Almost Eden (21 page)

I darted across the open doorway and down the hall, past one door after another. When I came to Mom’s room, I grabbed the doorframe, and swung through the open door into her room, flattening myself against the wall. Mom was sound asleep. She never moved a muscle.

I was just in time. Footsteps followed me down the hall, pausing every few steps. Someone was doing a bed check or something. My eyes darted around the room, looking for a place to hide. The footsteps were coming closer. I dove under the bed, scrunching as far back as I could into the shadows.

Two legs in white shoes appeared in the doorway. Above me, Mom turned over in her sleep. The shoes took a step inside the room. And another. I sucked in my breath. For sure this was it. I was done for.

Then the shoes turned on their heels and left. I exhaled, but I didn’t dare move a muscle except for the ones I needed to breathe with. I waited, listening. The footsteps went all the way to the end of the hall and finally disappeared. When I was sure no one was coming back, I wriggled out from under the bed and slowly, carefully, closed the door. Then finally I could breathe normally.

The lounge was a cool oasis compared to Mom’s room.
Schindashin hite
was right. And dark, too, now that the door was closed. I felt my way to the window and quietly slid open the curtains so the lights from the parking lot outside gave some light to see by. Maybe Mom would be less startled if she could at least see me.

I sat carefully on the edge of her bed, hoping the movement might be enough to wake her up, seeing how she was getting more restless now. No such luck. For all I knew, they’d given her some kind of sleeping pill.

“Mom,” I whispered. “Wake up.” I put my hand on her shoulder and gently nudged her.

She mumbled under her breath but didn’t wake up. I tried again. “Mom! Wake up!”

“
Vaut es daut
?” she muttered, rolling over, her eyes blinking like they were trying to open. “
Vaut es louse
?”

I swallowed. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom. I’m sorry I scared you. It’s me. Elsie.”

“Elsie? What are you doing here!?” She struggled to sit up, still drowsy.

“
Shhhh!
Quiet, Mom. Please?” At least she knew me anyways. That was a relief.

“Is something wrong? What’s happened–”

She sat up and flung off the sheet, looking around in a daze. This was all wrong. I hadn’t meant to confuse her like this. Mom felt the night table for her glasses, only instead she knocked them to the floor. I scooped them up and handed them to her, helping her slip them on.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mom. Honest. Everything’s fine. Really.”

Mom reminded me of Wendy, sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightie, with her bare legs and feet poking out. But Peter Pan wasn’t going to come flying in the window to whisk us away. And I didn’t have any fairy dust, though it sure would’ve come in handy about now.

“I want to show you something, Mom.”

“It’s still dark outside,” she said, not really awake yet.

“Shhh! Yeah. It’s nighttime.” I rummaged through her dresser and found a pair of slacks and a summer blouse and shoved them into her hands. “You need to get dressed. I have to show you something.”

“Funny time to show me something,” she mumbled as she stumbled into the bathroom, clutching her clothes. For a minute I thought I was going to get away with it, that Mom was so groggy she would just do what I told her. Only then I guess she started to wake up because she stopped at the door and turned to me. “What’s this all about young lady? Why am I getting dressed in the middle of the night?”

“I–It’s like this–” I threw up my hands. “I can’t explain, Mom. I have to show you. Please come with. I know it sounds crazy,
but please
” How was I going to talk Mom into going along with everything? Then I remembered all the adventures she’d taken me on when I was little. All the mud puddles we’d played in, the foxtails we’d pretended to swim in, the rain we’d danced in, and the butterflies we’d chased.

I could feel the sweat trickling down my face and chest. “I really seriously want you to come with me, Mom. It’s my turn to take you on an adventure. Remember?”

“An adventure?” She stood there for what felt like forever, until I was thinking that maybe she couldn’t remember, maybe all our adventures had been zapped out of her brain already. Only I hoped maybe one or two
of them were still there yet. And then, the corners of her mouth smiled a little. “We haven’t had one of those in a while. I’d better get dressed if we’re going on an adventure.”

I grinned, nodding. “Hurry.”

While she dressed, I slipped my runners back on and peeked to see that the coast was clear. I checked my watch again. We had to get moving.

“The night-duty nurse isn’t going to let us just walk out, you know,” Mom said as she pulled on her socks and shoes.

“We’ve got that covered.” At least I hoped we did. I hoped Jillian and Sadie had been able to get away. “Ready?”

Mom stood up straight and held her hand out to me. The two of us walked out, hand in hand, bold as could be. When we reached the lounge I pulled Mom around the outside of the room, out of view of the open doors on the other side.

“Stay here a minute, okay?” I whispered, leaving Mom pressed against the wall next to the exit. Crawling on my hands and knees, I peered around the corner.

The nurse sat behind the front desk, filling out some papers. I slowly pulled back and scrambled to my feet. Then I checked my watch one last time.

“Okay,” I whispered. “In a couple of minutes someone is going to start banging on the door. When the nurse
gets up to see what’s going on, that’s when we get out of here.”

Mom looked doubtful. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,
schnigglefritz.
We should wait and go on an adventure tomorrow maybe, during visiting hours. We can’t–”

A terrific pounding on the front door cut her short. I could hear a muffled voice outside, yelling, “Help! Please help!”

Things started to happen. They started to happen fast.

That was one of the things about adventures, I remembered now. Once an adventure got started it kind of swept you along.

I heard a chair scrape back, and footsteps running to the door. I heard buttons being punched, which meant the doors were unlocked. Squeezing Mom’s hand, I risked another peek around the corner.

The nurse stood in the doorway, holding the inside door half open. “Stop that racket this instant!” she hissed. “This is a hospital for goodness sake.”

Jillian yanked the outside door open. “Please, you have, to help! We were racing. My friend fell off her bike!”

The nurse peered around Jillian. “What in heaven’s name are you kids doing out in the middle of the night?”

It wasn’t working. The nurse wasn’t budging.
Move, move
, I pleaded silently.
Before someone else comes along to check what all the racket is about.

“I think she hit her head!” Jillian cried.

Someone screamed. Not just a scream. An ear-splitting shriek. Only one person I knew could scream like that. Lena. But Lena wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Hurry!” another voice yelled from outside.

I recognized Heather’s voice. What was going on? Sadie and Jillian were the only ones who were supposed to be out there. Heather sounded hysterical. She even had me wondering what could have gone wrong. Mom tried to push past me. I had to hold her back.

The nurse reacted the same as Mom.

“Don’t move her!” she called, dashing outside.

“Now!” I ran with Mom to the front doors.

Outside, Jillian had grabbed the nurse’s arm and was running with her across the parking lot to where Sadie lay sprawled on the pavement with everyone else huddled around. They’d chosen the perfect spot. Just beyond the light spilling from the front doors, and in the shadow of the weeping birch on the front lawn.

“Okay, the coast is clear.”

I shoved open the inside door, but Mom didn’t budge, not even when I tried pulling her along with me. It was like her shoes were all of a sudden glued to the floor. The next second, Lena popped out from behind some bushes. She ran around the railing and held the outside door open.

“Hurry up!” she whispered.

Mom’s eyes almost jumped out of their sockets. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ll explain everything,” I promised. “As soon as we’re out of here.” And then I pulled on Mom’s hand and Lena grabbed the other and we burst through the doors, into the night.

Across the parking lot, everyone was still crowded around Sadie. The nurse had her back to us. Anyways, Eleanor, Heather, Naomi, and Joy all stood behind her, shielding the front door from her view even if she did turn her head. On the other side of Sadie, Jillian was watching for me.

We didn’t hang around to see what happened next.

Mom, Lena, and I ran down the walk and around the corner of the building. At least, Lena and I ran, pulling Mom along between us.

N
ine of us, with Mom in the middle, walked hand in hand in the dark along the top of the floodway toward the cemetery. It felt a bit like we were Jesus and his disciples, heading home after a hard day of performing miracles.

For sure this adventure wasn’t turning out like I had planned. In the middle of explaining everything to Mom, my friends had come barreling across the floodway on their bikes.

“What?” Jillian grinned when they caught up to us. “You didn’t think we were going to go home and let you have all the fun?”

“Some people,” said Sadie.

“I’ll never be able to explain this,” Mom was shaking her head and looking like she maybe was going to change her mind. “That poor nurse. You must’ve terrified her. She’s
probably reporting the lot of you to the police right now.”

I felt a little bad about tricking the nurse, too. “I promise I’ll go apologize to her tomorrow. Just come with us, Mom.”

“Please, Mrs. Redekop?” pleaded Jillian.

“
Nah yo
” said Mom, shaking her head. “I suppose I’ll have to, if only to keep an eye on you girls.”

My friends cheered, even though the idea of Mom keeping an eye on us was sort of funny when you thought about it.

I didn’t think I wanted to double Mom on my bike, at least not in the dark. So we left our bikes and started walking. All we had to do now was cut through the cemetery back to the main road and walk far enough out of town to get away from the lights.

No one wanted to spend any more time in the cemetery than we had to. We hurried through, careful to stay on the paths and not walk on anybody’s grave. I’d never been in a cemetery at night before. Even with so many of us together, it was a creepy place. We were all huddled so close together that when one of us jumped at a shadow, we all jumped.

Even after we were already out of the cemetery, I kept getting this shiver up my back like there was maybe something behind us, watching. I couldn’t help looking back just in case we’d maybe made some of those dead people angry, disturbing their peace, and they were following us.

I didn’t see any zombies, but we weren’t a half mile out of town when I looked back again and saw headlights coming toward us.

“There’s a car coming,” I said.

“Hide!” someone squealed. I think maybe it was Eleanor.

We all dove into the ditch to hide, automatically. We flattened ourselves in the long grass and peered out.

Everyone except Mom, that is. She stood calmly by the side of the road.

“For heaven’s sake, girls. I let you sneak me out of the hospital. I followed you through the cemetery in the dead of night. But I’m not going to hide in a ditch!”

Mom was the smart one anyways. Already the mosquitos were eating us alive.

The car pulled up beside us, stopping a few feet from Mom. Not just any car. Dad’s car. So it goes always.

I stood, hauling Lena up with me. Car doors slammed. I couldn’t see who it was because the headlights were blinding me. Then Dad came striding into the light. “Esther? Are you all right?”

“Mom?!” Beth was right behind him. “Elsie! Where’s Lena?”

“Right here.” Lena peered out from behind me.

Beth ran over and practically lifted her off the ground, she hugged her so hard. “How dare you scare us like that?!
Again!
We’ve been driving all over town looking
for you! Of all the bonehead stunts–” She stopped sputtering to hug Lena some more.

“What is going on?” Dad spoke quietly, between his teeth.

Nah yo
, I thought, and started talking. I’ve never talked so fast before in my life, trying to explain about taking Mom to see the stars and how I knew it would make her feel better and how I just wanted to do something, anything, to help, especially since everything was mostly my fault, and that I hadn’t been able to find Tommy but I really wanted to do this one thing for Mom, because maybe it would help make things right again.

At first Dad kept trying to interrupt, but after awhile he gave up. There wasn’t much else he could do because I never shut up or hardly stopped for a breath even. Pretty soon stuff was coming out of my mouth that I didn’t know was in there, about how when Lena and I spent the night at that abandoned farmhouse there was something wonderful out there with us so I wasn’t afraid anymore. There was something in the stars and in the fog and in the night and inside me even.

I kept on talking about how I knew in my heart of hearts that if Mom could see what I did that night, it would do her more good than any pills or treatments or anything else the doctors could give her. And maybe she’d feel happy again instead of sad. Even for a little while. So we were taking Mom out to have a good look at
the stars, at the way they were in the middle of the night when there wasn’t enough room in the sky to hold them all. When it feels like you could practically reach out and touch God, He’s so close.

“I think it must’ve been God,” I said. “That night Lena and I were lost.”

I was more surprised than anyone. I guess I still believed in Him after all. Why else would I say all that stuff?

“Are you done?” Dad asked. It was hard in the dark to tell how mad he was.

I gulped. “Uh-huh.” Without looking I knew my friends were there, standing behind me, swatting mosquitos. “I’m done.”

“It’s not all Elsie’s fault, Mr. Redekop,” Sadie stepped forward beside me. “It was my idea to pretend I was hurt so the nurse would open the doors.”

“And it was my idea to have a pajama party at your place, so Elsie could sneak out and go hide inside Eden,” added Jillian, standing there on my other side.

“And it was my idea for all of us to help make a division,” Lena piped up, squeezing between me and Jillian.

“Diversion,” Sadie whispered.

“I mean a diversion,” said Lena.

Dad ran his hand through his hair. Pretty soon he wasn’t going to have any hair left. “I think I’ve heard enough.”

Only there was still a little more he had to listen to. Mom put her arm around my shoulders and said, clear as
a bell, “Isaak, I know how all this must look. But, we’re here now. I for one would like to see all those stars Elsie’s so excited about. You can take me back to the hospital after.” Then she said something else to Dad, too, only she said it in Plautdietsch.

All around me I could hear my friends suck in their breath, waiting.

“Everyone in the car,” Dad growled. “Now.”

How many kids do you think can fit in an old Chrysler New Yorker?

Eight in the backseat for sure, sitting on each others’ laps. And Lena in front, sitting on Mom’s lap. With one cat yet, Domino, curled up on Lena’s lap.

“I didn’t have the heart to leave him at home by himself,” said Beth.

Once everyone was wedged in and the doors were shut tight, Dad sat in the driver’s seat. He waited with both hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. “Okay, Elsie,” he said. “Where are we going?”

I practically leaped over the backseat to throw my arms around his neck. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to go far. Anywhere away from the lights.”

He nodded, and started the engine. “I know a good place.”

Mom reached over and touched his arm. He put his hand on hers and squeezed it once before pulling onto the road.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Beth. “You’re certifiable, you know that, don’t you?”

I grinned back at her. “Probably. It runs in the family.”

We stopped at a crossroads a little ways south of town. Mom said it was where her grandparents first lived when they came here from Russia. There was nothing left of the old village now, except a few trees beside the road.

Beth found a blanket in the trunk. She spread it on the grass in the shallow ditch. Naomi, Eleanor, Joy, and Heather sprawled out on their backs on the blanket to gaze up at the sky.

First thing Mom did was take off her socks and shoes. She said she needed to breathe and so did her toes. Mom and Dad sat on the trunk of the car, leaning against the back windshield. Sadie and Jillian sat on the hood. And on the roof, Beth and I lay back with Lena between us. Domino prowled across our stomachs.

For sure this wasn’t anything like I planned. But we’d made it. We were here, out in the country under the stars in the middle of the night. Nothing else could go wrong now.

Only the weather.

For the first little while clouds kept blocking the view of the stars so you couldn’t see the whole sky all at once like
I had that night at the farmyard. Every so often someone would squeal, “Ooo, over there,” and point to where the clouds had parted. And then we’d catch a glimpse, a patch of sky crammed with stars. A tiny bit of heaven.

“This is pretty neat,” Beth said quietly.

“Yeah. Not like that other night though,” I said. “The weatherman said it was supposed to be clear.”

From the ground I heard someone snort.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Beth. Domino curled up on her stomach, I think because she wasn’t wiggling as much as Lena and her stomach was bigger than mine. “I thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.”

Lying there staring up at the night I was thinking it was true, what I’d said that day. I could stop going to church if I wanted. I could stop praying. I could give God a different name if I wanted to.

But I couldn’t just stop believing in Him. Even when I thought I didn’t, He was all the time in my head. Like Grandma said, I’d believed in Him all the way already since I was just little.

“I guess I do after all,” I said.

I kept waiting for the skies to clear. But instead there were more and more clouds all the time. All of a sudden the air cooled. And then fat drops of rain started plopping down all around us. Lightning flashed behind the clouds and a crack of thunder boomed right on its heels. We all jumped to our feet pretty quick, let me tell you. Only before we had time to get in the car, the clouds burst open.

It didn’t just rain. It came down in buckets. Everyone was soaked through in seconds. Rain streamed through our hair and ran down our backs and dripped off our noses. In no time, rain filled the shallow ditches beside the road.

No one seemed to care. We all grinned, water pouring off us. Except Lena. She stuck out her tongue to catch the rain. Even Beth was grinning, wiping her hair back from her face.

Then Mom burst out laughing. She laughed like a little kid, surprised by something wonderful. She stepped away from the car, spread her arms wide, and laughed out loud, looking up to the sky to let the rain stream down her face. “
Mein zeit!
” she cried. “Oh my goodness gracious!”

Whooping, Jillian jumped in a puddle. Lena squealed and ran, arms out, leaping and splashing. Beth rescued Domino, tucking the shivering kitten inside her wind-breaker.

What the heck, I shrugged. We all ran and splashed and spun in circles. Jillian and I grabbed each other’s slippery wrists and twirled, around and around, rain glistening on our skin. Beth turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth, gulping down the rain.

Even Dad let Mom grab his hands and pull him out into the road. They swung each other around, stomping and tromping and whirling back and forth until I had to stop and watch because, Holy Moses, I never knew my Mom and Dad could dance yet.

Mom whirled toward me, collapsing with laughter. She reached out and hugged me hard.

“I didn’t mean to make such a fuss over the stupid pajama party. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” I said, hugging her back.

“You are my sunshine, Elsie,” she whispered in my ear. “You could never make me anything but happy. Don’t you ever forget that.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I think maybe I was doing both. Rain streamed off my face, so it was hard to tell. There was something else yet I had to know. “What did you say to Dad? You know, back at the car before?”

Mom laughed. “I said, when the heart is full, the mouth overflows.” And then we laughed harder than ever.

Pretty soon the downpour fizzled away to a bit of soft, misty rain. We shook water from our hair and wiped it from our arms and legs and faces. The air was scrubbed as clean and fresh as the first day Noah stepped out of the ark.