Rosalind

by Stephen Paden

  Rosalind finished her lunch, but she didn’t enjoy it. The hamburger tasted like cardboard and the fries were nothing like her own homemade delicacies, but every time she sipped the soda through the straw, her eyes lit up like little miracles. This dark, bubbly elixir was a luxury that had never entered her house or her mouth. The crisp, crackling soda played havoc on her throat, creating a juxtaposition of salty bubbles and sweet, vanilla-flavored Coca-Cola. It was heaven in her mouth and on her taste buds. And it was simply miraculous.

  She shyly asked for a refill and Nancy was happy to oblige.

  The door to the restaurant opened and a man in a uniform walked in. Rosalind had seen this type of uniform before when men like this came out to their home on a few occasions; usually to take her father away for the night. Her mother had always told her to hide in her room every time they came and she would always hear her mother yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs just before they would take her father away.

  She recoiled in her seat as he sat down at a booth and motioned with his finger. "Coffee," he said.

  "You got it, Sheriff Hanes," she replied.

  "Damn, Nancy, you don't have to be so formal," he said.

  She only smiled back and then filled a large cup for him. He grabbed the cup from her and took a sip. Nancy sniffed him.

  "Whew! You smell like burnt wood," she said.

  "Bad morning. Trailer home up north burned right to the ground."

  "Oh my God, I hope no one was in it," she said, sitting down in the booth. He looked over at Rosalind and then nodded at Nancy. She put her hand on her heart and said, "Oh."

  He leaned in and whispered, "We found three bodies. It was awful. One was a baby." Rosalind sipped her soda, unaware of the contents of their discussion. This Coca-Cola was the most amazing thing she had ever introduced to her tongue.

  "The guy, you know, trouble here and there, but never deserving of something like this," he continued to whisper.

  "Deserving? What you saying? Was it arson?" she asked.

  "Looks like it. We know the fire killed the woman and the baby, but him? There was a knife in his throat. What was left of this throat. Now don't you go tellin' no one you heard that from me, but I had to tell someone. We don't get that kinda thing around here, you know?"

  She nodded.

  He sipped his coffee and looked over at Rosalind. "Well let's see, you got yourself some company over there Nancy?"

  "Oh, sheriff," she said, still holding her hand to her heart. "I tell you some people in this world have got it comin'. Poor girl came here this mornin' with an older guy. He done run off with her all her money and left her here. I never seen her around before so I think she was abandoned."

  "What'd he looked like?" he asked, pulling out a small notebook and a pen.

  "I dunno, about fiftyish, bald, long gray beard. Drove an old truck, like one of them during the war."

  "Korea?"

  "No, before that. The big one," she replied.

  "She got any family around here?" he asked.

  "I don't think so. She's alright here for now. I'm gonna give Mary Peterson a call and see if she a spare room."

  "Bad morning all around," he said, downing the last of his coffee. He got up and walked over to Rosalind and Nancy followed, circling the counter. He put his hands on her back and it caused Rosalind to flinch.

  "Sorry, young lady, didn't mean to startle you. We're gonna keep an eye out for this creep, does that sound like a plan?" She nodded and looked down at her soda, sipping at it. "You just keep to Nancy here and she'll get you all squared away." He looked back at Nancy when he got to the door. "You just tell Mary Peterson that I'd be happy if she watched out for this young lady," he said. He tipped his hat and left.

  "He's a good man," she leaned in and said to Rosalind. "But by the looks of it, I don't suspect you ever met one of them." Rosalind sipped her soda until it was gone. "I'm gonna give Mary a call and see what's what." Nancy went down to the end of the bar and called Mary. Rosalind didn't know what they were talking about, but Nancy nodded her head a lot and smiled once or twice so maybe that was good news. She was tired. What little sleep she'd gotten sitting on the side of the road clearly wasn't enough.

  Once the soda was gone, the events from the previous night came rushing back. The fiery shape of her mother sliding back and forth across the living room; her dead brother in the tomato crate; her father just sitting there on the couch, burning; none of that seemed real but she knew that she had seen it all happen. Why didn't he get up and put himself out? she asked herself. She wondered if she would ever be able to forget about the horrific scene that took place only hours before.

  Nancy came back with a smile on her face. "Okay baby, I got some good news that you more than deserve. She's got a room available for cheap, but honey, one dollar and the change you got there ain't gonna cover it, so she said you might be able to work it off. But you have to be at least sixteen to work there. She said that's the rules. Are you sixteen?" Rosalind didn't know how to answer. The first time she ever told a lie was to the man who brought her into town. Maybe that's why he took her money, because she lied to him. What would happen if she lied to Nancy? After all, Nancy was the nicest person she'd ever met, but so was the man in the truck until he'd run off with all of her money. She started to speak, and Nancy seeing the dilemma, interrupted her. "You look sixteen to me. You understand that, don't you? If I could take you home with me, I would. God knows you need a friend, but Hank would skin me alive."

  Rosalind was relieved. She didn't have to lie to Nancy and that meant that she wouldn't get mad and leave her. She looked Nancy in the eye and nodded.

  "Good girl," Nancy whispered.

  Chapter 7

  After her shift ended, Nancy grabbed Rosalind's suitcase and put it in the back seat of her car. Mary Peterson's boarding house was less than a mile away, so the trip was quick. Rosalind had driven in two different vehicles in the same day and decided that she liked the experience, even if one of them had resulted in her getting robbed and abandoned in an unfamiliar town.

  The sun was setting and the warmth that it had brought the day was succumbing to the coolness of dusk. Rosalind pulled her jacket tight around her slender frame as she walked up to the three-story, Victorian-style house. Nancy knocked on the door and a plump, dark-haired woman answered it. She didn't smile at first, but when she looked at Rosalind's freckled face and stringy hair coming out of the makeshift ponytail, she offered one in sympathy. They followed her into the hallway and Rosalind was happy once again to be warm.

  "Young lady, you can call me Mrs. Peterson. Mr. Peterson passed some years ago, God rest his soul, so it's only me here and the rest of the tenants. Do you know what a tenant is?" Rosalind shook her head back and forth, bowing her head. "Well, that's you! And we're happy to have you." Mary Peterson motioned for them to follow her down the hall, where they stopped at a plaque on the wall. Rosalind looked at it and saw the writing, then bowed her head again. "These are the rules, and I expect you to learn them. Memorize them and you'll be just fine. Can you start by reading the first one?" Rosalind slowly lifted her head and looked at the top rule. She squinted and then started to say something, but stopped. Mary looked at Nancy, and Nancy shrugged. "Honey, can you read it?" Rosalind shook her head back and forth.

  Nancy bent down and looked Rosalind in the eyes. "Sweetheart, can you read?" Nancy asked. Again, she shook her head back and forth.

  Nancy looked at Mary. Mary clapped her hands together. "Well, let me begin with the first one. It says: Be kind to one another. Judging by the looks of you, I should say that'll be an easy one." Rosalind smiled.

  "Mrs. Peterson, it looks like you have it from here. I'll tell Sheriff Hanes that our girl is in good hands," said Nancy. She knelt down again and ran her fingers through Rosalind's red, oily locks. "What's your name, honey?"

  Rosalind looked back and forth between the ladies. She didn't know the wisdom of hiding her name, and it wasn't like
she was on the run from a crime or something. But she did run from the fire, and the man in the uniform already knew about the fire that killed her family. She pondered the gravity of disclosure, but decided that these women were not like her momma or any man she'd ever encountered in her short life. She wasn't familiar with the word trust, but she was familiar with the concept.

  She looked at Nancy and said, "Rosalind."

  Chapter 8

  A week had passed since she had watched her family burn to death, but Rosalind did her best to put that out of her mind. Her life at the boarding house had at first been difficult, and every night when she went to bed, she expected to see her father walk through the door and have his way with her.

  She hid her morning sickness from Mrs. Peterson the best she could, mainly because she didn't know how to explain it. Her body was changing and she knew it, and deep down she suspected that something was wrong with her, but it wasn't until another week had passed when she sat down with Mrs. Peterson for a sandwich that she came to understand.

  "Sheriff Hanes was asking about you. I told him you were doin' just fine. He'd still like to come check on you," she said, swallowing the last of her lemonade.

  "Is he gonna to take me away?" Rosalind asked, putting her last half of the pastrami and mustard sandwich on the plate.

  "No, honey. He just wants to make sure you're okay." That was the second endorsement by as many people she'd heard about the sheriff, and it didn't sound like she had much of a choice in the matter anyway, so she nodded her head.

  "But we need to talk about something before he gets here, and trust me, it'll be our little secret," Mrs. Peterson said. Rosalind nodded. "How do I say this?" Mrs. Peterson hemmed and hawed, sipping at lemonade that was long gone and finally put the glass down. "Honey you're pregnant, aren't you?" Rosalind hung her head like she always did when a difficult question came her way. Mrs. Peterson scooted her chair around and put her hand on her back, just like Rosalind's momma had done the day she killed her father. Mrs. Peterson just looked into the distance and said, "Oh my."

  Rosalind knew what pregnant was, but until then, she never made the connection, at least consciously. Subconsciously, however, she knew that the thing that was wrong with her had something to do with what her father had been doing to her and the sickness she felt every morning. Add to that her mother's reaction when she told her she hadn't gotten her monthly in over forty days, and it was all there in plain sight. She thought about that for a moment and wondered if she had known the whole time, or was it that she was too stupid to make the connection? She didn't try to answer it or analyze the situation. She threw her arms around Mrs. Peterson. Mrs. Peterson hugged her tight and whispered, "It's going to be just fine."

  Sheriff Hanes came by that evening, this time in casual clothes. Mrs. Peterson suggested that that might make Rosalind feel more at ease, and she was right. The rest of the tenants had finished the supper that Mary and Rosalind had prepared, a few of them commenting on how tasty the chicken had been and that they'd never seen French fries quite like that. Mrs. Peterson gave all of the credit to Rosalind. After the last of them had gone upstairs to their rooms, Mary, Rosalind, and the sheriff sat in the living room.

  "Mrs. Peterson, would you mind if I helped you with that fire?" he asked, noticing that the embers from the kindling hadn't quite taken. Rosalind stared at the fireplace. The sheriff noticed.

  "That'd be just fine. I'll make us some more lemonade," she replied.

  The sheriff huddled over the fireplace, grabbing the fire-iron and rustling the kindling around. He grabbed a long match that sat next to the wood tray and struck it against the brick wall inside the pit. It lit on the first stroke and he lowered it to the wadded up newspapers. They caught on fire instantly and the flames rose high around the few logs that were in there. Rosalind continued to stare almost catatonically at the blaze.

  Mrs. Peterson returned with three glasses of lemonade on a tray. Rosalind took hers and gulped it down, but even though it was sweeter and more tart than any she had ever had at home, it was nothing compared to the Coca-Cola she'd had a week ago at the diner. The fire began to roar and the chill of the room disappeared. Rosalind closed her eyes and let the warmth wash over her.

  "So, Rosalind. Mrs. Peterson tells me you're getting' along just fine here," he said.

  Rosalind nodded.

  "She also tells me you're not much of a talker, but I guess I already knew that."

  "She's…she speaks when she needs to. I think that's a quality that a lot of people in the world could use," she said with pride.

  "I reckon you're right about that." He sat back down in the winged chair next to the window and took a sip of the lemonade. "Not bad at all," he said, raising his glass. "But there's a little matter we need to discuss." Rosalind squirmed in her seat. She didn't know that being pregnant was necessarily a bad thing, but like her father's visits to her bedroom every night of her teenage life, she knew that something was off about it. She knew that the two together might be something even more than off. "There's the matter of your parents, young lady." Mrs. Peterson hadn't told him their secret. She knew she liked her. But a panic grew inside of Rosalind. Did he say parents? Did he suspect that she had a connection to the fire and the family that died in it? Rosalind gripped her glass tight, ignoring how cold it was making her hands. "Mrs. Peterson was kind enough to tell me when I asked that you were old enough to work here on your own. But sixteen is still pretty young in my household. And if it was my daughter, who just so happens to be your age, told me she was leaving or worse, run away without telling me, I'd want to at least know she was safe. So that brings us to it." He settled back and took another swig. "Do you think your parents would want to know you're safe?"

  Maybe they would, she thought. If they were alive, that is.

  She shook her head back and forth.

  "Honey, if you don't mind me asking, what's your last name?"

  Without thinking about it, and because Mrs. Peterson and Nancy had both said that the sheriff was a good man, she answered him. "Stump. May I be excused?"

  Mrs. Peterson nodded and Rosalind darted upstairs, closing her door and locking it from the inside. She'd never had a lock when she lived at home, but she became intimately familiar with the one on her new door.

  She ran to the window in her bedroom and looked out at the street, hoping to see the sheriff getting in his car.

  Downstairs, the sheriff stood up and looked up at the stairway and then at Mrs. Peterson. The family that had burned to death in the fire a few weeks back had little there to indicate who they were, but after asking around, he'd found out. He was no Sherlock Holmes, but the girl had shown up out of nowhere on the very morning the fire had killed that family, and he knew that she was involved.

  He thanked her for the lemonade and for looking after Rosalind. She replied that Rosalind had become quite an asset around the house, paying for her room and board by doing chores and cooking dinner.

  He got in his car and drove away while Rosalind watched him from her bedroom window.

  Chapter 9

  Joe Hanes jolted upright in his bed and looked furiously around the room. He zeroed in on the clanging sound of metal coming from his nightstand and slammed his hand down on the round button.

  The room was quiet.

  He wiped the sweat from his face and threw his legs over the side of the bed.

  He started to speak, but the cold reality hit him like a bomb. His wife wasn't there anymore. She hadn't been there since she passed four years ago. He reached over and ran his hand across the bedspread where she used to sleep.

  When the doctors told her they had found a cyst in her uterus, they were optimistic. It had been the size of a golf ball, but it was a singular mass that they said they could remove without danger of it spreading further into her body. What they didn't know until they performed surgery was that behind the uterine wall lay a much larger mass that had reached her spine and had begun to wrap itself aroun
d it. What started out as minor numbness in her back and occasional weakness in her legs ended in lower body paralysis by the time she had started measuring her life in weeks. Words like 'hope' and 'cure' had left her physician's vocabulary and other words like 'acceptance' and 'preparations' had moved in.

  On March 3rd of 1955, Stella Hanes had passed away, and Joe was left to raise their only daughter Betty by himself. She made it easy. She was her father's daughter and her logical demeanor provided more support to Joe than his sympathetic ear had offered her. And after the first year, life in the Hanes household returned to a faint shadow of its previous self.

  Joe got dressed and went into the bathroom to shave. A few minutes later, Betty knocked on the door and without a word they switched places with a small hug in the hallway. They were like a well-oiled, predictable machine of human interaction. They had performed this ritual for the past four years and some mornings they didn't even know they were doing it.

  Joe sat down at the kitchen table. Betty grabbed the skillet from the right burner on the stove and brought it over to him, slipping her spatula under an over-easy egg and putting it on his plate. She slipped the last egg onto her own plate and put the skillet back on the burner and turned off the gas. With mechanical grace, she grabbed the two pieces of toast from the toaster that had just jumped out and buttered each one. With a small spoonful of jelly, she spread a conservative layer of purple glaze over each piece, put one in her mouth, and took the other over to her father.

  "Thanks," he said. He took a bite of the toast and flipped open the newspaper. Betty poured them both a glass of milk from the glass bottle and sat down in the chair next to her father.

  "I have cheerleader tryouts today. I'll get a ride home," she said, finishing her bite of toast.