Tallgrass (17 page)

“Mr. Reddick’s a hard man. You may not know it, Rennie, but Dad is probably the nicest father in the whole world.”

She didn’t have to tell me that.

“Can you imagine him throwing one of us out of the house for marrying a beet worker?”

“He’d give him a job,” I said.

“Shoot, with the trouble he has getting hired hands right now, he’d probably promise his daughters to anybody who’d go to work for him.” My mouth dropped open. Marthalice was saying all kinds of crazy things. She said, “That’s a joke, snooks.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t hire Danny and Beaner,” I said.

Marthalice, who was getting money out of her pocketbook, jerked her head up to look at me, but she didn’t reply. She put some coins on the table, then stuck the package of Chesterfields back inside her purse and clicked it shut. She snuffed out the cigarette next to the remains of her sandwich. “Remember, don’t tell Mom I smoke.” She bit at a fingernail, saw what she was doing, and put her hand in her lap.

“How come you do that, bite your fingernails?”

She jiggled her shoulders. “How the hell do I know?” Marthalice stood then, saying she had to go to work. We went outside and started up Colfax, because we were close enough to Cousin Hazel’s to walk. A boy followed us out of the drugstore. He’d been sitting behind me, and maybe Marthalice had been staring at him, because he grinned, gave a low wolf whistle, and muttered, “Hubba-hubba.” He was nice looking, probably a high school boy, not a soldier or a beet worker. I thought Marthalice would smile back, maybe flirt with him. Instead, she said, “Shove off, buster.” Then she drew her arms to her sides and turned and almost ran down the side street, as if she were scared, rabbity scared.

ONE AFTERNOON, WHILE COUSIN
Hazel took Mom to a doctor’s appointment, I played with Emilie Brown, the little girl who was visiting her grandparents next door. “I’m staying with Grandmother Varian for the summer because my mother and father adopted my sister last year, and she’s purely a handful,” Emilie told me.

We were sitting in Cousin Hazel’s backyard on a swing that had two seats facing each other, and we moved back and forth in tandem, one of us leaning forward a little as the other leaned back. There wasn’t much to talk about, because Emilie was a just a little kid, but that was okay. I liked sitting there, smelling the sweet odor of the Chinese lilacs that formed a hedge between the two houses. Cousin Hazel’s Negro maid, whose name was Cattie, came out and gave us each a bottle of Coca-Cola.

“Did you used to be a slave?” Emilie asked her.

I stared at Emilie, thinking that was the rudest question anybody had ever asked, but Cattie only replied, “Not me. You think I’m that old?”

“Where I come from, there’s lots of coloreds used to be slaves way back yonder in time. We got one works for us. He’s older than Moses.”

“Moses lived a thousand years ago. There ain’t nobody that old that lives yet. Besides, there’s no slaves no more.”

“I know that. But I bet when we beat the Japs and the Germans, they’ll be our slaves.”

“You’re only seven. How come you know about the war?” I asked her.

“Everybody knows about the war. My daddy works for Miss’sippi war relief.”

“You got a camp of Japs out where you live. I heard Mr. Walter say so,” Cattie told me.

Emilie stared at me. “Aren’t you scared they will kill you dead in your sleep?”

“They live behind barbed wire, and we have guards with guns to make sure they don’t hurt anybody. I’m not scared.”

“Would the guards shoot the Japs if they got out?” Emilie asked.

“Probably not. We’ve got some working in our beet fields.”

“I hear you got one works right in your house with your mother,” Cattie said. “I heard your mother say it to Miss Hazel.”

“You lock her up at night?” Emilie asked. “I’d do it anytime in the world if one of ’em worked for me.”

“She goes home at night.”

“I’d be afraid she’d stick a knife in my back when it was turned. You ask me, all is confusion out there, but I ain’t going to worry my head about it,” Cattie said. She pulled out a knife and cut branches of lilac, throwing them onto the ground, while Emilie and I swung back and forth silently.

Then Emilie said, “If you’ve got Japs working for you, I expect they can’t all be all bad.”

“I guess not.”

“How do you tell the good ones from the bad ones?” I thought that over, swinging so hard that the swing began to squeak, and Emilie said, “Slow down. This noise pesters me.”

“Maybe there aren’t any bad ones. Did you ever think of that? Maybe we made a mistake locking them up.”

“You think that, you think I’m Eleanor Roosevelt,” Cattie said, gathering up the lilacs and starting for the house.

When Cattie was out of earshot, Emilie leaned forward and whispered, “There’s not anybody going to mistake
her
for Mrs. Roosevelt.”

AFTER EMILIE HAD GONE
home, I went inside and took out one of Cousin Walter’s
National Geographic
magazines, which was about Pygmies in Africa, and was sitting in his chair with its back to the doorway when Mom and Cousin Hazel returned. They sat in the dining room drinking iced tea, and they must have thought I was still outside, because after a while, I realized they were talking about me. I wished I’d been paying attention instead of studying midgets.

“I can’t tell one and not the other. It wouldn’t be right. She’s still a young girl. I want to protect her awhile yet,” Mom said.

That wasn’t fair. I wasn’t a young girl when it came to taking over Marthalice’s chores or offering to quit school.

“Are you going to tell them the doctor said you’re fine, then?”

“I couldn’t do that. It would be a lie.”

I forgot about being offended over Mom calling me a young girl and began to shiver, although it was hot in the living room. I wondered if maybe Mom had gotten bad news from the doctor and she was going to die. I leaned as close to the edge of the chair as I could to hear them.

Cousin Hazel said, “Of course, you’ll be all right, Mary.” Her voice sounded too cheerful, as if she were trying to reassure Mom. She didn’t reassure me.

“You heard what he said. The prognosis is good.”

I repeated
prognosis
to myself so that I could look it up in Cousin Walter’s big dictionary, which sat on a stand beside the bookshelves. I hoped I could spell it.

“What will you tell them?”

“That I’m not well yet, that I need rest. She just doesn’t need to know the seriousness of it. You’ve seen her, Hazel. What good would it do to burden her with this? She’s fragile.”

But not too fragile to do the milking or cook for a beet crew, I thought. I carefully closed Cousin Walter’s magazine, disappointed and ashamed that my mother considered me too young to know what was going on. Mom and Dad hadn’t shielded me from Susan’s death or the internment camp. Mom ought to be square with me about her health, I told myself.

“Is there more tea, Hazel? Oh, don’t get up. I can get it. I’m not a complete invalid. You don’t have to wait on me.”

“Now stay put, dear.” A chair moved softly on the thick carpet, and in a minute, there was the sound of ice dropping into glasses. “Cattie makes it with a sprig of lavender. It’s a nice touch, don’t you think?” Cousin Hazel said. “It’s extravagant of me keeping her on, but the fact is, she can’t get another job. You’d think with the need for defense workers, they’d be glad to hire a Negro. I can’t imagine that the soldiers out there care what color the hands are that put together their equipment. But I guess somebody in the government does.” The two of them were silent, drinking their iced tea. “You must have learned plenty about prejudice in Ellis since this war started.”

“More than I’d like to. It makes you question the things you’ve always believed in.”

Cousin Hazel chuckled. “You’ve never had a problem with right and wrong, Mary.”

“Loyal certainly hasn’t. You’ve no idea how people are about that camp. It’s all but broke up my sewing club. Some have got so high-and-mighty about Tallgrass, they won’t hardly speak to those of us who’ve hired the Japanese. Loyal says a bird can’t fly so high that it doesn’t have to come to the ground to eat. But I don’t know, Hazel. I’d like to go back to the time when I could quilt for a contented heart. The Jolly Stitchers, we call ourselves. We’re not so jolly anymore, I tell you.”

“I don’t see there’s much you have to be jolly about these days, what with Marthalice coming here and Bud overseas, and, of course, you getting sick and then that awful rape and murder of the child you wrote me about. They haven’t caught the man, have they ?”

“The sheriff has somebody in mind, but he can’t prove it, so he won’t say anything. I wish to goodness he’d hurry up. It’s got everybody on edge. I get up two or three times a night to make sure Loyal’s locked the doors. Loyal does, too, sometimes.”

That made three of us, and I wondered that we didn’t bump into one another in the dark.

Mom lowered her voice then, and I strained to hear, since I hadn’t been told anything about the sheriff knowing who’d killed Susan Reddick. But I couldn’t make out her words. I’d be easier in my mind if I knew, I thought. But I couldn’t ask Mom later, because then she’d know I’d been snooping. They talked in low voices. Then they were silent. In a minute, Mom said, “You’ve done so much for us. How will we ever thank you?”

“Nonsense. You’ve no idea how much it means to be useful.”

“There was nowhere else to turn.”

“That’s what families are for.”

Outside, kids screamed. They were playing Softball, and a boy yelled, “You are, too, out!” I used the noise to snuggle into the chair so that if Mom or Cousin Hazel came into the room, I could pretend I was asleep. The afternoon was warm, with a breeze that brought the smell of the lilacs into the living room. Off somewhere in the house, Cattie sang a song soft and low. I wondered if maybe I really would fall asleep. Fat chance.

“Marthalice could have stayed on here. Walter wanted her to. We could have kept an eye on her,” Cousin Hazel said.

“You know we agreed it was best she get her own place. I think she’s adjusted. She’s more grown up.”

And smokes and cusses, I thought.

“Marthalice will be all right, Mary.”

“She wrote she caught sight of Alberta Hern from Ellis last year, right in downtown Denver. Alberta’s the worst woman for gossip in two counties.” There was a pause, and Mom added something I didn’t catch. Then she said, “Her husband killed himself with a shotgun on their wedding night.”

“On purpose?”

I didn’t know that and leaned toward the edge of the chair to catch her reply, but Mom must have answered with a shake of her head, because she didn’t say anything. I wondered if it would be okay to tell Betty Joyce about that.

“What an awful thing to live down.”

“She never has. Any time her name comes up, somebody adds that piece of information in the next breath—just like I did. It’s not very Christian, is it?”

“I don’t think you have to worry about not being Christian.”

One of them pushed back her chair, and I hoped they would not come into the living room. I knew I’d really get it if Mom knew I was listening. Mom despised snoops almost as much as she did liars. Still, I was glad I’d heard what they had said. It wasn’t just overhearing things I wasn’t supposed to. I liked listening to the way the two women confided in each other. Mom and Dad were as close as any married people, but I sensed that there were things Mom couldn’t talk about with Dad, things he would brush off or say were silly. There was a closeness among women. They understood one another in a way that men didn’t. If Mom told Dad her feet hurt, he’d tell her to soak them in Epsom salts or change her shoes. But if she complained about her feet to even Bird Smith, who was her least favorite Jolly Stitcher, Mrs. Smith would cluck and know that all Mom wanted was a little sympathy because she’d had a hard day.

I was learning that when women liked each other the way Mom and Cousin Hazel did, they formed a bond that was different from what either one had with her husband. It didn’t mean Mom was disloyal to Dad for being that tight with women. That closeness was in addition to what she had with Dad. He would always be the center of her world, but her women friends eased her life. Betty Joyce and I had that kind of friendship, or at least we’d started on it. We told each other things we wouldn’t tell our folks or that we’d never tell our boyfriends, if we had them. Sometimes we didn’t even have to say things out loud. I knew that Betty Joyce was relieved to get away from the hardware and spend time on our farm. And I think she knew I knew.

“I might as well help you rinse these glasses. I’m not much good for anything else,” Mom said.

“Oh, let’s sit a bit longer. Besides, you’re company.”

“I’m no such thing. I’m a nuisance and no denying it,” Mom said.

“I’ll tell you when you’re a nuisance. Sometimes I get so starved for female companionship, I could just cry. I envy you your sewing circle, even if you don’t always get along. When that business with Walter happened, well, the only way I could stay sane was to confide in you, Mary. Mrs. Varian next door is the dearest woman in the world and my closest friend, but I couldn’t tell her. She sees Walter every day. I can’t imagine what you thought when I unburdened myself in that letter, probably that I was an awful woman.”