Borrowed Children (10 page)

“You threw it away but she found it. Practicing Chopin. Biting her lip, tossing her head, till I almost heard the music too.

“I never knew that.”

“That was when you had the bad leg. You never came upstairs.” A laugh simmers. “We still had the outhouse way at the back of the yard. And you had that cane-bottomed chair, remember? We could see you with your leg bent, resting your knee in that old chair, making for the outhouse.”

She looks at Uncle Cress.

“Mother said she had to start out long before she wanted to go.”

Aunt Lauras laugh bubbles over. Cress and I join her; even Opie chuckles. But Omie looks at Aunt Lauras untouched plate.

“The spirit of Christmas doesn't come in a bottle.”

We don't say much after that. I like the cold food, though. All the tastes are clearer out here.

“Now for the crown,” Opie says. “Where's the plum pudding?”

Omie uncovers it.

“Bravo! Another rabbit!” Aunt Laura sings.

“Let me get the hard sauce from the fire.” Omie gets up with some trouble. “This cold will make an old woman of me. Opie, you do the honors.”

He takes a bottle from the hamper and drizzles its contents over the dark, fluted cake. It smells like sweet wood.
Scratch
—the flame leaps, covering the little dome. Opie jumps back.

“God bless us! Now where's the coffee?”

Omie produces that, too, pouring it from a thermos jug while the halo of fire flashes out.

“Laura, would you serve the pudding?”

“That I can do,” Aunt Laura says, rising. “I'm an expert slicer.”

When Opie takes his first bite, he sighs. “Topsoil couldn't taste sweeter to a maple.”

Everybody laughs this time, settling down to the last taste of Christmas. Opie lights candles. We're alone in the park, the winter day fading. Just ahead of night, we pack up and drive home.

19

The next morning Omie is tired.

“I'm not going to do a thing today but wash and put away dishes. That's no fun. Why don't you go with Opie to the mill?”

Sawdust piles, handsaws, men with fingers gone: that doesn't sound like much fun either. But I don't want to hurt her feelings.

“I'd love to.”

“All right,” Opie says. “But first we'll have to get these Christmas trees in the ground.”

For a minute I think he means the tree we decorated. But then he goes on: “Rena's mountain sprouts. They've been out of earth long enough.”

So out we go after breakfast with a spade and a post-hole digger. We start in the side yard next to the corner. The ground is soft, and Opie's used to this. He takes a neat tube of dirt out with the digger and leaves me to spade dirt loose around it. On he goes to the front.

Omie wants one dogwood in front of the house, one in back, and the redbuds on either side. “That way,” she says, “I'll see spring out every window.”

“And see Rena,” Opie adds.

He plants trees the way Mama makes biscuits, as if its as natural as breathing. His big hands pat the reddish dirt into place.

“That ought to hold,” he says, as we finish the last of the redbuds. “Let's get them a drink.”

He carries that to them in a tin watering can. Then we wash up and set off for the mill.

Memphis is bustling this day after Christmas. I'm surprised, but Opie explains, “Folks have to change what's the wrong color or what they got two of or what's too big in the seat.”

“But why today?”

“Something to do. Can't just sit looking at a turkey carcass and a dead tree.”

“Opie, tell me something about Mama.”

“Well, she was the first person to call me Opie. She couldn't call me Papa, so soon after losing her own. And I called her Dumpling—till she got big enough to ask me to stop.”

“I mean about her music and Aunt Laura and—”

“Whoa, there. One thing at a time.”

“How much older is Mama than Aunt Laura?”

“Hmm. Let me see. Some of those years were longer than others.” He studies the road.

“How old was Mama when you married Omie?”

“Who are you—some reporter from
The Commercial Appeal?”

“I think she said she was three.”

“Sounds right.”

“So when was Aunt Laura born?”

“Well, there's William, Lizzie, Anna May—I guess about thirteen years.”

“What?”

“Separating Rena and Laura. Laura's the baby, as if you couldn't tell.”

“That's almost the same as me and Willie. I turned twelve just before he was born.”

“Step careful then. Your mama hung over Laura like a guardian angel. And Laura broke every string in her harp.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cried herself sick whenever Jim Perritt came courting. Didn't want Rena out of her sight.”

“She didn't like Daddy?”

“Only time he took her on his lap she bit him on the cheek.”

Seems like I shouldn't laugh at that but I do.

“What about the music?”

“That's different.”

We're out of town now, turned onto a red clay road.

“How?”

“You get Omie to tell you about that.”

“Will she?”

“Don't ask me. We've only been married thirty years.”

The road takes us out of trees and into big flatlands along the river.

“Just a couple more miles,” Opie, says. We ride in silence.

“Cotton, timber, pallets—all kinds of businesses latch onto the Mississippi. Like fleas on a dog. Here's my flea.”

We drive through a gate into a graveled yard. The road goes between big stacks of lumber. I don't see any sawdust, worksheds, or sawyers. Just a one-room building painted white.

“That can't be the chowhouse.”

“Not hardly. I figured you'd seen plenty of sawmills, so I brought you down to the shipping yard. All we do here is fill the orders. Operate out of that office.”

Opie pulls up next to it.

“Well, come on in.”

The little room is full of dust and old pipe smoke. Penciled notes on different colored paper are taped on the desk, the filing cabinet, the wall.

“What are these?”

“My employees.”

“They write you notes? But they all look like the same hand.”

“Now you're a detective. They are. They're my notes.”

“But why?”

Opie rubs his forehead.

“Times aren't hard just in Goose Rock. I've had to let my bookkeeper go and do it myself. The notes remind me what to do when.”

“Will that work?”

“I hope so. Business is slower, which gives me more time and fewer accounts.”

He shifts a ledger on the desk, reads one note. “We're not working today.”

“I guess nobody returns Christmas boards.”

“That's right.” He smiles. “Let's go pay tribute to the river.”

Walking between stacks of sweet-smelling lumber, I think of Daddy. I forget how it was that he took just me up on Big Lick, but he did once, and we were walking like this.

“Mandy,” he said, “you're breathing the smell of promise. This timber's going to be houses, good houses for miners, put up by the Darby Coal. I've sold so much to the mines—roof beams and timbers—I'm glad to sell them something that won t go underground.”

“Are these houses, Opie?”

“What, child?”

“Are these lumber piles going to be houses?”

“I hope so.”

“Don't you know?”

“And don't you know when to stop asking questions? I swear, you're as bad as Laura used to be.”

Opie smiles but I can tell he's not entirely kidding. We walk on to the river without a word.

If you've never seen the Mississippi, you probably think like I did that a river is just a minor exception to land. Sometimes flooding, other times drying up, but still an exception. Not the Mississippi. It's a fact. I can hardly see across it.

“Is this the widest part?”

“Not quite. It's wider at the Delta.”

“Is the ocean like this?”

“I don't think so. From what I hear, the ocean is blue and comes right at you.”

“You've never seen it?”

“Nope.”

“But Opie, you ought to. You're getting old.”

I wish I could take that back as soon as I say it. What's got into me?

But Opie chuckles.

“Old and hungry, that's me. Let's go home and see if there's any meat left on that bird.”

20

We drowsed away the rest of yesterday. I read Keats' “Nightingale” which is sleepy too. But today Aunt Laura has volunteered to take me sightseeing. I can't wait!

“It's a sight what you'll see with Laura, that's for sure,” Opie says over breakfast. “But you might like to look at this first.”

He hands me a letter from the stack of mail Omie brought in. It's from Mama.

“And here's yours.” He slides another one across the table to Omie.

I've never had a letter from Mama before.
Miss Amanda Perritt
: her handwriting, plain as day. Opie has already slit the envelope with his pen knife; I fish out the single sheet.

Sunday, December 21
Goose Rock

Dear Amanda,

Merry Christmas to my first daughter! I hope you are en joying your holiday and remembering your manners.

Your father put the tree up today—a handsome fir—so the house smells like the woods and he felt right at home.

Willie is trying very hard to roll over. Anna and Helen coax him, not knowing the work when he begins to crawl. You remember keeping up with Helen.

With school out this week, David and Ben have gone to help at the mill and the house is awfully quiet.

Kiss Omie and Opie for me and come home soon. We miss you.

Love,
Mama
Mrs. James D. Perritt

When I finish the letter, it's a shock to be in Memphis. I feel like I've stood in the door at home.

Opie is drawing a map to the streetcar stop.

“Put in Johnson School,” Omie reminds him.

He does. Neatly. They debate about how much money I need. Finally, mid-morning, they let me set off.

I try to look like I've waited for streetcars all my life.

“Where are you visiting from, honey?” says a lady in a cranberry coat.

“Kentucky.”

“Daniel Boone's country.

“Yes, ma am.

She probably thinks we wear coonskin caps and eat deer meat.

“Don't worry about getting lost. The conductor will help you. We're all friendly down here.”

“Thank you.” I dread more help.

But when the streetcar comes we get separated, so I don't have to worry. I get off at Second and make my transfer for Catalpa with no problem.

I could pick out Aunt Lauras door even if I didn't know the number. All the other houses have lace panels behind the side glass. Aunt Lauras curtains are two shades of purple.

When she lets me in, I see there are curtains in the other doorways, too, tied or pushed to one side—yellow, orange, white.

“Your house doesn't look like this,” Aunt Laura laughs.

“Not exactly.”

“You probably have furniture. Tables, chairs. If you do that, you have to decide which room is which.”

“Don't you?”

“Sometimes this is the living room,” she says, as we walk into the room off the hall. It has bare floors, a rag rug, and one big straw chair.

“And we eat here sometimes.” She gestures to the next room, with a wooden card table in the center and big pink and gold pillows piled under the window. “We can sit on the floor, we can sit at the table. Or we can switch the two rooms around.” She makes it sound like great fun.

“But I do know where the bedroom is. Come back with me while I finish my face.”

I follow her down a narrow hall and through a doorway hung with beads. Really. They rattle as I walk through. She laughs.

“Mother says I'm a genius at furnishing doorways.”

Curtains are shut in the bedroom, so it's dim despite the bright day. Aunt Laura waves toward a cloud of clothes heaped on the unmade bed.

“I've been going through things this morning, clearing out for the new year, and I wonder if there's anything there you could use.”

I look at her. There's a difference between having your clothes on and being dressed. She's dressed: black chemise, red shoes, red beads, and fingernails red as fire. And her cast-off clothes will be for getting dressed, too. In Goose Rock you put your clothes on.

She sits down at her dressing table.

“Oh, Amanda, I forgot to take your coat. Just hang it on the bedpost.”

I do, and she gets to work, licking an eyebrow pencil, leaning intently toward herself. I sort out the delicate dresses, feeling like a chowhouse dish beside china. These aren't for me—a yellow crepe scoop-necked shimmy, a lavender square-cut shift.

“At least try the red one.”

I untangle it and find buttons smaller than baby teeth, a straight skirt, a flounce to let you walk. Can you see me headed up the dirt road to school in this?

But she's saying to try it on—

“No, you ninny, you have to take your clothes off first!”

I feel more naked standing here in my slip than bathing in the kitchen at home. I try to hurry, but the dress sticks at my shoulders, my hipbones. Finally I get it on, pull it straight.

Aunt Laura watches from the mirror.

“Not bad,” she says. “Come let me see.”

She tilts her head and studies me. Her red mouth curls.

“I used to look just like you.”

“You did not.” That pops out before I can stop it.

“I did too. I was tall and skinny, what they call a carpenter's dream.”

“Pardon?”

“Flat as a board. And I slumped to apologize for taking up space.”

“Your face never looked like mine.”