Anywhere But Here (25 page)

It was a brown and white spotted pony, not trained or anything. Some farmer must have donated it. We called him Silver Dollar. Well, pretty soon, when it didn’t all pan out the way he’d thought—there weren’t many kids in the neighborhood and they didn’t want to pay to ride that pony, it was slow, they could go quicker on a bike—Hal lost interest in it. We had to nag him even to feed it and brush its hair. It lived in that old shed where Adele’s horse had been.

Wouldn’t you just know, Granny was the one who took care of it. She got up at five every morning and hauled out that big pail of water and oats. She was the one who brushed that pony. Even after they took the leg off, she hobbled out there on crutches. She was a tough one, such a one.

I’m still sorry I let them take that leg, I think that’s why she died. She just didn’t want to live anymore when she couldn’t move
around. They said her heart was like a girl’s, she could have lived lots longer. But she’d had the tumor in the leg. That they had to get rid of. Those last months were hard, with her in bed, I got up all hours of the night, changing the bedpan, she was so ashamed, she wouldn’t let anyone but me in there. And then she was losing her hair, too. She was a proud, proud woman. It was hard for her.

She died on your seventh birthday, in the morning, before any of you were awake. I wasn’t sorry. She’d lived a long, long life, she was ninety-one when she died and she didn’t really want any more. I was up with her all night. We didn’t talk much. We weren’t ever close and she wasn’t one to pretend. But I’d taken good care of her all that time and she knew it. She never had bedsores, she always had her things around her, I fixed her just what she wanted to eat. She had to admit I’d been good to her. And I was glad to have done it. Then when she died, at five thirteen in the morning, she looked happy, she got this big smile and her hands just opened at her sides. Carol was there then, too, she saw it. And then I knew, that was the end of something.

Adele and I talked and we decided to go ahead with your party. Why not, it didn’t make any difference to you kids and she had everything already planned. She had a cake from the bakery in the icebox. And because Granny was so old, we weren’t sad. She would be happier where she was.

So I sat on the phone to the funeral parlor and with the priest. And then again, too, we had detectives looking for Milton. They’d been looking this time for weeks already. And I saw outside the kitchen window, Hal taking you kids for rides on Silver Dollar. He went round and round the garage, so slow. I suppose your mom paid him something, that was probably the only time he made his money on that horse. Not long after Granny died, we had to give the horse away. Some people on a farm took him, where they had little kids. They came in a truck and got him.

You were wearing white that day. A white eyelet blouse and shorts and white anklets and white tennies. I remember from the picture: you had a big white bow in your hair. Your mom planned a nice party for you. Some of Chummy and June’s came, Hansens, and that Stevie Felchner, whose parents rented the little orange
cottage in back by the barn, and those Griling kids. You can see in the picture, after all these years, you can still see how the other little children look clean and had decent clothes and shoes and those Grilings didn’t. There were the two girls your age, Theresa and Mary, and the one they didn’t have too much longer, that retarded girl, Annette, who went away to school for them up in Okonowa. I remember they each brought you presents. Everyone’s was nice, something the mothers bought and wrapped, except the Grilings’. They each brought something they’d just bought, in the bag from the store. I suppose the dad or whoever gave them their money, gave each one fifteen cents or a quarter and they each went in and picked out what she wanted. I don’t remember what Theresa or Mary brought anymore, jacks or something, you know, a regular present. But this Netty brought you such a cellophane bag of chocolate candies. I suppose that’s what she would have liked for herself. She couldn’t play with toys much. But it was a warm day and they were all outside and I suppose she was carrying it around, holding it in her hands, and by the time you opened your presents, hers was all melted, just one gooey bag of chocolate and the kids laughed.

Your mom had all kinds of things planned: games, pin the tail on the donkey, she’d bought firecrackers that came out like red, white and blue parachutes you kids could chase across the yard. So while you were all busy with that, she came in and found me. She had a supper planned for the kids after, she’d ordered that cake from the bakery a week ahead. She had sparklers and those black firework snakes for you kids to light after you ate.

She came and told me about Netty’s chocolates; we both felt so bad.

“Pyuk,” she said, holding the bag up and dropping it, with a thud, in the wastebasket. “Mom, you don’t think you could just whip up something chocolate for a cake, so we could take it out and say it was made from Netty’s candies? You wouldn’t have the time?”

“Why sure,” I said, “but won’t Annie expect the storebought? She knows you went to pick it up.” The cake from the bakery was real fancy, I bet she paid quite a bit for it. She’d brought one of
your crayon pictures of a swimming pool and they’d copied that, with the frosting.

She said she’d take you aside and explain. You always were good like that, she could talk to you and tell you the truth. She knew you wouldn’t cry or fuss or throw a tantrum like a lot of children would. You were mature, more than Benny was. Carol couldn’t talk to Benny like that. Your mom talked to you almost like a grown-up.

“We can have the other with Benny and Hal tomorrow,” she said.

And I was glad to do it. When someone dies, it’s like you’ve been hit hard in the stomach; you lose your breath for a moment and everything stops. Then when it all comes back, you have an empty house. I’d made the phone calls first thing in the morning. Now there was nothing left to do. The house seemed so big and quiet. And do you know what I did? I fetched that bag of chocolate from the wastebasket, it was sealed with such a cardboard strip on top, it was perfectly good, just melted, and I used that as the start of your cake. And believe me, I’m telling the truth, did that cake ever turn out good.

I took my time. I had all afternoon. I baked three layers and then while they were cooling on the mangle, I made a filling with nuts and a separate maple frosting. Your mom had the idea to put seven sparklers in like candles, and we lit them just before she carried it out.

We’d set up two card tables in the backyard, and your mom had covered them with paper tablecloths. Red, white and blue. Everything had to match. It was just dusk then and Carol and Hal were there too, and your mom and Lolly and we all sat down and had that cake on paper plates. Your birthday is in June and the mosquitoes mustn’t have been too bad then yet, because we stayed out late and watched while you kids drew with your sparklers on the air. You and Benny played tick-tack-toe, but whichever one won, it always faded before you could draw the line through. Ben was teaching Netty to write her name. She wrote the same letters over and over. She had the letters right, but she was too slow. I went and made a pot of coffee to bring out and we
ladies kept drinking the coffee and eating the cake. Then, one by one, at eight or nine o’clock, the mothers would step out on the porches and call their kids home, and family by family, they’d go. First Hansens, then Stevie Felchner, then finally June came over to get hers. Pretty soon all the mothers had called their kids in, except the Grilings, and they looked embarrassed because they had no mother. That little Mary got the older ones by the sleeves and they said they better go home, too, their father would be missing them. And by the time we folded the card tables up and went in, all that cake was done for.

I’ve thought about that many times. That was good of your mother to think of, on that day when she had so much to do. That Netty went away, I don’t know, a year or two later. I remember when they came and took her in the car. I watched by the window. It was two women with short hair, they looked like church women, and just an ordinary car.

W
hen we moved to California, we didn’t know anybody. For the first three weeks, we stayed at the Bel Air Hotel, but that was too expensive, so we moved to another, smaller hotel on Lasky Drive. Lasky was one of the quiet, mildly commercial streets south of Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It seemed to be a clean hotel, inhabited mostly by older single people who rented by the month. Our room in the Lasky House had a double bed with a faded, flowered bedspread, gray carpeting and old wooden venetian blinds.

We went to the same place for dinner every night, the Hamburger Hamlet in Westwood, and we tried to sit in the same booth. We ordered the same food every night, too. There was enough else new in our lives.

“Well, it
is
beautiful.” My mother sighed as we drove away from the Lasky House and Beverly Hills and the car coasted down a hill on wide, bright Wilshire Boulevard into the sun. Tall, glorious apartment buildings stood on both sides of the street, their stripes of window catching light from the late, red, falling sun. We saw young boys in huge white leather tennis shoes on skateboards. Two rabbis walked on the sidewalk with a three-year-old girl in a pink dress. A couple in sweatsuits jogged.

We didn’t know how they could do it; live, eat, look like that. For us, it seemed so hard.

My mother was going to be a special education teacher in the Los Angeles Public School District and her classes started a day before
mine. We got up early when it was still dark. She took a long time dressing arid left an hour to drive. As she went out to the elevator, she told me to stay inside our hotel room. I asked if I could just walk around the block.

“Honey, I’ve got a lot on my mind. Just do what I say this once.”

So I made the bed and stayed in the room, watching TV, pretending I was an actress on each of the shows. I kept calling the desk to ask the time. I wanted to go out but I didn’t. Here I was too scared to disobey.

And when my mother finally came back, something was wrong. She knocked things over, moving quickly. It seemed everything had changed. I didn’t even know if we’d get dinner. She exhaled, snapped on the overhead light, kicked her shoes off and began undressing, hanging her good clothes neatly in the closet.

She looked at me for the first time that afternoon. “You won’t believe what I’ve been through today, you just won’t believe it,” she said. Then she went back to undressing.

Except for the overhead light, it was dark in the room because the blinds were down. We never raised the blinds. We didn’t want anyone on the street to be able to see us.

“I can’t teach there, Honey. They sent me to Watts. That car going in the parking lot with barbed wire all around. They have electric fences. I’m telling you, Ann, we’re lucky I’m alive.”

Her voice sounded small. I’d never heard her so scared. It made me feel light in my stomach. I lifted up an edge of the blind. It was reddish outside, dark only in the centers of bushes.