The Root Cellar (5 page)

“No, it isn’t—mine’s red. Hers is pink like the color things get in the fridge when you leave them too long. I wish she’d take her moldy,
pink hair and her fur coat—doesn’t she know you shouldn’t skin animals?—and go back to New York!”

“Sam!” Aunt Nan said sharply. “That’s enough! You’re fourteen years old. I know it’s been hard for you but I think you might—” A door slammed. In a moment it was opened again and Rose heard Aunt Nan’s voice, more faintly: “Honestly, Bob, I think Sam is behaving.…” The door closed.

Rose was shattered. She had never heard herself attacked like that before. Snooty. Snob. What did he mean? And her hair wasn’t pink! She got up and turned on the light and went to look at herself in the round mirror that hung over the dresser. She pulled furiously at the hated short ends of her red hair. What had she done to make him say things like that? She lay awake most of the night, cold and shaking, saying Sam’s unkind words over and over to herself.

The next morning she stuffed the fur jacket, and the boots, and the black velvet pants, into the back of her closet and tied a large kerchief around her head. She could not look at Sam. Every time he came into the room she stiffened. She felt exposed, defenseless. She did the chores Aunt Nan set for her in silence, and she spent most of the time in the next two days huddled in her thin sweater with her back against the hawthorn tree in the glade, finding comfort in
the creek’s soft gurgle as it flowed over the sticks and stones.

On Thursday Aunt Nan took her to school in Soames and talked to Mr. Hodgins, the principal, who wrinkled up his face and coughed a dry little cough at the news that Rose had never been to school.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever had a problem like this before.”

“You could give her a test, couldn’t you, and find out how much she knows? I’m sure Rose isn’t stupid.”

“Yes, yes, I was going to suggest that, Mrs. Henry.”

Rose thought,
No, he wasn’t. He’s a fool
. But she sat down obediently and read a simple story out loud, wrote a couple of paragraphs about it, did some arithmetic problems, spelled a short list of words, and answered a few questions about geography.

“Amazing.” Mr. Hodgins coughed his dry little cough twice. “Your grandmother must have been a fine teacher.”

“Yes.”

“Well!” Mr. Hodgins was clearly a bit taken aback by her ready agreement. “You can probably go right into grade eight without any trouble.”

Aunt Nan took Rose to the local dry-goods store afterward. “You can’t wear those good
skirts all the time,” she said and bought two pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, a jacket, and a pair of running shoes. Rose put on her new clothes the minute they got home. With her kerchief tied securely around her head she felt, if not comfortable, less conspicuous.

First thing Saturday morning the phone rang. It was a girl from Toronto to ask if she and her mother could drive out to see the ghost. Aunt Nan had said to all the children on Tuesday, “You must come and visit,” but she had never expected that any of them would. “Come, of course,” she told the girl, and she said it to three others who called that day. It was like a constant parade of sightseers all entranced by the “weird” place where Nan Henry wrote her books. One girl asked Rose admiringly if she was Emily of Shadow Brook Farm, to which Rose replied frostily, “My name is not Emily and this, thank heaven, is the first time in my life I’ve ever been near a farm.”

That evening as she was setting the table and the last visitor was pulling out of the driveway, she muttered angrily to herself, “This place is like a zoo. Next time someone comes I’m going to jump up and down and ask for a banana.” She turned to see Sam standing in the doorway, grinning. “Don’t laugh at me!” she hissed. She was horrified to realize there were tears in her eyes. “You and your stupid ghosts! You made all
those people come! I don’t care if you hate me! I don’t care if you think my hair is pink! I don’t care if you think I’m a snob! Just don’t you dare laugh at me!” She threw down the silverware with a clatter and ran from the room.

She stood with her back against the closed door of her bedroom until her quivering rage had subsided. Then she sat down at the desk in a cold calm, took out a sheet of the monogrammed paper her grandmother had given her at Christmas, and wrote Aunt Millicent a letter.

She looked up to reach for an envelope and there was Mrs. Morrissay coming toward her through the wall from the twins’ room.

The Root Cellar

“M
rs. Morrissay!” A shudder like an electric shock ran through Rose. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

Mrs. Morrissay said nothing. She didn’t move. She stood half in the twins’ room, half in Rose’s, a blue and orange kerchief tied around her head, a dust mop in her hand, looking very ill at ease.

Rose was trembling. Her hands were wet with cold sweat and she could hardly focus her eyes. Mrs. Morrissay came the rest of the way through the wall and into the room. She was no longer half visible. She was solid, three dimensional.

“You’re Sam’s ghost.” Rose heard her own voice, strange and shrill and accusing.

“I ain’t no ghost.” Mrs. Morrissay was indignant. “I’m just plain myself, minding my own business and it happens.”

“Happens?”

“I shift!”

“Shift?”

“Shift. I’m going along minding my own business like I said, hoeing or scrubbing or mopping, and right in the middle I shift. And you needn’t be so cross, Rose. You ought to know better. It’s not easy for a body to shift. I’m in my kitchen, then quick’s a cow’s tail after a fly, I’m in yours—or your bedroom.” She looked around her. “Oh, Rose, ain’t this an awful sight? It was so pretty.” She went over to the corner by the window and picked at the layers of wallpaper. “See, this here’s the one I put up. It was white with pink roses.” Suddenly she smiled at Rose, a warm, embracing smile. Then she looked out the window.

“Ain’t it something how them bushes is all grown over? Funny how you can still see where the old garden was.”

“Mrs. Morrissay, you have no right to be here!” Rose could barely control her shaking voice. Her sense of how things ought to be had never been so disturbed, not even by her grandmother’s death. “You don’t belong here, Mrs. Morrissay—” Rose stopped abruptly, her fear and her shock subsiding before Mrs. Morrissay’s smile. “I suppose it
is
your home?”

“Of course it’s my house. I grew up in it. I was married in it. I’m like to die in it and”—Mrs.
Morrissay finished with a sigh—“it seems I shift in it.”

She reached over and took Rose’s hand. Rose snatched it away. “It’s all right,” said Mrs. Morrissay soothingly. “Rose, I told you, I ain’t no ghost. I ain’t dead. I’m just shifted, and I don’t know how no more than you do. It just happens, like I said. All I know is that if the good Lord sees fit to shift me, I shift. I suppose it’s … well, I dunno. But I do belong here, and, Rose, I want you to make things right in my house for me.”

“Mrs. Morrissay, I can’t fix your house. It isn’t my house, and anyway, I don’t even like this house. I’m not going to stay here. I’m going back to New York.”

Rose realized that she was actually talking to the old woman as easily as she had used her name, Mrs. Morrissay. “How do you know so much about me? Who are you?”

But Mrs. Morrissay was staring at Rose. As if she hadn’t heard her question, she said, “Don’t talk about going off like that, Rose. You ain’t going to New York, you know you ain’t—oh!” Mrs. Morrissay looked at Rose in alarm, opened her mouth to say something, and disappeared, not slowly the way she had come but instantly, like a light being turned off.

Rose started back. Fearfully she put her hand toward the spot where Mrs. Morrissay
had been standing. There was no one, no thing. Her mind was in a turmoil. At that moment, through the window, she caught sight of something blue and orange moving across the glade.

“There she is!” Rose spoke aloud in her excitement. “There’s her kerchief!”

She flew down the stairs and out of the house. But there was no sign of Mrs. Morrissay in the clearing. Rose slumped down against the little hawthorn tree. “It’s true what I wrote Aunt Millicent,” she whispered. “They are mad. And now I think I must be mad, too.”

She sat there, dejectedly scuffing the leaves with her feet, her mind going over and over what had happened. Her toe struck something metal. Surprised, she sat up straight and pushed at it with her foot. It clinked. She went over on her hands and knees to look. She brushed away the leaves and discovered that there were boards underneath with a metal latch of some sort.

“It’s a door, a door in the ground. How odd.” Excitedly she began to pull at the vines and thick grass that had grown over the boards, and when she had pulled most of them away she saw that, indeed, it was a door—two doors, in fact, with rusty hook-and-eye latches that secured them together. With much pulling and wrenching she managed to loosen them and slowly, slowly, with a great deal of straining and heaving she pried them open.

There were steps inside that had been made by cutting away the earth and laying boards across. The boards had all but rotted away, but the earth steps were still there. At the bottom, facing her about three feet away, was another door, upright, also fastened with a hook-and-eye latch. The doorway was so low she had to stoop to get through.

Inside she found herself in a kind of closet with shelves along the sides on which stood crockery jars and glass sealers. On the floor stood several barrels with lids on them. The place was cold and damp, but it looked to be in use.

I don’t understand. If Aunt Nan keeps her pickles and things here, why is it so hard to get into?
she thought. She had lifted the lid off one of the crocks and found it full of beets. Another was full of cucumber pickles. She looked up. Someone behind her was blocking the light. Quickly she turned around.

A girl, smaller but probably about the same age as her, stood at the top of the steps with a jar in her hands. It was the girl from the bedroom with the four-poster bed. She wore quite a long dress made of some rough dark brown material, with a white apron over it. On her feet she had awkward-looking ankle-high boots. She had dark brown hair in one long braid down her back, a plain round freckled face, a small nose, a wide mouth—and
bright black eyes. They were blinking at Rose in consternation.

“Where’d you come from?” she demanded.

“I … I … what?”

“You’d best get out of our root cellar.” The girl came down the steps. “Missus will be terrible cross.” She reached up to the top shelf and brought down one of the crocks. All the while she kept turning around to stare nervously at Rose.

Rose stared back.

“You’d best come along now.” The girl frowned. “Honest, Missus don’t like having strangers around.” She started back up the steps.

“Look”—Rose followed the girl—“look, isn’t this—” She’d been going to ask, “Isn’t this Aunt Nan’s root cellar?” but the words never got spoken. At the top of the steps she found herself standing beside a little garden with rows of young plants set out in it. Behind it the creek bubbled merrily and a neat stone path led from the garden to the kitchen door. Pansies and sweet alyssum bloomed along the walk and there were hollyhocks against the back wall of the house. The bricks looked bright and the trim around the windows and the kitchen door was fresh and white. Chickens and ducks were squawking and flapping to let her know she was intruding, and a pair of geese scurried across the grass toward her. Down past the
creek a cow and a small flock of sheep were browsing. Beyond, where there should have been a field of crab grass and burdock, was an apple orchard in full bloom.

“This time it’s me,” whispered Rose. “I’ve shifted.”

Susan