President Roosevelt said on the radio times were getting better, and that was why all the Lovells had pitched in to buy the corn planter that would plant four rows at a time. She just hoped rain came to water in the corn. She could see them out there with buckets and dippers, the whole Lovell clan, taking care of everybody’s fields. She giggled.
“What’s funny?”
She told him.
He smiled and bumped her with his arm. “Don’t worry, sugar. It will rain. It always does.”
While her dad was milking their Jersey cow and slopping the hogs, Clara put their dishes to soak in the warm water from the stove; then she went to make her bed. She still slept in the baby room, although she was ten. How many times had she heard her mother say She’s still in the baby room, Franklin. It’s not right. There was a big upstairs for bedrooms, but it didn’t have floors or ceilings or walls yet. It had been part of her daddy’s plan to build a fine house for his fine bride where they would raise a fine family.
But the times had changed and they’d been lucky to hang on to their land and tractor. And they had the necessary things—a well, a garden, an outhouse, a smokehouse, a chicken house, a hog house, a barn, and a corncrib.
The big house had been a great beginning, just like her mama’s clock with Westminster chimes people made such a fuss over. And her mama’s fine wardrobe with its red enamel drawers. And Clara’s own fancy bed.
The bed was a white concoction (a vocabulary word from the sixth graders) that made her think of a birdcage. Or maybe a wedding cake because it was so high. She’d needed a step stool to get in it when she was small. Now she could do a little jump. The headboard and footboard were made of curling metal vines. Birds, their beaks open, sang silently. Nobody in the countryside had such a fine bed.
For a minute, she watched her daddy coming down the lane from the barn. He grabbed the bucket that hung on a nail by the henhouse door and went inside. She was glad he was going to gather the eggs because she didn’t like to. The chicken house was hot and dusty and sometimes the hens pecked her hand when she reached for the eggs.
She stripped off her gown and hung it on a peg, took her dress off the other peg, and slipped it over her head. She put on clean underpants, then sat on her hope chest—the only other piece of furniture in the room—to put on her socks and shoes. Grandpa Lovell made cedar hope chests for the girl cousins on their tenth birthdays. By the time they were married, hopefully the chests would be full of useful things like tea towels and dishes and pretty nightgowns.
Clara loved the plain cedar chest that smelled so good, but she didn’t invest much energy in hoping someday somebody might want to marry her. She hoped it would rain. She hoped the garden would grow. She hoped her mama was happy in Italian heaven. She hoped her daddy stayed strong and well. She hoped she was a good daughter and would become a better person. She hoped the uncles would make ice cream today. She hoped until she had touched on all the important stuff. And then she said Amen.
* * *
As they walked to Grandma and Grandpa Lovell’s, her daddy looked at the pasture beside the road and said it was about played out. “We’ll move those cows tomorrow,” he said.
She liked moving cows. They were gentle and followed her daddy, who carried a bucket of grain and called suk suk. She brought up the rear, clapping at the laggards. She liked the cows more than she liked the chickens or the hogs.
At the cemetery at the end of the road, she wondered if they would go inside to visit her mother’s grave. She’d forgotten about the Mason jar of flowers. But her daddy looked at the angel from the road and then they turned east.
Uncle Robert and Aunt Marie’s house was at the top of the hill. It was a yellow two-storied among the trees with a barn and shed behind it. Her cousins’ rope swing hung from a giant oak tree in the side yard. They flew so high in that swing Clara felt like her toes almost touched heaven.
“They must already be gone,” her daddy said.
Their little mare nickered and trotted to the fence. Clara jumped the ditch and petted her.
At the bottom of the hill, an almost-dry creek, choked with grass, ran under a wooden bridge. The sound was hollow beneath her daddy’s boots.
On top of the next hill was Uncle Samuel and Aunt Ruth’s place. Aunt Ruth was shaking a rug on the front porch. She waved and called, “The kids are just picking a mess of asparagus for the meal. Be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Aunt Ruth talked funny because she was from Tennessee.
“See you there,” her daddy called, glancing at Clara with a hidden smile.
At the bottom of the hill, they stopped on the bridge to see if there was any water flowing. There wasn’t, but her daddy spotted a box turtle in the grass.
“It looks like his shell is painted with hieroglyphs,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Seventh graders,” she explained. “Ancient Egyptian writing.”
The next hill belonged to Uncle Joseph and Aunt Treva. Their new puppy yapped ferociously from the wraparound porch.
“He thinks he’s the king of the hill,” her daddy said, laughing.
“I would like to have a puppy.”
She got to play with her cousins’ puppies. But she wanted one that she could be the boss of. One that might like to sleep in her room.
Her mama had always said no. One dog meant more dogs and nonsense she didn’t want to deal with.
Her daddy didn’t say anything but he squeezed her shoulder in a promising way.
The road bent north. In the fencerows, wild morning glory climbed over everything. Hidden birds tweeted and mystery critters rustled around.
Soon they came to Miss Doll’s house. Miss Doll was the widowed mother of Aunt Ruth. Her house was so tiny they called it the dollhouse. It was surrounded by an ornate black metal fence with spikes that fired Clara’s imagination. When she squinted her eyes and stared at the bark of the old hickory trees that surrounded the house, she saw hideous faces that shifted their expressions more the longer she looked. But the faces disappeared when she tried to get her cousins to see them.
The road bent east and they crossed the railroad track on a bridge high above it. Then around the next bend was Grandma and Grandpa Lovell’s gingerbread house with the pump organ in the parlor and the big barn with the sparkling pond behind it.
She saw cousins fishing from the bank. She glanced at her daddy, who looked happier than he’d looked all morning.
“You go ahead, sugar.” He touched her head. “Have a good time with your cousins.”
It seemed wicked on this day.
“Go on,” he said. “Catch us a fish.”
She took off running. Being set free to have fun was almost as good as rain.
·· three ··
Harriet Jane
1957
WHEN her dad came in from the field for lunch, Harriet Jane was at the counter stirring sugar into the iced tea. She looked away when he kissed her mom on the lips.
He ruffled Harriet Jane’s bangs as he walked past. “How’s my number one daughter?”
“Fine,” she said.
He picked up baby Annie and nuzzled her. Then he made a face and put her back in her playpen. “Clara, the baby needs her diaper changed,” he said.
Her mother looked up from the potatoes she was whipping. Her eyes went to Harriet Jane, then to the baby, and back to Harriet Jane.
Harriet Jane’s dad had gone into the dining room and sat down in his chair at the head of the table and opened the day-old newspaper the mail carrier had just delivered. Harriet Jane had run out to the mailbox to get it because she knew her dad would like to look at it.
“Call Phoebe and Mona,” their mother told Harriet Jane. “Tell them it’s time to eat. And please change Annie. I’m in the middle of getting food on.”
Harriet Jane w
ent to the bottom of the stairs and was starting to yell up when the Westminster clock started its noonday extravaganza. Sixteen chimes—four for the quarter hour, four more for the half hour, four more for the three-quarters hour, four more for the full hour—followed by twelve slow, hearty bongs. While she waited for it to end, she congratulated herself on having used her word for the day in a sentence. Extravaganza. It meant an elaborate or spectacular entertainment or production. An aunt had given her a Word a Day calendar for Christmas.
When the old clock finally stopped vibrating, she yelled, “Phoebe! Mona! Come on! Time to eat!”
She heard the scramble of their shoes on the wood floors overhead as she picked up Annie and carried her to the baby bedroom.
The downy softness of her sister’s almost-bald head brushed against her cheek. “You’re a bald, smelly baby,” she whispered in Annie’s ear.
Annie beamed and Harriet Jane kissed her, her heart overflowing despite the messy little bottom she was about to clean.
In the baby bedroom, she laid Annie on the changing table. Annie gazed up at her big sister as if Harriet Jane were the most wonderful thing on the planet. Why did the spirit from the place where all the plants were dead and the creeks were full of sludge and the sun never shone come to sit on her then? Force tears to her eyes? Make her ache deeper than her bones?
She tried to keep what happened secret. If she was a good big sister, got perfect grades, helped her mother, learned a word a day, and won blue ribbons, she would make everybody proud—Grandpa Lovell, her parents, her teachers, her 4-H leader. Her dad. Then the spirit would leave her alone and nobody would ever know.
She forced herself to make a silly noise and bury her face in Annie’s fat little neck, giving big smooches, making her baby sister crow with laughter.
“We’re waiting,” their dad called from the dining room. “Food’s getting cold.”
After she’d put Annie in the high chair and sat down, their dad said grace. He always began by thanking God for each one of them by name, starting with her mother. Harriet Jane felt a glow every time when her daddy thanked God for her. Then he asked for forgiveness of their sins, known and unknown. Then he asked God to please hold off the rain until all the corn was in the ground because if he couldn’t finish in the next couple of days, it would be too late for the year.
Harriet Jane knew he’d worried about the cold, wet spring that had kept farmers out of the field. Every morning and every evening he’d hung on the weather report, longing for warm, dry days.
After the critical stuff—gratitude, forgiveness, weather—he talked to God about whatever was on his mind. Sometimes it didn’t take long. Other times the food got cold. Today, Annie smacked the high chair tray, and Harriet Jane sensed their mother’s hands going over Annie’s as her dad discussed the neighbor who had bought Uncle Joseph’s house and was letting the place get junky. When her dad finally said Amen, he looked at Harriet Jane. “I thought you were going to town with the 4-H kids. Weren’t you guys going to the swimming pool this afternoon?”
“I didn’t want to,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “I thought you did.”
She shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
It felt like too much trouble. And her swimsuit didn’t fit.
Her dad looked perplexed. Another one of her Word a Day achievements. It meant baffled or puzzled. “Did you know about this, Clara?” he asked their mother, who had food in her mouth but nodded.
But Harriet Jane was pretty sure her mother had forgotten the swimsuit was too short and tight, and Harriet Jane hadn’t reminded her a second time that she needed a new one. It was hopeless anyway. The new swimsuit would be either too babyish or too sophisticated.
Phoebe and Mona started teasing each other and Mona finally got mad and kicked Phoebe. The baby dropped her spoon on the floor and began to fuss for someone to pick it up. The phone rang and Harriet Jane’s mother got up to answer it and everybody forgot about Harriet Jane not going swimming.
* * *
It was hot upstairs, but the windows were open and a breeze tickled her neck. The whir of the Singer came from the sewing room downstairs, where their mother was making Phoebe and Mona look-alike dresses. Their mother sewed all their clothes except their underwear. Everybody said the girls always looked so pretty, and Clara so fashionable.
Except for the sound of the sewing machine, it was quiet. The baby was napping. Phoebe and Mona were in Mona’s room being completely still, which meant they had fallen asleep, which they often did on warm afternoons, or they were doing something they shouldn’t, like giving each other haircuts or playing with their mother’s lipstick.
She should hear the sound of the tractor. Maybe her dad had shut down to refill the planter. She listened, hoping the tractor would start again so she didn’t have to worry.
He was so proud of her. She wished she could tell him about the gray spirit and how tired it made her. She thought he could do something about the spirit if he knew. There was no reason for her to be tired. She didn’t have too much work to do. Her mother wanted her to have fun, be happy, read, draw, pursue her dreams, go swimming. Sometimes she could do those things, and sometimes she couldn’t. If she told her dad, he’d know there was something wrong with her and wouldn’t be proud of her anymore.
When the tractor started up again, she felt giddy with relief. She sank to the floor cross-legged in front of the beautiful old wardrobe at the end of the hall.
The wardrobe had belonged to their grandmother Belle Lovell, who had died a long time ago. Eventually, Grandpa Lovell took a second wife, and when their mother married their daddy, Ralph Hoffmann, Grandpa Lovell moved with his second wife to town, where he ran a grain elevator with his new wife’s cousin. Grandpa Lovell gave the house and the farm to his beloved Clara and her new husband.
Their daddy had made changes after he got home from the army. He tore down the dim, dusty corncrib where cracks of sunlight shone between the boards, and he installed a shiny new grain bin. He got rid of the chicken house and the hog pen because he wanted to concentrate on cattle and grain farming. When they got running water in the house and a real bathroom, they didn’t need the outhouse anymore. He wanted to knock down the smokehouse, but their mama convinced him to leave it for a garden shed. Inside the house, all of Grandma Belle’s fine things, like the wardrobe, the Westminster grandfather clock, and the bed Harriet Jane slept in, stayed.
The wardrobe loomed at the end of the hall, seeming to hint at answers to questions Harriet Jane didn’t have yet. There were things in the drawers her parents wouldn’t think were suitable for her to be looking at. She especially loved the postcards—both the pictures on the front and what was on the back. She had looked at them many times when her mother thought she was in her room reading. She had grouped them by sender. The ones from Josephine were the best because they had foreign language on the back that explained what was on the front. Harriet Jane liked to flip them back and forth, trying to figure out from the picture what the Italian words might say.
Many of Josephine’s postcards showed enormous naked statues, lots of them in fountains. Harriet Jane had never seen a naked man and she studied those pictures. There were naked ladies too. And kids and babies. Even the animals looked naked as spouts of water jetted up among the figures or poured out of the mouths of fish.
“Harriet Jane?” her mother called.
She closed the drawer and jumped up, going to the top of the stairs.
“I have an idea,” her mother said. “Come down and let’s talk about it.”
In the sewing room, the pretty sundresses were spread out on the cutting table. Harriet Jane hoped her mother’s idea wasn’t to also make her one. Phoebe and Mona were cute little girls. Harriet Jane would look like a giraffe in a tutu. At school, kids called her Giraffe. And Stretch. Maybe people expected so much of her because she was tall.
Harriet Jane thought swimsuits, like underwear, had to come from the store or the Sears catalogue.
Her mother opened her cedar hope chest, which sat under the south window. She held up two pieces of fabric. One was white with little black dots. One was black with big white dots. “What do you think?” she asked.
Harriet Jane was glad her mother hadn’t picked something babyish like the gingham she’d used for the little girls’ sundresses.
“Maybe,” she said. A swimsuit made out of the polka dots could be cute.
“Slip off your clothes and let me measure you.”
The soft tape measure felt cool against her skin as her mother measured around her chest under her arms. Then she measured the distance between the two bumps on Harriet Jane’s collarbone. Her soft hands with their light touch smelled like soap and cigarettes. Harriet Jane remembered that scent from way back when there had been only her, and her mother had brushed her hair every morning and put in barrettes.
Her mother made notes, then measured the length of Harriet Jane’s body from a point on her chest to her crotch. She wrote down that number. Then she did the same thing on Harriet Jane’s back.
Harriet Jane could see herself in the standing mirror. Naked except for her panties, her frizzy blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was gawky and ugly.
Her mother caught her eyes in the mirror. “You probably don’t realize it, honey,” she said, “but you’re starting to look so much like your grandmother Lovell.”
Harriet Jane stared at the image in the mirror. Why did her mother say that? Grandmother Lovell—Belle—had been beautiful. Everybody said so. And there were pictures in the wardrobe. Harriet Jane had seen with her own eyes how pretty she was.
Surprise Lily Page 2