“Oh? Who’s Roger?”
“My mom’s boyfriend.”
“I see. Is your mother home now?” Because surely the child should not be out in the alley by herself.
“Shelly’s not my mom.”
Beate paused a moment to process this. “Then where is your mother?”
“In Tennessee with Roger.”
She was beginning to lose track of the names, but persevered. “Does Shelly live over there?”
“Yeah. She stays with my dad.”
So the surly man was Kyra’s father. “Who else stays in your dad’s house?”
“Petey and Michelle.”
Beate thought she might have sorted it out, finally, except for the possibly vexed question of Pete’s and Michelle’s paternity. “Well Kyra, it was very nice to meet you. Why don’t you go back in your own yard now, so Shelly doesn’t worry about you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t forget your bear,” Beate reminded her, and Kyra turned to pick it up before she opened the gate to her own yard, squeezed through and let it bang shut behind her.
Funny little creature. Not so much unmannerly—though eight was not too young for manners—just unwilling to put much effort into a conversation. But she was being unfair. Children that age were very much in their own worlds. And this little girl seemed to live pillar to post as it was, shifting between parents and whoever the parents’ cotenants happened to be at any given moment. What could you expect?
That evening Beate’s daughter called. She lived in a city that was nearly as far away as her son’s but in the opposite direction. Her daughter was, as always, vague about how she spent her time, and with whom, and anything else that might allow for personal knowledge. But she was full of prodding questions about Beate. Was her mother still drinking coffee even after she had been advised not to? Was she still having trouble sleeping? Well no wonder. Was she getting out and doing things, seeing people, not just shutting herself inside with her sewing?
Beate asked what was wrong with sewing. “Nothing,” her daughter said. “You just can’t make it your whole life.”
“It’s not my whole life.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m sure I don’t,” said Beate, beginning to be sorry she’d answered the phone. There was a point when one’s children began to bully and manage you for your own good, but surely she had not yet come to such a pass. What would her daughter know about her life these days, either in its entirety or its parts? What would anyone?
“You could do volunteer work,” her relentless daughter went on. “You could take a class at the community college or somewhere.”
“What sort of class?”
“Whatever interests you. Music. Art. The Y here has a course in memoir writing. A lot of older people do that, write down their reminiscences. Even get them published.”
“Since nobody ever wants to hear about them, I doubt anyone would read them.”
“Never mind,” her daughter said. “I think it would be nice if you had some kind of more social hobby, but never mind. Is Daddy there?”
Beate called her husband to the phone and hung up. She heard him talking for some time, although she couldn’t make out what he said. Every so often he laughed. If she asked him later what they were talking about, he would say nothing, nothing in particular. Let them have their jokes and secrets. She would settle for being left out, as long as they didn’t fuss over her.
She had been a good mother. She’d taught them Christmas carols, made pancakes in the shape of bunnies, checked their homework, taken them for vaccinations and eyeglasses and braces. Love measured out by the teaspoon, built up over years and years, a reservoir. Why did so little of it flow back her way?
Kyra returned the next day. This was not surprising. Beate figured she was a novelty, or perhaps Franklin was the real draw. When he started pawing and whining at the fence, Beate went outside, knowing what she’d find. “Hello?”
“Can I play with your dog?”
Beate opened the gate. Kyra had a red popsicle in one hand and was sucking on it. Her mouth and tongue were stained a startling cherry red. Not the sort of thing Beate would have given a child at nine-thirty in the morning. “Why don’t you finish your popsicle and go ask Shelly if it’s all right with her. And wash your face,” she added.
She waited while the girl scooted across to her own yard, emerging a little while later without the popsicle, her mouth a rubbed-looking pink. “Did Shelly tell you it was all right to play here?” Kyra nodded. “Good, because you know you shouldn’t go visit people you don’t know without permission.”
Beate stepped aside and Kyra entered. Franklin rushed to cover her with sloppy dog kisses. Kyra giggled. Beate found a couple of his old toys, a ball and a squeaky man. She sat on the stairs and watched them play, Kyra giving him detailed instructions, Franklin, uncomprehending, following along as best he could. After a while Beate got up and went into the kitchen, poured out orange juice into plastic glasses, and set out some cheese and crackers and apple slices on a plate. She called Kyra over the picnic table (Franklin needed a break by then), and the two of them ate their snack in the shade of the old linden tree. Kyra, once talking, chattered on in hectic fashion. She liked dogs and she liked horses. She was going to be in the second grade. Her teacher last year was Mrs. Singer and she was “all right.” Petey and Michelle didn’t go to school yet. She liked Petey but she didn’t like Michelle but she wouldn’t say why. Her mom sent her a postcard from Tennessee. It had a picture of a horse on it.
“Sometimes Petey hits me and I hit him back,” she volunteered.
“Well that’s not very nice. You shouldn’t hit him.”
“He hit me so I hit him and then I tied him to a chair.”
This seemed unlikely, but Beate let it pass. “When is your mother coming back from Tennessee?”
“I don’t know. Roger has a motorcycle. And two rodeo horses. And a million dollars.”
“You like to make up stories, don’t you? Will you live with your mother or your father when school starts?”
Again Kyra said she didn’t know, and Beate didn’t ask any more questions. After an hour, Beate sent her back across the alley. No one had called or come looking for her, but it was best to pretend that someone might be.
She returned the next morning. Beate was ready for her and had a note prepared: Would it be all right if Kyra visited at my house? I enjoy her company but would not wish to worry you.
At the bottom she signed her name and included her address and phone number. Beate sent her home with it and almost immediately Kyra was back. “OK” was written in scratchy blue ink at the bottom of the page.
This was probably the best you could hope for. Beate sat and watched Kyra and Franklin play, as before, and once that ran its course she told Kyra she had work to do, but that she could come inside and watch if she wished.
She did, and Beate led her upstairs to the sewing room. Kyra was transfixed by the dressmaker form. “What’s that for?”
“If you’re making clothes, you can fit them on her.”
“What kind of clothes?”
“Anything you like. Pants, shirts, dresses.”
Kyra looked uncomprehending. Beate realized that this was a new idea for her, that ordinary people made clothes, they didn’t just come from a store. “Her name is Miss Swanky.”
“What does swanky mean?”
“Fancy, like showing-off fancy.”
Beate gave her a tour of the room and all its features, let her touch the skeins of yarn in their basket, run her hands over the rainbow spools of thread. She showed Kyra a picture of the appliqué border she had selected for the quilt, a pink and green pattern of stylized, trailing roses. “Do you see the little brown bird?”
Kyra shook her head. “Try again,” Beate told her, and when Kyra spotted it, tucked into a green curlicue, she smiled her first full, unguarded smile. She might well grow up to be pretty. Up until now it had be
en difficult to say. “You see,” Beate told her, “the bird was right there the whole time. You just had to look carefully. Would you like me to show you how to embroider? First let’s go wash your hands.”
Beate provided an embroidery hoop and a square of white muslin, showed her how to thread the embroidery floss and roll a fat knot at the end of it. She taught her how to make a cross-stitch in yellow, then they picked red, Kyra’s favorite, for blanket stitches, then blue for stem stitch, and pink for French knots. “You practice those for a while. When you are good enough, if you like, we will find a project for you.”
She started in on her own work, one eye on Kyra in case she grew bored or frustrated. The light from the window lit her silky hair as she bent over the hoop, quiet for once, absorbed in pushing the needle in and out. Her thin, summer-brown legs were planted wide apart, her feet in their old plaid tennis shoes flat and splayed out. Still, she made a nice picture. A little girl learning to sew; what was more charming than that? “Let me see,” Beate said after a while. “Very good job,” she pronounced. “You can take it home with you and show everyone.” If nothing else, she thought, the girl had learned how to thread a needle.
Beate fixed their lunch—chicken salad, bread and butter, milk—and again they ate it at the picnic table in the backyard. Children’s high, indistinct voices reached them from beyond the fence. The two younger ones must have been playing outside. Beate closed her eyes. Her childhood in Germany existed only as scraps of much-handled memories. There had been a cherry tree outside the front door and her father had lifted her up on his shoulders so that she was surrounded by the glowing fruit. There was a song they sang when they went to feed the ducks in the park: Alle meine Entchen schwimmen auf dem See, schwimmen auf dem See, Köpfchen in das Wasser. She had tipped over the blue bowl of sugar and her mother had been cross. How much was remembered, how much was lost? Who had she been, that long-ago girl child? Now that it was almost too late, she reached back, trying to reclaim her. Perhaps childhood was always a foreign country.
From across the alley one of the children, probably the little girl, raised her voice in a sudden, piercing shriek. Beate opened her eyes. It was time to send Kyra home.
She came again, not the next day, but the day after. And she did not appear on the weekends when her father was home and presumably keeping better track of her. But she visited often enough for the two of them to fall into a routine: the simple sewing tasks Beate set for her, Kyra’s mile-a-minute observations on the people in her world (“Shelly has a rash between her toes”), the lunch eaten at the picnic table. She was a flighty little thing, Beate decided, but also inquisitive and anxious to please. She might have interests and aptitudes that would reveal themselves over time. All any child really needed was encouragement.
Beate told herself not to make the girl into a pet. There were not very many weeks left in the summer, and once school began, she might be reclaimed by the mother and the legendary Roger.
But say she stayed here, with her father. It might be possible for Beate to assume some place in her life. She would introduce herself to the adults in the house, make arrangements. Provide her with some of the supervision and attention she seemed to lack. Help with her schoolwork. And what a pleasure it would be to have a little girl in the house, teach her how to knit, how to bake cookies . . .
Here Beate stopped herself, since she was surely getting too far ahead of herself. And she had to wonder what Kyra herself wanted.
Beate began by asking her if she liked school, if she was looking forward to school starting up again. “Uh huh,” Kyra said, unconvincingly.
Beate persisted. “And what do you like about school? Do you like reading stories? Spelling? Arithmetic?”
“Roger lets me ride his motorcycle.”
“That sounds like fun.” Giving up her attempts to steer the conversation.
“Yeah, and I got to put the gas in it.”
Beate said that was a good thing to do. She couldn’t help noticing that Kyra’s own father was never mentioned with any similar enthusiasm. Then again, it would be hard to compete with a motorcycle.
She made a surprise for Kyra, a little sundress she stitched up out of red bandana fabric, red being Kyra’s favorite color. She had to guess at the measurements if it was to be a surprise, but she put smocking across the front and made straps with adjustable buttons to allow for anything off in the sizing. It turned out well and was certainly more attractive than her stretched and faded play clothes.
“I have something for you,” she told Kyra, the next time she came over. “Here you are.”
She held it out but Kyra wouldn’t take it from her. Something blank and dull settled over her face. “Would you like to see how you look in it?” Beate prompted.
“No.”
“Kyra, if someone gives you a present, you should thank them.”
Almost inaudible: “Thank you.”
“Why don’t you go into the bathroom and try it on?”
“I don’t want to.”
“All right, but why don’t you want to?” Her feelings were rather hurt, although she was not really entitled to such feelings.
“I don’t want to! You can’t make me!”
“Kyra, I would not make you do anything you don’t want to. I’ll wrap the dress up and you can take it home with you.” Quickly retreating, since what choice did she have? Maybe the girl didn’t like wearing dresses. She wondered if it would ever be worn, or if it would end up shoved into the corner of a closet. Kyra left that day with the dress in a brown paper bag, the bag drooping from one hand. It had clearly been a mistake, but she had no idea why.
That night after dinner, she asked her husband if he thought there was an age when children became self-conscious about their appearance.
He looked up from the computer where he was researching his next grandiose project, a complete replacement of the house’s heating system. The front entrance was still a bare and dispiriting mess, but he liked to think ahead. He seemed surprised that she would ask him such a question, as well he might, but who else did she have to talk to?
“I guess so. I couldn’t say what age. Probably when some other little kid starts making fun of you.”
“That starts young.” It was how she had come to think of Kyra’s near-tantrum about the dress: she had interpreted the gift as criticism. And she had hardly been wrong to do so. Was that why she didn’t seem excited about school, because she was teased there? “Or maybe there’s a phase when they aren’t sure what they want to be, girls or boys, you know, pulled both ways . . .” Ride a motorcycle? Thread a needle? Her son when young had played with dolls. Her daughter, well, she had never had any use for normal girlhood.
“Who are you talking about, your little orphan friend?”
“She’s hardly an orphan.”
“All the more reason not to get involved in her affairs.”
“There are parents and then there are parents,” Beate said, but their conversation was at an end. How little comfort they were to each other. How many more years life might go on in this way, until one of them died and the other fell entirely silent.
She might have worried about Kyra staying away, but she reappeared the next morning just as before. Beate welcomed her inside. The new appliqué square was now finished and she pinned it to the design wall and asked Kyra to help her decide how to arrange them. “This one on top of this one on top of this one,” Kyra declared. “Then this one and this one.” Beate laughed and said that then it wouldn’t be a quilt, only a long piece of cloth.
Their lunch that day was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and vanilla pudding. Franklin sat at their feet in the shade, panting. The weather had turned hazy hot. “You know, Kyra, I like your idea of making a long embroidered panel. A kind of tapestry. That could be my next project, you could help me.” It wasn’t even the skills themselves she wanted to teach the girl, but the principles of craftsmanship, the ethic of excellence, how doing a thing well could ab
sorb and sustain you.
“My daddy sleeps in Michelle’s bed.”
Kyra held the last peanut butter and jelly square in one hand, though she seemed uninterested in eating it, and was intent on squeezing the filling out through the flattened edges of the bread.
“What did you say, Kyra?”
“Sometimes he does.”
“Does what?”
Kyra drummed her heels against the bench. “Sleeps in her bed,” she repeated, patiently. There was no sense that she felt she was communicating anything remarkable.
Beate felt her insides revolving. “Do you mean, when Michelle is sick or has nightmares?” Please God that there would be some such an explanation.
Kyra shrugged. “I guess so.”
“And what does Shelly say about this?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Finish your milk,” Beate said automatically. She made herself sort through the different possibilities. Kyra was mistaken. Kyra was being untruthful, or exaggerating. Children often did, and certainly Kyra’s statements did not always seem reliable. It was something ordinary and innocent. Bedtime stories. A child afraid of the dark.
She remembered something she’d once seen from her window, some time back, in the spring, before Kyra had come to live in the house across the alley. The man’s truck had pulled into the driveway and he’d gotten out and lifted up the little girl in her soiled pink ballerina outfit. He’d carried her inside and they had not come out again. The woman’s car had not been there.
None of this was evidence of anything. But once the thought entered your mind, it pulled other thoughts and suspicions along behind it. And all the toys, the backyard games the man arranged for them. What if he did it not to court and appease the woman, or because he genuinely liked children, what if the woman was just the excuse for him to gain access to the child?
Such things happened. She had no doubt. The close heat of the day bore down on her and she lifted her glass of ice water to her forehead. “Why did you want to tell me about your daddy sleeping in Michelle’s bed?”
“I don’t know.”
Do Not Deny Me Page 9