Grace's Pictures (13 page)

“Miss Gracie! You hurt me!” Hazel screamed, holding the side of her head.

Linden growled like an old dog.

The ruckus was enough to wake hibernating animals. It was all Grace could do to regain order before parading them down the street toward the school, a task Mrs. Parker thought she should have rather than a hired driver. She had almost gotten out the door before the mistress saw her youngest daughter’s red face. Alice Parker rolled her eyes. “What happened?”

All three children tried to answer, sending up a squabble worse than the tower of Babel.

“Go on, now.” Mrs. Parker kissed the top of each child’s head and practically pushed them out the door.

Grace marched them down the sidewalk, prodding them toward the building side when a beat cop passed them. Thankfully, Holly took Hazel’s hand when they got to the school and marched right up the steps with no more words to their brother. Linden pulled on Grace’s arm. “Can we go home now?”

“Sure we can.”

Once Grace had Linden alone, he transformed into a cooperative wee fellow. They set out straightening up the house.

“Here, Miss Gracie.” He handed her his father’s cold pipe left on a table. “Let me get the vinegar for the window smudges,” he said, toddling off to the scullery.

Clearly his older sisters’ teasing had been the trouble. Grace hadn’t known about such things, being an only child herself and one who had not lived in a family since she was ten.

Linden carried his own dusting rag and followed her about, helping as much as he could. “Father says I will be the head of his company one day.”

“That’s a long ways away, lad.”

Tears sprang to his eyes.

“Aw, now what’s the trouble?”

“I’m not crying. I’m not a baby.”

“You are a fine young man.”

“And I don’t cry. Father says. Or I won’t be good enough to be the boss man.”

But he was so young. Grace held his face in her hands the way her mother used to do to her. “You are smart. You are important. You are able.”

He nodded.

Grace thought that if she, as wounded as she had felt when she left Ireland, could prosper, surely this lad born into a financially stable family could do the same.

By the time Hazel and Holly returned home, Linden had decided he’d rather they go to school without him.
Enjoy it now,
Grace thought, wondering just how unreasonably high Mr. Parker’s expectations for this three-year-old might be.

Grace’s first instruction at the Parkers’ house after tidying up was to establish a day nursery. She was to get started before it was time to cook supper.

“But the children—”

“The children can play in their rooms while you’re busy. Hazel and Holly can study their lessons,” Mrs. Parker told her. The lady of the house was brief and to the point, just the way she was with the children. “Use the third floor, Grace. You know where the cleaning supplies are. I suppose you can sew? There is fabric for curtains in the bureau drawer in my bedroom. When it’s clean, move the children’s toys up there.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I start with the parlor drapes and furniture, ma’am? I haven’t gotten to them yet.”

“You agreed not to question me, Grace.”

So she resigned herself to the attic. Even in the cool air, perspiration plastered her dress to her back as she climbed the narrow, steep stairs from the second floor.
This is not the workhouse attic. ’Tis not the same.
This attic surely would not be as desolate and drafty as the place where she’d spent the last of her childhood.
Breathe. You’re in America.

A mouse scrambled over the toe of her boot as she entered, startling her.
Come on, Grace. You are able.

She let out the breath she’d been holding. The vacant space was no plush American parlor, but there was nothing nefarious about it either. The walls did not reek of generations of suffering. This building held almost no age at all. Different. This was different.

There was but one window and a wee one at that. No electric lights either.

She dragged a broom across the wooden floorboards. Maybe with some lye soap she could freshen it. And if she could find some whitewash, it wouldn’t be quite so dreary.

Curtains? She wasn’t so sure. She vaguely remembered Ma teaching her how to thread a needle when she was a child. Sighing, Grace decided the woman would not notice if that wee window never got any curtains. Grace would press on.

Saturday morning Grace trudged up to the third floor again, this time with Holly and Linden in tow. They all wore coats. It was brisk up there, especially at that early hour. She gave them each a broom.

Whack!
Linden smacked his against a beam.

“Whoo!” Holly circled hers in the air.

“Is everything a game to you?” Grace snatched the brooms away.

The two children stood before her, mouths open as though she’d thrown icy water on them.

“That’s all right. You are not in trouble.”

Their shoulders relaxed.

“But we do have to clean this place. Are you going to help or not?”

“Yes, Miss Gracie!” Holly reached for her broom and then Linden’s.

Well, so. All they required was to feel needed. As they retreated to opposite corners to continue sweeping, Grace began to hum. “Say, let’s make up a song.” She began to sing, “You are smart. You are important. You are able.”

Soon they were singing it with her, and she realized the
power of those words. If she believed it, perhaps she could pass that confidence on to the Parker children.

If . . . Grace was always saying
if
to herself. The unknown future sometimes paralyzed her. But perhaps having responsibilities and assigning tasks to the children would be a start, something real to grasp on to. And they seemed to have fun at the same time. Why not?
“Eat dessert first.”
Harold Hawkins’s advice could apply to many circumstances.

She found a carpet rolled up in a corner. After hauling it outside for a good pounding and then lugging it back to the attic, she unfurled it. A perfect floor covering to help warm the space. She’d changed her mind about whitewash, at least until spring. She found that if she lit the coal fireplace in the master’s bedroom, the air warmed up some in the attic, enough to keep the children from catching cold, she thought.

Grace divided the next hour between trying to coax the children into behaving and cooking simple meals of boiled beef and roasted hens to see the family through Sunday, when she would not be there. While the meat simmered and roasted, she finished hauling the children’s toys to the third floor. A rocking horse, a complete set of alphabet blocks, numerous dolls with miniature furniture sets, and an array of spinning tops filled out the attic room nicely. The children had been overindulged it seemed, except when it came to food.

Alice Parker clapped her hands when she saw the nursery. “Delightful, Grace.” She never even mentioned the uncloaked window.

Beaming from the unexpected compliment, Grace dared to agree. “The children even helped a bit. They argue much less when they have a job.”

“Right. Well, whatever you think.”

“I’m thinking the children will be quite content to spend their leisure here when the weather’s not pleasant.”

“Oh, they’ll be up here all the time, Grace.” The woman turned to leave, careful not to snare her heel on the uncarpeted steps. She spoke again with her back toward Grace. “Except when the girls are at school, I expect you to keep them up here. That’s what a nursery is for, now, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Parker wanted the children out of sight. That had been the purpose of creating this space. Grace could not fathom how it was possible for a mother not to care for her children. A father, aye. But not a mother. She bit her lip and reminded herself that this woman made the rules and she would have to operate within those constraints. “Aye, that’s what ’tis for—the children.”

Alice Parker halted on the second floor and called up to Grace. “I almost forgot to tell you. I’ve invited two friends for tea today. Two o’clock.”

Conveniently the mantel clock downstairs struck noon. Two hours? There were no more store-bought biscuits in the scullery. Grace only had time to make soda bread. “Certainly,” she responded through clenched teeth, wondering how such an unpleasant woman could possibly have any friends. When she was beyond the woman’s hearing, she spoke her mind. “Am I to be a miracle worker or what? A tea party two hours hence? That woman is as loony as a . . . a . . .”

“A loon?”

She jumped. Holly stood in the doorway. “Not a word of that, lass. Not if you want some of the tea treats I’m baking.”

The lass giggled. Already Grace was winning their favor.

Thankfully the children did play in their new nursery while Grace worked in the kitchen. She only had to scramble up there once to break up a fight, which was less than she expected. As she
scooped flour from the bin into a bowl, she could not dismiss the similarities. The Parker children were separated from their mother by two floors just like Grace had been from her mother. Of course, Grace’s mother did not choose that division. It was forced on her. That fact made Grace resent her employer all the more.

Adding buttermilk, salt, and soda to the flour, she worked the dough past the stage of crumbs, something one should not do with soda bread. She knew full well to sift the dry ingredients together before adding the liquid, but she was in a dither and careless. The batter became the victim of Grace’s frustration. Here she was working for a woman who did not love her children so that Grace’s mother, who did love her daughter, could be freed from such tyranny.

The dough stuck to her fingers like river slime. She rubbed her hands together, dislodging as much as she could and wiping the rest on her apron. With a dust of flour on her hands, she turned the messy concoction onto a board and kneaded with fury.

She had just popped the bread into the oven when Linden came down the stairs, wailing. “Sissy kicked me.”

She sighed and led him back up to the nursery. She found Holly sitting on a child-size rocker in a corner of the room, arms wrapped tightly across her wee chest. She knew Linden was telling on her. She stuck out her tongue.

“Now, now, lassie. Don’t be that way. What’s the trouble?”

Grace discovered that Linden had confiscated Holly’s doll, Miss Margaret, to become a leader in his tin soldier army. “She’s taller than the rest. I need her to see ’em all in battle.”

Hazel had just arrived home, dropped off by the driver the Parkers had hired to take her to a special holiday choir practice at the school. Grace heard Mrs. Parker apologizing that her housekeeper had become too detained to greet him at the door.
Conversation wafted along the flower-papered halls like smoke in a chimney. And apparently Hazel had heard some of the commotion coming from the attic. She appeared in the doorway, hands on wee hips. “Girls don’t fight in the army, stupid.”

“Hey.” Grace grabbed the stubborn lass’s wrist. “No name-calling.”

Hazel wiggled free and joined her sister in sticking out her tongue at their brother. Linden whimpered.

Just when it had been going so well. Perhaps the problem began whenever there were more than two together in the house. Grace was ill equipped to settle such juvenile disputes. She’d never had time for them when she was their age. Perhaps it was not all bad to have struggled for survival and skipped these foolish battles of wills. Despite all that, she had to try. It was her job.

After a time of hapless negotiating, she remembered the bread. “Linden, I’ll help you make a tall general for your army.” She tossed Miss Margaret back to Holly, who caught her by her blonde curls.

Much to her dismay, Grace discovered she would have to start over with the bread.
Pitiful.
What she made looked so unappetizing, Mrs. Parker’s guests would never even taste it. She could not accept failure. Drumming her index finger against her forehead, she thought hard. The bread was still good enough to eat, so she put it aside for the children. Bribing them with food might prove to be advantageous, for now anyway.