The Great Gilly Hopkins (12 page)

Trotter fought going to bed, but her fever was high, and she was too dizzy to stand up. Despite her protests, Gilly stayed home from school Tuesday and Wednesday to nurse the three of them, and Thanksgiving Day found her exhausted from going up and down stairs and from bedside to bedside.

It occurred to her that if she could get sick, too, no one would blame her for collapsing but, of course, she didn't catch anything, except irritability from not sleeping properly and worrying. She called Mr. Randolph's doctor, Trotter's doctor, and the pediatrician, but no one gave her any help. The patients were to stay in bed and take aspirin for the fever.

Gilly chopped an aspirin in half with the butcher knife for William Ernest. One piece flew out of sight under the stove and the other piece, which she got down the boy's throat with no little difficulty, came up again promptly, along with the bowl of soup she'd coaxed down earlier. She was afraid to try any more aspirin.

Trotter told her to wipe his face and arms and legs with a cold cloth, which seemed to help the fever a little, but the child was still miserable, and clean as she might, the smell of old vomit hung in the room.

The whole house was a mess, in fact. Even rooms like the living room and kitchen, which nobody but she went into, began to look as though they had been bombed. She was simply too whipped to pick up after herself.

By Thursday she couldn't have cared less about Thanksgiving. The turkey Trotter had bought was relentlessly defrosting on the refrigerator shelf, but there was nothing else to remind her as she sat at the kitchen table dressed in jeans and a shrunken T-shirt, chewing her late breakfast of bologna sandwich that the rest of the nation would soon be feasting and celebrating.

The doorbell rang. She jumped at the sound. Her first fear was that lawyer son had not believed Mr. Randolph's excuses for not coming to Virginia for Thanksgiving and had come to get him. Then, with annoyance, she realized that it was probably Agnes Stokes, sneaking around to find out why Gilly had skipped school for two days.

But when she opened the door, it was to a small, plump woman whose gray hair peaked out from under a close-fitting black felt hat. She wore black gloves and a black-and-tweed overcoat, which was a little too long to be fashionable, and carried a slightly worn black alligator bag over one arm. The woman, who was an inch or so shorter than she was, looked up into Gilly's face with a sort of peculiar expression, whether frightened or hungry, Gilly couldn't have said. At any rate, it made her shift uncomfortably and push at her bangs until she remembered two of Trotter's trusty sentences for emergency use and offered both of them.

“We're not buying anything today, thank you, and we're faithful members of the Baptist Church.” She hurried to close the door.

“No, wait, please,” the lady said. “Galadriel—Hopkins?”

Gilly yanked the door back open. “Who are you?” she blurted out, as awkwardly as William Ernest might have.

“I'm”—It was the woman's turn to look uncomfortable. “I'm—I suppose I'm your grandmother.”

Somehow Gilly would have been less surprised if the woman had said fairy godmother.

“May I come in?”

Dumbly Gilly stepped back and let her.

The sound of snoring poured forth from the dining room. Gilly willed the woman not to look, not to stare at the funny little brown face poked up above the faded quilt, the mouth gaped and trembling with each noisy breath.

But, of course, the woman looked, jerked her head slightly at the sight, and then turned quickly back to Gilly.

“Gilly, honey, who is it?” Damn! Trotter must have heard the bell.

“OK, Trotter, I got it,” Gilly yelled, as she tugged at her shrunken T-shirt (the last half-clean one) and tried to make it cover her navel. “Want to sit down?” she asked the visitor.

“Yes. Please.”

Gilly led the way into the living room and backed up to the couch, sticking a hand out toward the brown chair.

Plunk
. They both sat down in unison like string puppets, the lady right on the edge of the chair so that her short feet could touch the floor.

“So—” The woman was bobbing her little black hat. Did anyone in the world wear hats these days? “So—”

Gilly was trying to take it in. This—this little old lady in the old-fashioned hat and coat—was Courtney's mother? In all Gilly's fantasies, Courtney had never had a mother. She had always been—existing from before time—like a goddess in perpetual perfection.

“I'm right, aren't I? You are Galadriel?” Her voice was Southern but smooth, like silk to Trotter's burlap.

Gilly nodded.

“My daughter—” The woman fumbled in her purse and brought out a letter. “My daughter left home many—” She snapped the purse shut and raised her eyes to meet Gilly's puzzled ones. “—many years ago. I—my husband and I never…I'm sorry…”

Helplessly Gilly watched the little woman stumbling for words, trying to tell a painful story and not knowing how.

“My husband—” She tried to smile. “Your grandfather died—nearly twelve years ago.”

Perhaps she should say something, thought Gilly. “Jeez, that's too bad.”

“Yes. Yes, it was.” The woman was pushing hard against the words to keep from crying. Gilly knew the trick. Oh, boy, how well she knew that one. “We—I tried to contact Courtney, your mother, at the time, of course. But—I was not able to. In fact—” The pitch of her voice went up. She stopped trying to talk and took a handkerchief from her purse, barely touching each nostril before putting it away.

Go ahead and blow, honey. It'll make you feel better. Trotter would have said it, but Gilly couldn't quite get it out.

“As a matter of fact—” The woman had recovered herself enough to continue. “As a matter of fact, this letter—this letter is the first direct word we've—I've had from my daughter in thirteen years.”

“You're kidding,” said Gilly. She felt sorry even though the woman's pain didn't seem to have anything to do with her.

“I didn't even know she'd had a ba—Wouldn't you think she'd want her own mother to know she'd had a baby?”

This was obviously the point where she, Gilly, was supposed to come into the story, but it still seemed far too remote, like something that had happened once to a friend of a friend. She tried to nod in a sympathetic manner.

“Gilly. I called you and called you.” William Ernest stood clutching the doorway for support, his face still flushed with fever. He was dressed in his long grayish-white underwear. At the sight of a stranger, he stopped dead.

The woman looked at him once hard; then as she had done with Mr. Randolph, she looked quickly away.

“I'm sorry, W.E.,” Gilly said. “I didn't hear you call me. What's the matter?” As soon as she asked, she knew. His long johns were wet all down the front. Gilly jumped up. “'Scuse me, I'll be right back.” She hustled the boy back to his room, as fast as you could hustle a boy who was still weak from fever and lack of food. It was hard to be patient with him on the stairs. “You shouldn't have come downstairs, William Ernest. You're sick.”

“I wet,” he said sadly. “I couldn't help it.”

She sighed. “I know. When you're sick, you just can't help it.” She got him the last clean underwear, which was short and wouldn't be as warm, and changed his sheets. She took a dry blanket off her own bed. He climbed in and turned his back to her at once, his strength exhausted.

“Gilly, honey,” Trotter called drowsily as Gilly passed her door. “You got company down there?”

“Just playing the TV.” Gilly smoothed her hair and tugged again at her shirt as she went down the stairs. She knew she looked a wreck. She must have shocked the poor old lady right out of her socks.

The woman gave a weak smile and nodded when Gilly came in. “You poor little thing,” she said.

Gilly looked behind to see if W.E. had followed her down.

“Bless your heart.” There was no one else around.

“Me?”

“Courtney didn't exaggerate. I'm just so glad you wrote her, my dear. How could they have put you in such a place?”

“Me?” What was the woman talking about? What place?

“I know I shouldn't have burst in upon you like this, but I felt I had to see for myself before I talked with your caseworker. Will you forgive me, my dear, for—”

There was a heavy thump, thump, thumping on the stairs. Both of them sat stark still and listened as it drew inexorably nearer.

“
Ohhh!
” The little lady gasped.

Swaying in the doorway was a huge barefoot apparition in striped men's pajamas, gray hair cascading over its shoulders, a wild look in its eyes.

“I forgot!” It was moaning as it swayed. “I forgot!” It grabbed frantically at the woodwork. “I forgot.”

Gilly sprang to her feet. “What did you forget, dammit?”

“The turkey”—Trotter was almost sobbing now—“Fifteen dollars and thirty-eight cents, and I let it go to rot.” She gave no sign that she noticed the visitor.

“Nothing's gone to rot. I would have smelled it, wouldn't I?”—Gilly couldn't help sneaking a sideways glance at the little woman, who looked almost as frightened as W.E. did when he spied a new word in his reading book—“Go back to bed, Trotter. I'll put it right in the oven.”

The huge woman made an effort to obey, but nearly fell down just trying to turn around. “I better set a minute,” she panted. “My head's light.”

Gilly grabbed the back of the striped pajamas with both hands and half dragged, half supported the faltering frame toward the couch. But she knew—just as one knows when piling on one final block that the tower will fall—she knew they couldn't make it.

“Oh, mercy!” Trotter gave a little cry as she came crashing down, pinning Gilly to the rug beneath her. The woman lay there, flapping on her back like a giant overturned tortoise. “Well, I done it now.” She gave a short hysterical giggle. “Squished you juicy.”

“What? What is it?” The third night-clothed actor had made his entrance.

“You awright, ain't you, Gilly, honey?” asked Trotter, and without waiting for an answer, “S'awright, Mr. Randolph.”

“But someone fell. I heard someone fall.”

“Yeah, I fell awright.” Trotter was rocking her huge trunk in a vain effort to get to her feet. “But it's OK, ain't it, Gilly, honey?”

“Just roll, Trotter,” said a muffled voice. “Roll over and you'll be off me.”

“What's that? What's that?” Mr. Randolph squeaked.

“It's poor little Gilly.” Trotter grunted and with a supreme
ahhhhhhh
rolled off onto the floor.

“Miss Gilly?” he was asking anxiously.

“I'm OK, Mr. Randolph.” Gilly got up, dusted herself off, then took him by the hand. “Let's get you back into bed.”

By the time she returned from the dining room, Trotter had somehow hoisted herself into a sitting position on the couch, and dizzily clutching the cushions with both hands, had found herself face to face with a white-faced stranger.

“You said wasn't no one here,” she accused Gilly.

The visitor, for her part, was teetering on the absolute brink of the brown chair in what Gilly took to be a state of total shock. But the small lady proved capable of speech. “I think I'd better go,” she said, standing up. “I don't seem to have come at a very good time.”

Gilly followed her to the door, eager to get her out of the looney bin the house had suddenly become.

“I'm glad to have met you,” she said as politely as she could. She had no wish for the woman to think poorly of her. After all, she was—or, at least, she claimed to be—Courtney's mother.

The woman paused, resisting Gilly's efforts to hurry her out the door. She reached over abruptly and pecked Gilly on the cheek. “I'll get you out of here soon,” she whispered fiercely. “I promise you, I will.”

Fatigue had made Gilly stupid. She simply nodded and closed the door quickly behind the little form. It wasn't until she'd gotten Trotter back in bed and was putting the turkey in the oven that the woman's meaning came clear.

Oh, my god.

Well, it didn't matter what the woman thought. Miss Ellis could explain about today. No one could make her leave here, not when everyone needed her so. Besides—Trotter wouldn't let them take her. “Never,” she had said. “Never, never, never.”

D
read lay on Gilly's stomach like a dead fish on the beach. Even when you don't look at it, the stink pervades everything. She finally made herself admit the fact that it was her own letter that had driven Courtney to get in touch with her mother after a silence of thirteen years. What had it said? She couldn't even remember what the letter had said. And Courtney's letter had, in turn, brought the little lady up from Virginia to spy her out.

And now what? It was not at all the way she'd imagined the ending. In Gilly's story Courtney herself came sweeping in like a goddess queen, reclaiming the long-lost princess. There was no place in this dream for dumpy old-fashioned ladies with Southern speech, or barefoot fat women in striped pajamas, or blind old black men who recited poetry by heart and snored with their mouths open—or crazy, heart-ripping little guys who went “
pow
” and still wet their stupid beds.

But she had done it. Like Bluebeard's wife, she'd opened the forbidden door and someday she would have to look inside.

By Saturday night, when the turkey was finally upon the kitchen table with the four of them gathered gratefully around it, there was still no word from either Miss Ellis or the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Trotter and W.E. looked deathly white, and Mr. Randolph was the shade of ashes, but they had thrown off the crankiness of their illness and were eating the cold dry meat with chirpy expressions of delight.