Tallgrass (15 page)

“Mary Stroud! Have you forgotten poor Susan Reddick?” Bird Smith asked. “It’s a day that should always be remembered.” Mrs. Smith was a stocky woman who wore a black wool coat and anklets with her high-heeled oxfords. Her clothes were too small for her. She told the Jolly Stitchers once that she always ordered them from the Montgomery Ward catalog, and that she’d been the same size since Woodrow Wilson was elected—the first term.

“Do you mean the same size as Woodrow Wilson?” Mrs. Gardner had asked. Mrs. Smith had sent her a stern look, but the other Stitchers had giggled.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten about Susan Reddick,” Mom replied, scratching at the tail of a piece of floss that had come loose on her embroidered pillow. Mom was propped up against a design of windmills and Dutch girls. “I don’t see what my hiring a Japanese girl has to do with Susan getting killed.” Mom looked directly at her, and I wondered if Mrs. Smith knew her husband had been one of the men at Tallgrass. If she did, she didn’t mention it. But then, nobody ever talked about that night.

“It was a Jap that done it. Everybody knows that.”

“It certainly wasn’t a Japanese
girl.”

“It could have been a Jap girl that left that door unlocked.” Mrs. Smith’s mouth was a thin, straight line, and she clutched her pocketbook against her coat. I hadn’t offered to take her coat because I knew that Mom didn’t want her staying long. If Mrs. Smith settled in and took out her stitching, she’d be there till the second hoeing.

“The Reddicks didn’t employ any Japanese.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Smith said. “I think that’s beside the point. But it’s your fudge. I guess I’ll let you cook it.”

Mom lay back against the pillows and sent me a pleading look. So I went to her side and said, “The doctor’s going to get mad again if you don’t rest up.”

Mrs. Smith stood up. “I just came to cheer you, Mary. That’s all.”

“And you have, Bird, you and your liver pudding. How can I ever thank you?”

When I walked her to the door, Mrs. Smith told me, “That pudding’s for your mother, little girl. You’re not to eat it.”

“Oh, no, ma’am. I wouldn’t eat it in a million years.”

Mrs. Reddick came after that. When I told her that Mom was asleep, she asked, “Will you let me just sit by her side? It gets so I can’t stand to be at home sometimes.” So Mrs. Reddick sat in the easy chair, her little spotted hands folded in her lap while she stared at the roses on the wallpaper; then she lifted her eyes to the ceiling, which was papered in a brown-and-white feather design. After a while, she began piecing a Sunbonnet Sue block, just like those in the bloodied quilt I’d found in Susan’s room. I couldn’t imagine why she’d make another quilt in that design, but she must have had her reasons.

“Rennie should have woke me,” Mom said when she opened her eyes.

“I told her not to. There’s nothing that heals like sleep,” Mrs. Reddick said.

“Do you sleep, Opal?”

Mrs. Reddick shook her head, then said brightly, “I brought you an apple brown Betty.”

“In the midst of tribulation, you are thinking of others.” Mom patted Mrs. Reddick’s hand and studied her a moment before saying that a girl from the camp was coming to work for us.

I thought Mrs. Reddick wouldn’t approve of that, but she said, “Why, that’s fine, Mary. Elmo hired me the little Jack girl, the one who’s so slow. He told her he couldn’t pay her much, and she said that was okay, since she didn’t work much.”

“And was she right?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Reddick said. “I don’t mind. I like having someone there. It just gets so lonely.” Her lip trembled, and she bit down on it. Then she took Mom’s hand and said, “I wish I had one of my girls.”

“Elmo won’t let Helen come home?”

“He won’t let me even mention Helen. He says she’s not worth it, that she shamed us by marrying Bobby Archuleta, who’s no good. He’s right, of course. Bobby scared me a little, and maybe he scared Helen, too. Just a year ago, I had two daughters. Now I’ve got none.” She stood and squeezed Mom’s hand. “It’s turkey one day, feathers the next. But when I’m in town, I sneak into the drugstore to see Helen. She works there. She has a little girl now, named for Susan.”

I was getting to feel like a regular stationmaster by the time Mrs. Larsoo called. She was as big as a silo and old, and she carried a handkerchief because her nose ran for no reason. She touched the wrinkled square of cotton to her face and asked Mom how she was feeling, but before Mom could reply, Mrs. Larsoo said, “That Jap girl isn’t to sew with the Jolly Stitchers. She might stitch some secret message into the quilt.”

Mom, who was resting on the sofa with an afghan over her, chuckled and asked, “Now what could a girl from the camp know that she could relay to anybody?”

Mrs. Larsoo sniffed. “You can’t be too careful.” She, too, took out a quilt square, a V for Victory design done in browns and blacks, and began embroidering around the
Vs
with heavy black floss in a chicken-scratch design.

“We’re not making quilts for Tojo, Iris. The next one, that Lady in the White House quilt, goes to the minister at the church.”

“There you are. The girl’s probably a Buddha or something. She’ll stitch a message from the Antichrist into it.”

“Daisy’s family is Methodist,” Mom told her.

“You are making a mistake, Mary. I am wiser than you. I am seventy-six years of age.” She looped the floss around her needle and made a big black knot like a squashed fly.

Mom sighed. “Why tell me, Iris? I don’t have anything to do with your age.”

THE DAY BEFORE DAISY
went to work for us, I came out of the A&P and found Beancr Jack sitting on the bench near the door, cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife. “I hear you got a Jap sister now,” he said. I was sorry he knew about Daisy. Why does everybody seem to know about our business? I wondered.

“She’s going to be the hired girl.”

“You think she can see the dirt with those slanty eyes?” asked Danny Spano, who was hunched over beside Beaner, his forearms on his thighs.

“Careful the yellow don’t rub off on your dishes,” Beaner said, and they both cracked up.

“Good one, Beaner.” Edna Elliot came out of the store just then and stood so close to me that I had to move aside.

Beaner looked up at Edna. “Well, I’m damned. Did you say something, fatso?”

Edna’s face fell, and her lower lip trembled. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, but I decided lightning would strike her dead before I’d defend her again. Then Danny said, “Ah, can it, Beaner. She’s okay.”

“You want her, you take her.” Beaner pinched Danny’s arm so hard that Danny flinched. “So long, boy.”

Danny got up and stood a little ways apart.

I started for home down the Tallgrass Road, and after a few minutes I had a feeling that someone was behind me. I turned quickly, thinking it was one of the Japanese from the camp. Instead, it was Danny, and he yelled, “Hey.” I kept on going, hoping he’d turn back. “Wait up,” he called. He reached me and took hold of my arm. “When’s your sister coming home?” Marthalice had gone to the pictures and to school dances with Danny, and sometimes she’d flirted with him at the drugstore. But Mom and Dad never liked her dating Danny, because they said he was wild, and they were glad when she started going out with Hank Gantz.

I shrugged.

“What’s her address in Denver? Maybe I’ll look her up the next time I’m there.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember, or won’t tell me?”

With my foot, I nudged a rock out of the road and kicked it into the ditch.

“You’re just as stuck-up as your sister.” Danny tightened his grip on my arm until I looked him in the face. His eyes weren’t mean, but they were dark, blacker even than Carl’s eyes, and he scared me. “Aw, you can both go to hell.”

I SUPPOSE THAT WE
expected Daisy to have tiny bones and long, straight hair, to move about silently, talk in whispers, and treat us deferentially. I thought she’d dress simply, maybe wear a kimono. Or that she might even turn out to be the girl with the saddle shoes. Whoever we had expected, she was not the Daisy who showed up with Carl.

She was taller than her brother. Her hair was cut in a pageboy, and it was as dark as midnight. Daisy wore rouge and red fingernail polish. She had on a plaid pleated skirt and a cashmere sweater set with rhinestone scatter pins across the left shoulder.

Daisy wiped the bottoms of her shoes on the boot scraper beside the back door, then came inside “hell-bent for election,” as Dad said. She pushed her glasses up on her nose as she grinned. Before Carl could introduce her, she put her hands on her hips and announced, “Hi ya, I’m Daisy. Everybody here doing good?”

Dad leaned back in his chair and smiled at Mom, who was sitting at the kitchen table in her housecoat. She gaped at Daisy as Dad said, “Yes, ma’am. And how about yourself?”

“A-okay.” Daisy pinched her thumb and dog finger together before she turned to me. “You’ve got to be Rennie. How’s the world been treating you, Rennie? Okeydokey?”

“Okeydokey,” I repeated.

“That’s good. You going to help me with the breakfast dishes, or do you have to go to school?”

“I have to go to school.”

“I’ve got your number.” Daisy laughed and turned to Mom. “You want me to scrub the kitchen floor? These boys tracked in a whole lot of mud. Boys!”

Carl looked at Dad, then Mom, then back at Dad again. “Daisy’s pretty snazzy for a Japanese girl,” he said uncertainly. “We grew up in Los Angeles. She likes to jive.”

Dad laughed, and when Mom nodded at him, he said, “That’s fine, Carl. She’ll do.”

Carl and Daisy exchanged glances, and Daisy began picking up the breakfast dishes. “Oh, you can wait on that, Daisy,” Mom said. “You might as well have a cup of coffee with us first. The boys always do. I’ll show you how we fix it.” Dad told Mom to sit still, but Mom waved him off and stood up. “Women are the only ones who can brew a decent cup of coffee. Men!” She said it the same way Daisy had said “Boys!”

Dad slid a glance at me, and I grinned at him. We both thought Daisy was okeydokey.

After Mom showed Daisy the way she rinsed the pot with hot water, and how she measured the coffee and boiling water, Dad helped Mom back to bed. When he returned, Dad told me, “Your mother’s an easy touch.”

“No such a thing!” Mom called from the bedroom.

FROM THE BEGINNING, DAISY
made us glad she was there— me especially, since every morning when she showed up, I was grateful I hadn’t had to quit school. She arrived with the boys, full of jive talk, and chattered until she left. But when one of the Jolly Stitchers called, Daisy went outside and hung up laundry or washed out the fruit cellar or cleaned the chicken house. If there was nothing else to do, she just quit for the day and went on back to the camp. Mom said she didn’t like the idea of Daisy going across the fields on her own, but Daisy said she could take care of herself.

One afternoon, Mrs. Smith called with a butterscotch pudding the color of hog wallow. Daisy took it from her, but I could tell Mrs. Smith didn’t want to give it up. “Girl, are you honest?” Mrs. Smith asked in a loud, slow voice.

Daisy blinked at her and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“That pudding’s for Strouds, not for you.”

Mrs. Smith spotted me. “You make sure your mother gets that.”

Daisy put the pudding into the icebox and whispered, “Even if I was the Thief of Baghdad, I wouldn’t steal this.”

I studied the pudding. “I wish you would.” We giggled, but I felt sorry for Daisy, thinking how awful it was that somebody would treat her like a thief just because she was Japanese.

Daisy put on her coat and went out the back door, while Mrs. Smith watched her from the bedroom. Then she told Mom, “I couldn’t rest easy with the enemy in my house.” She sat down on the edge of Mom’s bed, making the springs sag.

“It’s nice to have somebody to talk to, almost like having Marthalice around.”

“What about the old lady? You can talk to her.”

“Granny’s mind isn’t there so much now. She doesn’t know who Mrs. Roosevelt is.”

“Well, I wish I didn’t,” Mrs. Smith said.

Mom ignored her, because we thought Mrs. Roosevelt sat on the right hand of God, and God, Dad said once, was Mr. Roosevelt. “When I mentioned the war this morning, Granny told me it was about time we freed the slaves. She was a little girl in time of that war, you know.”

Mrs. Smith sighed. “It’s a burden you carry with Mr. Stroud’s mother, Mary.” Mom always called Mrs. Smith a “foul-weather friend,” because she liked to talk about troubles.

“Oh, I don’t mind. She’s a dear soul. But it is nice having a young person around during the day.”

“At least Miss Evelina speaks English. That hired Nip girl, it’s a wonder you can understand her.”

Mom had gotten tired of explaining that Daisy spoke English, and that in fact, Daisy understood only a little Japanese, so she smiled and said, “We manage.”

Mom and Daisy did a lot better than manage. When I got home from school, I’d find them at the kitchen table drinking Postum and playing bridge or listening to “Portia Faces Life,” which was the only soap opera Mom turned on.

“That poor girl,” Daisy would say, shaking her head, sometimes wiping a tear from her eye.

“It’s only make-believe,” Mom would tell her, but she’d sigh and take a handkerchief out of her pocket and blow her nose, then say, “Now Rennie, don’t you dare tattle to your father that we’ve been listening to this.” I wouldn’t, because I liked to listen to it, too.

Daisy borrowed my Nancy Drew books to read at the camp and brought me her movie magazines when she was finished with them, and we talked about our favorite film stars. “Why, it isn’t anything to see famous people when you live in Los Angeles,” she told me. Daisy and her girlfriend had stood outside a movie theater in Hollywood during a premiere once and seen Clark Gable and Carol Lombard. Daisy knew somebody who’d sold razor blades to Andy Devine and nail polish to Marion Street. And one time, she’d been waiting for the streetcar when Velma Burgett drove by in a Cadillac convertible. “She was wearing a diamond engagement ring the size of a Chiclet,” Daisy said.