Ellen Foster (5 page)

And what else do you take when you leave a place you never will come back to not even if you forget something very precious to you? You will just have to live without it.

Then there is personal hygiene. A toothbrush and a hair comb and towels in case you have to supply your own. To be sure they will have sheets for the bed.

Then there is where to go.

Get it right before you get on the telephone. You do not want to sound like a fool.

Hello. This is Ellen. I’m fine. I was wondering if

Hello. This is Ellen. I’m fine. How are you? I was wondering if I could come stay with you. Is this weekend OK? Do you think you could come and pick me up now?

I get lucky on the first try.

My mama’s sister Betsy says sure you can come.

I tried her first because she has a recently dead husband and could use some company. I am sure.

It will be nice to have a girl around, she says.

That is sweet. Music to my ears.

You better pick me up at the store near my house. You know where that is? Our path is washed out.

And I am on my way.

What do you want to do this weekend? she asks me in the car.

Do you have a bathtub? I hope I picked somebody with a bathtub.

Why yes I do, she says.

I already know she has a nice house. It is yellow and has flowers growed all up on the mailbox if I am not confused.

I cannot think of what all I would like to do. This is all happening so fast.

She settles me in the house and we go shopping in town. It is a different town. She keeps saying she has always wanted a girl to buy for.

She did not have any babies. Not a one.

We shop and buy a dress that suits me fine and more little things than I can think of. My favorite was a pair of gloves with a sequin cat sewed across the hands. I cannot play in them but they are good to look at.

All afternoon and night and on into the next day is like magic. I do not think of anything but the flowers on the sheets and the bubbles in the bath water.

This is the life.

All day Sunday we just lounge around the house. Aunt Betsy spends right much time on the couch looking at magazines with stars in them. She just smiles and tells me to make myself right at home.

Which I do. Looking in the dresser drawers. Fingering the what-nots. Generally getting to know the place.

She just keeps saying for me to make myself right at home.

It is good to have somebody around like that.

Then she wants to know who is coming to take me back.

She must have forgot.

Take me back where? I wonder.

Home, she says.

I say I told you I wanted to come stay with you and you said fine. Now I am here and I got all my stuff that I brought from the other place back in the bedroom closet.

She says no and laughs at the same time. I meant you could stay for the weekend and then go back to your own home.

Really?

What did you think I meant?

That I could come stay with you.

Well I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.

Me too.

Good. Let’s just take you back and you can come again another time.

My new mama grocery-shops every Saturday night. She tells one of the big girls to look after the baby boy and then she is off. I go with her sometimes just to get out of the house. If you get your coat and hat on and stand by the door you can usually go.

But if you go you better help.

She will not let more than three of us go at one time because that spells trouble. She took the baby one time and came home frustrated and touchy. It is hard to shop with somebody in the way. I took Starletta with me one time and found that out for my own self.

She goes at night to miss the crowd. That is good because
you do not have people breathing down your neck for you to make your meat or fruit selection. It is also good because they slash the prices on the fancy baked goods.

I almost died when I saw all the froze food in this store. Way way more than in my old store. Here you could get every meal of the day froze on a plate. Breakfast. Lunch. Not just supper. Pancakes. Patty sausages. Link sausages. Hamburger meat already in the bun.

I tried to get my new mama to buy some of it but she said it was cheaper and better nutrition to make food from scratch.

But it is not easier.

She never runs out of money at the store. No matter how many bags she has she does not have to put a thing back to get next time. She pays the way I like. Cash on the barrel head.

Riding home in the car with all the food you feature how it will look and smell cooked. Chicken does not look like much raw but wait till you fry it. Then it melts in the mouth.

She promises to fry the chicken for Sunday lunch but only if I help.

Oh yes.

And please what about some sweet corn and potatoes or if you do not have any corn what about some peas? Does that sound good to you?

That sounds fine. But only if you help me.

Oh yes.

Aunt Betsy lets me off at the end of the path just like I ask and I walk the rest of the way to the house.

I will just have to lock myself up is what I thought. If I have to stay here I can lock myself up. Push the chair up to the door and keep something in there to hit with just in case.

I forgot sometimes and he got to me but I got him away from me pretty soon. If you push him down you have some time to run before he can get his ugly self up. He might grab and swat but that is all he can do if you are quick.

It would have been OK if he had left me alone to begin with but he got confused. Sometimes he would come stand outside my closet door just to tease me. Talking to me all about my mama’s little ninnies.

You got girl ninnies he might say.

I became the champion of not breathing or blinking to be heard. Somebody else calling out sugar blossom britches might sound sweet but it was nasty from him. He could make anything into trash.

The first day back at school my teacher noticed a bruise he put on my arm and they all had a field day over it in the school nurse’s office. Calling in everybody but the janitor to come in and take a look at it. I had rather nobody saw my business.

The teacher said she was fascinated by me and my bruise and just had to hear more. She had been watching me close ever since I would not tell her about my mama.

She asked me how it all happened so I told her my daddy put the squeeze on me and that is how it happened. She was shocked but I told her I was used to it so do not get in a uproar over it. You live with something long enough and you get used to it. Like smelling the inside of Starletta’s house.

She asked me if I had somewhere to spend the night.

Of course! I live in a house just like everybody!

No honey. Not your house. Let’s call somebody to come pick you up and I’II take care of getting your things from your house.

That sounds good to me but I already tried it one time.

Who do you know to call? she wants to know.

All I can think of is Starletta and her mama and daddy but you have to call the store for somebody to give them the message.

Isn’t Starletta your little colored friend?

You could tell by the way she said colored that this would not do.

She’s it, I say.

I would feel foolish calling up Dora’s mama or my mama’s mama and I have already worn out my welcome at Aunt Betsy’s.

The teacher says everything is OK and she will make the necessary arrangements.

That sounds good. Maybe she will have better luck than me is what I thought.

My art class teacher had been standing over to the side and not saying anything. I did not know her good but she liked the way I do art.

She got the teacher and the principal by the sleeve and said to have a word or two in the hall. When they came back in they said they had decided what to do with me.

It is about time I thought. Yes Lord it is about time.

8

I stayed at the art teacher’s house until it got warm and green outside. The law said I could stay temporary until somebody decided what to do next.

She lived in a blue house with plants in the windows and hanging all in the kitchen.

Roy is her husband and he could clean a house like a woman. Wash the dishes. Do the clothes. Do it all and smile when you ask him how he can stand working like a woman.

She told me to call her Julia her real name when we were at home.

So many new things came at me so fast I did not know how to keep up. One thing we did was to go to a movie in town right in the middle of the day. It was a long cartoon and I cannot think of the name to save my life. It was OK to start with but it got long and I could not bear it anymore. They will not let you get up and mill around in where folks are trying to
see the show so I went in the lobby for the popcorn lady to stare me down.

I put it all on the list to tell Starletta.

I slept in the guest room. She said I was free to decorate but it is no need when you know you will just pack up and go.

I kept my box of mess from the old house in the closet. The microscope came in handy when I had nothing to do. That was a good buy.

Word got out at school that I was staying with the art teacher. Some boy I do not know good had something cute to say about it. Just like me staying with Julia had something to do with her putting check plus wonderfuls on my art. Ha. He could shut his mouth or I would punch him is what I said. I got up close in his face and he did not say anything back. He better watch out for me is what else I said. I am strong as a ox.

Me and Julia and Roy laughed and carried on right much.

Every Sunday we would all three lay on the floor drawing each other with blue hair or two noses or something silly. You name it. Or we would all take a part reading Prince Valiant and stand up and strike a pose when it is your turn to read. That was the best.

The warmer it got the more we stayed in the yard.

She said it was good I loosened up. We would run around and she would tell me to let it all hang out. Let your hair down good golly Miss Molly let it all hang out. Go with the flow, she would say. Make up a tune and throw in some words and go with the flow.

I had no idea people could live like that.

If you did not know them you would call them off the rocker
but they were just happy she said with a big H. You could see it leak out sometimes and she would grin and say don’t you just love the sunshine or she and Roy would nibble on each other and speak some French. Sometimes she would grab me and say you are so NEAT!

One day I asked her what they were doing here and where they were from.

At first she said Pluto.

If I did not know so much about space I would have said OK and went right on with my business. But I said you are not from outer space. Where are you really from?

She said she would be straight with me.

Both Roy and I were raised in the northeast. We always liked the South so when we finished college we decided to settle down here and have a family

Me?

where I could teach and Roy could do his thing in peace.

Oh.

Our dream had always been to have a quiet place in the country far away from all the city hassles. Our minds were so polluted by city life that we needed all this space and serenity to find ourselves.

Oh.

She lived in the sixties. She used to be a flower child but now she is low key so she can hold a job.

She went on and said when she was young

Like me?

she wanted to save the world.

I asked her from what.

From people like your father is what she told me.

You mean there is more like him? You mean he is not the only one?

I need to know.

Once I got him in my head it was hard to shake him out. I mostly worried about what he might do about me making off with all the cash money.

When Julia said there was more like him I shuddered to think how God let him and the rest slip through. The day he made my daddy he was not thinking straight.

My daddy was a mistake for a person.

The times me and Julia and Roy worked in the garden I did not think about him but of my mama and the way she liked to work in the cool of the morning. She nursed all the plants and put even the weeds she pulled up in little piles along the rows. My job was to pick the piles up and dispose of them. I was small my own self and did not have the sense to tell between weeds and plants.

I just worked in the trail my mama left.

When the beans were grown ready to eat she would let me help pick. Weeds do not bear fruit. She would give me a example of a bean that is grown good to hold in one hand while I picked with the other. If I was not sure if a particular bean was at the right stage I could hold up my example of a bean to that bean in question and know. It took a long time to pick that way but you have that sort of time while she is humming.

I know I have made being in the garden with her into a regular event but she was really only well like that for one season.

You see if you tell yourself the same tale over and over again
enough times then the tellings become separate stories and you will generally fool yourself into forgetting you only started with one solitary season out of your life.

That is how I do it.

Julia and Roy were determined not to use bug killer or fertilizer from town on their garden. They went organic. He mixed dirt and chickenshit and promised us tomatoes and peppers that would blow the mind. He would mix it all up with both arms up to the elbows and say how this was his dream.

I helped but only with a shovel. The hands were not made to dabble and scoop in chickenshit.

We went outside every day to see what if anything was growing yet. I made them bet me which thing would be grown first.

Then they told me one day my birthday was coming up so what did I have in mind to do? That got my goat because I had forgot and could have turned eleven without my knowledge.

Do I have to decide now? is what I need to know.

No but do give us some time to plan. OK?