Getting Near to Baby (6 page)

“These are the twins, and this here is Isaac. He was born the year after the twins,” Liz said. “And Robby is the youngest. He's three.” The children in Liz's family shared the same long jawbone and high forehead, narrow slanty eyes. The young one had hair like milkweed fluff—white hair that stood up and swayed as if a breeze moved through it.

So there were only the five of them, which did not seem to be so many that Aunt Patty should feel called upon to remark on it. The introductions were barely over before the boys set to digging at that shallow hollow they'd started. They worked as a team, wordlessly. They had been doing this together for a long time and it showed. The twins chipped away at the wall with the shovel and an iron rod, letting the clods fall and break at their feet. Isaac scooped the dirt into a small plastic bucket with one hand and deposited it in a bigger metal bucket.

Robby watched this for only a moment before picking up a bent spoon to help with the digging. I could see that Little Sister was itching to get at it; her eyes shone with wanting to. If there was one thing Little Sister loved, it was dirt.

“We lug the dirt out in these buckets,” Liz said. “Daddy used the dirt to make Mom a raised garden so she doesn't have to kneel to weed.”

“How many of you work on it?”

“Just us kids, mostly,” she said. Then whispered, “Robby's too little to accomplish much.”

Maybe. But he kept up a steady pace, his little shoulder blade working like the spoon. Much of the dirt he dislodged fell right into the front of his diaper.

“And Uncle Larry helps.” Liz added, “Uncle Mike, of course. But he doesn't do any digging.”

Little Sister took up a kind of garden fork with a short handle. She looked at me and then Liz for permission.

“Go on, then,” I said.

She picked herself a spot between Isaac and Robby and scratched away at the wall. It took her a minute or so to get the hang of it, but then she began to make real progress. The dirt fell like rain. It was only a few minutes before her toes were covered with small red mounds that were not dislodged even when she shifted her feet around.

“Might's well set a spell,” Liz said, and put a hand out to offer me the best chair. The one with silver tape across the seat. It didn't even wobble when I sat down.

The other one creaked dangerously when Liz leaned back and crossed her legs the way Aunt Patty tended to do. After a moment, one of the plastic strips snapped, jarring her a bit, but she only smiled a tight little smile, no more than she would have done if she'd had to slap a mosquito.

“Are you going anywhere with it?” I asked, recalling something I'd once heard Aunt Patty say about tunneling straight through to China. I didn't figure on China, but they might have gotten to nearby Chapel Hill the way they were going.

“Not really,” Liz said. “We've talked about digging up through the floor of one of the empty bungalows, but there's little enough reason for that. We can walk through the door anytime we want.”

I nodded. But I liked the idea of having a tunnel under the house.

“Then we talked about digging our way across the street. But Uncle Mike says that's probably not a good idea. We'd get in a lot of trouble if the road fell through. So we're heading back through the woods with it. We'll keep going till we get tired or hit water.”

“Digging might run in our family,” I said. We've been coal miners for as long as anybody can remember. My daddy and both my granddaddies and their granddaddies were coal miners. And before that I had a granddaddy who was a gold miner. He got rich in California, rich enough to send my grandma back east to meet his family. Then got himself shot dead over the title to his mine, so she never went back west. But he was our family's only rich miner. Since then, every one of them has been poor as sand.

“Maybe it runs in yours,” I added.

“It might,” Liz said. “In the dead of one night, Uncle Larry dug himself a ditch around the edges of the village square,” she added. “He said it was because he was hearing gunfire.”

“Gunfire?”

“Like in the war. He believed the town was being fired upon and everyone would gather together and dig in to protect the women and children.” The light was failing, so Liz reached over and gave the flashlight a shake to get it to go on a little longer.

Then she went on to say, “He believed it walking all the way into town with a shovel over his shoulder, and he believed it right up until he was about a third of the way around the square. He says he looked up then and realized that no one was shooting, that he was dreaming. But it felt so good to be digging, he said, that he just went on till he finished the job.”

She paused, looking thoughtful. “So he's not crazy. Although he probably wouldn't have planted the ditch with marigolds if it hadn't been that Sheriff Batts is in the habit of showing up for the early breakfast special at Tillie's Diner on the south side of the square. Sheriff Batts insisted all that digging should be good for something. You seen those marigolds?”

I had. But when Mrs. Potts, who is Mrs. Batts' sister, told Aunt Patty to take a look at them, I had no idea what made them so interesting. I nodded as Liz went on to say, “Don't they look pretty? Uncle Larry thinks he'll put in pansies in the fall.”

“Who sleeps in all the houses?” I remembered seeing the string of bungalows all lit up at night. Now that we were getting along so well, I didn't think she'd mind the question.

“My uncles each have one,” she said. “My folks share one with Robby and we cook in another. My brothers share one and I have one to myself. And we rent one out to my cousin Beatrice, who works in the attorney's office in town. The others need fixing up before anyone can live in them.”

I was at a loss for anything further to say, but we felt easy with each other. We sat in the faint light still coming from the flashlight. We gazed admiringly upon the industry of the younger members of our families. Little Sister turned once and flashed me a radiant smile.

“Why won't she talk?” Liz said to me in a low voice.

“Mom thinks it must be grief. The doctor said so, anyway.”

“Grief stays with a person for a long time,” Liz said.

I looked at her questioningly.

“You don't worry she might lose the habit altogether, if she goes on long enough?” Liz asked.

“Habit?”

“Talking,” she said. “She gets on real well without it. Maybe you ought to make it harder for her.”

“How?”

“Pretend you don't know what she means. Or wants. Or even what she likes,” Liz said. “You look after her so well she doesn't have to talk.”

“I never thought of that,” I said.

“I ought to mind my own business,” Liz said, but not like she meant it.

“No, it's all right,” I said. And it was. “I know you mean well.”

“You do the way your momma decided you should. Don't listen to me. I'm too mean to my brothers by half, I know.”

I hadn't noticed any meanness in Liz. She said what was on her mind, that was all. She had a point about the way I watched after Little Sister. But I wasn't sure I could do what she said to Little Sister.

Another truck rumbled in overhead, sending down a shower of dust. The flashlight died out altogether. It was dark in there, but not so dark as it had seemed when we first came in. “Getting on to supper time,” Liz said. As if those words were the noon whistle, the boys put down their tools. Two of them hefted a bucket they'd filled as they trooped out. Little Sister marched right behind them.

Mrs. Fingers stepped out on her porch as we were heading back to Aunt Patty's. She was taller than Liz by some and just as slender, if you didn't count the swelling of her belly. “Hi, there,” she called as she stretched and rubbed her back.

“This here is Willa Jo, Momma,” Liz said. “And this is Little Sister.”

“Well, isn't it nice to have some company,” she said with a welcoming smile.

“This is my little sister,” Liz said with a grin as she patted Mrs. Fingers' belly.

Mrs. Fingers laughed and said, “Now we don't know that yet, Liz.” But she held Liz's hand flat to her belly like she liked to have it there. I ached to feel my mom's hand on mine, clinging on to me. “Would you all like something to eat? Cookies?”

“We're headed home to supper,” I said. “But thank you anyway.”

“You come on back anytime, you hear?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Mrs. Fingers let go of Liz's hand and rubbed her back again, which made me look at her hands instead of into her eyes. I didn't realize I was being rude till she said, “I must look a sight.”

“Oh, no, ma'am,” I said. “You look a fine sight.”

“Aren't you the sweet one,” she said. But I wasn't. It had been some time since my mom had looked like that, but I remembered it as a happy time and my heart wrapped itself around the picture of Mrs. Fingers with that baby belly. I hated to leave. But I knew Aunt Patty would be waiting.

She met us on the road as we came out of the Fingers' driveway. “My lands, you girls look like you've been through a dust storm.”

I looked at Little Sister and decided Aunt Patty was right. A fine layer of red dust rested on the shoulders of her shirt and her hair. I reached up and felt grit on the top of my head.

“Where have you been for the last two hours,” Aunt Patty scolded. “I was worried to death. I even called the sheriff.”

“We met Liz Finger on our way from town,” I said.

“I might have known.”

“We took a shortcut through the woods.”

“A two-hour shortcut?”

“We talked some,” I admitted.

“That was just thoughtless, Willa Jo. Don't you think I worry?” Then Aunt Patty lowered her voice to add, “Didn't I tell you to stay away from those children?”

“They don't seem so bad.”

“They're let to run wild,” Aunt Patty said.

L
iz came by the day after she showed us the excavation. Her little brother Robby trotted at her side, holding up his diaper. I'd seen her coming and beat it out to the driveway before she could get to the front door. I'd no sooner got out there than the front door opened. For the first time ever, maybe. But Aunt Patty didn't come out. She just stood behind the screen door.

Liz had stopped to pin Robby's diaper so it wouldn't slip. “Want to go for a walk?” she asked.

“How about we sit on the front steps,” I said, because I knew Aunt Patty would have cats if I asked to go anywhere with Liz. We played jacks and let Little Sister keep an eye on Liz's brother. It was fine, if I didn't mind that Aunt Patty sort of hovered in the shadows inside the front door all afternoon. That is, it was fine till Liz's other brothers came home and wanted to play on Aunt Patty's lawn too. In all fairness, I could see why Aunt Patty thought there were so many of them. They moved fast, and three of them covered as much territory as any six boys.

“It's time you and Little Sister came on in and took your baths, Willa Jo,” Aunt Patty said. “I guess all you kids ought to go on home now,” she added, talking to Liz.

I felt my face go all hot, but Liz was real nice about it. She thanked Aunt Patty for her kindness in letting her brothers come to play with Little Sister. Then she rounded up her brothers and herded them toward home.

Aunt Patty didn't say another word about getting ready for bed. But I drew enough bathwater that it sloshed over the sides when Little Sister and I got in. I didn't even care. My face felt like it was wearing a mask of Aunt Patty. My mouth and my eyebrows had drawn themselves into thin straight lines that I didn't have to look into the mirror to see. We sat there till the water was cold enough to make us break out in goose bumps. Aunt Patty never said word one, not about the goose bumps and not about water on the floor. She was wearing thin straight lines too.

The next morning was a little better. Aunt Patty came out to sit on the front patio the way she never did, really, and set herself up to stay. She brought her cigarettes and matches and an ashtray and a whole armful of magazines.

Isaac brought Little Sister a present of a big june bug he'd trapped the night before. Thin red-and-white-striped string, the kind that came on boxes from the bakery, had been tied to its thorny leg like a rope around a dog's neck. The june bug could still fly, and did, it just couldn't fly away. Little Sister, and then Isaac, ran behind that june bug as it whizzed back and forth across the yard.

Liz and I looked through the magazines Aunt Patty brought out and decided who was cute and who just thought he was. Liz said all the models in the pictures are tall, like her family. She said she thought she might try getting work like that when she was older because she'd like being in rooms filled with tall people. Liz said her aunt was already talking about finding somebody to take Liz's pictures.

After a while, Aunt Patty gave us all watery lemonade instead of the Coca-Cola I knew Liz was hoping for. Aunt Patty wouldn't let Little Sister and me have Coca-Cola. She brought out a plate of cookies, two apiece. She was none too comfortable with sweet stuff.

“I don't want your momma to say I ruined your appetite for lunch,” she said. Liz and her brothers didn't need for her to hint. They each took one cookie and I could not make them take another. But they did enjoy the lemonade. They drank till the pitcher was dry. Oddly, Aunt Patty didn't mind at all. She grinned when Isaac didn't put his glass back on the tray, but handed her his empty glass and said, “Thank you, ma'am.”