My Sister's Hand in Mine (51 page)

Harriet was at her side again almost instantly, looking up at her with a startled expression. Together they returned to the souvenir booth, where Sadie stopped and assumed a slightly bent position as if she were suffering from an abdominal pain.

“What's the trouble?” she heard Harriet asking with concern. “Are you feeling ill?”

Instead of answering Sadie laid her hand heavily on her sister's arm and stared at her with a hunted expression in her eyes.

“Please try not to look so much like a gorilla,” said Harriet in a kind voice, but Sadie, although she recognized the accuracy of this observation (for she could feel very well that she was looking like a gorilla), was powerless to change her expression, at least for a moment or two. “Come with me,” she said finally, grabbing Harriet's hand and pulling her along with almost brutal force. “I've got something to tell you.”

She headed down a narrow path leading into a thickly planted section of the grove, where she thought they were less likely to be disturbed. Harriet followed with such a quick, light step that Sadie felt no pull behind her at all and her sister's hand, folded in her own thick palm, seemed as delicate as the body of a bird. Finally they entered a small clearing where they stopped. Harriet untied a handkerchief from around her neck and mopped her brow. “Gracious!” she said. “It's frightfully hot in here.” She offered the kerchief to Sadie. “I suppose it's because we walked so fast and because the pine trees shut out all the wind.… First I'll sit down and then you must tell me what's wrong.” She stepped over to a felled tree whose length blocked the clearing. Its torn roots were shockingly exposed, whereas the upper trunk and branches lay hidden in the surrounding grove. Harriet sat down; Sadie was about to sit next to her when she noticed a dense swarm of flies near the roots. Automatically she stepped toward them. “Why are they here?” she asked herself—then immediately she spotted the cause, an open can of beans some careless person had deposited inside a small hollow at the base of the trunk. She turned away in disgust and looked at Harriet. Her sister was seated on the fallen tree, her back gracefully erect and her head tilted in a listening attitude. The filtered light imparted to her face an incredibly fragile and youthful look, and Sadie gazed at her with tenderness and wonder. No sound reached them in the clearing, and she realized with a pounding heart that she could no longer postpone telling Harriet why she had come. She could not have wished for a moment more favorable to the accomplishment of her purpose. The stillness in the air, their isolation, the expectant and gentle light in Harriet's eye, all these elements should have combined to give her back her faith—faith in her own powers to persuade Harriet to come home with her and live among them once again, winter and summer alike, as she had always done before. She opened her mouth to speak and doubled over, clutching at her stomach as though an animal were devouring her. Sweat beaded her forehead and she planted her feet wide apart on the ground as if this animal would be born. Though her vision was barred with pain, she saw Harriet's tear-filled eyes, searching hers.

“Let's not go back to the apartment,” Sadie said, hearing her own words as if they issued not from her mouth but from a pit in the ground. “Let's not go back there … let's you and me go out in the world … just the two of us.” A second before covering her face to hide her shame Sadie glimpsed Harriet's eyes, impossibly close to her own, their pupils pointed with a hatred such as she had never seen before.

It seemed to Sadie that it was taking an eternity for her sister to leave. “Go away … go away … or I'll suffocate.” She was moaning the words over and over again, her face buried deep in her hands. “Go away … please go away … I'll suffocate.…” She could not tell, however, whether she was thinking these words or speaking them aloud.

At last she heard Harriet's footstep on the dry branches, as she started out of the clearing. Sadie listened, but although one step followed another, the cracking sound of the dry branches did not grow any fainter as Harriet penetrated farther into the grove. Sadie knew then that this agony she was suffering was itself the dreaded voyage into the world—the very voyage she had always feared Harriet would make. That she herself was making it instead of Harriet did not affect her certainty that this was it.

*   *   *

Sadie stood at the souvenir booth looking at some birchbark canoes. The wind was blowing colder and stronger than it had a while ago, or perhaps it only seemed this way to her, so recently returned from the airless clearing. She did not recall her trip back through the grove; she was conscious only of her haste to buy some souvenirs and to leave. Some chains of paper tacked to the side of the booth as decoration kept flying into her face. The Indian chief was smiling at her from behind the counter of souvenirs.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I'm leaving,” said Sadie, “so I want souvenirs.…”

“Take your choice; you've got birchbark canoes with or without mailing cards attached, Mexican sombrero ashtrays, exhilarating therapeutic pine cushions filled with the regional needles … and banners for a boy's room.”

“There's no boy home,” Sadie said, having caught only these last words.

“How about cushions … or canoes?”

She nodded.

“Which do you want?”

“Both,” she answered quickly.

“How many?”

Sadie closed her eyes. Try as she would she could not count up the members of the family. She could not even reach an approximate figure. “Eleven,” she blurted out finally, in desperation.

“Eleven of each?” he asked raising his eyebrows.

“Yes … yes,” she answered quickly, batting the paper chains out of her face, “eleven of each.”

“You sure don't forget the old folks at home, do you?” he said, beginning to collect the canoes. He made an individual package of each souvenir and then wrapped them all together in coarse brown paper which he bound with thick twine.

Sadie had given him a note and he was punching his money belt for the correct change when her eyes fell on his light, freckled hand. Startled, she shifted her glance from his hand punching the nickel belt to his brick-colored face streaked with purple and vermilion paint. For the first time she noticed his Irish blue eyes. Slowly the hot flush of shame crept along the nape of her neck. It was the same unbearable mortification that she had experienced in the clearing; it spread upward from her neck to the roots of her hair, coloring her face a dark red. That she was ashamed for the Indian this time, and not of her own words, failed to lessen the intensity of her suffering; the boundaries of her pride had never been firmly fixed inside herself. She stared intently at his Irish blue eyes, so oddly light in his brick-colored face. What was it? She was tormented by the sight of an incongruity she couldn't name. All at once she remembered the pavilion and the people dining there; her heart started to pound. “They'll see it,” she said to herself in a panic. “They'll see it and they'll know that I've seen it too.” Somehow this latter possibility was the most perilous of all.

“They must never know I've seen it,” she said, grinding her teeth, and she leaned over the counter, crushing some canoes under her chest. “Quickly,” she whispered. “Go out your little door and meet me back of the booth.…”

A second later she found him there. “Listen!” She clutched his hand. “We must hurry … I didn't mean to see you … I'm sorry … I've been trying not to look at you for years … for years and years and years.…” She gaped at him in horror. “Why are you standing there? We've got to hurry.… They haven't caught me looking at you yet, but we've got to hurry.” She headed for the bridge, leading the Indian behind her. He followed quickly without saying a word.

The water's roar increased in volume as they approached the opposite bank of the chasm, and Sadie found relief in the sound. Once off the bridge she ran as fast as she could along the path leading to the waterfall. The Indian followed close on her heels, his hand resting lightly in her own, as Harriet's had earlier when they'd sped together through the grove. Reaching the waterfall, she edged along the wall of rock until she stood directly behind the water's cascade. With a cry of delight she leaned back in the curve of the wall, insensible to its icy dampness, which penetrated even through the thickness of her woollen coat. She listened to the cataract's deafening roar and her heart almost burst for joy, because she had hidden the Indian safely behind the cascade where he could be neither seen nor heard. She turned around and smiled at him kindly. He too smiled, and she no longer saw in his face any trace of the incongruity that had shocked her so before.

The foaming waters were beautiful to see. Sadie stepped forward, holding her hand out to the Indian.

*   *   *

When Harriet awakened that morning all traces of her earlier victorious mood had vanished. She felt certain that disaster would overtake her before she could start out for Pocahontas Falls. Heavyhearted and with fumbling hands, she set about making her pack. Luncheon with Sadie was an impossible cliff which she did not have the necessary strength to scale. When she came to three round cushions that had to be snapped into their rainproof casings she gave up with a groan and rushed headlong out of her cabin in search of Beryl.

Fortunately Beryl waited table on the second shift and so she found her reading a magazine, with one leg flung over the arm of her chair.

“I can't make my pack,” Harriet said hysterically, bursting into Beryl's cabin without even knocking at the door.

Beryl swung her leg around and got out of her chair, “I'll make your pack,” she said in a calm voice, knocking some tobacco out of her pipe. “I would have come around this morning, but you said last night you wanted to make it alone.”

“It's Sadie,” Harriet complained. “It's that cursed lunch with Sadie. I can't go through with it. I know I can't. I shouldn't have to in the first place. She's not even supposed to be here.… I'm an ass.…”

“To hell with sisters,” said Beryl. “Give 'em all a good swift kick in the pants.”

“She's going to stop me from going on my canoe trip … I know she is.…” Harriet had adopted the whining tone of a little girl.

“No, she isn't,” said Beryl, speaking with authority.

“Why not?” Harriet asked. She looked at Beryl almost wistfully.

“She'd better not try anything…” said Beryl. “Ever hear of jujitsu?” She grunted with satisfaction. “Come on, we'll go make your pack.” She was so pleased with Harriet's new state of dependency that she was rapidly overcoming her original shyness. An hour later she had completed the pack, and Harriet was dressed and ready.

“Will you go with me to the souvenir booth?” she begged the waitress. “I don't want to meet her alone.” She was in a worse state of nerves than ever.

“I'll go with you,” said Beryl, “but let's stop at my cabin on the way so I can change into my uniform. I'm on duty soon.”

They were nearly twenty minutes late arriving at the booth, and Harriet was therefore rather surprised not to see Sadie standing there. “Perhaps she's been here and gone back to the lodge for a minute,” she said to Beryl. “I'll find out.” She walked up to the souvenir counter and questioned the Indian, with whom she was slightly familiar. “Was there a woman waiting here a while ago, Timothy?” she asked.

“A dark middle-aged woman?”

“That's right.”

“She was here for an hour or more,” he said, “never budged from this stall until about fifteen minutes ago.”

“She couldn't have been here an hour!” Harriet argued. “Not my sister.… I told her one-thirty and it's not yet two.”

“Then it wasn't your sister. The woman who was here stayed more than an hour, without moving. I noticed her because it was such a queer-looking thing. I noticed her first from my chair at the bridge and then when I came up here she was still standing by the booth. She must have stood here over an hour.”

“Then it was a different middle-aged woman.”

“That may be,” he agreed, “but anyway, this one left about fifteen minutes ago. After standing all that time she turned around all of a sudden and bought a whole bunch of souvenirs from me … then just when I was punching my belt for the change she said something I couldn't understand—it sounded like Polish—and then she lit out for the bridge before I could give her a penny. That woman's got impulses,” he added with a broad grin. “If she's your sister, I'll give you her change, in case she don't stop here on her way back.… But she sounded to me like a Polak.”

“Beryl,” said Harriet, “run across the bridge and see if Sadie's behind the waterfall. I'm sure this Polish woman wasn't Sadie, but they might both be back there.… If she's not there, we'll look in the lodge.”

*   *   *

When Beryl returned her face was dead white; she stared at Harriet in silence, and even when Harriet finally grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her hard, she would not say anything.

A Day in the Open

In the outskirts of the capital there was a low white house, very much like the other houses around it. The street on which it stood was not paved, as this was a poor section of the city. The door of this particular house, very new and studded with nails, was bolted inside and out. A large room, furnished with some modern chromium chairs, a bar, and an electric record machine, opened onto the empty patio. A fat little Indian boy was seated in one of the chairs, listening to the tune
Good Night, Sweetheart,
which he had just chosen. It was playing at full volume and the little boy was staring very seriously ahead of him at the machine. This was one of the houses owned and run by Señor Kurten, who was half Spanish and half German.