Borrowed Children (6 page)

“Its Mandy who gets up.”

“Or Mandy either.” He turns to me. “You're getting your motherhood early.” The way he says it makes it sound like something I could wear.

He opens his worn bag, with its shelves of pills and liquids, and pulls out a bottle of something green as grass.

“This should do the trick.” He hands it to Mama. “Let me know and I'll write a prescription if you need more.”

We thank him, feeling a little shamefaced since Willie has been quiet as an egg ever since he came. Just smiled and waved his hands when the doctor felt his belly.

“That's the way it goes,” Mama says after Doc Bailey is gone. “Five minutes with a doctor can cure a child—till the doctor leaves.”

And she's right. Willie wails again as soon as she feeds him, knees drawn up, face tight as a fist. And we can't give him the medicine till bedtime. But when we do, it works like a charm. For me that means the first real sleep since the Skidmores'.

I wake up before dawn in a panic. Willie! I run into Mama's room, my heart loud as thunder. The tiny back under the crib quilt rises and falls. Mama is a big ball in bed. And I am as awake as I'll ever be. Feeling foolish, I put on the coffee and take up the book.

Now while the birds sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief…

It isn't ten minutes till Willie cries. I go in as usual to change him before giving him to Mama, but she's already up, crooning to him.

“This boy slept all night!” she proclaims, happy as Christmas. Willie stares at her face like a great light.

I try to be glad. I am glad about the sleeping, but I feel useless. I thought it was me Willie needed.

“We're fine here,” Mama says. “You start breakfast.”

Anybody'd rather hold a baby than cook.

The rest of the day and the week are like that, too: Mama gaining strength and taking over. Not enough for me to go to school, but enough to talk about it. Yet no one does. Is that my punishment?

It's Friday night now, and Mama and Daddy are figuring. Given all that's happened with Willie, I'd forgotten about the mill, forgotten to worry. Tonight Helen asks Daddy about the big ledger book.

“You're doing your books,” she says. “What are you studying?

“How money disappears.”

“Are you a scholar?”

“No, honey. Just a Professor of Hard Times.”

She stares at him.

“I wish I were a scholar,” he says. “It's going to take some research to figure out how to make ends meet.”

Mama signals for us to go to our room.

Once down the hall, Helen continues her questions. “Ends of what?”

“He means we're poor,” Anna offers.

“The whole country is poor right now, not just Perritts.”

“Who's going to meet their end?”

“No, no, that's not what he's talking about. He means making the money which comes in equal the money that goes out. Having a balance.”

“How can he do that?”

“Well, I'm not sure. It takes adjustments.”

“Oh. Do we have some?”

“You don't have adjustments; you make them.”

“Could we make some?”

“We already have. We've adjusted a lot to Willie's coming.

“But that didn't have to do with money,” Anna puts in.

I think about that.

“Well, it did in a way. If I hadn't stayed home, we would have had to hire help to look after Willie and Mama.”

“So you kept money from going out?”

“Sort of.”

“Like the boy at the dike.”

“What?”

“That's a story we heard at school,” Anna explains. “But he was keeping the water
out,
Helen, out of the village.”

“And
in
the sea,” Helen insists. “Like the money. Mandy's been keeping the money
in.”

I wish I'd thought of that. Somehow it makes me feel a lot better.

“You girls get ready for bed,” Mama calls.

I start to help Helen out of her dress.

“I can do it myself now,” she says. “Since Willie, my arms are longer.”

Mine, too, I guess. But I hadn't even noticed I'd quit helping her. Why didn't Anna do it?

Anna's got her dress off, her gown on, and has jumped into bed.

“Anna, get up and brush your hair. And your teeth.”

“I'm too tired.”

“No, you're not.”

“Your teeth will fall out and get stuck in your hair,” Helen warns.

You can tell she's been to school.

Anna rolls out of bed and does what's needed. We're all about settled when Mama appears at the door.

“Come into the kitchen a minute, Amanda.”

I climb out of the warm bed, stone cold. I half expect to see every china chip laid out on the table, a note written in blood beside it: You must put it back together by morning or die.

But this isn't a fairy tale. Daddy is seated at the work table drinking coffee. Mama motions me to have a seat.

“Mandy,” Daddy begins—he never calls me Amanda, no matter how serious things get—“your mother and I appreciate all your work since Willie came. We know it's not been easy. You're the only child I've got who would grieve missing school, and you're the one who's had to do it. …”

He pauses and Mama goes on.

“So now that I'm better—”

“You mean I can go back to school?”

I blurt this out from excitement and relief.

“After Christmas, yes,” Mama continues, “but before that we have a present for you.”

A present? The first thing I think of is the ring Mama ordered. It seems years ago and I'd forgotten all about it. But I don't want a ring, not with money like it is.

“You like trains, don't you?” Daddy says, as if to fill up the silence.

“Sure.” But they can't be going to give me a toy train. I don't know what to do. They're both looking at me.

“Omie's invited you to come to Memphis,” Mama says. “It's your Christmas present. And we'd like to let you go.”

I can't believe it.

“You mean on the train?”

Daddy nods.

“By myself?”

It's all I can do to keep from saying: Without Willie?

“Just you,” Mama confirms. “A week and a half to visit and see the sights.”

“And describe that baby to your grandmother,” Daddy adds. “She wants an eye-witness.”

I smile. “Are you sure its all right? I mean…”

“Well, we wouldn't be ready to spare you tomorrow,” Mama admits. “But I'm stronger every day, and in another week—”

“But I'll be there at Christmas!”

“That's right,” Daddy says. “You can ride streetcars hung with holly.”

“And eat Mama's plum pudding.”

And miss yours, I think. And miss Willie looking at the

tree.

“I don't think she wants to go,” Daddy says to Mama.

“Yes I do! I just can't believe it, that's all.”

“Well, it's settled. You go on to bed, and we'll talk tomorrow.

“I don't think I can sleep.”

“Want a spoon of Willie's potion?” Daddy offers.

“Jim!” Mama's shock is half real. “Sit still then, Mandy. I'll make you some cocoa.”

And that's the strangest thing of all: sitting at the table while Mama waits on me, a huge gift where I'd expected a slap in the face.

11

Before Helen was born, we used to go to Memphis once a year. “Come summer, I have to go home,” Mama would say, and pack a trunk and a hamper. I only remember the last two visits: red waxy flowers in Omie s back yard, Aunt Laura pretty as a catalogue cover, Opie peeling apples with his pocket knife. One trip the boys disappeared the moment the train pulled out and Mama told me to quit looking out the window and watch Anna till she found them.

But it wont be like that this time. I'll be on my own. I close my eyes and see myself sitting on the red plush seat, brave and lonely.

Maybe I'll feel I belong in Memphis. It's a real city, even if it's not Boston. Things happen there—interesting things to interesting people. I've seen that in Aunt Lauras eyes.

Mama said I can go a week from Sunday. That's tomorrow. Ben and David took no notice, even when she told David he might go down next summer to work for Opie.

“If I'm going to saw logs, I might as well saw them here,” was all he said. He doesn't want to leave Polly.

Mama told the girls, too. Anna was mad.

“Mandy gets to do everything! Stay out of school to take care of Willie! Go see Omie and Opie! Its not fair.”

But Helen got tearful.

“What if you forget how to come back?”

I explained about the railroad, the track being nailed down and going both ways. And about a roundtrip ticket.

“But if it's round, you don't come back like you went. That's straight.”

“Helen—” I always forget she sees each word-picture. You have to tell her it's not real.

“Round trip just means the ticket will bring you back.”

I told Willie I'm going. He smiled with his lips tucked in. That's his new trick. He practices all the time. Last week he worked on his tongue. Not sticking it out, but smiling with it laid from his lip to his chin. He's never idle. If he's not asleep, he's nursing, working, or crying. I admire him. He knows he's got a lot to do and he doesn't waste a minute.

I wonder if he'll know I'm gone. Will he forget me? Mama says he won't but the idea makes me sad. In two weeks he'll be a different baby. Mama's baby.

I don't see how I can feel so many things. I want to go—of course I do. I'm ready as a big red tomato is to get off the vine. Then why does the vine suddenly seem fragile, like it might wither up if I'm gone? No, that's not right. I'm more afraid the vine doesn't need me, will grow right over the place where I was. Before Mama got better it felt like I
was
the vine. Now I don't know.

And last week, when the Christmas box came from Omie and Opie, I felt left out because there wasn't a present for me. Isn't that silly, when mine is the biggest gift of all?

What with packing and fretting the week has spun by. It's a cold Saturday night and we're loaded in the wagon to go to the train. I can tell David and Ben are sour about being here. They had to get their chores done early. But Mama insisted that the whole family take me.

It's a squeeze to get us all in. Anna sits up with Mama. I'm back with the boys, and Helen sleepy in my lap. I was hoping to hold Willie but Mama didn't offer. Anyway, Helen seems rooted. She's the only one somber to see me go.

Daddy coaxes Midge and Welkie and we start rolling, between mountains that stand like a deep part of the dark. The only sound besides the wagon's rattle is Mama singing:

O, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing.
The breeze is sighing, the nightbirds crying.
Far, O far beneath the stars her brave is sleeping
While Red Wings weeping her heart away.

Willie's wrapped in sleep and song and quilts.

We come to the wagon bridge. Daddy eases us on it. There's no rail; he has to have dead aim. He carries a lantern, of course, but its glow doesn't go far, and there's not much moonlight. We travel the road by heart.

A little ways downcreek from the wagon bridge is the footbridge—just two logs, fun to balance across. But there was one time I couldn't make it. In the rattly silence it comes back to me, that hard day I was coming home.

I was seven maybe, seven or eight. It was early winter and we'd just moved to Goose Rock. I'd waked up that morning feeling jumbled, like the inside me had come loose from my bones. My back ached and I was hot, but Mama couldn't feel it, so off I went with David and Ben to school.

I did all right through the morning, but by lunch my feet rose over my shoes like bread. I told Miss Bledsoe.

“You're hot as blazes,” she said. “Get your coat and go straight home.”

I didn't think to question, just put books in my satchel and headed out. The wool of my red coat smelled funny. Somehow I thought I could smell that it had grown too red. And my eyes didn't go where they should.

But I walked. Like Welkie and Midge in this darkness, I knew the road, and I trusted it to pull me. But as I got heavier, it had to tug harder, and when I topped the hill above Goose Creek I realized I was too big for the footbridge; I'd have to cross like a wagon. Then when I reached the rough lip of that bridge, I couldn't stand up. My feet had ballooned. I got down on all fours, grateful for knees. The bridge appeared to me a long ladder. I had to haul myself up as well as across. But I made it. And crawled the rest of the snow-crusted way home.

Anna was the baby then. Mama came to the door with her wrapped in a shawl. She didn't see me at first, then she screamed. I couldn't speak for the heat rushing out the door.

I don't remember much about the next few days. I know Doc Bailey came, bringing shots and little envelopes of big pills. And Mama's face kept appearing above me, like the moon tonight. “I see the moon and the moon sees me. …” Did she sing that?

And why does this come back now? Is it the cold? Is it Anna in my made-over coat? Mama has given it a black velvet collar and pocket. This didn't impress Anna, but Helen was thrilled.

“Your pocket has a coat!” she said, over and over. “I want a pocket with a coat.”

“It will come to you,” Mama promised. “Anna is just one stop on this little coat's road.”

“Where is it going?”

“Probably to a rug.”

Omie braids rugs out of our old clothes—“anything that's got body but no spirit left.” The parlor rug is mostly David and Daddy, the dining room, David and Ben and me. So that, too, will be cut and stitched and twisted, the too-red coat that belonged to a pocket, the Mandy-Anna-Helen coat. Willie won't need it.