Follow Me (23 page)

The first mistake she meant to avoid was overstaying her visit at the Campbells’. As much as she liked it there and as kind
as they were to her, she didn’t want them thinking she was taking advantage of their hospitality. If she really intended to
remain in Tuskee, she couldn’t begin by living off handouts from a couple who had a huge family to support. So when she learned
that the apartment above Mr. Potter’s hardware store was empty, she asked if she could rent it. Mr. Potter insisted that she
live there for free.

The rooms had been vacant since Arnie Bly had died, and the furnishings were meager — a tattered sitting chair, a pinewood
table stained with coffee rings, a foldout cot for a bed. Mr. Potter was apologetic about the conditions, but Sally was grateful
to him. And she wasn’t given a chance to feel lonely. Penny came over the first night with a bag of groceries and made a spiced
meat loaf, waking up the sleepy, dank rooms with the spitting noise of onions frying in oil.

She waited until she had supper on the table and they’d taken the first taste before beginning to tell Sally about the people
she’d met that day.

There was the old woman who’d come into the store that morning carrying her little white poodle in her purse. While she browsed
for shoes, she fed the poodle tiny peppermints.

And there was the bank executive who insisted on buying size-ten galoshes to cover his size-twelve shoes.

And the little boy who had names for each of his toes — Fiji and Samson and Mr. Doodlepuss and…

“I couldn’t believe it. Right when I was fitting that boy with loafers, some feller came riding down North River on a donkey.
He stopped in to buy boot laces.”

“Really?”

“It’s true!”

It was also true, Penny said, that the mayor’s wife had webbed feet. And six pairs of women’s pumps, size nine, on sale, were
bought by Father Macklehose, the priest at St. Bernadette’s.

“He likes a three-inch heel.”

Oh, how Sally laughed at Penny’s stories. She would keep begging her friend to stop so she could take another bite of her
delicious meat loaf before it got cold. And while she was savoring the food, Penny would begin another story.

Life was promising to be comfortable for Sally Mole, who had learned not to take comfort for granted. Late the first night,
lying awake in the darkness above Mr. Potter’s hardware store, she thought about the people she missed most: Mole, her sister
Trudy, her son, Uncle Mason and Georgie, and even Gladdy Toffit. As she drifted off to sleep, they all got mixed up in her
mind, the dead with the living, and she wondered if she would ever see any of them again.

By the end of her third week in Tuskee, Sally had opened her first savings account at the local bank. She’d stocked the cupboards
of her kitchen with canned soups and rice, crackers and cookies. She’d purchased a new pair of saddle shoes from the clearance
rack at Penny’s store. She’d been to the Immaculate Word Church on Hewitt Avenue twice for their Sunday service. She’d made
biscuits and brought them to the Campbells in thanks for their kindness. She’d learned her way around the downtown streets.
She’d come to understand the difference between a ripsaw and a crosscut saw, between tongs and pincers and pliers. She could
answer most any question that a customer put to her.

She wasn’t working because she was expected to work. For the first time in her life, she was working steadily, if slowly,
toward a goal. She’d calculated that every dollar she tucked into the cash register would come back to her in the amount of
a nickel. And a nickel plus a nickel plus a nickel would eventually add up to a substantial amount.

When she looked at herself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet in her bathroom, she looked at a new Sally. She wasn’t the
same used-up girl who couldn’t keep out of trouble. Not that trouble wouldn’t come after her. No, she wasn’t such a fool that
she thought nothing would go wrong ever again. Sure, things would go wrong. There would be challenges. She even had a hunch
about the kind of challenge she’d have to deal with next. But in her reflection she saw someone who was unrecognizable simply
because she’d learned to be hopeful.

Hopefulness wasn’t just a mood for her; it was the logical conclusion she’d reached based on the evidence around her in Tuskee.
The way people nodded and smiled at her along the street — why, they treated her as though they’d been saving a place for
her at their dinner tables. And the sights she saw just walking around the block: spikes of velvety red snapdragons in the
gardens, willows dripping green, and a drawbridge yawning open above the river. It was all so simply beautiful, as close to
paradise as she expected to come.

It would have been pure paradise if she hadn’t been bothered by that distracting little hunch she had. That one particular
notion. By the middle of July, with her period two weeks overdue, her suspicion was getting stronger, the details coming into
sharper focus every day. And as the substance of her hunch solidified, she felt herself preparing to despair. She had tempted
fate in order to give herself a second chance and make up for her earlier negligence. But something so inevitable could never
be used as recompense for something she’d already done. It didn’t occur to her that she might give herself the moral freedom
to change her mind and start looking for a way out of her predicament. All she could do was start preparing to spend the rest
of her life dealing with the consequences of her recklessness.

But at least she’d made it to Tuskee. Everyone who settled in Tuskee prospered, and she could do the same. She didn’t have
to give up hope just because she’d have more responsibility than she’d planned for. Yes, she could be happy here. If she kept
saying it to herself, she’d believe it. Yes, yes, yes, she could be happy here.

She celebrated her twenty-second birthday by writing a letter to her family, addressed to her parents. She volunteered little
information about herself, though she did include her return address. She wrote that she hoped everyone in the family was
in good health. She promised to visit soon and enclosed a twenty-dollar bill, which she specified was to be saved for her
son.

Though she would never receive a reply from her parents, she would keep sending money through the years. Eventually it would
add up to thousands and would equal exactly the money she deposited in the bank at regular intervals. From that first installment,
she aimed to divide her earnings fair and square, with half of it going to her lost son and the other half saved for her second
child, the one growing inside her — a last, unexpected gift from Benny Patterson.

The swath of park that ran along the east bank of the river was mostly a wide, unkempt lawn where boys played football and
people brought picnics. Dandelion cotton carpeted the grass. Gnats gathered in thick, suffocating clouds. From the distance
could be heard the steady clanging of the trip-hammers inside the Dyson Tool Company across the river. The grate of the Ferry
Street Bridge creaked beneath the wheels of passing cars and buses. And the river, clearer here, without the film of cement
dust or sewage, bubbled and splashed against the shore on its way north.

At one end of the park was a small railed platform, just wide enough for a plank bench that had been gouged over the years
with hearts and initials. During her lunch break, Sally would sit there and watch Dyson workers loading crates on a barge,
and she’d listen through the city’s noise for the music of the river. Sometimes she’d hum quietly, so quietly that her voice
would be inaudible even to her own ears.But she could feel the melody inside her. And when a smoky column of minnows gathered
below the platform, she imagined that they were waiting for her to sing.

Left and right, day and night… no stoppin’ once we start.

It was soothing to sit there, humming to herself and rehearsing words of songs she’d sung long ago, in her other life. She
would have liked to sing so loudly that the minnows would be able to hear her above the rushing water. Sure, they’d be grateful
to her for giving them something to listen to besides the river. She’d make them forget about fishing nets and pike jaws and
winter ice. That’s what music can do — make you forget the dangers. This song or that, crooned for an audience of fish. Dozens
of little fish, maybe even hundreds.

It’s simple to wish,

And simple to dream.

Mmm-hmmm.

Is Sally here?

Who?

Sally Werner.

Who?

Sally Angel.

Who?

Sally Mole, Mole, Mole!

Hush.

Let her sing.

Sing for us, Sally.

Mmm-hmmm.

She had her eyes closed when a little boy climbed the platform, thrust his head and torso beneath the lower rail, and tried
to reach far enough so he could skim his hand along the river. She didn’t see him swish his arm in an attempt to catch some
minnows. And with the clamor of the city mixing with the rushing water, she didn’t hear the boy growling an invitation to
the fish to come get caught, come on, you dummies.

But she didn’t need to hear the boy or see what he was doing to sense what was about to happen, or would have happened. Even
without seeing the boy wriggle forward on the platform, even without quite knowing that he was there beside the bench, she
became aware of the sensation of impending disaster. It was something between a dream and an idea, involving more presumption
than apprehension. And though she continued to sit with her head tipped back, her eyes closed, her thoughts adrift, the prospect
of danger caused her to shift her position and thrust her left leg to the side so the boy bumped against her ankle instead
of falling from the platform.

Her eyes opened wide. She saw the dusky sky. Her first impression was of the universe’s infinite depth, and at the same time,
sensing the boy’s weight against her leg, she understood in a flash that if she moved her leg, he would slip forward and plunge
into the river. He would drown. No, he wouldn’t drown because Sally had already hooked her fingers through his belt loop and
pulled him back to safety, away from the edge of the platform.

Oh, but wasn’t he a rascal, his mother said with the kind of saintly calm shared with the rest of Tuskee’s citizens, who could
not be shaken from their general optimistic belief that everything happened according to a reasonable plan. As she gripped
him by the elbow, pulling him gently to his feet, she explained to Sally that her son sure knew how to get into trouble. If
she let him get out of her sight for a second, just one second —

“Fishy!” the boy was insisting, stomping his feet. Either he’d be allowed to catch one of those little fishies in the river,
or he’d throw a tantrum.

Sally judged the boy to be about three, a couple of years younger than her own son.

“Once when he was a baby,” his mother was saying, “I couldn’t find him anywhere. He’d gone and crawled into the laundry basket
and fallen asleep.”

“Fishy fishy fishy!”

“We had the whole neighborhood out looking for him,” the mother went on, brushing back the boy’s wet bangs. “You rascal,”
she said, planting a kiss on his forehead. “We gotta get on now. Sweetie pie, say thanks to the lady. She saved you from a
soaking. Say thanks.”

“Fishy.”

“Fishy to you,” said Sally.

“Have a nice day,” the mother offered in a plain, friendly manner.

“See you, then,” Sally replied. After they were gone, she sat for a while watching the river as its surface turned waxier
beneath the darkening sky. The school of minnows had disappeared, though not for good, Sally was sure. The next time she came
back, the minnows would be there, waiting for her. And she knew that though the current seemed to have slowed almost to a
standstill and the water beneath the platform looked like a big block of ice, solid, with nothing inside, really the river
was full of mysterious life.

Sally had arrived in the city of Tuskee in the late spring of 1952. She worked steadily at Potter’s Hardware through the summer,
into the crisp fall days, and then through a winter that was colder than she was used to and yet more beautiful, with the
streetlamps candy-striped with red ribbons, the pond behind the library crowded with skaters, a thick snow cover on the ground
that lasted through to the beginning of March, and blustery winds that kept the clouds moving and cleared the sky to a crystal
blue almost every morning.

With so few expenses of her own, she was able to save over five hundred dollars — this was on top of Mason Jackson’s money,
which she’d come to think of as a fortune she was holding in trust. Having failed once to give it away, she couldn’t help
but wonder whether, instead, she was meant to keep it. She never intended to spend it on herself. But in a strange way, all
that cash, the whole lump sum of it hidden in a hatbox in the back of her closet, was of more use to her if it remained intact.
It was a hedge against uncertainty. It was the foundation for the settled life she was going to lead.

As the months passed and the pregnancy began to show, she found herself enjoying her solitude more, though not because she
was ashamed of her condition; if shame ever occurred to her, it was only as an idea to consider briefly and dismiss, something
to send away from Tuskee while she stayed on. She was grateful to have purposeful work that put her in contact with people
each day. And it helped to know that she had a good friend in Penny and could count on being invited to join the Campbell
family for holiday meals. But she was happy just to sit by herself at the window of her apartment watching snowflakes collecting
on the sill while she thought about the child growing inside her.

She felt certain she was pregnant with a girl, and when she thought about what to name the child, she didn’t even consider
names for boys. At first she decided she liked the name Judy, in honor of Judy Garland. But the next day she changed her mind
and settled on Francesca. She went on to consider that Winifred was a fine name. And how about the names of her sisters, Trudy
or Laura, or even her own name? How about Millicent? Now that was a name with stature! And really, there was nothing to compare
with the friendly, inviting name of Brenda. Or maybe Phyllis or Carol, Daisy, or just plain Sue? All the names available were
like candies on display. She’d choose one and give it to her child, her little girl, who with her fluttering presence was
the reason Sally didn’t mind the evening solitude, why, with the dark sky spilling snow, the shop below her apartment closed
for the night, the intersection of Mead and State below her window empty of all activity, she didn’t feel in the least bit
lonely.