Beholding Bee (26 page)

When we get home and Pauline and I walk in the front door, Peabody comes barking and barreling down the stairs and it takes him all of two seconds to remember Pauline.

“Bee, you still have the little dog!”

“It’s Peabody,” I say, and Pauline is trying to bend over and pat him, but it is not easy with the size of her belly.

“Oh, Bee,” she says, tearing up just looking around at everything: the library with all the books, the tall staircase with the railing just made for sliding down, the parlor with all the lace cloths so you don’t get the furniture dirty. It is a house a girl can call a home.

“But how did you do this? Who lives here?”

“We do,” I say, leading her to the kitchen. “Plus my aunts, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Swift.”

They are not in the kitchen. I put on some tea. I cut fat slices of spice cake and give one to Pauline and one to me and one to Peabody. I am going to have to cut back on sweets for Peabody, now that he is getting so tubby.

“Where are they, Bee?” Pauline is eating her cake and drinking her tea and looking around the kitchen. The room smells of roses.

“They are very shy,” I tell Pauline.

She raises an eyebrow. “Really?” She eats the cake and rubs her belly. She is too tired to wait for my aunts, so I take her upstairs and show her the guest room, the one with the buttercup walls. We both lose our breath when we walk in, it is so beautiful. Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter must have found the strength to get very busy. I guess company coming can do that to you.

“Oh, Bee. It is so pretty.” Pauline goes over and sits on the four-poster bed and then lies back on the pink-and-blue quilt. She has four fat pillows just like me.

In the corner is a tiny crib all made up with white soft sheets. Somehow my aunts already knew about the baby coming. I tap on the bed and Peabody jumps up. He isn’t so sure about things, but I tell him Pauline is someone he’s going to get very close to, I am sure of it, so he might as well get started right now. When he is settled up on a pillow, I lie down, too, and it is almost like we are playing the ha-ha game. Except we are in Pauline’s new bedroom now and not lying on the grass outside our hauling truck and there is a watermelon between us.

“Bee, I’m so sorry,” Pauline whispers in my ear. “I’m sorry about leaving you. I should have never gone with Arthur. I’m sorry about everything.”

I let the words pour over me and it is like I am getting washed in the kindness. It feels very nice to be apologized to.

116

“Don’t you want to see Pauline?” Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter are sitting at the table, both a little slumped over.

Mrs. Potter gets up and tries to fill the kettle with water. It is very heavy and so I carry it to the stove. She tries to light the match, but she can’t get a spark. She never has gotten the hang of the stove. “Why are you both hiding in here?” I ask as I light the burner and put the kettle on to heat.

“We’re tired,” Mrs. Swift snaps. “We’ve been busy.”

“The room is very beautiful. Pauline is very happy. Thank you.” I smile at them. “Don’t you want to get to know her?”

The kettle whistles and I get up and make them both weak tea. I cut us all slices of spice cake. They both shake their heads at it. “Just a little?” I ask. “You want to be strong when the baby comes. Don’t you want to be able to play with the baby?”

Mrs. Potter looks at Mrs. Swift. Mrs. Swift looks at Mrs. Potter. “They’re not the ones we came for,” says Mrs. Potter. “But we think it’s a good idea they stay. They will help you.”

“We want to show you something.” Mrs. Swift struggles with a book on her lap. I help her put it on the table. It is very old with a worn leather cover that is as wrinkled as Mrs. Potter’s skin. There is a large gold cross on the cover. Mrs. Swift pushes it to me. “I’ve been looking everywhere for this. I finally found it up in the attic while we were looking
for that crib. Why your grandfather kept it hidden up there, I have no idea.”

The pages are brown as paper bags. In thin letters, the first page says
The Holy Bible
.

“Go to the next page.”

I flip it open. The page creaks. There is a handwritten list of names in faded ink, beginning with Josiah (1701–1753) and Beatrice (1710–1745) Bradford. The last name changes, and the ink turns to black, but the line is straight to Elizabeth Bradford Potter (1759–1839) and further on is Abigail Bradford Swift (1818–1893). My grandfather, Edward, is recorded, and he may have told my mama he was cutting her out of his life, but he didn’t, not really. Her name is beneath his: Bernadette. And beside it is my papa’s name, Tommy Lee Hockenberry. And under them both is me, Beatrice Rose Hockenberry.

“You know what this means?” Mrs. Potter asks. She traces the line to her own name and then to Mrs. Swift’s.

I shake my head because I don’t know what to make of everything yet.

“I am your great-great-great-great-grandmother,” says Mrs. Potter. “And Mrs. Swift is your great-great-grandmother.”

I stare at the page. I look at both of them. Mrs. Potter is grinning. She takes Mrs. Swift’s hand and squeezes. “Abigail is my granddaughter. She always was rather forthright, to say the least. Even as a child.”

I hold tight to my chair.

Mrs. Swift pulls an envelope from the back of the Bible and pushes it over to me. “Open it.”

It is a deed to the Josiah Bradford house, built 1732. There
are house plans attached. Although much has been changed, like the porch added and all the gingerbread dripping over everything, you can tell it is the house I am sitting in.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” says Mrs. Swift, sipping her tea, “is that since there are no other living relatives, the house belongs to you, Beatrice.”

117

That night when I am all tucked in my own bed with Peabody nestled up beside me, and I am feeling all contented that I have found a home where I can stay, Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter come in for their good-night hugs.

If I wanted to, I bet I could wrap my arms around Mrs. Swift twice, that’s how thin she is getting. Lately she has been getting so tired that I have been doing a lot more than just looking up a word now and then. Now she has me flipping through book after book, reading chapters, crosschecking dates, confirming facts.

I hold her close, feel how thin she is. She nearly topples over from the weight of my arms, but she squeezes me back. I feel the tears on her cheek when she whispers, “You really are a cygnet among ducklings, Beatrice.”

I pull back and she sees the question in my eyes.

“If you don’t know what
cygnet
means, look it up.” Then she gives me one more hug and leaves me alone with Mrs. Potter.

“I found her. I found my Pauline,” I say after a while. I have always been better at telling deepest-heart things to Mrs. Potter.

“That took a lot of courage, going back to that show, didn’t it?” She reaches for my curls and braids them so they don’t fall all over my face. She rubs my forehead and
down the sides of my eyes and then softly touches my diamond.

“Seems to me you’ve found Pauline—and a whole lot more, Bee.”

I snuggle deeper in the pillows and Peabody snuggles closer to me. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I have.”

118

Pauline gets grumpy as the weeks go on and she gets more and more uncomfortable.

We do not talk anymore about where my aunts spend their time. Pauline and I come to a truce of not talking about them. One night, though, while we are playing the ha-ha game on Pauline’s bed, I tell her how Mrs. Potter is really the lady in the orange flappy hat.

“Oh, Bee.” Pauline groans and flips over, which is not easy to do now that she is a whale. “There’s nobody here but us. Now, go to sleep.” Her voice is muffled and angry.

After that I show her the Holy Bible and the deed, just to set things right. She rubs her hand across the cover’s wrinkled leather and opens it and runs her fingers down the names. I whisper that she needs to stop so she doesn’t erase anything.

“I just can’t believe that your name is here. And this is your mama, Bernadette. And that is your papa.”

She shakes her head and stares at the Bible, and then we settle into another truce of not talking about the house anymore, either, because all Pauline can concentrate on is the new baby coming. She does say, though, that one day we’ll have to find a lawyer to look into everything.

119

Francine has left me alone since my revenge plan. She turns red as my diamond and looks at the ground whenever she sees me. This happens quite often now that we are playing on the same playground all the time. That rule got changed for good when Ruth Ellen’s mama made such a fuss and Miss Healy stood up to the principal a few more times and now we mix—at least when we are out at recess.

We still have our same classroom at the end of the hall near the janitor’s closet, but who knows what will happen with that rule? Ruth Ellen’s mama invited the professors and students from the university for a meeting at her house and she served wild apple pie. She asked me if I might like to come to a meeting. Maybe if I go, Ruth Ellen would want to, too. I told her maybe I would. It is good to know about a lot of things.

One day I am late getting to school on account of Pauline waking us all up in the middle of the night because she was awful sure her baby was coming early. She fell asleep before anything big happened and Peabody and I had a terrible time getting back to sleep. When a baby’s coming, you do not want to miss anything.

I run all the way to school, I am so tardy, and when I finally get there, Francine is out by the road talking to a man with heavy black glasses. At first I think it might be Bobby and my heart jumps, but then I know it can’t be
Bobby because he would never have anything to do with someone like Francine.

The man is shaking his head and Francine is crying into his shoulder. When she pulls back, her face is very red. Her books are all over the ground.

She tries to jump up in his arms and hold him around the neck but he is still shaking his head and slowly he untangles her fingers. “Don’t go, Papa,” she sobs, and she tries to grab onto his neck, but he is pulling, pulling away. When he is free of her, he hurries off to his car.

My mouth is open. Francine notices me and runs for the school steps.
Hey
, I want to tell her,
you forgot your books
, but I don’t. I watch her grab the door and then stop and lean her head against the wood and her shoulders shake.

It is hard to see someone lose their papa. Slowly I scoop up her books and walk up the steps. She is trying to wipe her tears away before I get there.

“Here,” I whisper. My curls are falling wherever they want and I do not try to pull them over my diamond.

She looks at me for an instant, at my diamond shining, and takes the books, and hurries inside.

120

When Pauline’s baby is born one hot night in June, we start learning all about being a family. This basically means no sleep for anybody.

We wake up every few hours for another feeding. Pauline cries when the feeding doesn’t work right. I brush her hair because it is very comforting to her. I make her lots of tea and lots of toast, up the stairs and down the stairs, over and over again. “You have to drink more water,” I tell her when I’ve brought her the tenth glass of the day. Of course I have to keep going out to the well to fill up the bucket. The water in the kitchen sink still runs like butternut squash.

Every time the baby cries, I bring her to Pauline, which seems to be the solution to everything. When the baby is well fed and Pauline is especially tired, she lets me bundle the baby in a blanket and walk across the floor, over and over, but she tells me I can’t leave the room.

At night I have to be careful of bumping into Mrs. Swift or Mrs. Potter. They come around a lot so they can see the baby. Sometimes they pick her up when Pauline is asleep. The baby settles down in Mrs. Potter’s arms, just like Peabody.

“How wonderful it’s a girl,” says Mrs. Potter, rocking slowly.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Swift. “The world can be a wonderful place for a girl, can’t it, Elizabeth?”

I don’t want anything to upset Pauline, so I don’t mention anything more about Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter. Generally, it is not good to worry things when you are so happy. You tend to cloud things up.

Sometimes when Pauline and the baby are asleep I sit myself carefully on the bed and watch the moon move across their foreheads. Pauline is very careful not to roll over on top of the baby. I am glad of that. She opens her eyes and looks at me and smiles. “Oh, Bee. My Sweet Pea Bee. I am so happy.”

“Me too,” I say, looking down at the little baby, feeling my heart swell to bursting.

“Come lie down beside us,” Pauline says.

And I do.

121

Pauline is slow about coming up with a name.

This is very aggravating to Mrs. Swift. “Girls need strong names. None of those silly names like Patience or Charity.”

“Imagine growing up with a name like that,” says Mrs. Potter. “You could never get rip-roaring mad about anything. The babe’s got to be named Elizabeth.”

“Why should she get your name? Why not Abigail?”

“Elizabeth is a good name. You know she’s going to need a strong name, just like Beatrice.”

I never thought of my name as strong, but I do now, and I thank my mama and my papa for giving me a good beginning. Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter bicker well into the night. I hear them through the walls. I fling one of the shoes that Ruth Ellen’s mama bought me one day with her ration stamps after she saw the holes in the bottom of my work boots. “We have so much,” she whispered. “We can share.”

Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Swift are quiet for a minute. Then they pick up again.

“Well, how about Sarah?”

“Not quite right.”

“How about Constance? Leah? Martha?”

This is when I have to get up out of bed and bang on the wall. “Be quiet in there,” I snap.

They hardly stop. “How about Gertrude?” says Mrs. Potter. “You know I’ve always liked that name.”

This time I roll my eyes. I fall asleep thinking about the name I would choose. It is Sophie.