Getting Near to Baby (17 page)

Now Little Sister's fingers tighten around mine.

“All those things are important,” Uncle Hob says. “They are the most important things.”

Little Sister nods, patting Uncle Hobart on the knee as if to comfort him because she is sitting next to him. Little Sister is the sweetest thing sometimes. Only Baby could ever be sweeter.

The air has gone all quiet. It's as sticky as it has been throughout the day, but it is soothing now in some way that it couldn't be while the sun was right overhead. We all sit together and watch the clouds gather. A trickle of something bright and silvery-white, like melted platinum, wanders across the sky.

“Looks like we're going to get some weather,” Uncle Hob says after a while.

“Not till after dark,” I say. I don't even know how I know that.

“The crops like a night rain,” Uncle Hob says. Aunt Patty sighs. She sounds like she feels the want of that rain herself. There is something I need to tell Aunt Patty, but I'm not at all sure how it will be received.

Instead of speaking directly to her, I say what I must to the air around her. “I'm sorry you aren't going to get into the Ladies' Social League.”

“It doesn't matter,” Aunt Patty says. “I can get together with Tressa, now that she's moved back to town. And that Fingers woman sounds awfully nice.”

“She is. She isn't really having twins.”

Aunt Patty straightens her back a little, the sure sign of a new idea. “It might be fun to have her meet Tressa, both of them having all those boys. Maybe we'll just form our own Ladies' Social League. A friendlier one.”

“Now there's an idea,” Uncle Hob says. Aunt Patty just beams.

“Mrs. Fingers will like you too,” I say. “You and Liz are a lot alike.”

Aunt Patty actually looks pleased to hear this. “We are?”

I shrug as I say, “You both just say what is on your mind.”

“I've been thinking I ought to get to know that girl better,” Aunt Patty says. “She's not at all what I expected.”

A little silence falls as we all take things in.

“You all think I was wrong,” Aunt Patty says to no one in particular. “About a lot of things. I know it. But it's done now, right or wrong. Sometimes these things happen and there isn't one single thing a person can do about it except look back on it.”

“That's true,” Uncle Hob says.

“Hob,” Aunt Patty whines.

“Not a thing, I mean,” he says. “That a person can do.” Then he grins. “But it's also true, you were wrong.”

Aunt Patty gets a sour look on her face that I can almost feel, like it is on mine. In fact, I think that look is on my face sometimes. My voice is quavery as I sing, “I'm a little rain cloud, dark and wet.” I suck in a deep breath to sound stronger. “Squeeze me tight and wring me out.”

Uncle Hob looks at me like I've gone right around the bend.

But Aunt Patty remembers the words. “Your momma still sings that?”

I nod.

“She made that up when we were girls. Little girls.”

“Noreen made that up?” Uncle Hob strums a few notes, then sings it. We all sing it together. All except Little Sister, who nods her head from side to side in time to the melody.

“Oh, Hob, what am I going to do?” Aunt Patty wails. “She will never forgive me.”

“She will,” I say.

Aunt Patty and Uncle Hob look at me.

I'm kind of surprised that Aunt Patty doesn't know this about Mom. “She will. She isn't even mad at Daddy.”

“Well, she should be,” Aunt Patty says.

“Patty.” This is Uncle Hob.

“I know, I know.” Aunt Patty settles back. She is trying to live with being in the wrong, I think. It is not an easy feeling to live with.

“The house sure did need a good cleaning,” I say. But that doesn't seem like near enough, so I add, “I bet that firewood is near about dry by now.”

Aunt Patty reaches around Uncle Hob and squeezes my shoulder. But after another moment, she hides her face in her hands and says, “I just can't stand that all this would happen to Noreen. She was always the sweetest thing.”

I know just how she feels. And Uncle Hob rests his hand on the back of her neck, like he knows too. But it is none of it Aunt Patty's fault and I am about to overflow with feeling for her. I scooch over to sit on Aunt Patty's other side.

“It was awful nice of you to replace those june bugs,” I whisper to her. Little Sister might hear me, but this needs to be said. It seems like it ought to be said now.

“That's all right. I only had to do the first one by myself,” Aunt Patty says. “Hob helped me with the rest.” She leans toward me and whispers, “He caught the fresh ones and tied on their little strings.”

I prop my chin on my knees, content that I have cleaned my plate, as Mom likes to say. She isn't talking about food, but about having cleared up misunderstandings and made apologies where they are needed. It seems to me Aunt Patty and I have had our share of the first and neglected the latter. But now I am content to watch the clouds turn and tumble slowly toward us through the heavens.

The sun is behind us now, ready to drop out of sight behind the peak of the roof, but it can still put on a show. Brilliantly colored ribbons stretch across the sky to meet the oncoming gray clouds, making them soft in shades of coral and blue.

Then, like she couldn't stand the quiet another instant, Aunt Patty says, “I'm sorry about all those things I said. I didn't mean it but for that moment. I love you girls to distraction. It is just an enormous responsibility to ... well, you know what I mean. I was overwhelmed. I am just filled with admiration for your momma. I don't know how she manages.”

I'm not sure this is an apology. “We're good girls.”

“Yes, you are,” Aunt Patty agrees. “I didn't mean you weren't. I just meant I should never have been so critical.”

I'm satisfied with that. So far as I am concerned, everybody's plate is clean.

“One thing is driving me crazy, and I have to ask,” Aunt Patty says after a few moments, and she is looking at me. “Whatever made you climb onto the roof?”

It's kind of a shock to be reminded that this is still in question. It doesn't feel strange anymore that we are all sitting out on the roof. Somehow, the whole dilemma has slipped my mind completely. “I ... I wanted to see the sun rise,” I say in a near whisper, because it does not seem to be an adequate answer. “I wanted to see the sun rise, and I just stayed.”

“You just stayed,” Aunt Patty says. She slaps her hands down on her knees. “You sat up on this roof and baked like turkeys and now the whole neighborhood thinks we are a family of lunatics and the only reason you can give me is that you wanted to see the sun rise?”

“We were getting near to Baby,” Little Sister says shyly There is a moment of shocked silence. Even Little Sister appears to wonder where these words have come from.

Then Aunt Patty says, “Why, did you hear that? Little Sister's done got her voice back.”

Little Sister hangs back from this announcement herself. Or maybe she is not as excited about it as the rest of us are. So when Aunt Patty reaches over and envelops her in a hug that includes me and Uncle Hob, Little Sister is looking bewildered by it all.

“Why wouldn't you talk to us, Little Sister?” Aunt Patty says.

Little Sister shrugs, looking like she thinks she is about to be in trouble.

“Don't get me wrong,” Aunt Patty says. “I'm real glad you're talking. I'm not mad or anything.”

“You sound a little mad,” I say.

“Well, I'm not,” she says. And now she only sounds tired. “But I'd like to know why. I really would.”

She turns her head as if she is staring off into the distance. In a small voice, she asks again. “Why wouldn't you talk to us, Little Sister?”

“I tried,” Little Sister says. “I did. But my voice was lost in sadness.”

Aunt Patty looks around and there are tears shining in her eyes. Her face is turning pink with the effort to keep them from running down her cheeks. She sort of smiles and says, “We've all been lost in sadness, Little Sister.”

It comes just naturally to lean on Aunt Patty the way I would lean on Mom if she were here. The little sound Aunt Patty makes in her throat is welcoming and it seems like we might comfortably sit this way forever. I have a sudden thought. “I don't know how we're going to get you down from here,” I say.

“We'll probably have to call the fire department,” Aunt Patty says. And laughs. But the tears escape and race each other to her chin.

T
he sun is sitting much lower in the sky when Mom pulls into the driveway in the secondhand car Aunt Patty bought. Milly is in the passenger seat. But when Aunt Patty grabs me around the knee with fingers that are bony with tension, I know it is only Mom that she is thinking about.

Milly and Mom get out of the car and Mom walks straight up to the front door without ever looking up. I'm tempted to call out to her, to tell her she isn't supposed to go to the front door. But I can't. And although Little Sister has chattered like a magpie for the last fifteen minutes, she has fallen silent again.

We hear the doorbell. Aunt Patty makes a squeaky sound in her throat.

Then we hear Mom knock. Aunt Patty makes a motion to get up, but Uncle Hob puts his hand on her shoulder and she sits quiet. The movement draws Milly's eye, and she looks up and sees the four of us and puts a hand up to her mouth. But she is quiet.

Then we hear Mom say, “They must've gone to get the girls. Nobody's home.”

Milly doesn't say a word. Her eyes are big as saucers.

“Milly” Mom says. “Do you want to go get an iced tea and we'll come back in about a half hour? Milly? What's the matter?”

Mom is walking toward the car as she is talking. When she gets there, Milly says, “Now don't get excited.” Then she turns Mom around and points.

Mom puts one hand to her chest and says, “Good heavens.”

“It's okay, Mom, we're coming down,” I say.

“Right after the sun sets,” Aunt Patty says.

“The sun sets?” Mom says.

“You wouldn't believe the view from here, Noreen,” Aunt Patty says.

 

Audrey Couloumbis was born in Illinois. The southern voices in
Getting Near to Baby
are voices she's heard all her life. One of her grandmothers came from Virginia and had plenty of relatives there, and the other had relatives that came up from Louisiana. She was a bit younger than Willa Jo when one of her aunts lost a child, and she remembers how the shock of it rocked the family. Although her aunt's baby died of cystic fibrosis, at about the same time, a small child in a neighboring family died of bacterial illness derived from drinking tainted water. It was these memories that sparked the incident around which Getting Near to Baby revolves. But also influencing her writing was the memory of the nature of the relationships she had with adults at that time in her life. Like Willa Jo, she had the kind of family whose benign neglect fostered her independence and left her plenty of free time to find her own way in the world.

Currently, Ms. Couloumbis lives in New York City and upstate with her husband. She loves gardening, building stone walls, moving furniture, and driving down roads she's never been down before.