Gingersnap (11 page)

“My brother, Michael, wasn’t sad about leaving our house, our village, but for my parents and me, it was another story. My mother turned toward us; tears streaked her cheeks. I leaned against Michael. I looked at our house, at the bare plum trees that surrounded it, then at the narrow dirt lane in back of us.

“Another cart was lumbering behind us. My friend sat high up in front. There was a sudden loud noise,
like a clap of thunder, the sound of a cannon. Michael was so startled that he dropped the parcel with the sausages, and I just managed to reach out for them.”

Tears came down Elise’s cheeks; she’d forgotten the soup. She spread out her hands, looking at me.

“But it was too late for the little book,” she said. “It fluttered down off the cart, the pages riffling, onto the dirt road. And as we moved on, I watched the cart, just behind us. The wheels just missed the book.”

Elise and I glanced down at the book. “How far it’s come,” she said.

“It has your name in it,” I said. “And the address of the bakery.”

She picked up the book and opened the pages, but the page with her name was torn. We could see the large
E
and
Carey Street
, but that was all.

“Ah. I see.” She put her arms around me. “It’s not my name, Jayna, but now I know who you are. Of course I do.”

T
he bell jangled in front, and jangled again. Elise shook her head. “There’s so much more. Just wait, Jayna.”

She wasn’t my grandmother. I felt those words in my head. Elise didn’t belong to me. Neither did this bakery. And I loved them both.

I was alone.

Elise ran her hands across my shoulders, then touched my cheek before she went through the curtain into the bakery.

I turned, hoping to see the ghost, hoping to hear her whisper something, telling me what that meant:
I know who you are
.

But everything was still. Motes of flour rose in the air, and the oven made its own sounds as bread baked. I went out the back door, leaving the spoons, the napkins, the bowls of half-congealed soup on the table.

I sprinkled the last of the dried insects over Theresa’s cage, watching her snap at them, then stood breathing in the smell of the greenery growing in the garden.

What was that sweet smell?

I saw a patch of strawberries, the early fruit red and plump. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, then picked them and dropped them into my outstretched dress. I left them in the colander in the kitchen.

I could hear Elise in front talking to a customer. The bell jangled again. When we wanted the bakery to be busy, it never was. But now, when I wanted so much to hear what Elise had to say, more people were coming in.

I went upstairs, trailing my fingers along the banister to feel the
ML
letters. They might not have been my mother’s initials; they could have been anything.

In my room, I sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window. I had so much to think about, so much to wonder about.

What would Rob say to all of this?

Something was there in my mind again.

The hardware store
.

Mrs. Smith: “He has the good-luck charm; he’ll believe in it and it will make him strong.”

Rob: Holding up the stone girl that day in the pond. “She might bring us luck.”

The stone girl
.

Why hadn’t I given it to him the day he left?

But there was something I could do.

The ghost sat on top of the dresser, one bare foot resting on the thick drawer knob, a little pink polish on each of her toes. I saw her hand, just for a moment, her fingers raised, and I went toward her.

“Don’t come too close, Jayna,” she said. “I don’t know why, but that’s not allowed.”

I held up my own hand. “All right. But I want you to do something for me. For Rob.”

Did I see her nod?

I reached out and slid the stone next to her on the dresser doily. “I want you to take it to him.”

“How can I do that?” she said. “I’m here to take care of you. How can I search the huge Pacific Ocean—” Her voice broke off. “And we don’t even know …”

She began to disappear. Her foot faded; her hand was gone.

I hit the wall with my fist. The noise shocked me. Pain shot through my knuckles and up my arm. “Don’t you dare leave me. You’ve followed me everywhere. What are you here for if not to help? I need you.”

The foot moved a little; the fingers curled themselves together.

“He has to be alive,” I told her. “He has to feel strong. He has to believe he’ll come home.”

She shook her head, the lock of hair swinging.

“I will stay here.” My voice was fierce. “I will find out who I am. And you will go to him, to my brother, who is the most important person in the world to me. You will give him our good-luck stone girl.”

I could almost see her crossing the country, reaching the West Coast, searching the Pacific Ocean for him. “You can go anywhere in the world,” I said.

Was he alive?

I brushed away that thought. He had to be alive. He had to be on a raft somewhere.

“You will put it in the raft where he can see it. Whisper to him that he has to come home, that I’m waiting for him, that he has to hold on until someone finds him.”

I stopped. It was enough.

She was silent. Then, “He has to come home,” she echoed. “Jayna is waiting. He has to hold on until someone finds him.”

“Yes. Exactly that.”

“I’m not sure if I can.…”

“Be sure.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and she was gone. The little stone girl was gone, too.

I’d just have to wait.

I went downstairs, back into the kitchen, and knelt by Theresa’s cage. “We’re going to fix a place for you, too.”

Elise was still in the bakery. I turned on the radio as I washed and dried the bowls carefully and put them back in the cabinet. The Andrews Sisters were singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

The radio crackled. The music was cut off.

“Okinawa has fallen,” the radio announcer said. I could hear the excitement in his voice.

All those men on the island, both our side and the other side! All the displaced people! Were the destroyers moving away, and was Rob somewhere in that empty sea?

“A huge step toward the end of the war,” the announcer said.

I picked up the blue recipe book and put it on a shelf, where it would be safe.

And then Elise called, “Jayna, let’s talk.”

E
lise came into the kitchen. “I’ve put the
Closed
sign on the door. Now it’s really time for the two of us to talk. We’ll go up to the living room.”

On the stairs, she stopped and took my hand. “Feel the initials,” she said. “Your mother’s.”

Tears began to slide down my cheeks. My mother.

We went into the living room with its dark shiny furniture. The late sun streamed in across the patterned rug as we sat together on the couch.

“I should have known the minute you walked into the bakery,” she said. “That lovely hair, the cake sliding down the front of the counter. So much like your mother. Like your grandmother.” She smiled. “Who
else could you be but Marie Louise’s daughter, Elise’s granddaughter?” She shook her head. “Who else could cook the way you do?”

I wrapped my arms around myself.
Like my mother. Like my grandmother
. They were gone long ago. But still they were mine; they belonged to me.

She patted my hand. “The day we left our village, our cart lumbering down that dusty lane, we were looking back at the house and the little recipe book fluttering on the road.…”

I could see it, the cart, the lane, the neighbor’s cart following.

“I stretched out my hands for that book,” she said. “Of course, it was too late. But Elise, in the cart behind us, jumped off, catching the hem of her dress, the great wheels just missing her. She scooped up the book, reached out to hold on to the side of the cart, and was back up, waving it at me. I could see what she was saying, even though I couldn’t hear her. ‘It’s safe,’ she called. ‘Safe, Madeline.’

“I called back, sending her a kiss, ‘It’s yours now. Keep it forever.’ ”

“Madeline?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice. “You’re not Elise?”

“Elise was my best friend,” she said.

We were both quiet for a moment. Then she spread her hands. “Years later, the two of us came to Brooklyn. We decided to open a bakery. Why not? We both baked;
we both loved the yeast rising, rolling the dough, adding cinnamon and raisins. We loved making the pies, the cakes, the croissants, the Florentines, the gingersnaps. We went back and forth for a name for our bakery. Should it be Madeline’s? Should it be Elise’s?”

She was smiling now. “Elise won. Elise always won. By that time she had a husband, and a baby girl, so we named the bakery after that baby. Gingersnap.”

My mother. Gingersnap, like me.

“Oh, that child, Marie Louise. She clattered up the stairs, carved her initials in the banister, climbed out the back windows, cooked even better than Elise and I could. She used that little recipe book, staining it with buttery fingers, with melted chocolate. She was our delight.”

I was smiling. I could see her.

“She mixed up our names. I became Elise instead of Madeline, her mother something else, a made-up name for Mama.”

Should I call her Elise or Madeline?

She knew what I was thinking. “Either one,” she said. “Mr. Ohland calls me Madeline, but Andrew and Millie’s parents call me Elise.”

“Madeline?” I felt the word on my tongue. But I’d called her Elise from the beginning, so it had to be that.

Elise began again. “Our Marie Louise was married here, then lived in Brooklyn until she and her husband,
Claude, moved upstate because of his work. And then there was the accident.

“I was glad that your grandmother was not alive to know what had happened.” She shook her head. “Such a heartache. And to think of you and Rob in foster homes. I didn’t know that. If only I had.” Her mouth was trembling. “So if you want to stay for a while, until your brother comes home …”

Staying here! I’d be in the bedroom with roses and the bakery kitchen. I could look out the window toward the subway, waiting for Rob. I threw my arms around her.

Soup came into my head. “Could I …,” I began, and started over. “Would you like to use some of my soup in the bakery?”

She didn’t stop to think. “That’s the best idea. I love your soup.”

Later we locked up and went upstairs to bed. I heard the church bells chiming, counting with them as they tolled eleven times. I fell across the bed. So much had happened today, so much to tell Rob. “The ghost is coming,” I whispered. “Just hold on.”