The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (6 page)

“And you get food.” He gestured to the flat fields. “We got enough potatoes this year to feed every cow and human ten miles square. If you like potatoes every which way but raw, with a herring along or under or on top, you’ll be happy with the food.” The girl smiled shyly, looking down at her worn boots.

“Well, if you can get something hot on the table and keep the chickens and the cow happy and clean the clothes and the house and whatnot, the job is yours. We’ve been running through you ladies like bonbons, but I’ll give you a try.” He nodded toward the house. “They’ve had the run of the place. No mother going on two years.” He paused and looked toward the cliffs. He shook his head and then looked back at her. “It’s damn cold come winter. You interested?”

The girl smiled up at him. “
Oui.
Please.”

“Better get used to the English here. We don’t speak a lick of the French.”

“Yes.” She nodded her head slowly, like a sunflower heavy with seeds.

“You got a name?”

“Madeleine.”

“Well, we’ll call you Maddie. That okay?”

“Maddie.”

“You met Dalton?” Bill pointed toward the ladder. She smiled and nodded. “You won’t see too much of him. Mealtimes. He’s got a boat he made and spends most of his time out in it pulling lobsters—unless I drag him out to the field with me.” He glanced down at her. “Kind of young, aren’t you?”

Maddie shrugged and looked away.

Bill stood staring at her another long moment. He reached out to take her blanket bundle, but she pulled it closer. He reached for her extra boots then, and she shook her head no in that slow-moving way she had.

“Well, then, Maddie,” he said, his hand on the door, “let’s go meet them girls.”

 

Avis and Idella were back at the table. Only their eyes moved when Bill pushed open the door and Maddie walked behind him into the house. They’d been listening to every word. They sat in front of half-eaten biscuits, their legs swinging back and forth beneath the table.

“Girls, this is Maddie. She’ll be helping us. Della, you show her where she’ll sleep and the drawer to put her things in.”

The girls eyed her without greeting.

“She won’t fit in our room,” Avis said after a pause. “I’ll have to stick some of me out the window if we’re all s’posed to sleep in there.”

Bill laughed. “Stick your head out, then. That’ll save space.” He turned and walked out. Maddie stood looking down, hunching her broad shoulders as if she were cold.

“Come on, then.” Idella stood and started walking up the stairs. Maddie didn’t move or raise her head. Idella stopped and turned around. “Come on, I said. What’s the matter with you?”

Avis had stayed in her seat watching. Maddie raised her head and turned toward Idella on the stairs.

“You don’t speak English?” Idella asked.

“Not so good when I am new.”

“All I said was come on. Jesus.”

 

“This here is your drawer.” Avis had scampered up after them. She pulled open the bottom drawer of the one dresser in the room. It was empty.

“This is your bed. It’s pretty small—I don’t think you can fit on it.” Idella was annoyed and didn’t know why. She felt tall and stiff looking down at this new one, crouched in front of the bed, sticking the extra pair of men’s boots under it. Then she sat on the bed with her bundle in her lap. She did fill up most of it with her broad bottom.

“Très bon.”
She smiled at them tentatively. “Good.” She corrected herself and patted the bed.

Idella and Avis watched as she slowly untied the knot and unfolded the blanket. Her hands were large, the fingers like a man’s, her fingernails broad and thick.

Carefully she took a few clothes from out of the blanket and placed them in the drawer. There was another dress, as sacklike and shapeless as the one she was wearing, some underwear, and one other pair of long stockings. But something was left in the folds of Maddie’s old blanket, a lump still in there. Both sisters noticed. Maddie tied the blanket again around the lump and kept it on her lap.

Idella stood in the corner, looking out the window. She didn’t have the strength to be nice to this one, didn’t want to be bothered. They all left, the girls. What was the point?

“You walk the whole way from Salmon Beach?” Avis was so nosy.

“Oui.”
Idella looked over at Maddie impatiently. “Yes,” Maddie said. “It was Salmon Beach.”

“They tease Dad about them notices at Wheeler’s Store,” Avis said. “Mr. Wheeler said he should charge Dad a nickel for every one he puts up, and he’d be rolling in it.”

“Avis, get your feet off the bed with them shoes.” Idella reached down and brushed dried clods of field off the patchwork spread. She’d worked hard getting that clean.

“Did you sleep somewheres?” Avis ignored her sister and leaned over toward Maddie eagerly, her behind barely lighting on the edge. “You come so early this morning.”

“In a barn.”

“They know you was in there?”

“The horses.” Maddie smiled. “And the cow. I drank milk.”

“From the cow?” Avis laughed. “You put your mouth right up over her tittie?”

“Avis!”

Maddie laughed. “I spray.” Maddie made a noise like something squirting. “It is good. Warm.”

“Why’d you come here?” Idella turned from the window and snapped the question across the room.

Maddie looked at her. “Here I get air. Not like the lobster factory.”

“You work there?” Avis asked.

Maddie nodded. “I hate it.”

“Me and Idella watch the girls walk up and down on their lunch break. We can see them from our back field.”

Idella could see, even from this distance, that Maddie’s fingers were covered with ragged cracks. They looked red and sore.

“What you got in there?” Avis pointed at the bundle.

“Avis! That’s none of your business! Quit picking at her. You’re going at her like
she
was a lobster. Pick, pick, pick.”

Maddie looked down at her large hands and shrugged her broad shoulders.

 

All that first day, Maddie moved slowly about the house, taking things in. She was nervous, fidgety at the beginning. Avis followed her like a fly. Idella stood off to the side more and watched. Maddie studied everything. She went into Mother’s pantry and shook and lifted all the bags and barrels. She pulled the tops off all of Mother’s spice jars and put her nose close down into them to smell the precious contents. She put her hands on everything.

“What is this?” Maddie reached high up and took the jar of honey from the top shelf.

“You can’t touch. It was Mother’s special honey.” Idella grabbed it. “It was from Dad.”

Maddie looked at Idella. “
Pardon.
I did not know.”

“Honey keeps forever.” Idella placed the jar back exactly where it had been. “I’m keeping it forever where she put it. You French girls touch everything.”

There was the sound of a wagon approaching. Maddie turned quickly from the window and put her head down, as though trying to disappear.

“Hello there, you Hillocks!” The man in the wagon was yelling. “Need anything in Salmon Beach today?”

“That’s just Mr. Pettigrew,” Avis said. “He always calls that when he goes by. He’s nice enough.” She ran to the door. “No thanks, Mr. Pettigrew. Not today.”

“Just asking.” He kept his wagon moving. “Tell your dad not to work too hard!” He laughed as he said it. “Tell him I said so.”

“Do many people go on the road?” Maddie asked.

“Nah. The Pettigrews, ’cause they live farther up. The Doncaster boys go tearing by. They’re always cursing at each other, so you know it’s them. Then Mrs. Doncaster yells after them from her porch. Come on out to the barn.” Avis took Maddie’s hand and pulled her out into the yard. Idella followed at a distance.

Maddie looked at every chicken, like one was different from the other. She came up behind them as they scattered about the yard, felt them, put her hand down around their bodies, and laughed when they pecked her.

She put her hand on the muzzle of Tater, the cow, who turned her big head heavily in Maddie’s direction. “You have a nice cow,” she said as they stood in the doorway of the barn watching her.

“Idella saved that cow’s life,” Avis said. “She got a chunk of potato stuck in her throat, and that cow was going to choke to death.”

“Let me tell her, Avis—it was me that done it. Dad was yelling for me from the barn, see, and I didn’t know what he wanted, but I knew he wanted it bad! He said, ‘You’ve got to get that potato. We can’t get our arms down there.’ So I did his bidding. Dad and Dalton held her mouth open, and I reached my arm in—I stuck it way down in, through the mouth and beyond—and I felt around, and then I come to it—I got my fingers around it, and I pulled my hand out all along the way with that piece of potato. Dad told me I’d saved the day. He used them words.”

“That’s why we call her Tater,” Avis said. “We used to have two cows, but the best milker went with Baby Emma.”

“Who is Baby Emma?”

“Our sister.” Avis picked up bunches of loose hay and scattered them over her head, twirling about. “She’s two on May Day. She lives ten miles away, and she needed the cow for her milk. Mother died having her.”

“Avis!”

“Well, she did.” Avis stopped her spinning and stood. “So Dad give her to Aunt Beth. She wanted a girl, and Dad had two already.”

Maddie stood with her hand on the cow and looked at Avis and then Idella
. “C’est triste,”
she finally said, then caught herself. “Sad. So sad.”

“She was beautiful,” Idella said, returning Maddie’s sorry gaze with narrowed eyes. “Our mother was beautiful. She was a lady. She wasn’t anything like you.”

“Non.”
Maddie shook her head, her fingers still splayed heavily on the back of the cow. “
Non.
Not like me.” She spoke softly. “I am sorry, Idella. I did not know what happened to your mother. I did not have a mother for long.”

“Did she die?” Idella asked.

“She left me.”

“Left you? By dying?” Avis asked.

“By going in a wagon and not taking me. She left me with my father.”

Avis persisted. “He nice to you?”

Maddie looked at Avis. “There was no jar with honey.”

“Dad got that honey for Mother special from the man with bees,” Idella said.

“I am sorry I moved the jar. Don’t be mad, Idella. Please.”

Idella ran up to the pile of hay and kicked her leg through it, scattering stiff bits in a prickly flurry. She turned and ran into the house, jumping over the porch step and slamming the door.

“What bit her on the ass?” Avis said, staring after her.

Maddie turned and smiled at Avis. “Such talk, Petite Avie. She is sad. And angry.”

“Petite Avie?” Avis laughed. “Is that French for ‘Pretty Avis’?”

Maddie reached over and pulled bits of straw from Avis’s hair. “Pretty Avis.
Oui.
Sad Idella.”

 

Maddie did not go to sleep when the girls did. She said that she would just sit on her bed and look out the window. She slept very little, she said, and never before midnight or one.

“Well, you’d better get to sleep sooner than that to get up in time to do stuff,” Idella said, sitting stiffly on her bed in her nightgown.

“Ah,
oui,
I am up at dawn. I shake the rooster.”

“Why don’t you go downstairs with Dad?” Avis asked.

“Ah,
non. Non,
I belong here with you girls.”

“Well, I think this is weird,” Idella said.

“Shut up, Idella, and go to sleep.” Avis was under the covers. “Then you won’t know she’s here.”

Idella did think it odd. She could feel Maddie’s heavy presence. She was such a poor hulk of a thing. Her cheeks were rough and reddish, as if she rubbed at her face a lot. Idella pulled the blanket up over her eyes. Still, her smile had a sweetness. It came and went so quick, like a rabbit skirting out of the tall grass and then freezing up again.

“Good night, Maddie,” Avis said finally, in a voice that had lost its vinegar. “I’m glad you’re here.” She was soon asleep.

Idella lay there longer, feeling the new presence in the room, smelling her body smells. There was dirt and milk and salt about her. Idella turned her face to the wall and fell asleep.

 

Avis sat up in bed the next morning and looked over at the small cot. The brown woolen blanket Maddie had brought was carefully spread over it. The lump was gone, and she was gone. “Where’s Maddie?”

“Look out the window, why don’t you?” Idella, who’d been lying awake, pointed toward the cliffs.

Maddie was standing at the top of the cliff ladder looking out to the bay.

“She better not go over the cliffside,” Idella said, joining Avis at the window. “Dad’d be mad as hell.”

Avis turned to Idella. “Let’s go through her things. I want to find her treasure.”

“No, Avis. That’s not nice. And she’s coming back now.”

“Maddie’s not very pretty, is she?” Avis said, watching again from behind the curtain.

“Well, no. I don’t guess she is,” Idella said.

They got themselves dressed and down the stairs. It was much earlier than usual for them, but they were interested. Maddie was now in the kitchen standing at the stove over the black iron fry pan. There was nothing in the pan yet. The blue tin pot on the stove had steam still coming out the spout; the smell of coffee was strong. Bill’s door was closed.

Maddie looked up when the girls came in.
“Bonjour.”
Her smile stayed a little longer than yesterday.
“Café?”

“You think too much French in the morning,” Avis said. “You’ve got to switch to English before Dad gets up. He hates not knowing the words.”

“Coffee?” Maddie repeated. “Sweet?”

“Sure!”

“Avis! We don’t drink coffee yet.”