Clover (2 page)

While the big fat nurse with the eyeglasses studied the blank wall, I studied her shoes. White crepe-soled shoes with heels run-over so far, the shoe touched the floor. She
didn't even see me when she took one of the trays from the cart.

A big set of doors swung wide open. Two doctors dressed in rumpled green started down the hall.

“This is the absolute worst part of it all,” one of them said.

The other doctor loosened the mask that covered everything on his face except his eyes, “I understand there is a child. A little girl.”

“At least she has one of them.”

“I'll talk with the family now.”

I hope they don't mean something bad has happened to Sara Kate, I thought. Gaten will be so sad. I waited until they were out of sight and hurried back to the waiting room to hear what they were going to say about Sara Kate.

A nurse led me into a small office. The doctor was speaking in a soft, soft voice, yet it was strong and heavy with sadness. Uncle Jim Ed and Everleen were carrying on like the world was coming to an end. Then I knew something was wrong. Bad wrong. A nurse offered little white pills in thimble-sized plastic cups to Aunt Everleen and Uncle Jim Ed.

Aunt Everleen buried her face in her hands and covered her ears with her fingers when the doctor tried to explain how Gaten died. For her, it was enough that he was dead.

But Uncle Jim Ed leaned forward in his chair and listened.
He listened and cried. Aunt Everleen's face showed she heard the sad-faced doctor explain that my daddy's internal injuries were too extensive for them to save him.

The doctor put his hand on my shoulder. “I want to see my daddy,” I said. “I need to see him.” But he wouldn't take me to see Gaten. His blue eyes filled with tears. He turned away, “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “We couldn't save your father.”

The doctor wouldn't let me see my daddy, but he took me to Sara Kate's room to see her. The state trooper sure had been right. Sara Kate was some kind of bad bruised and cut up. Her eyes were closed. Maybe, like her lips, they were swollen shut.

The doctor's voice was soft, like our footsteps had been. Soft like snowflakes falling on the ground. “Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Hill,” he repeated until she had slowly opened her eyes. Maybe she was so slow about it because she hadn't gotten used to her new name. After all, she had only had it for a few hours.

She smiled a quick weak half-smile and closed her eyes again. I guess there wasn't much for her to keep them open to see. Just a doctor in a rumpled green cotton outfit and me. I still hadn't gotten my hair fixed and, like always, I had sort of messed up my tee shirt a little scraping the bowl in which Aunt Everleen made the lemon butter creme icing for her fresh coconut lemon layer cake.
Plus, with Daniel not around, I got to lick the ice cream dasher.

Sara Kate bit her swollen lip. And even on a face that messed-up, sadness found itself a place. “Oh, little Clover,” she whispered.

The doctor gave me a “say something” look.

“Hey,” I said, “I'm very pleased to see you, ma'am.” Then I pulled loose from the doctor's light grip on my hand and backed out of the room.

All I had heard my daddy say about her meant absolutely nothing to me. I still did not know the woman. To me she was a total stranger. How could I know her? It takes time to learn a person.

My aunt wanted to pray for me. With me. I didn't feel like praying. It seemed like all the praying I'd done hadn't helped anyway, not one single bit. While I was hiding behind those trays, I prayed for my daddy not to die. I'd prayed for my grandpa, too. Even prayed for my mama to come back to me. I just can't pray no more. It won't do me any good no way.

It's strange, but as soon as Gaten died it seems everybody sort of knew he was going to die. They could all remember some little thing he'd said, something strange about the way he was acting. They all could see some change. From the way everybody's talking, it seems Gaten visited every living soul in Round Hill, South Carolina.

All I can think is, if all those people knew something was going to happen to Gaten, wonder why they didn't do something to stop it from happening?

Some people claimed they didn't even know it was going to be Gaten. They just knew something terrible was going to happen to someone. Somebody's left eye jumped. A black cat crossed the road to the left, in front of another person's car. When that happens something bad is bound to follow.

Uncle Jim Ed doesn't seem troubled in the least that people keep coming up and saying all those kind of things. He simply said, quietly, “There is something so awesome about death, baby girl, people feel compelled to address it in some way. I suppose it's to make some peace with themselves to answer the last unknown.”

With a silent owl-like swoop, the cars pulled into line and away. Car engines purring like an arrangement of music. Notes written for a sad song.

At the end of a row of rosebushes, a broken rose dangled down on one of the bushes. Broken, because I tried to break it off to pin on my dress but couldn't. You wear a white rose if your mother is dead. I don't know what color you wear when your daddy dies. I guess it probably doesn't matter.

Miss Katie is waving a big white handkerchief. They didn't tell Sara Kate that Miss Katie was left behind with
the food just in case some stranger might come by, hungry and in need of a place to rest awhile. Just by chance it might be the departed soul. They only told Sara Kate it was an old custom, handed down through many generations. They did tell her, though, that the reason the hands on all clocks in the house had been stopped at 6:45
P.M.
was because that was when Gaten died. People coming in only had to ask if it was morning or evening.

The only time Sara Kate said anything about the funeral arrangements was when they wanted to bring Gaten's body home and have the wake there. They said he should spend his last night on earth at home. “Oh no, oh no,” Sara Kate whispered. “I don't think I can handle that.” She did let them bring him by the house in the hearse the day of the funeral.

Sara Kate is sitting next to my daddy's only brother, Uncle Jim Ed. Her eyes are closed. She is twisting her new wedding band on her finger. Sara Kate is not old, but she is making the sounds with her mouth that old people make when they are beside themselves and don't know which-a-way to turn. Quiet, dry-lipped, smacking sounds. Lips slowly opening and closing, smack, smack. Just like Miss Katie.

A group of small barefoot children stand on the side of the blazing hot, hard-surfaced road. So thin, they look like stick figures. Big wide eyes pop out from faces like big
white cotton balls on a blackboard. They turn and walk backwards, waving their sticklike arms until the long line of cars are out of sight. I wave back.

Sara Kate is standing alone before Gaten's casket. Her husband. My father. The funeral crowd has been held back. She has her own private time. Just a little stretch of time to be alone with Gaten. Small silent moments to say goodbye to someone already lost to her forever. All eyes are upon her. She is a white woman, a stranger to Round Hill.

Sara Kate is looking down at Gaten. Gaten's necktie is crooked. His necktie was always crooked. There was that strange connection between them that I could never understand. At least twice that I can remember, there had been a quick look from Sara Kate, and Gaten would give her a slight smile and straighten his necktie. And then smile a smile for her alone. Now Sara Kate looked at Gaten, but Gaten did not straighten his necktie.

I guess that strange and curious connection between them is gone forever.

As far as looks go, Gaten had a look for me, too. There was a certain look between us, but it sure was not the same kind of look he and Sara Kate had. For me, Gaten's look did almost everything. Most of the time he didn't have to question or punish me. His look did it all.

There was one look my daddy gave me that I don't think I'll ever forget as long as I live. It happened the day my teacher, Miss Wilson, marched me down to his office. All the years I'd gone to Gaten's school, I'd never been in any kind of trouble, much less something bad enough to be sent to the principal's office. Gaten had enough trouble at school without me adding to it.

I think my teacher hated to take me a whole lot worse than I hated to go. “Bringing Clover here, sir, was my very last resort.” My daddy took off his eyeglasses. “Please don't apologize, Miss Wilson. Clover is my daughter, but she is also one of your students. I would have been disappointed in you as a teacher if you had treated her differently because of me. I'll keep Clover here with me for the rest of the day.”

After Miss Wilson left I inched up to Gaten's desk. “I'm sorry, Daddy,” I said. “I didn't mean to cause trouble. Honestly I didn't.”

Gaten sucked in his breath. I could tell he hated for me to call him daddy at school. Calling him daddy caused a change in his feelings toward me. It showed. A two-year-old could see that. Besides, when a daddy is all you have left, you end up with double love. At least that's the way it was until Miss Sara Kate came along.

Anyway, as I was saying, Gaten looked away from me. “Get a pencil and paper, Clover, and write down everything you want to tell me that happened in your classroom
this afternoon.” Then my daddy looked at me. It was such a disappointed look, I could barely keep from crying.

“Maybe you'd rather tell me, Clover,” he said. I studied the floor, swaying from side to side, shifting my feet one over the other. “No sir,” I said. I never raised my head. No computer for me today, I can see. So I balanced my notebook on my knees and wrote. Gaten said, “Write everything you
want
to tell me that happened.”

I didn't
want
to tell him nothing that really happened. How do you tell your daddy you showed off so you wouldn't have to take a test? A test you knew in your heart that you could never get a passing grade on.

When they started this thing of testing in the schools, I sure hate it that I made such a high score on that old IQ test. Made everybody think I'm so-oo smart. But I know I'm not. I've always been good in math. My grandpa taught me figures and stuff before he taught me to read. He said, “The most important thing a person needs to know is how to hold on to their money.” There's no way for me not to be good in spelling. My uncle Jim Ed's wife, Aunt Everleen, has had my head buried in a dictionary since I was in the third grade. She wants me to make it to that Washington, D.C., spelling bee so bad she can taste it.

And poor old Gaten, he still thinks I'm a genius because he believes I learned to drive a tractor just by him telling me what to do. To this day he still doesn't know Grandpa
taught me to drive a tractor as soon as I turned eight. He made me promise not to tell my daddy until I was older. My grandpa died that same year.

I just sort of guessed at most of the other stuff on the test. Like, I figured “ruth” would mean the opposite of “cruelty” since Grandpa said she was a good woman from the Bible. Gaten said most people knew “ruthless,” but never even thought of “ruth” as a word. I didn't tell him I never did, either.

All of this was really Gaten's fault. Looks like he should have known in the first place I couldn't have learned to drive a tractor that quick, just because he told me what to do.

I was playing at the edge of our backyard when I heard a moaning sound. At first I thought it was the old stray hound having another litter of pups. And I sure didn't want to see that. Not again. Then I heard a weak cry for help and raced to the tractor shed. There was Gaten. His leg was pinned between the tractor wheel and spray machine. He had been hooking up the machine to spray peaches when the tractor probably slipped out of gear and rolled back.

Gaten's voice was getting weak. He was bleeding like a butchered hog. “Get Jim Ed,” he whispered.

I started to cry. “Uncle Jim Ed went to get a load of fertilizer.”

I grabbed my daddy to try and pull him out, but he made me stop. “This tractor has got to be moved,” he groaned and closed his eyes.

“I can do it, Gaten,” I cried. “I can, I can. Please let me.”

“You can't even reach the clutch, Clover.”

“I can if I stand up.”

“You don't know how to change gears.”

“Yes, I do,” I almost said, but said instead, “I will if you tell me how to do it.”

Gaten thought I was some kind of genius when I pulled that tractor off him.

Grandpa said that once I've learned something I'm like an old cooter, it's hard for me to turn it loose. I guess he thought comparing me to an old green turtle was a compliment. But what's got me worried now is, there's bound to be all new stuff in this new test. Stuff I've never heard of in my entire life. Just because I'm good at spelling and know the meaning of a whole bunch of words in the dictionary is not enough. Everything you need to know is not in there.

I tap my foot on the carpeted floor, like I'm bouncing a ball. Thump, thump. Gaten looks up. “Did you finish your report, Clover?” I shake my head, no. “Don't shake your head, Clover, say yes or no, Mr. . . .” Gaten breaks off. He never, ever made me call him mister. I giggle out loud.

There is no way I could tell Gaten why I was brought to his office. So I wrote and wrote.

I can't get away with stuff like I can when I'm waiting in Gaten's office to go home after school. I ride the school bus in the morning. Gaten has to leave before Aunt Everleen has time to fix my hair. I'm the only girl in the fifth grade who doesn't fix her own hair. Gaten says it looks too bushy when I do it.

Once I almost got away with sharpening a whole stack of pencils to a nub on his new electric pencil sharpener. Gaten didn't fuss or nothing. Just said, “I think you've sharpened enough pencils, Clover, do your homework.” I do believe Gaten will be telling me to do my homework for the rest of my life. Then there was the time he told me to wear a dress on picture-taking day, and I slipped and wore my rust corduroy skirt. It was bad twisted but still pretty. When Gaten saw it, all he said was, “Straighten your skirt, Clover.”