town said she looked like me.
But Sarah was going to be more of a beauty, I could tell. She was turning heads already, which was enough to make my Samuel nervous.
I was just about to dump the mess from my dustpan when a car horn made me jump. Who in the world would come honking? Sarah and I both craned our necks, looking out the window to see who was pulling in.
“Sam!” Berty yelled.
Indeed, the oldest Hammond brother and his family were coming up the drive in their rattletrap Model A. But something wasn’t right. Sam wasn’t one for any sort of noise that would call attention to himself. And that made me a little squeamish inside, thinking about his wife and the baby to come. I dried my hands and hurried outside.
Berty and Emma Grace had run out of the house before me. Katie looked up from where she’d been pulling turnips in the garden and started walking our way. Harry came rushing out of the barn with the milk pail swinging. Almost I said something to him about being more careful, but I didn’t. Hammond children helped with the chores when they came over, same as we were always helping at their house. Like we were all one. No sense doing any criticizing.
When Sam Hammond stopped in the drive I knew before he got out that all was not well. Two-year-old Georgie was bouncing up and down on his seat as usual. But Thelma, his mother, was not looking so good. I wished they’d gone honking into Belle Rive for the doctor instead of to my house.
“Good evening, Mrs. Wortham,” Sam called. “Thelma’s not been feeling the best. Sorry to trouble you with the horn, but I sure appreciate you coming out.”
Thelma shoved the car door open before Sam got around to her side. She was heavy with child, and even sitting forward took some obvious effort.
“Stay there a minute, Thelma,” I told her. “I’ll come to you.”
“Oh, Mrs. Wortham, I just want to come in and put my feet up. I’ll be all right.”
“Are you feeling any pains?” I questioned, needing to know but hating to ask in front of the younger children.
“Not so much. I been nauseous more than anything.”
“And weak,” Sam added. “She’s been weak.”
I wondered again if I might persuade them to visit the doctor in town or even go into the hospital at Mcleansboro, but we’d been over all that before. Young Sam wasn’t as bad as his father when it came to doctors. But he and Thelma had already told me that a pregnancy wasn’t the same as some disease. They didn’t really want a doctor, and especially not a hospital stay. Sam and Thelma wanted me and Thelma’s mother, Delores Pratt, to be the ones delivering their children.
I’d missed out on the first one, having the influenza at the time, and Delores had managed just fine with the help of a neighbor. But here they were now, making me pretty nervous. They were confident in me, because I’d helped dear old Emma bring little Emmie Grace into this world. But that had been necessity and my only experience. I’d never meant it to be the start of any midwifery of my own.
Standing beside the car, I could see Thelma’s bulging abdomen churn and wiggle in front of me.
“Oh my,” she said.
“Baby kicking?”
“Seems like she’s ready to come clear out the side,” she said with a laugh. “But I believe I’m feeling some better.”
Sam wasn’t so sure, and neither was I. Thelma was perspiring heavily, though it was becoming noticeably cooler with the clouds moving in. Georgie climbed up on his mother before anybody could tell him otherwise, and she winced.
“Are you still feeling faint?” Sam asked her. “Mrs. Wortham, she was feelin’ faint. Is that a normal thing? She don’t rest enough, that’s what it is. She can’t rest when I’m off to work, with Georgie runnin’ around. I come home, and she looked like a shallow breeze could just knock her plumb over. I carried her to the car, and we come right over. Can we get her inside?”
“No, no,” I wanted to say. But I knew there wasn’t much sense in sending her out on those bumpy roads again. If she wasn’t in labor now, that would surely bring it on. Straight to bed for a while; maybe that would help. And if the labor started, I’d chase Sam Hammond out the door in a hurry to fetch me the doctor, like it or not.
Thelma wanted to walk in, but Sam picked up his once-dainty bride and carried her, which I heartily approved of. She was supposed to have a couple more weeks to go, at least we thought. No sense in too much activity hurrying things.
“Me! Me!” Georgie yelled. “Carry me!”
His father didn’t seem to hear him, so I swooped up the little tike and started for the house.
“I wa’ appasauce!” he told me, and I remembered the mess I’d not quite finished cleaning up. Maybe Sarah had gotten it. She’d stayed inside, and she was always extra good help. Which made me think of Rorey. The oldest Hammond girl still at home, she was supposed to be around here somewhere, but lately she was doing just as little as she could.
As if reading my mind, Harry yelled, “Hey, Rorey!”
I looked but couldn’t see her anywhere.
“Whatcha doin’ up a tree?” Harry laughed and then bounded on into the house with the milk pail, not too full, obviously, or it would be spilling all the way. Twelve years old and he still could hardly walk for running everywhere he went. He’d been a pill when he was younger, that was for sure.
“Looky! Looky!” Georgie screamed in my ear. Thanks to his pointing, I finally saw Rorey sitting two stories up in our sweet gum tree, a book across her lap. Her diary, almost surely. And she was writing in it, scarcely looking our way for all that was going on.
“Supper before long, Lord willing!” I called to her.
“Oh,” she said, barely loud enough for me to hear. “I’ll be down pretty soon.”
“I hope so.” I shook my head. A thirteen-year-old up a tree and paying the rest of us no mind. She’d better get down before her father arrived or she’d catch the dickens from him. But I didn’t feel like warning her.
Thelma was doing some moaning when I entered the house. More of the baby kicking, I hoped. Sam had moved pretty quick and gotten her clear into the sitting room, out of sight. Hurrying to catch up, I completely forgot about the floor. I got as far as the table with Georgie wiggling in my arms, but before I knew what was happening, my feet flew out from under me, and I landed hard on fresh-mopped floor. I was stunned speechless for a moment, wondering if falling with a toddler in my arms might have hurt the poor child. Sarah ran over to my side.
“Oh! Oh, Mom! I didn’t know it’d be so slick!”
She tried to take Georgie from me, but he would have none of that. At first he looked as stunned as I was. Then he burst out laughing.
“Do again! Do again!”
I’d have laughed with him if it hadn’t hurt so bad. Thank God, though, that it wasn’t Sam and Thelma falling down in a heap.
“Are you all right, Mom?”
“Oh yes,” I assured my daughter, and Harry, who by now was staring at us from across the room. “I’m fine.”
“Do again!” Georgie squealed some more. “Fun! Fun!”
“No,” I told him simply. “Not fun for me. Harry, come and take Georgie so I can get up.”
I felt a little stiff. I could imagine what a sight I was, going in to see to Thelma after drying the floor with my backside. But I went anyway, feeling a little better as I walked. And I made Sam get Thelma to my bed instead of the rocking chair where she’d wanted to be.
“Really, Mrs. Wortham,” she tried to tell me. “I’ll be just fine. I just need to sit a spell.”
“That’s wonderful. And I’m not disagreeing with you. I just don’t want to be taking any chances. Sam’s probably right. You need to get off your feet more. Might be a good idea to ask Dr. Howell—”
“Mama’s comin’ out next week,” she assured me. “I’ll be just fine till then.”
“Well enough,” I agreed. “But while you’re here, you stay in bed, just to be sure. We’ll take care of Georgie for you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wortham.” She smiled and mopped at her brow.
“Goodness. Still pretty warm, isn’t it? And already October.”
I didn’t bother telling her that I’d been feeling autumn’s chill in the air for days now. Not strange at all for her to be warm. I’d been warmer when I was with child too. Back when I was carrying Robert, I’d nearly frozen Samuel by kicking covers off the bed all that winter.
Thelma plopped her shoes at the foot of the bed and said she didn’t want anything but a little sheet tucked in over her. “I oughta be up helpin’ you cook supper,” she told me. “And here we come bringin’ nothin’ at all but more for you to do.”
Before I could answer we heard the awfullest clatter from the kitchen. Sam just turned his head, but Thelma knew her little boy pretty well, and she clucked her tongue. “Georgie, I’d just about wager. So sorry, Mrs. Wortham, for whatever he’s done.”
His little child voice was laughing plain enough for us all to hear. “Boomie! Boomie!”
I left Sam reaching for Thelma’s hand and ran to see what Georgie had gotten into this time. I should’ve known. A whole stack of baking pans lay littered across the floor, and Georgie was plopped down in the middle of them looking delighted with himself. I should’ve tied that cupboard shut when I knew he was coming. He’d done the very same thing the last time he was here.
Harry was just standing there helpless. “He didn’t want to be held,” he explained. “I didn’t think it’d hurt to let him walk around a little.”
“It’s all right. Just better to take him in the sitting room so he doesn’t get too close to anything hot, all right?” I did my best shoving all the pans back into the cupboard with little Georgie standing at my side, merrily enjoying all the noise I was making at it.
“Boomie!” he chuckled again. “Boomie!”
Sarah was pulling the hot rolls out of the oven to put on the warming shelf, and Harry didn’t move an inch toward taking Georgie into the next room.
Emma Grace strolled back inside, and I was glad to see her. She was always obliging. “Emmie, please help Harry entertain little Georgie a while. Can you find that rag ball we made?”