The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (16 page)

She lay flat on her back and looked up into the tumbling sky, then closed her eyes. The space behind her eyelids continued to spin. She ran her hands across the grass and clutched at scratchy wads of it. There was a rock under her shoulder blade, cold and hard. It had been here forever, probably, the whole time she was alive, buried in the hard-packed ground. It had been here when her mother was alive and the whole time Idella was gone down to Maine. It’d be here still after she was gone.

Idella listened hard. She could hear the water far below the dark cliff, lolling and slapping over the rocks. A cow drawled from the barn. The Doncaster dog was barking off in the woods. She was back up in Canada. Nothing much had changed, nothing the eye could see.

“Della?” Avis’s wisp of a voice floated cautiously in her direction. “Della, you done?”

Idella sighed in the darkness and then called out, “I’m coming, Avis. I’m coming right back in.”

Avis stood in the doorway waiting. When Idella got to the dim pool of light by the kitchen door, Avis reached out her hand. “Can we go up to bed now?”

Idella hugged her. “You go on upstairs and go to bed.”

“Aren’t you comin’, too?”

“I’ll be up in a minute. You’ll be all right. Go on now. I’ll check on Dad, and then I’ll be up. Here, take the lamp with you and set it on the bureau. I’ll get a candle.” She went over to the sideboard and took a candle from its holder. Carefully lifting the glass chimney from the oil lamp on the table, she lit the candle and stuck it back into its holder. “Here now, take this.” She offered Avis the lamp. “Walk slow and steady. I’ll blow it out when I get up there. Good night, Avis. We’ve had a long day.”

“G’night, Della.” Avis was so tired she could barely speak. She carefully held the oil lamp with both her hands. Idella stood in the kitchen watching her wobbly steps all the way up to the top.

Idella continued to stand in the center of the kitchen, her candle flame the only light. She stared into its warm, wavery yellow, eyeing the dark veins of blue that flickered at its core. She felt peaceful, spent. Here she was, back on the farm, back in the kitchen, where she’d spend all of the next day and plenty more days after that washing and scrubbing and fetching for Dad. She’d never been down here alone like this so late at night. Dad was always around, always stayed up late. Already the little schoolhouse in Maine, the teacher, the blackboard, the books seemed long distant, more than a train ride away.

She thought of her book. It was still where she’d put it near the door. She walked over and picked it up and turned toward the stairs. There had been no sound from Dad’s room. Idella went up to the half-opened door and peeked in. He was lying there, awake, staring up at the ceiling in the darkening room.

“What’s that? What’s that noise?”

“It’s me.”

“Idella?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing out there?”

“Nothing.”

“Come in here. Come in. Bring the light.” His voice was different, soft somehow.

Idella shyly opened the bedroom door. She had never visited him in the night before, never come to him with her nightmares or fears or illnesses. She’d been afraid. Afraid to bother him—he worked so hard and got up so early. Afraid to anger him—he was so quick-tempered. Afraid.

He looked helpless lying there under the bedclothes, long and thin. His beard was growing in all scruffy. He’d been unable to shave, and it made his face dark and shadowy as she held up the candle.

“Tell me, did you like school? Did you like going to live with your Aunt Martha?”

Idella looked down at the blackness of the floor. She felt somehow ashamed. “Yes, sir, I loved it.”

“You loved it, eh?” He lay in the darkness, but she could feel his eyes upon her. “You loved it.”

“More than anything.” There was a long pause. She could hear his breathing. “I passed the eighth-grade test when I’m not even in that grade yet.”

“Did you? Well, Della, that’s good. I think that’s good. Your mother would have liked to hear that. She was a great one for books, you know. You prob’ly don’t remember. She used to read to me by the hour.”

“No. I didn’t know that.”

“This is the bed where she died, you know. Right here in this spot. I should have moved the bed. She must have stared up at the ceiling there, same as me.”

Idella lifted her candle till it glowed on the ceiling. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that she’d really had a mother. Her memories didn’t seem real.

There was another long pause. “Idella, I need to pee, and I can’t wait till morning, and I can’t get to the damn pot by myself. Dalton’s nowhere to be seen or heard from. I’m going to need you to help lift me out of here and get me the pot.”

“Yes, sir.” Idella carefully placed the book and candle on the small table next to his bed and walked over to the chamber pot in the middle of the floor. She lifted it and carried it over to her father’s bed.

“Take this arm and pull me up first. . . . AHH, goddamn it.” He took a long, deep breath. Idella reached down and grasped the offered arm but was afraid of what to do next. “Go on now, give it a pull. It won’t come out, it’ll just hurt like a son of a bitch down below. Come on now, Della. Give a pull.” She pulled till he was in a sitting position, wincing with pain.

“Now get my legs out over the edge. Go slow, especially with the left there.” Idella reached down and guided his legs, one at a time, over the edge. “Jesus, Mary, and the little bastard, too! Good girl, Della. Now get the damn pot. You gotta hold it right up to me, ’cause I ain’t gonna stand. Put it right there and hold it. I’ll do the rest.”

Idella held the pot up with both her hands to where he pointed. She closed her eyes and turned her head toward the window. She could tell by the sharp intake of his breath how difficult it was. She kept her eyes closed and waited till the sound of pee splashing into the metal pot had stopped.

“Holy Mother of God, that does it. Help me back in now.”

Idella placed the warm, pee-filled pot on the floor next to him and helped guide him back into bed. “Would you like something to drink, Dad?” she asked him.

“Well, now, that’d start the whole thing flowin’ again. I’ll wait till mornin’ before I go through that goddamned rigmarole again.” A faint smile crossed his wan face. “You’d best go on up to bed now. You’ve had a big day. Leave me a light on, will you? I’m like as not to lie here awake till morning. My leg burns so, I can’t sleep.”

Idella lit the lamp next to his bed with her candle and turned to go. Then she saw her book lying on the table where she’d put it. She walked over, picked it up, and held it close for a moment. Then she turned around and looked at her father, who was quietly watching.

“Would you like me to read to you, Dad? Like Mother used to? Would you like me to read from my book?” She saw his startled expression. Without waiting for an answer, she took a small cane-bottom chair from the corner of the room and pulled it over next to the oil lamp.

She sat and opened her book. “‘
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
Chapter One.’” Idella’s voice was trembly and shy. “‘I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, . . .’ ” Idella looked up. “Can you hear me, Dad?”

He nodded. There were tears in his eyes.

Idella continued slowly and carefully, “ ‘. . . though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. . . .’ ”

She read for more than an hour, until he had finally drifted off into a merciful sleep. She sat watching for a while, then took from the pocket of her skirt the handkerchief Mrs. Elmhurst had given her. Laying it flat against the open page, she marked her place and put the book on the bedside table where he would be sure to see it. Then she tiptoed back up to her room.

September 1922

 

“Bossy! Bosssyyyyy!” Avis called up into the darkening sky and down into the already dark shadows of the woods. She had gone over every inch of the field looking for her cow. Now she felt her foot slide as she stepped down into the middle of a large cow patty at the edge of the woods. “A nice fresh one,” she said out loud, grabbing a stick and scraping the bottom of her shoe. “If Bossy can’t hear me, she can sure as hell smell me now. Wanderin’ off where she’s got no business.”

Dad had given the calf to Avis four months ago. He had brought it into the house wrapped in his arms, no more than a day old. The cow was bawling the whole time. Dad had plunked it down in front of Avis as she’d sat at the table shelling peas with Idella. “Look what I found in the hay this morning,” he’d said to her, “a rapscallion, like you. So I’m givin’ it to you. It’s yours.”

He’d put the calf down on the big hooked rug and walked out, laughing, wiping his large hands on the seat of his pants. The calf had stood there, all rickety, raised up its tail, and started a stream of pee out the backside that was aimed dead center of that rug. Idella’d let out a scream to wake the dead and run around calling, “Get a bucket! Get a bucket! For God’s sake, get a bucket!”

“Don’t worry, Della,” Avis had called, “I’ll get the mud. And the shit. And the piddle. I’ll get it all.” Then she had taken the cow’s head between her hands, kissed the white star on its snout, and led it out of the house. “Come on,” she’d whispered, steadying the calf. “We’d better start moving or Della’ll have our heads.”

Avis knew that calf was hers. Tater was her cow mother, but Avis was her real one. She’d spent the rest of the day boiling up water and scrubbing the rug, while Idella watched and gave unwanted instructions. But Avis didn’t care. She had decided to name the cow Bossy, because that was a cow name, and she was the perfect little cow.

Now Avis stood at the edge of the field. She had already looked in the woods. She’d followed all the cow paths. Only the reedy, muck-filled swamp was left. Avis had been listening for Bossy’s bell for over an hour. The other cows had been in the barn before she’d set out to get them. It got dark sooner in September, and the cows reacted. Tater was the lead cow. She’d come back early, clanging her bell, moaning to get her teats squeaked. Molly and Queenie had followed behind.

It was Avis’s job to round up the cows every evening. She could hear Tater’s lead bell clanging through her sleep. But it was Bossy’s little tinkle of a thing—Dad had gotten her her own bell—that snuck into Avis’s dreams and sometimes woke her. She’d dream that Bossy was being chased down by dogs. She’d wake up in a sweat and sneak out to the barn, past her sleeping sister, past Dad’s snores. He was often asleep at the table, his head on crossed elbows, too tired or drunk to go to bed. She’d take the oil lamp from in front of him—sometimes it was still lit—and go out to the barn.

She’d find Bossy nestled on top of her hooves in the stall, breathing out that warm, musty steam breath. Avis would get down in the hay and put her head on Bossy’s belly and breathe it in. “There’s my girl,” she’d whisper. “Safe and sound.”

 

Bossy was the first thing in Avis’s life that she’d gotten new. Everything else was handed down from Idella or sent in boxes at Christmastime from Aunt Martha and Uncle John. Idella always got the pick of the litter. She’d get the box from the mailman and open it and take the best. She denied it, but Avis knew she had a few things stuffed under her mattress. There were some girl things, a few dresses, that Idella was hoarding. Avis had caught a glimpse.

She knew that people felt sorry for them, and that’s why neighbors sometimes gave them clothes. She’d see Mrs. Doncaster and Mrs. Pettigrew watching them walk across their fields. They’d be whispering and shaking their heads. Avis could tell they were talking about them, and she hated it when they’d call her over and ask her how tall she was now and how much she thought she weighed—even how old she was. She lied. “I’m going on seven,” she’d say sometimes. “I’ll be sixteen next month,” she’d yell at them a few days later. Both neighbors had known her since she was born. They could figure out that she was twelve if they were that interested.

They’d known her mother, too, for a lot longer than Avis had. They knew what her mother’s laugh sounded like and what her smile had been like. Avis had only ever seen two pictures of her mother, and she hadn’t been smiling in either one. Avis remembered little flickers of sounds that might be her laugh. But she wasn’t sure about her smile, her teeth. Somehow their knowing these things—women who happened to live next door—and not Avis, her own daughter, made her mad.

Avis wanted secrets. She wanted privacy. She didn’t want to tell those busybodies how old she was because then they’d be wondering why she was still straight as a board with no breasts in sight. Not that she wanted breasts. She didn’t. She had no use for them. They’d be a nuisance. But Idella was getting them. They weren’t much to look at, not that she let anyone. Idella’d been taking her baths lately when she was sure no one else was home, but Avis had come running in yesterday and caught Idella climbing out of the big tin tub in the kitchen. Avis had been shocked to see the pink-tipped bulges before Idella covered herself quick with her arms. Avis had felt betrayed.

The neighbor women knew better after a while and stopped asking Avis for information. She’d see them calling Idella over. Idella was always so polite. They’d invite her in. She’d come home smiling, hiding a brush or a hairpin. Idella’d squirrel the things away in her side of their room. Not that Avis gave a damn.

Della’s hair wasn’t much better than Avis’s, but it was blond. She was always washing it and fooling with it and tying it with rag ribbons. Avis wasn’t going to be putting rag scraps into her hair. She’d rather have nothing than wear rags instead of ribbons.

Dad always said their mother had the most wonderful hair. Sometimes Avis took her mother’s braid out of its envelope and looked at it. She felt it and smelled it and held it up to the sunlight to see the veins of reddish gold. Avis’s hair was mousy next to it. She did anything she could to keep it off her face and not have to look at it.