Darnay Road (6 page)

Darnay
Road 13

Well
I don’t let grass grow under my feet before I’m pretty well out the door and
around that side of the porch and there they are mewing and wrestling around
under there and I can barely catch my breath.

One
of them has his paws on the trellis and he’s stretched out showing me his soft
kitty belly. “Hey there,” I say as I quickly count four. I hear Granma come out
on the porch cause she wears the same black shoes as the wicked witch in
The
Wizard of Oz
and they clack so loudly I can always stop any wrong thing I’m
doing before she ever gets in the room. But I usually end up telling on myself
cause I can’t bear to keep the truth from her. And I eye Easy’s shirt under
there then and I need to get it and wash it or something cause he probably
needs it from what I’ve seen.

“Tell
me I do not hear cats under there,” she says looking over the banister. She’s
wearing her flowered apron with the pink rick-rack trim I love over her black
and white housedress with the flowers and birds and she looks tall as Jesus
might upon his return when he separates the Catholics from the heathens and
lets us good ones into heaven.

“Yes
ma’am you do hear cats but they are kittens and I need to keep them please
please please. They don’t have a mother.” I pull the trellis and get that one
and he’s so cute, so soft and warm and I rub my cheek on him and look up at
her.

I
don’t know why her hand goes over her mouth like that. Then she pulls her hand
away and bunches them in her apron. “Oh you sweet thing,” she says to me.

Then
I remember I am an orphan, well almost Abigail May says Aunt May says.

I
do not know what to say now. It’s not Granma’s fault. I told her that before,
but she says my daddy loves me, he sends the check every month and if that’s
not proof she doesn’t know what is. So I can’t be an orphan, can I?

“I see what happened
now,” Granma says. “You been crawling around under there hiding those kittens
from me.”

I
open my mouth, but this story is telling itself so I think I might wait a
minute.

“You
think I wouldn’t find out?”

“Um,”
I close my eyes for a minute cause I been of two minds on it—telling the truth
and not telling it. “Can I have a can of tuna fish Granma? And a dish of milk?”

“Tuna
and…,” she repeats, then she runs out of steam.

So
I get both of those things and I take first one to the kittens then the other.
They’re so cute I can hardly bear it and now I don’t have to pen them up until
we’re done playing. But Granma calls me in for a bath cause we are going
shopping it being Saturday and Granma says I look like I rolled around in a
pig-pen.

So
pretty soon I am in the shallow bath with a Wonder Bread wrapper over my arm
and she leaves the plug out and I lay back and she puts pitchers of water over
my hair. She is saying she might call the dog-catcher to come get those kittens
and I am feeling mad and sad all at once. “You can’t do that,” I’m saying,
though I hardly look at her cause I am heavy-hearted.

“You’re
getting attached already and we are not keeping four cats. They will soon be
twenty-four.”

“No
ma’am,” I say, meaning they won’t be twenty-four. They’re just babies.

“Your
daddy would not like you holding cats that could have worms Georgia Christine.”
She pours another load of water over my hair and it creeps onto my forehead and
I have my eyes shut tight.

She
is sure bringing up Daddy a lot today, like the cats got her going. She sets
the pitcher on the side of the tub and gets up off her knees and they crack a
couple of times and she seems to barely make it. She uses two words, lumbago
and rheumatism. And headache so that’s three.

“Well
we don’t have to tell him,” I suggest wiping the dry washrag she hands me over
my face. It’s just a possibility is what I mean.

She
leaves the room and comes back with a big fluffy towel which she holds out for
me. Another is under her arm for my hair. I get out and she wraps the towel
around me then I bend over and she wraps my hair then I flip back my head and I
look like the maharushie. That’s what I call it. She takes the Wonder Bread
wrapper off my arm and she’s drying me all over. “Well that’s a sight better.”

I
take the towel and wrap up again and run to my room while she scrubs out the
tub. I know I left a ring.

I
get my favorite underpants with the pink ruffle around the back and my pink
Keds and my cut offs and my sleeveless blouse with the little blue dogs on it.

Well
Granma isn’t going to roll my hair cause it takes forever and ever and I’m not
going to the store in curlers, no way. I’m going to let it be long and dry in
the sun, and just that quick I think of Easy touching my hair so many times
cause it blew all over him, like an octopus might, but that don’t make sense
cause an octopus can’t blow around like my hair.

I
am smiling so big thinking about what a friend he is. He’s my friend now.

So Granma comes in and
she’s pulling the sheets off my bed cause I slept on them dirty.

“Abigail
May says her Mama wants to take her to Florida,” I say.

She
keeps bustling around my bed. Maybe now she doesn’t want to look at me.

“Granma?”

“Well
I don’t know about that,” she says. “Guess we’ll wait and see.”

“I
don’t want her to go,” I say right away.

“Course
you don’t. Remember Abigail’s mother said this before and nothing came of it,”
she says putting my sheets in the basket for washing.

“How
old were you when you met Grampa?” I ask her.

“I
was twelve.”

“I’ll
be ten years old in two weeks. Two handfuls.”

“Yes
you will.”

I
lie on my bed and try not to think of Easy and I say, “Tell me that story how
you met him.” I mean Grampa.

She
sits next to me and takes the brush and I get in front of her and sit pretzel
style and she starts to brush my hair. “Well…he was the new teacher and they
introduced him in front of the church. Most handsome man I ever saw. Looked a
lot like Anthony Perkins.”

“Not
when he played Norman Bates,” I say because that’s what we already figured out
when she tells this story.

“Right,”
she says pulled out of that dream where she’s seeing Grampa standing up there
right out of Hollywood, or Salem Missouri take your pick.

“Then
what happened?” I say to get her going again.

“Well
we had him to dinner because folks did that you know, had the new teacher in.
And we were friends for a while and I finished school and I was sixteen and we
married.”

“That’s
not all,” I say cause she always rushes that part about the four years unless I
ask her at night. “He was a Baptist man and they had him to dinner and when you
got sweet your family said he had to get made into a Catholic, but his family
said you had to get Baptist, but the Catholics got him cause he had to sign
papers and that’s where you had the wedding, so he went your way and oh his
mother was mad, and then he didn’t practice anyway—being Catholic that is—but
everybody was pretty happy with it cause he was also a carpenter, like Jesus,
and he could fix most anything so they didn’t stay mad for long, and then you
had my dad and they forgave all of it mostly.”

“Well…that’s
about it I guess.”

“Well,
they shouldn’t have judged someone they didn’t know,” I say as she pulls the
brush through my hair.

“That’s
right,” she says.

“Cause
someone might be a good person even if…they’re not Catholic. Like Grampa wasn’t
Catholic but he was good.”

She
just keeps brushing.

“And
if someone’s poor they can still be real good,” I say.

“Yes.”

“So
it wouldn’t be right…right?” I say.

“What
wouldn’t be right?”

“To
hold something against someone else that they can’t help.”

“Course
not, now get downstairs before you give me the headache.”

But I talk almost all
the way to the market. We walk there when the weather is good. It’s eight
blocks, but they aren’t all long. Granma pulls the wire cart and its rubber
wheels don’t make much noise on the sidewalk. I can’t wait because I’m getting
a pack of Hostess Cupcakes, but mostly I’m telling Granma how I can find homes
for the kittens. One for Abigail May, one for me, and I don’t tell her, but
maybe Easy could take one. Maybe Cap. Then we could let our cats visit and play
and they’d be so happy.

Well
I would be, that’s for sure.

And
what do you think it’s about that time he goes riding past so fast on his bike
and Cap is with him and a couple of boys I don’t know, all of them riding so
fast and he pops a wheelie and circles around and passes me again and I almost
take my good hand out of Granma’s and wave, but I catch myself because he isn’t
looking at me. And I’m thinking he is just as handsome in the sunshine as in
the moonlight.

And
Grandma looks at me. “He came with Ricky the day you broke your arm,” she says.

And
I say, “That’s Easy.” Because it is.

And
she keeps looking at me and I look at her.

“He’s
nice,” I say.

Then
we just keep walking.

Darnay
Road 14

When
we get home I see that trellis pulled away first thing. I say oh no and run to
the side of the porch and the kittens are nowhere to be seen. Easy’s shirt is
still under there. I wiggle between that trellis and the footing and grab that
almost rag as if I might shake it and those four babies will fall right out.

I’m
coming around to the front and Granma has the cart parked on the walkway and
she’s still standing on the sidewalk and I meet her with that shirt in my hand.

“They
are gone,” I say in a terrible voice. “I know someone took them, maybe Disbro.”

She
is taking that shirt from me, shaking it out and holding it arm’s length like
it’s the most nasty thing.

“Hold
on,” she’s saying. “Now hold on.” And she’s looking at that shirt, thin and
tattered, dirty white.

Maybe
Easy came for his shirt and thought he should take the kitties so I didn’t get
in trouble. Maybe that’s what he was saying when he circled back and went past
me.

But
why would he? It doesn’t make sense. I just know it was Disbro Peak. “He’ll put
them on the tracks. He’ll put them on the tracks.” I am crying, but mostly I’m
mad. I go running out of the yard.

“Georgia
Christine,” Granma is saying, but I’m not talking now, I’m running across the
street for Abigail May and I get to her yard and on her porch and I’m looking
in her screen. “Abigail May,” I’m huffing and puffing.

And
I see into the living room, it’s off to the side and the pocket doors are
opened wide and she’s in there sitting in the chair and across from Father
Anthony with a saucer on his knee and he’s drinking tea or something.

“Abigail
May,” I say again.

They
all look then, and Aunt May is at the door first, and she says something to me
about Abigail can’t play now, and behind her Ricky runs upstairs and he’s
shouting he won’t go, and Aunt May goes after him.

I just slip in then,
cause Abigail don’t know what’s happened. And she comes around the wall where
her chair was and Father Anthony is setting his saucer on the coffee table
where the magazines are fanned out and the big ashtray with the gold speckles
sits with the lighter that looks like Aladdin’s lamp and we’ve rubbed it many
times believe me and it’s fake.

Abigail
is hugging me, crying on my shoulder.

Her
mama is coming for them. A new man. She’s going to marry him and she wants
Abigail and Ricky to come to Florida and Abigail May says she is not going.

“Abigail
May,” Father Anthony says, “sit down and wait for your aunt to return. Should
you be here Miss Green?”

Abigail
May says she is not sitting down without me and she keeps holding me. She
disobeys Father. I move us toward the chair and get us into it, and I’m looking
right at Father, but I’m saying, “It’s all right Abigail. It will be okay.”

But
I don’t think it will. We have got problems with a capital P. I think of the
music man, but he can’t help us now.

“I’ll
stay with you, Georgia,” Abigail says. “I can live with you and Granma if Aunt
May don’t want me no more.”

Aunt
May comes down the stairs then. She enters the living room and stops when she
sees me like she’s getting the headache. “Georgia Christine?” she says like she’d
say, Gomer Pyle? What I mean is, she can’t believe I’m all the way in the
chair, I guess.

I
have my good arm around Abigail May and I’m just looking at Aunt May, then
Father, cause Granma says over and over, look people in the eye and I’m trying
to. “Please don’t send Abigail May away,” I say to them.

“Now
I don’t need another one,” Aunt May says, mostly to Father Anthony.

“You
should run on home Miss Green,” Father says in that same voice he uses to give
me penance after confession—you should say three Hail Mary’s, ten Our Father’s,
twenty Glory Be’s. That’s pretty much my usual. And come to think of it, I have
a few sins piling up I need to tell him about. Hopefully he won’t know it’s me
when I finally have to come clean. That would be so embarrassing.

I
try to peel Abigail May off me, but she makes a whimper and clings tighter and
I have to get her off my cast some. Plus, I have those kittens to search for.

Now
Aunt May comes over and tries to pry Abigail off, but she mustn’t know how no
one can cling like Abigail. Even Ricky can’t throw her off when she’s
determined.

Father
finishes his tea and stands while Aunt May looks about mortified and nearly
ready to slap Abigail though she hardly can with Father looking on I don’t
think.

“Well
I am just ashamed of this display,” Aunt May says red-faced to Abigail, but
Abigail don’t care, I can tell you that for a fact.

And Aunt May, she gets
thrown by children. She never married. Granma says that very thing sometimes
when Aunt May is working out in the yard in her curlers and bandana and long
skirt and blouse and with her saddle shoes on and her black socks. Granma will
be sitting on the porch and she’ll look over at Aunt May and out of the clear
blue she’ll say, “May never did marry. I don’t know as she ever had a beau.”

And
then I’ll look too and we’ll just be quiet and look like that.

But
she’s red-faced now and it’s not unusual to see that, I get that way too, but
it’s not as scary I don’t think. And I try not to look at her Adam’s apple
cause Abigail May always makes me laugh when she talks about it, how it bobs
when Aunt May is excited. It sticks out more than anyone’s and bobs like a fish
is nibbling, that’s what Abigail says, and her Mama too so she tells.

“Can
Abigail May come over to my house for a little bit?” I ask. “She’s awfully
upset.”

“Well…I
am not rewarding such disrespectful behavior,” Aunt May says, mostly to Father
Anthony.

But
Father gestures with his two fingers, those holy ones that bless over the
communion chalice, those same two he waggles toward my house.

Aunt
May shifts her feet a little and plucks at her skirt. “I suppose for one hour.
Not to play. But to calm down. Hear me Abigail May? You will calm down.”

Abigail
May doesn’t even look at her aunt but she stands and holds her hand out for
mine and I stand and say to Father and Aunt May, “Thank you kindly,” and I do
not even have the ‘ly’ out of my mouth and Abigail May is yanking me out of the
room and out the door.

“You
have got to see,” I’m saying as I am now pulling her across the street.

She
is speaking a mile a minute, saying that they can’t make her leave Darnay Road,
and I pull her through my gate to the side of the porch and tell her quickly
about the kittens.

“No,”
she gasps. “It’s Disbro Peak. We have to tell Cap and Easy. They’ll get them
back.” She slams a fist into her palm.

“But
I don’t know,” I say frantically. “They’re the only ones who knew I put the
kittens there. Cap did anyway. So what if they took them? To find them homes or
something? We have to find out.”

“Well
I can’t ask Ricky. He’s so mad he says he’s never running with them again.”

“Well…this
is the worst mystery we ever, ever had!” I say. “You know what we….”

Lord
I cut it off just in time cause here come the shoes. She’s on that porch with
plenty to say to me for running off. She declares I was nearly run over by a
car when I crossed the street, but I didn’t see any car at all, not even that
big black one parked outside of Abigail May’s that Father Anthony drives.

Abigail May is taking
over, the first one to run up on the porch and appeal to Granma. She gets this
off of
Perry Mason
. She says Perry would never ever break her on the
stand not even with those eyes ringed in black that don’t blink. And I pretty
much believe it. She says having an older brother who has tortured her for
years has made her very strong. So now she’s making her case to Granma about
living with her so she doesn’t have to go to Florida.

Granma
sits in her chair on the porch. She is rubbing her hands together while Abigail
May goes on. My guess is Granma’s wishing she had her green glass full to the
brim about now, but it’s too early and Abigail doesn’t hardly take a breath.

Granma
has her hands on Abigail’s arms. “There now settle down. Settle down.”

She
waits until Abigail calms down a little.

“Wait
and see,” she says to Abigail.

Abigail
quiets down a little more and I have four fingers crossed behind my back cause
I know what’s coming, I know.

And
there she goes. Granma thinks she’s Doris Day sometimes. She loves to sing “Ka
Sera Sera,” for everything. And that’s what she is doing now, and Abigail looks
at me, her face so happy and her nose so wrinkled.

And
Granma sings on.

And
then he goes by--Easy, an old baseball glove hanging from his handlebars. Cap is
behind with a bat under his arm. They are pedaling furiously, like usual. Other
boys are behind, one after another they go whizzing past to the ball fields.

I
don’t know when Granma stops singing but there I am all the way to the steps
looking after that herd of boys.

Well
I don’t know. I’m just looking. He couldn’t have taken those kitties, he’s so
busy all the time. But somebody did all right and he’d want to know.

Granma
starts to speak slowly. “How about I call Aunt May and the two of you can have
a sleep-over? We’ll pop corn and watch Roy and Dale and The Lennon Sisters.”

I
look back at her and smile. She’ll never make it to Lawrence Welk. She’ll be
snoring away by then.

And
we’ve got a mystery to solve.