All the Finest Girls (8 page)

Two days have passed since Louise spoke with Dilly about church.

“Dilly,” she said, drying a plate and looking out the window over the sink. Dilly had come in for a cup of coffee and was on his way back out the kitchen door. “I’m wanting yah to carry me down to de Anglican.” Louise stopped and sucked a tooth. “Hear me now, Anglican, I mean Episcopal, church on Sunday. Down by de market.”

Whenever Louise speaks, Dilly’s face turns very serious. His eyebrows shoot downward and he pulls at the corner of his mustache. I watched him concentrating hard on Louise as she spoke.

“You want me to take you to church on Sunday? Is that it?”

“De service is at nine, for an hour. Den I’ll be ready to come home.”

Dilly nodded slowly and walked out the door, where I could see him scratch the top of his head and adjust his cap before getting back on his mower.

Sundays are Louise’s day off. Mom says we’re not to bother her on those days. We’re all to make do, she says. But so far, Louise has been just the same on Sundays, spending the day with me as always. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing to do in Coldbrook. Today, though, she wants to go to church, and she’s invited me to come along.

Louise walks me into the bathroom and sits down on the lid of the toilet.

“Commere witcha razzy head,” she says reaching for the hairbrush resting on the sink. I back up toward the door. She holds the brush high.

“Yah not entering de house of de Lord wit yah head like dat. So if yah wanting to come wit me, let me do my work.”

Until now, Louise hasn’t said a word about my hair. I’d thought she didn’t see the fuzzy knots, the patches that had become sticky to the touch. Or maybe I looked like a black girl now. I wanted her to notice, but now that she has, I run to the bed with a screech.

I stuff my head beneath a pillow. The truth is I hate my hair this way but can’t admit it. I keep it wrecked for my mother, because it makes her sad. Too many ideas and feelings jab at me. I’m anxious, unhappy, and I’m ashamed for disobeying Louise. But what is strangest is what I cannot find. There’s no red anger rising, no prickly skin, no sandpaper tongue of the enemy. I wait for Cat, but he doesn’t come. Louise doesn’t sit on the edge of the bed the way Mom does, doesn’t plead, doesn’t offer a leg for me to kick at, an arm to twist away from. With Louise, there is no inky darkness, no place to go. I’m at loose ends, and the air beneath the pillow quickly becomes hot and thick.

I turn the pillow aside in search of fresh air. Beyond the open bathroom door I can see Louise at the mirror, adjusting the pins in her small round hat. In the reflection, she catches my eye.

“Yah don’t wanna be raging against me,” she says, her voice quiet and simple. “A child’s always got the power to break her mumma’s heart. But yah cyaant break mine; not yet, Addy.”

I lie on the bed and listen to a bird calling outside the window. Bob White, says the bird. Bob White.

“All right den, Addy, I’ll see yah after service.”

Before she can walk away, before I can think anymore, I walk, head bent, back into the bathroom.

The first stroke of the brush brings tears to my eyes, and Louise must take a scissors to three impossible nests. When she’s done she fastens the top of my hair with a blue ribbon. I can’t stop a smile when Louise looks at me head-on.

We walk down the long hall that separates our rooms from the big center of the house. I get up on my tiptoes as I pass my parents’ door and am rounding the corner to the top of the stairs when I catch the smell of frying bacon coming up the stairwell. Louise’s eyebrows are raised in surprise. Grabbing the bannister, I clatter down the stairs.

The kitchen is a cloud of blue-brown smoke. Louise pushes past me and turns off the burner that flames beneath a cast-iron pan. Five or six tar black strips of bacon spit their last, drowning in a pool of hot grease. I look to the far end of the room, where the table is set for four, crowned at the center by a clutch of forlorn daisies in a crystal vase. Mom sits at her place with her back to us, turned to face the sliding glass doors that open to the back lawn. A half dozen sooty cigarette filters fill an ashtray at her elbow. In her lap is a script open to the last pages.

At the sound of my hard-soled shoes on the tiled floor, Mom turns around. Her skin and lips and hair seem to disappear, papery and pale against the blushy collar of her robe. The delicate skin beneath her eyes is ashy gray.

“Good morning!” she calls out, her voice faltering on sleep and smoke. Her face looks confused when she notices the haze between her and us.

“Oh,” she says, frowning. “Whoopsy daisy.”

She walks to the stove, and Louise steps out of the way. When she finds the knob already in the off position, she tugs on it anyway and then peers into the bottom of the pan.

“Oh, well,” she says turning to us with a quick, tired smile. “My gosh, Addy.” My mother looks me up and down. “You let Louise brush your hair!”

I feel I’ve lost something. I turn my ankles and say nothing.

“Thank you,” Mom says to Louise, extravagantly. “Well. Hmm.” She turns back to the stove, as if she is looking for something but not sure what, then returns to us, her greenish eyes watery and bright. “Don’t you look lovely. Where are you off to?”

“Church. Dilly’s coming to carry us dere. Addy says she’s never been.”

My mother laughs gently.

“Oh Louise, that’s totally unnecessary. It’s your day off. I’m going to do lots of fun things with Addy. You go on.”

I make a squawking sound. Louise squeezes my shoulder.

“Now baby, remember what I told you about Sundays,” my mother says, pushing a lock of hair from her eyes.

“It’s no bother,” Louise says. “I asked she to come.”

My mother looks from me to Louise and back again.

“Addy. Don’t you want a yummy Sunday breakfast?” she says.

I turn my face into the folds of Louise’s dress and begin to holler. Louise pulls me away from her and squats down.

“Stop it, Addy. Now listen, don’t yah want stay wit yah mumma?”

I look up at Mom, shake my head.

My mother frowns, sticks her lower lip out. Like children do.

“Okeydokey,” she says, sighing and turning away. She scouts about for a place to put the ruined frying pan. “You go with Louise. We’ll do something together later. That’s fine.”

When we get in the car, Louise sits with me in the backseat. Dilly pulls the car out of the driveway and we head down the road toward town.

“Yah a hardheaded lickle ting, aren’t yah?” she says, watching the Schroeders’ farm passing outside her window. I think she must be angry with me, but I don’t care. I am with her and we are driving fast away from home.

Ten minutes later, we’re in Coldbrook center. Dilly drives around the green and onto Ford’s Hill, where the grocery store, the elementary school, and the town’s three churches are. Ford’s Hill is all of Coldbrook center. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it, Dilly says.

We pull up to the front of an old white church next to the market. Louise looks out the window and eyes it from steeple to steps.

“That’s it,” she says, clutching her purse in her lap. Behind her glasses, the corner of her eye twitches almost imperceptibly. “An hour’s time, Dilly.”

Dilly drives off, leaving us on the sidewalk. Little bunches of snowy clouds sail along over the roof of the church. Lilacs bloom in purple profusion on either side of the building’s big red doors, and I hear simple chords of music float out from the darkness inside. Louise takes my hand and we walk up the rutted cement path. Off to the side in the parking lot, people are nodding, waving to one another, saying hello.

The two Wyant boys, Kurt and Eddie, stand on the church’s stone steps. Kurt is a fat boy with a blond brush cut. His face, always flushed, looks today like a cherry red balloon squeezed by the knot of his brown tie. The buttons of his shirt strain across his soft belly. Kurt’s younger brother, Eddie, has the same yellow broom of hair and enormous eyes that roll in his face like a doll’s. When Kurt sees us, he sticks an elbow in his brother’s side and puffs out his cheeks. Eddie’s eyes jump out another inch from their sockets.

Louise and I follow a line of people up the stairs. When we reach the top, I’m a foot from Kurt and Eddie. I look at the legs of the man ahead of me. A noise I’ve known since the beginning of second grade, like something gnawing through paper, comes from the boys’ direction.

“Fff-fff-fff-ff,” comes the sound. “Rat Girl. Rat Girl. Fff-ff-ff.” Eddie meows like a cat.

“Rats don’t go to church,” Kurt whispers. “Who brushed your hair, Rat Girl? Is that your new mommy?”

The boys begin to snort and laugh. On the other side of the doors, a skinny man in a tie and cowboy boots is handing out programs. He looks over the heads of the people filing in and cuts his eyes at Kurt and Eddie. The boys quiet down, but when I glance over, they’re still looking at me. Kurt’s lips are pursed together to keep from laughing. The man in the cowboy boots hands Louise a program and nods his head in silent greeting.

Inside the church, Louise guides me to an empty row near the back and follows behind me, directing me to sit down. The big open space hums and rustles with the settling of people in their seats. Up in the balcony Mrs. Labenski, a teacher at my school, plays the organ. Louise has gotten on her knees and is praying silently. As she does so, a man in the row in front of us turns his thick neck and peers over his glasses at her. When his eyes catch mine, he twitches his mouth and turns quickly away.

Across the aisle ahead of us, I see Mrs. Chisolm, who owns the market, in a yellow suit and a giant green hat wreathed in fake flowers. Her daughter Amy baby-sat for me a few times before Louise arrived, but I’ve never seen Mrs. Chisolm herself outside of the store. When I go shopping with Dilly, she presses the buttons of the cash register and asks me questions about my family — how my mother is feeling, what big travel plans we have coming up — but when I’m with my mother, she sneaks glances at her over her half lenses and says nothing. Since Louise has come, Mrs. Chisolm lets her glasses dangle on their chain and leans her elbows on the worn linoleum counter.

“She treat you good? She sure got the money to, right?” I heard her ask Louise one day, her voice low like they were sisters.

Louise nodded just barely and began to scoop up the grocery bags.

“God bless you,” Mrs. Chisolm said, leaning back and patting her breastbone. “Suits me fine my Amy not working up by there anymore. She says that house is a godalmighty wreck.”

Now Mrs. Chisolm is sitting next to her husband near the front of the church and she is waving at me with a hand up tight by her shoulder, like the wing of a wounded bird. Mr. Chisolm, out of his bloody apron, is bending his bald head awkwardly over his shirt collar as he peruses the program. While Louise prays, Mrs. Chisolm continues to watch her, craning her neck to get a view between the shoulders of the people behind her.

A man in a white robe, his waist cinched with a length of rope, emerges from a side door and walks up to the platform. His face is round and flat and white. Like a dinner plate. Everyone rises at once, including Louise, who touches my arm.
The minister,
she whispers. Mrs. Chisolm turns around again, breaking into a broad, lip-sticky grin when Louise finally returns her gaze. Arm still close to her chest, Mrs. Chisolm is flapping her hand now.
Hi, Louise,
she silently mouths, then nudges her husband. Mr. Chisolm turns his shiny head and nods once, then looks away.

While the music from upstairs continues to play, the minister stands with his hands clasped, looking out at all the people. Two girls older than I, also in robes, stand behind him holding candles on brass poles. A boy carries a gold cup to a table. The minister’s eyes land on me and Louise, and stay there. When the music ends, the people shuffle their feet against the wood floor and sit down.

“Good morning,” says the minister.

“Good morning,” respond the people, all together.

“And what a good morning it is,” the minister continues, his voice simple and clear. “We are truly blessed by this beautiful day, a gift of God’s creation.”

He smiles, his teeth like cubes of yellow cheese.

“I want to welcome you all here today, those from our parish, as always, and most especially warm greetings to visitors from other parishes, as well as new members of our flock.” He spreads his arms wide and casts his eyes about the room. “Welcome to you all.”

As if they were responding to a loud sound or flash of light, the churchgoers turn toward Louise and me. More eyes than I can count, some friendly and others wide with wonder, look out from faces I don’t recognize. Louise stares straight ahead and holds a handkerchief tight in her hand. The minister raises his voice and the people turn back around and face him.

“As I took my morning walk an hour or so ago, I noticed, as most of you likely did, that the fields of Coldbrook are particularly ripe with promise this spring.” The minister’s voice fills the church and fastens the people’s attention. I lean forward and watch their quiet, upward-turning faces.

“I know for those parishioners who work the land how important this verdancy, this blossoming, is each year. Reaping the harvest puts the kids through school, replaces the worn muffler on the family car, adds to the kitty for that long-awaited Florida vacation. But what of the rest of us? How often do we take time from our busy day to marvel at this great bounty? The wondrousness of God? I’d like to begin today with a reading from Ezekiel. ‘And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying …’ ”

There isn’t anyone else, not another pair of eyes or back of a head, that looks like Louise. No one has skin that is dark like hers, no one has a nose so broad. There isn’t a shiny and curly head of hair in the church that resembles hers. I look down at Louise’s hand resting on my knee.

“And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd, and they became meat to all the beasts of the field …”

Louise is different, I think. Louise is different and I am different.

But Louise is stranger than I.