by Jenna Rae
“Thank you,” the woman said. And that was all. Lola and the stranger in the robe and hospital gown and gray fuzzy socks saw each other twice more before Lola had the hallways to herself, but she kept thinking about that moment as she paced.
“I’m healthy,” she muttered to herself, startling a nurse who was coming out of a patient’s darkened room. “There’s not a thing wrong with me.”
“Ma’am?” The nurse was a pretty, petite woman with a warm smile.
“Nothing, sorry,” Lola said. “Just thinking out loud.”
The nurse nodded. “Happens a lot on the night shift.”
That idea stuck with Lola too. There was something there, some story in the cooker about being whole and about the way we talk in the dark more freely than in the light. What was it? A new story, a story about a woman. She was named Olivia, maybe. Before she knew it, Lola was down the elevator and striding down the street. The drugstore was open until midnight, she was sure, and there were things she wanted.
A short time later, she was settled in her chair in Del’s room, using her knees as a desk for the notebook she’d purchased. Olivia’s world was building itself, and Lola lost herself in the threads of a story whose design she could only dimly perceive. She forgot Del, forgot herself, forgot she was in the hospital in the middle of the night. She wandered in the invisible web of a story whose world only revealed itself to her one tiny strand at a time.
Lola wrote until her hand cramped. She flexed her fingers and picked up the pen again, but it was too late. The story was gone, at least for now. She glanced at her watch and saw that she’d been writing for over three hours. No wonder her hand was tired. She couldn’t believe she’d lost the thread of Olivia’s story so suddenly. She tried for a long time but couldn’t make the story come back. She was eventually too frustrated to continue and she sat back, watching Del sleep.
What am I going to do? How am I going to make things right between us? The answer never came and neither did sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
I wanted to be a good person, somebody who helped people. I wanted to be worth something. An ache she’d long forgotten rose in Del, and she pressed her mouth shut to keep from crying out. How long had it been since Del had been an innocent? Mrs. Wendell. What would she think of me now?
Fourteen-year-old Del was a lanky loner, hiding behind a bushy blonde cloud of curls and sporting the awkward gait of a kid grown seven inches in as many months. She earned money by mowing lawns and doing minor repairs for people in the almost-middle-class housing development a mile or so from the trailer park.
She knocked on doors, asking people if they had any work that needed doing and getting thirty refusals for every yes. For nearly every yes, though, she got a regular customer. She worked hard and charged less than the boys and men competing for day labor jobs, and she always cleaned up after herself.
The money was good, for a kid Del’s age, and it gave her peeks into lives very different from her own. Del’s favorite customer, a youngish widow named Mrs. Wendell, had her come over two or three times a week. One day the job was refinishing the dining room table, another it was mowing the lawn, another, cutting back the blackberry bushes that threatened to overtake the yard. She always paid Del a fair rate, and she always offered Del a glass of lemonade after the work was done. She was nice to Del, which was a rare and wondrous thing to the awkward, gangly, lonely teen. Soon Del was stopping by Mrs. Wendell’s every day, and every day Mrs. Wendell had some job for her.
School, the trailer park, the city of Fresno—sometimes the whole world felt like a foreign landscape. Everywhere Del looked, things were gray and dingy and worn. All the faces seemed hard and cold. She felt like she’d been dropped into the middle of a world that didn’t want her. Like somebody had made a mistake and put her on the wrong planet. She was a careful alien, making her face a blameless blank, skulking around the edges of everything.
But she could relax at Mrs. Wendell’s, where it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with her. She wasn’t in the way or too awkward or a freak. And the world was nicer there. At Mrs. Wendell’s house, everything was clean and quiet and bright. Mrs. Wendell always had several windows open, and the smells of fresh flowers and cut grass and fruit trees wafted in from the garden. Large, ancient trees guarded the house from the brutal central valley sun and sheltered a world of cool and quiet and green. Del could almost feel the dust of the world drifting away from her as soon as she stepped through the gate that led to Mrs. Wendell’s front walk. Mrs. Wendell always had a radio playing in the kitchen, and the tiny house and yard were filled with whatever station Mrs. Wendell had chosen for the day. Sometimes it was country, sometimes rock, sometimes jazz or blues or classical music, but every time Del locked the front gate behind her she stepped into a world framed by Mrs. Wendell’s flowers, her smile and her music.
Every day, Mrs. Wendell sewed while Del worked outside. She loved watching Mrs. Wendell frown in concentration, her brow furrowed, her mouth pressed into a tight line. Sometimes her long, thin braid would fall over her shoulder, and her pale, slender neck would be exposed.
Something about that neck, its fragility and nakedness, hypnotized Del. She wanted to press her hot lips against that cool, soft, skin and feel the knobby bones underneath. They would feel the way a bird’s wings would if you could touch them, Del was sure. A few wispy hairs always escaped from the braid and danced in the light breeze from the fan, and Del imagined that they would tickle her skin when she kissed Mrs. Wendell’s cool, white neck.
Del was reckless with desire and put all of her love into her work. She built a shed for Mrs. Wendell’s yard things. She cleaned out the garage. She learned about cars so she could fix Mrs. Wendell’s ancient Chevelle when it broke down. She cut down a willow tree whose roots threatened to pull up the walkway and planted a chaste tree bought with her own money, blushing as she told Mrs. Wendell what it was and that it was a gift. Mrs. Wendell gave her a thank-you card the next day. Del tucked it into her pocket and sauntered toward home, waiting until she was in the privacy of the bathroom to wash her hands before unsheathing the creamy white paper. The words were simple, penned in Mrs. Wendell’s neat, even hand. Del smelled the paper. Did the words smell faintly of the lemony soap Mrs. Wendell savored? Maybe it was only imagination, but Del drew in the possibility of the scent until she was dizzy with love. Carefully encasing the note in the crisp envelope, Del put it with the money she kept hidden from her parents, tucked into a cloth sack behind her dresser.
After that, the first thing Del did every morning was glance at the battered bureau, painted a faded gray and covered with the remains of stickers from a series of bands she’d never heard of and places she’d never seen. Behind the castoff junk furniture lay her neatly folded jeans and tees, and behind those lay the money and Mrs. Wendell’s note. The secret presence of what Del came to think of as a love note carried Del through the endless hours of school, where no one knew or wanted to know her, and on to Mrs. Wendell’s home, where Del offered her gifts of labor with the ardent fervor of a courtier.
At six, Mrs. Wendell would call her in to sit at the table in the cool kitchen, and Del would race in and scrub her hands, worried about dirtying one of Mrs. Wendell’s pretty white towels. She’d perch carefully on the chair that had become hers, sitting up straight and hoping that she didn’t smell of sweat. Mrs. Wendell would sit opposite Del, and they would eat fruit and cookies and drink lemonade, and Mrs. Wendell would ask Del how school had been, and what the kids were like, and other questions. What kind of person did Del think she was? Did Del believe in God? Did she believe in reincarnation? What did Del think was her purpose in life? What kind of books did Del like? Music? Movies? Del worried about giving the wrong answer or being laughed at or sent away.
Eventually, though, she went from shy and awkward to almost eloquent under the easy acceptance of Mrs. Wendell, who always seemed interested in what Del had to say. She treated Del like a person, not lik
e a kid or a hindrance or competition or an oddity, and Del’s gratitude filled her and made her more generous with everyone around her, even her parents.
Day after day, she watched Mrs. Wendell’s graceful movements, the shine in her eyes when she grew enthused about something, the way her hair was plaited so perfectly. There would be waves in that hair at night when she took it out, Del knew. The moonlight would shine on those wheat-colored waves. They would hang down her slender neck and back and drape over her knobby shoulders and down over her barely-rounded breasts. Del wanted more than anything to see those waves caress that soft skin. To touch those waves and that soft skin.
She longed to find out what Mrs. Wendell’s lips would feel like, taste like. That longing became a hunger that nothing could fill. What had filled her up somehow made her even emptier inside, as the months drew on and Mrs. Wendell remained the same pleasant employer and acquaintance. Del was unable to think about anything but Mrs. Wendell. Food turned to sand in her mouth, other girls looked ugly to her, and she glared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“Why would she love you?” she barked at her reflection. “Why would you think you’re good enough for her to love you back?”
One day, Del sat down at the table after her work was done, and Mrs. Wendell turned around and gasped, dropping both glasses on the floor. Del jumped up and started picking up the pieces of broken glass and mopping up the lemonade with paper towels. She looked up to see Mrs. Wendell’s gaze fixed on Del’s face.
“What’s wrong?”
Had Mrs. Wendell seen that Del loved her? Was she disgusted? Del’s face flushed with shame. She finished clearing up. Then she sat and waited with her gaze fixed on the table. I’ll lie, Del decided. I’ll tell her I have a crush on a boy at school and just thought about him right then.
“Adele, what in the world happened to your eye?”
Del’s relief was a physical thing. “No, it’s nothing. I fell. We have these wooden steps, you know, and they aren’t real sturdy. I fell, that’s all.”
Mrs. Wendell shook her head. “Please, please, don’t lie to me. Aren’t we friends now? I want to know the truth. Please.” Her watery eyes held Del’s.
The truth? Del thought, her mind wild, the truth is that I love you. The truth is that I think about you every minute of every day, and I want to kiss you and live here with you. I want to touch you all over and smell your hair. That’s the truth. But she knew what Mrs. Wendell meant.
“It’s nothing, I just walked into a fight. No biggie.”
“At school? Don’t the teachers keep order?”
“Uh, no, not at school. My folks were just having it out, and I wasn’t paying attention. It was my own fault.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.” Mrs. Wendell’s eyes were fixed on Del’s.
“Well, I walked in when they were arguing, and I accidently got bumped. No biggie.”
“You are lying to me, Adele. I’m sorry to say that, but you are. That injury is no bump.”
“It’s no big deal.” Del was starting to feel weird. The way Mrs. Wendell was looking at her made her mad, for some reason. “Like I said.”
Mrs. Wendell’s eyes filled with tears, and she grabbed Del’s hand. “No, Adele, it is a big deal. It is. You’re a child, sweetheart, a little girl. Your parents should love you and protect you and take care of you. Honey, they should never, ever hurt you.”
Del pulled her hands away from Mrs. Wendell’s bony fingers. “You don’t need to get all worked up, Mrs. Wendell. It’s nothing.” She was getting madder and madder and didn’t know how to make this stop. Mrs. Wendell had actually touched her, but it was all wrong!
Mrs. Wendell shook her head and left the room, and Del sat back, defeated. Grief and impotent anger made her eyes sting with unshed tears. She would get sent home now and not asked back, ever. But Mrs. Wendell came back with her purse over her arm and a pad and pencil in her hand.
“Adele, I need you to write down your address for me,” she said, her hand shaking as she held out the pad. Del hesitated.
“What for?”
“I’m going to confront your abusive parents and call the police.” Mrs. Wendell’s cheeks were a hectic pink, and her eyes flashed. Del wanted to sink through the floor. She finally got a rise out of Mrs. Wendell, and it was for all the wrong reasons. She wished she’d realized Mrs. Wendell would get all upset about a stupid black eye. She’d have stayed away until it got better.
Stupid! She punched her thighs with both fists. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Now everything was ruined.
Del begged Mrs. Wendell not to go to the trailer park, partly because she knew it wouldn’t do any good and partly because she didn’t want Mrs. Wendell to see where she lived. They talked for hours and finally agreed that Mrs. Wendell would not go, but only if Del would agree to move in with her temporarily until they figured out a more permanent solution.
“Will your parents worry? Will they call the police?” Mrs. Wendell asked Del, and Del reassured her that it would be fine, they didn’t care, they probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone.
When Mrs. Wendell made her call home, Del did so, knowing that the phone had been cut off weeks earlier. She read the script Mrs. Wendell prepared, speaking over and into the recorded disconnected-number message, explaining to no one that she was taking an after-school job at a private residence in exchange for room and board. She waited a minute or so and then gave the phone number and address to no one and hung up with a grim nod.
“There, Adele, isn’t that better?” Mrs. Wendell pressed a cool hand to Del’s hot cheek. “You’ve been very responsible, sweetheart.”
I’ll take care of her, Del thought. I’ll protect her. A single woman alone at night, I bet she gets real scared. An idea came to her: Mrs. Wendell might have been hoping Del would move in with her and take care of her, and Del’s shiner was just a good excuse.
On the third night, when Mrs. Wendell came in to the little guest room off the kitchen to say goodnight, Del asked her to sit and talk for a while. After a few minutes, Del surprised both of them by leaning over and kissing Mrs. Wendell’s cheek. She hadn’t planned to do this, and she blushed furiously.
Mrs. Wendell regarded her with wide eyes. “You need to understand—”
Del knew what was coming and didn’t wait to hear it. She kissed Mrs. Wendell lightly on the lips. It was Del’s first kiss and she shook with nerves. Mrs. Wendell smelled faintly of sweat and baby powder and lemon, and her dry lips tasted like toothpaste. Finally Del stopped and looked at Mrs. Wendell’s face. She didn’t seem repulsed. She didn’t seem anything. She looked like a soft statue. Mrs. Wendell had turned off the radio before coming in, and the house seemed strange without the tinny sound of blues or rock or honky-tonk. The light was blue with evening and the air was cool, too. The world had become a strange, new place, and Del and Mrs. Wendell were strange and new in it.
Del took hold of Mrs. Wendell’s braid, undoing the rubber band, loosening the long, delicate strands of hair. She combed through the silky threads with her fingers as carefully as she could. Mrs. Wendell did not resist. She sighed lightly, her eyes closed. Her hair fell in the loose waves that Del had always imagined. And oh! Had there ever been anything so soft? Del’s hands trembled and she could hardly catch her breath. The silence made the moment seem sacred.
Del kissed Mrs. Wendell’s hair. Her cheeks. Then she went back to kissing her soft, dry lips. When she didn’t resist, Del kissed her again and again. Mrs. Wendell didn’t kiss her back, not really, but she didn’t move away either. Del kissed her harder, wanting to taste her mouth. She pulled Mrs. Wendell’s trembling body closer to her own, her hand resting on the small of Mrs. Wendell’s back, and felt her small breasts press into Del’s. She ran her shaking hand down Mrs. Wendell’s soft, lean arm down to the work-roughened ends of her fingers. Those calluses were hard, compared to the rest of her skin, and Del pulled Mrs. Wendell’s hand up to kiss her fingertips, one by one.
&
nbsp; Mrs. Wendell finally started responding, kissing Del back and stroking Del’s face with her cool, calloused, gentle hands. Del’s heart hammered when Mrs. Wendell placed her palm over it. She kissed Del on her forehead, her cheek. She reached up and caressed Del’s lips with a leathery fingertip. Del’s stomach fluttered and her breath came out as a small moan. Mrs. Wendell smiled at her but looked sad. When Del leaned in to kiss her again, Mrs. Wendell shook her head and frowned.
“No, Adele, stop. No, no, we can’t do this. Honey, stop. Dear God, what have I done? Honey, I mean it. I—stop that right now. Get off the bed. Go on now. I mean it, sweetheart. Right now.”
Del froze. She pulled away and sank in an awkward bundle of limbs on the floor and didn’t realize that she was crying until Mrs. Wendell reached over and used her yellow nylon nightgown to blot Del’s tears. Del couldn’t look at anything but the floor. She didn’t even know what she felt, only that she hurt everywhere.
Mrs. Wendell whispered, “I’m sorry. Oh, what’s wrong with me? I never meant to do anything like this. It’s wrong. It’s so wrong! You are still very much a child, my dearest, darling girl. Please understand I have to do what’s best for you, sweetheart, even though it may hurt your feelings. It’s the only way. I never meant for this to happen. I need you to leave right now and never, ever come back. It’s not a punishment, darling. Never think that. It’s to protect you. Please go. Go now.”
Del went cold all over. She begged, she remembered that, but didn’t remember anything about the rest of that night or the following days.
Now, nearly thirty years later, Del felt the same mix of confusion and shame and regret and fear. She felt cold. She felt empty. She looked around the hospital room and saw that Lola was gone, thank goodness. Stalking the halls again or off getting more coffee.