Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  “Do not take that tone with me,” she says opening the oven and taking out the meatloaf and criss-cross baked potatoes I love. Normally. Tonight I can’t eat a thing with Easy practically starving to death and being taken away without supper.

  “I ain’t,” I say, but I kind of am taking a tone, but gee-willickers this is so unfair. I didn’t even get to tell Easy good-bye and he had to ride his bike with that terrible scrape and he’s hungry from the river and there’s no supper I know. I just know.

  “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!” I tell Granma.

  “Lower your voice young lady.”

  “President Kennedy says we are supposed to do what we can to help America. And Darnay Road and Scutter are in America! And Easy says his mother is sick! So what can we do, Granma! What can we do!”

  She is looking at me like I’m speaking Swahili.

  “You can sit your bottom on that chair and eat before I send you upstairs without your supper.”

  “I can’t eat. Don’t you know Granma, I can’t eat when Easy is hungry!” I just start crying then because it’s so wrong and terrible.

  She comes for me and gathers me up and I really cry then. I am sadder than I knew and all the awful fear I felt when Easy fell off his bike so hard, it’s all right there.

  That evening after my bath I come downstairs quiet with Little Bit on my arm that used to be broken and now is fixed and almost good as new except for a tiny bend in it. I hear Granma on the phone. I think of running upstairs and lifting the other phone in her bedroom off the cradle and listening just for a minute, but I don’t.

  See, I know that is my dad because she has that special tone. It’s her, ‘this is my son,’ tone. And so I just sit on the top steps and she is sitting at the little desk for the phone in the hall.

  “Did you think she would never discover boys Charles?” she says. “It’s happening very early.”

  What in the world is my Granma saying that for? Are boys some kind of discovery? I would have to be blind not to notice there are girls and there are boys. Remember Abigail May and Ricky?

  “Hysterical,” she says next.

  Hysterical like the Red Skelton Variety Hour? Or hysterical like me when I think of Kruschev and probably Castro coming to Florida in a submarine and getting out at the beach and coming straight for Abigail May down in Tampa?

  Then, “Maybe if she knew her father loved her….”

  And, “She’s growing up, Charles. I’m sure this new woman is very exciting but…no I do not. I have never said I don’t want you to…that is just not true. But you have a daughter.”

  I sneak back up the stairs then and into my room. A new woman? She’s exciting? Is she a tight-rope walker?

  Well I don’t like her very much already. She better never, ever think she can take me from my Granma. And Easy.

  I think of Abigail May and I don’t know how she’s standing it—being kidnapped by Mr. Figley. I don’t know how I let it happen. I should have done something. But what can I do? I’m just a kid.

  I get in bed and snap off my light. After Granma talks to Dad she needs to come around and stare at me and tuck my covers and sigh. So I get ready for that. I let Little Bit sleep with me. Granma will allow it because she knows I’m upset.

  So once that happens and I keep my eyes closed the whole time, she goes out and it’s not long before I know she’s settled in for the night.

  Well I can’t sleep. I have to look out the window. The road is quiet, and a train is rumbling through. I think of Easy and wonder if he’s at home and what it’s like for him right now? Is his mom so sick she can’t get out of bed?

  Big gray is quiet. It stabs me like I’m just now knowing Abigail May isn’t there. Such a powerful longing rises up in me I don’t think I can bear it. “Abigail May,” I say.

  I go to my desk and get paper and my sharpest pencil. Using my silver flashlight I get in bed and get the light set on my paper and I start in.

  “Hey Abigail May,” I write. Then I tell her everything.

  Darnay Road 32

  I love waking up because at first it’s my room and all the things I love, especially my books, and my pink world as Granma calls it. But I wonder if I’m just a girl in one of God’s shoebox rooms.

  I say that for a very, very good reason cause one of my favorite things to do, well mine and Abigail May’s, is to make little rooms out of shoeboxes.

  Abigail May made rooms for her paper family and I made rooms for mine. Abigail May’s family had six children, and she always says she is having six, and my family had just one child, a girl. I don’t know how many children I’ll have someday, probably four, but Abigail May says Aunt May says Catholics have to have a baby every single year or they go straight to hell. I asked Granma and she said we’d talk about that when I am in high school. She says that about a lot of things, so we’ll be talking for years by the time I get there.

  Anyway about our shoebox rooms--we’d make our own wallpaper and furniture. We would play together with the rooms we felt like carrying under a tree in the backyard or up here in my room or across the street in hers, or on our porches.

  We never played in Aunt May’s backyard so much. That belonged to Ricky and with the tracks behind, it drew him and not us. But every inch of Granma’s, the backyard and the cellar, the attic, every inch belonged to me and Abigail May. Granma got the living room and her chair on the porch and the kitchen and her bedroom of course, but there is no part we weren’t welcomed in.

  I don’t know what Abigail May did with all of her stuff. She only took a bag Aunt May said. They are going to ship the rest but there is no room in the apartment. So it must all be in her room still. Her yellow world. Her banana world. That makes me laugh, but then I’m sad and I think of all those empty shoe box rooms, and I think of Aunt May all alone in that big house and Abigail so far.

  Easy. Oh Easy. He makes me so happy and he makes me so sad. He makes my heart bump and he makes my heart feel heavy as lead.

  I think of so many things and my stomach rumbles because I didn’t eat supper and I won’t be eating breakfast either. Nope. Not until I know Easy has food.

  So I get up quick and pull my shorts under my pajamas and take Little Bit with me and set her on the floor while I go pee-pee and brush my teeth. Then I get my thongs and go downstairs. I can hear the hiss of the iron in the kitchen cause Granma is ironing clothes. I go in there and she’s sprinkling over one of my dresses. She has this red and white sprinkler stopper in a Pepsi-bottle. There are just certain things that are Granma’s, and this is one of them.

  She looks at me. I am holding Little Bit.

  “Did you take her out?” she says, meaning Little Bit. “Best do it then get in here and eat your breakfast.”

  “Luminous,” I whisper because she is wearing the green apron that matches the potholder.

  “Say what?”

  “Um…I’m not eating breakfast, Granma.”

  She sets the iron on its tail and throws her weight to the good hip that doesn’t have the ‘misery,’ and stares at me with her lips pressed flat. Granma has silver hair and it’s long and thick like a pioneer’s. I love her hair, and she rolls it in a bun high on her head for workdays and into a French roll for church. Right now it’s in a braid over her shoulder cause she hasn’t pinned it up yet. She’s just my granma, that’s what I keep telling myself so I can stare back and hold my ground. I got that from John Wayne—holding my ground cause he says that in one of his movies which are all my favorites.

  “I suppose this is for your country?” Granma says.

  “No ma’am. It’s for Easy.”

  “I have put your supper in the icebox and you will eat that for breakfast Miss Smarty-pants.” She snaps up the iron and goes to digging it around the big white collar on my dress. I have never fought with my Granma in my entire life!

  I start crying. “Granma please don’t be mad at me.”

  Well she takes
one glance and here she comes and puts her arms around me and I reach around her. I just love her to pieces but of course I’m still not eating that meatloaf.

  Aunt May’s Buick is running behind me at the curb. I am knocking on Easy’s door and it is a terrible door for being dirty and needing paint. So Easy answers and he is looking at me. I hope he isn’t angry, but he just looks like maybe he’s surprised. And he isn’t wearing his shirt, just some cut-offs I’ve seen before. But he’s pretty handsome anyway cause he just always is.

  “Easy, Granma and me were wondering if you could come to lunch today. Well Granma says you can bring your mother if you’d like. Aunt May will pick her up if you need.”

  “Why I want to do that?” he says looking past me at Aunt May’s Buick while I try to look past him and I see on the far wall a big framed picture of Jesus praying on his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane. “I don’t want to do that,” he says kind of sternly.

  I clear the fear right out of my throat. “Thing is Granma has some bushes need trimmed and the back fence needs cleared and she didn’t know if you would be willing to do that. I could help you cause I know you still have to finish Miss Little’s. Well we drove by there—Miss Little’s and I saw your mower still there in all that tall grass. And Granma’s rake. I’m not allowed to um…be your right-hand man, Granma says,” then I rush to add, “…and I don’t agree, but Granma says so….” I take in a big breath because those words took all my air.

  I scratch my cheek a little and I’m so worried, but he smiles and looks down. But he looks up quick and he’s so stern. “I told you not to come around.”

  Well I’m a little mad now. Not so much, but a little. “I don’t know your phone number.” It’s the truth.

  He looks down again, at my sandals. I go back on my heels some and tap one foot then the other. It gets him to look up and I have to smile and he does too a little. “What time?”

  “Soon as you’re done at Miss Little’s.”

  “That’s gonna take me all day. I’ll come to your house first.”

  I get so excited I turn to go, and he says, “Georgia?” and I turn and he’s out the door a little. He’s very strong. I mean his arms.

  “Yes Easy?”

  “Mom don’t go out.” He has this very certain look in his eyes.

  “All right. I’ll tell Granma.”

  He nods and it’s okay again.

  I know it is.

  Darnay Road 33

  “Every year soon as school starts I have to write that essay about what I did over summer vacation and every year I say the same old thing but this year I’d like to be able to write that I helped clean up my neighbor’s yard. I’d like to say that if you please!” I stress to my Granma.

  I am dressed in my red short set and my sandals, with my braids pinned up on my head, and I’m waiting for Easy. Granma says I can’t just wait around for this boy, I have to do things like fold the dish towels. So I do that lickety-split and every time she gives me a job I do it really quick and I come back and say, “Now what?”

  So she just gives up. And now I’m trying to say that once Easy comes it would be fine, just fine if I could go with him to finish what I started in Miss Little’s yard. I already swore with my hand on my missal even that I would never ever go to the river again without her permission. I did that right in front of her and said the words like in Perry Mason, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.” I don’t know what else to do.

  “Miss Little looked out the window and saw us and didn’t say a thing,” I tell her.

  She gets that look and I just go get her the Bufferin and a glass of cold water.

  So Easy comes on his bike and he’s sweaty but not too bad because he didn’t have to go far to come here. “I had to straighten out my wheel,” he says.

  He is wearing the same bandage Aunt May put on him the day before I think because that is Granma’s bandage I know, she tears white cotton into strips and keeps it handy for when I do things like get a gigantic scrape on my knee. Last summer I had two skinned knees the entire summer, but this year I decided to just break my arm.

  But the bandage is dirty and blood showing through. Oh Easy. You can’t stay clean to save your soul, can you.

  So I am holding Little Bit and she is sticking her little nose toward him and sniffing. “It’s Easy,” I tell her, but she knows. She gets her paws on my arm and stretches her neck and he keeps his hands round his waist and I say, “Well take her.” And he does.

  Granma is at the screen then. “Best come and eat young man.”

  “Should I work first?” he says.

  “There is a young miss who can’t afford to wait any longer,” she says heading back to the kitchen.

  I take Little Bit. “We best go,” I say because I am the young miss and I’m about starved.

  So I smile at him and he’s looking at me, he doesn’t smile, but runs his hand over his hair and it is no longer shaved off, but it is growing again.

  I get the door and he takes over and follows me down the hall. I look back at him and he’s looking around, his eyes darting to look at the stairs and up.

  “My room is up there,” I say.

  He nods and I smile. I nearly tell him it’s pink, but I don’t.

  So I carry my dog into the kitchen and put her in her basket by the door but she don’t stay, she never does, and Granma says she’ll step on her one of these days and then what? But Little Bit is too quick, tapping one way then another.

  Granma tells Easy he can wash up in the sink and he looks like he ain’t thought about it, but he does go there and washes. He uses the cup towel instead of the hand towel, but geez Louise, he don’t know any better.

  So we get in the chairs and Easy sees his luminescent placemat and the plate setting there that Granma collected with Eagle stamps. They are our everyday and she has bone china for special she collected one piece at a time from the grocery. I still remember carrying home the gravy boat.

  So I sit there with Easy around the corner on my right and Granma in her place around the left. We are having the meatloaf and Granma’s potatoes with cheese added because they are leftover since I didn’t even eat any, and corn and peas and applesauce. We have this on Tuesday usually but now we’re having it on Wednesday. So we get everything all around and Easy watches what I take and I pass, and then he does like me. I take sliced tomatoes and cucumbers cause I can eat those every day.

  He doesn’t want those. I set the glass dish by his plate, but he just ignores them.

  I pick up my fork and he does too, and I cut a piece of my meatloaf and stick it in my mouth and he does too, and it’s so, so good. And Granma says, “You want some ketsup?”

  And Easy lights up some. “Thank you,” he says when she passes him the bottle of Brooks. He puts it on his potatoes, and his meat and even his corn. I can’t believe my eyes and I say, “You sure like ketsup,” and then he looks at me and I can see him blush some.

  Well me and my Granma don’t know what to say so Granma points at my food with her fork so I just get back to eating. I sure hope I didn’t embarrass Easy with my diarrhea words again.

  “And how do you know Miss Little?” my Granma says.

  I can’t believe she is going to talk about that. I can see Easy doesn’t expect to tell his business. He looks at me, then at his plate and he just chews some and swallows. “We live behind,” he says.

  “You’s moved here a couple of years ago?”

  “Yes ma’am.” He doesn’t take another bite, just drags his fork through a ketsup river.

  I want to tell her something wonderful about Easy, but everything I think of is something I can’t say.

  “This your first summer to mow lawns or you do so before now?” Granma says and these are really hard questions. I don’t know where she’s getting them from.

  “I mow since I been strong enough to push it. Back home I drove a tractor.”

  “A kid can drive
a tractor?” I ask because I didn’t know.

  “We bale hay down there.”

  “Where is down there?” Granma doesn’t miss a lick.

  “Tennessee, Ma’am. Shoehorn.”

  “Well that’s a crazy name,” I say, but there I go again. He is blushing and he goes on and takes a bite of potatoes.

  “Well how…,” Granma says.

  And here I come to save the day and I say, “The Patty Duke show is on tonight.”

  Granma has a forkful of food she is holding in the air over her plate. Now she looks at me. “So it is,” she says and finally, finally the airplane goes into the hangar.

  I about let out a breath and I shovel in that food and we barely say another word.

  Darnay Road 34

  “Intuition is like…well if you’re a girl…you just figure something out. You think you know…because you do,” I say.

  Granma is doing her chuckle she does when she eavesdrops. She doesn’t usually say anything, but she listens.

  Easy can ask some way harder questions than my granma. I have just started reading The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene to him and first page has Nancy saying how her dad needs her intuition and Easy wants to know what that is. He’s heard of it before of course, but he never got around to figuring it out I guess.

  I could give him some examples—like how my intuition tells me he is good, and maybe in some trouble, and often hungry, and alone, and worried even if he says he’s not. But I don’t say any of that so maybe I am learning how to hold back my words just a little bit.

  He finished Granma’s yard after we ate lunch. First he went to Miss Little’s and dragged his mower and Granma’s rake back here. Now it is pouring rain. I mean the sky has opened up and buckets are coming down and I have invited him onto the porch to wait it out and then I show him my favorite book which is lying right there on the little table next to Granma and her magazines which I tell him we’re not supposed to touch and he looks quickly at Granma and says he wasn’t going to. And Granma gathers them up and slides them under her lounger.