Scattered Leaves (14 page)

She paused to look at me and I stopped walking, too.
"You come from a rich family, but you ain't rich right now and you're more alone than I am. girl. You better be listening to all the advice I give you. hear?"
I nodded, I didn't mean for her to think I wasn't listening, but I was thinking about so many other things while she talked. I wondered how I was ever going to visit my mother. Would my father take me in his special car? When would I ever speak to or see Grandmother Emma again? What
if
I hated it here, hated the school? Would my grandmother Emma let my father take me back? Would he want to?
"Now then," she continued as we walked on. "just because your family's scattered and broken, it don't mean you can't be happy and have fun. No one is exactly jealous of my life, but do
I
look like someone who mopes about all day? No," she said, answering for me before I could even think of it. "That's because I know how to look after number one. You know who number one is. right?"
"No," I said,
"Number one is you, girl. You have to be number one to yourself. Forget about everyone else, that brother in that place, your mother, who you can't help now, and your father, too, who ain't doing much to help you anyway. Your great-aunt lives on another planet. You and me ain't really that different. We both got to look out for ourselves."
She stopped again and I stopped. Her eyelids narrowed,
"I don't trust no one," she said. "but I'll take a big chance with you. You want to be more than a best friend? You want to be like my sister? Well?" she snapped.
"Yes," I said, and she smiled.
"Okay, then. We'll be like sisters. Between us there will be no secrets, no lies. That's our motto. Whenever I look at you and you look at me, no matter where we are, we think, no secrets, no lies. Deal?" she asked, holding out her hand.
I
looked at it and then slowly put my hand into hers. She held on to it and whispered. "No secrets, no lies. Say it."
"No secrets, no lies,'" I repeated.
"Sisters protect each other first and worry about everything else second. No matter what, you never tell on me and I never tell on you. We die first. Say it. We die first."
"We die first." "Good."
We walked on in silence, she with a big grin on her face and me worrying about all that I had sworn to do and not to do. Suddenly, we heard her granddad's car horn and saw him pull to the side of the road. He didn't look happy.
"Why did you take that girl on the highway. Alanis? I told you I'd come for you at the mall!" he shouted as we crossed the street to the car.
I thought she had said she'd told him we were walking. Why was he so surprised?
"Stop treating her like a baby, Granddad. And me, too. I think I know how to walk along the side of a highway. Besides, she wanted to see what ifs like here. She got to know her way around. I won't always be hanging around with her. She's only in the third grade."
"One thing you'll never run low on is smart answers. Get in." he ordered.
Alanis flashed a smile at me and opened the rear door. We both got into the rear seat this time.
"Home, please. Mr. Marshall," Alanis told him. He glared at us. "Put on them seat belts!"
We did, and he pulled away from the curb, drove to a place where he could turn around, and did so.
"Mama still home?" Alanis asked him.
"Yeah, she's home. Matter of fact, she just got herself up. I told her to get herself over to the farmhouse and finish cleaning before she thinks of doing anything else today. I told her you'd be on our house as soon as I brought you back. The kitchen needs tending to." he added.
"That chauffeur come back?" she asked him. I perked up. Had Felix returned? Had Grandmother Emma sent him back to take me home after all? Maybe he had told her how run-dawn everything was and she didn't want me living here.
"No, but he'll be back. That's for sure." Lester Marshall said.
"Well. I know you're doing the best you can, Granddad. They can't blame you."
He looked back at her and shook his head.
"Don't sweet-talk me. Alanis. You do your chores and you don't get yourself in no trouble at school this year. I don't want to hear about no cigarettes or you bad-mouthing your teachers or nothing."
"Yes. Granddad."
He grunted. I was sure he would be very angry if he knew what she had just bought. How could she lie to him so easily and quickly? I think she saw the shock in my face. She reached across the seat to squeeze my hand so I would look at her.
"We die first," she whispered.
I bit dawn on my lower lip, looked at her granddad and nodded.
She smiled and looked out the window. When we arrived at the farm, her granddad reminded her about cleaning up the kitchen. She told me she would see me later.
"You know where and when." she added and hurried to her house. Mr. Marshall went to the porch, where he was repairing floorboards, and I went in to look for Great-aunt Frances. I had no trouble finding her. It was her soap opera hour, and she was sprawled on the sofa just as she had been yesterday, her eyes and ears fixed so hard on the television set that she didn't hear me enter or realize I was standing in the doorway. I heard the vacuum cleaner going upstairs and went up to put my school supplies in the bag Great-aunt Frances had given me.
When I entered my bedroom, the first thing I noticed was that all the letters had been taken out of the paper bag and two of them had been taken out of their envelopes. I put the school supplies down and looked at the letters. Would Great-aunt Frances have come into my bedroom and started reading these even before I had? Looking around the room. I noticed that it was cleaner, the furniture dusted and the cobwebs gone. It
was Mae Betty, I thought. She snooped.
I heard a door close down the hallway and looked toward the room reserved for Grandmother Emma. Mae Betty emerged, carrying a fistful of dust rags and a can of same polish. She looked back toward me.
"Make sure you don't leave things lying about your room, and don't leave no wet towels on the bathroom floor," she warned. "I'm not coming up here more than once a week."
"Did you look at my brother's letters?" I asked her.
"I don't know nothing about no brother's letters," she replied and went to the stairway. She glanced back at me and then descended.
Was she telling the truth?
I felt guilty about anyone else reading the letters before
^,
I had. Ian would be very disappointed. I returned to my desk and took them out one by one. The return address on every envelope had been torn off. Had Grandmother Emma done that? How was I going to write back to him? I took the bag and lay back on my bed. I decided I would do nothing else before starting to read his letters. There was no address on the letters themselves, either, but at least they were dated. so I knew which one came first.
.

Dear Jordan,
.
I am sorry I never had the chance to say goodbye to you. I did ask to see you first, but they rushed me out of the house and took me to see a child psychiatrist, Dr. Walker. It didn't take me long to understand what was going on. They didn't realize what I could see, what I could hear, and
what I could smell. I knew almost immediately that Dr. Walker was a praying mantis.

As I sat there and he listened to me, I saw his real body under the disguise. Remember when I showed you a praying mantis and we saw how still it could be for so long? Remember when I explained that it tries to fool other insects by staying so still it's hard to spot? Well, Dr. Walker was that still. He was looking for a way to trap me, but I was very careful and he finally had to move.

He was even more surprised when I told him I knew Miss Harper was a parasite.
"What do you mean?" Dr. Walker asked.
"Specifically," I told him, "she's a sucking louse, one of some 3300 species of wingless creatures of the order of Phthiraptera."
"How do you know this?" he asked.
"She lived off others and had hoped to suck everything possible out of me, out of my sister and even out of Grandmother Emma," I replied.
You should have seen the look on his face. I could see he was very impressed. I told him about the other insects I had seen, especially the hornets who were disguised as policemen. I told him I knew the institution was really an ant farm. He wrote everything down, and then he smiled and told me he and I would talk often.
Of course 1 knew we would. He was hoping I would tell him everything so he could warn the others.
Instead, I'm warning
^-
you. One of these days, someone will come around to see you and ask you questions about me.
Don't answer any questions until they let you speak to me.
Most important, Jordan. Don't let anyone read the letters I write to you. By now, they have surely sent someone to spy. You won't know who it is and you won't be able to tell what he or she is.
Just be cautious and alert.
Your brother Ian
.
I folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. As I did so. I saw that my fingers were trembling. What Ian wrote frightened me. I knew he wasn't joking. Ian rarely told jokes. If he said anything that made other people laugh, it was usually because they didn't understand him. He didn't mean it to be funny; he meant it to be critical.
Things that made other people laugh didn't make him laugh. He barely smiled at something that was supposed to be funny on television, something that would make our father laugh hysterically or even our mother. I would hold back my laugh sometimes and look first at him to see if he thought it was even slightly humorous. It took a lot to get him to go from a smirk to a smile. and I suppose I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times I actually heard the sound of laughter come from his lips.
Despite all that, he never seemed to be particularly sad to me. Things that should have made him unhappy hadn't appeared to bother him at all. No one could ignore people better than Ian could. Up until the moment Miss Harper had taken his private things, he'd acted as if she hadn't been there whenever he'd wanted. I knew that had bothered her more than any complaint I could have made.
If he wasn't being funny in his first letter, then what was he being?
I took out the second letter and unfolded it carefully. Taped to the bottom of a page was what looked like a piece of thread, but next to it he had written: the antennae of a black ant.
.
Dear Jordan,
Let me describe the place I am in. It is not exactly a prison even though there are bars on the windows. They won't let me go outside on my own or when I want to go outside. I can go outside only during exercise hours. They have a limited library here. I've asked for some books, but I don't think they'll get them for me. I can't ask you to try to get them because they won't let them through the mail.
I eat in a very small cafeteria. There are five other boys here, but I haven't spoken to any of them yet. I'm not sure what they are, but I'm studying them carefully.
My room is very small, only about an eighth of the size of the room I had at Grandmother Emma's, if that. There are two windows in the room, neither with curtains. They have black shades. My bed is about a third of the size of the bed I had and the mattress is very hard, as hard as board. There is a weak single ceiling fixture. I've asked for a desk lamp, but no one has brought one. Then you ask for things here, they nod, but no one says yes or no.
I try to get information about Mother. The best I've gotten is she is unchanged. There are no other details. I haven't asked about Father, and from what I gather, he hasn't asked much about me. They tell me nothing about Grandmother Emma, not even "unchanged." I know, however, that she thinks about me. She has hired an attorney and he has come to see me twice already. It's not Mr. Pond. Mr. Pond is a business lawyer. I need a criminal attorney. His name is Jack Cassidy, He asked me to call him Jack instead of Mr. Cassidy. He wants me to think he my pal. He is bald with gray eyebrows and a pinkish nose and lips. I was immediately concerned.
Yesterday, after he left my room, I was able to see him talking to one of the hall monitors, and when the light went on, I saw he had a tail and I realized he was a hairless rat. I should have known by the way his lips twitch and the way he clenches his teeth before he writes something to his long, yellow pad.
I want you to be honest with me," he told me. I can't help you unless you're absolutely honest with me."
"Will you be honest with me?" I replied, and he smiled and said "Of course.
Of course, he won't be. I don't mind being honest with him, however. I would rather everyone know that I know what's going on here.
I am keeping my own notebook and I am making copies of all the letters I send you. Some day, all this will be very valuable and I want you to have it all.
I am not confident about ever getting out of here.
But make no mistake about it, I'm not upset or unhappy. I have a wonderful opportunity.
I can expose them all.
Remember, be extra careful and tell no one any of this.
Your brother Ian
.
I folded this letter up and stuck it back in its envelope. Before I could read another. I heard Greataunt Frances calling to me from the bottom of the stairway. I quickly looked for a place to hide Ian's letters and decided to put them in the corner of the closet floor behind the shoe boxes. Then I hurried out, dawn the hall and to the stairway.
"I thought you were home," Great-aunt Frances said. "Did you get what you needed for school?"
"Yes."
"Good, Come on downstairs and well think about dinner. I have to tell you what happened on my soap opera today, too."
Mae Betty was back in the kitchen washing the floor and mumbling loudly about all the food that had been dropped and things that had been spilled and not wiped up before they'd become sticky and hard. She stuck her head out of the door as I came down the stairs to say. "You would think a blind person lived here!"
Great-aunt Frances only smiled.
"Don't mind her," she whispered. "I heard Lester complain about how lazy his daughter is many times. He swears she was so lazy it took her ten months to give birth to his granddaughter."
Could that be true? I wondered. And then I thought. How could Great-aunt Frances call anyone else lazy? Look at how little she will do, even for herself It helped me understand a little as to why Grandmother Emma was dissatisfied with her, but that surely wasn't enough to ignore her for so many years and let her live like this.
Before I could say or do anything else. Greataunt Frances went into a long speech about her characters on her soap opera. She talked about them as if they'd been real people and not actors pretending. As she described the story, she actually had tears in her eyes.
"I don't know how people can be so mean to each other. Jordan, do you?"
Before I could even think to reply, she went on and on about a different soap opera and the things people had done to each other in that one. Finally, exhausted, she dropped herself to the sofa and took a deep breath. Her face hardened in a way hadn't seen it harden before: her eyes colder, her lips firmer. She looked more like Grandmother Emma, and the childlike softness I had seen in her face evaporated.
"Didn't Emma talk about me at all?" she asked. "Didn't she say anything to you before she sent you here to live?"
I nodded.
"What did she say? Tell me," she demanded.
"She told me you wouldn't hate me and you needed me," I revealed.
She just stared.
"She told me that when I saw her in the hospital just before I came here," I added.
"Nothing else?"
I shook my head. She never really told Ian or me much about Great-aunt Frances. and Mother knew so little about her.
"My name burns her lips, is that it?" she asked with the first sip of anger in her face and voice.
I didn't know how to answer,
"You don't have to answer," she decided, "I know the answer." She looked away, her face still hard, tight.
"Maybe you should go visit her in the hospital now," I suggested.
She turned to me slowly, her eyes widening as she nodded. "I should do that. shouldn't I? I should just surprise her."
"I'll go with you," I offered. "And maybe we can go visit my mother. too."
"Yes, that would be nice. I'll think about it. I'll think about what we should wear. too. It will have to be something very special, and we'll have to do something different with my hair.
I
used to go on car trips all the time. I would go whenever my father would take me, no matter where.
"Emma wouldn't go unless it made sense. 'Why ride to a gas station or to a hardware store?' she would ask me. 'What are you going to look at when you get to the garage or the hardware store? How can you just tag along like a puppy dog?' "
"Maybe you just wanted to go for a ride," I said.
"Of course. No maybe's about it, and my father liked me to be with him. But that wasn't enough for Emma. Nothing I did was right according to Emma. I used to stand in the middle of the room and think. If I turn left, she will complain, and if I turn right, she will complain.' Once, she saw me just standing there and asked me what I was doing. I said. 1 don't know which way to turn. Emma.' "
"What did she say?"
"She said. Turn around and go back to your room and close the door.' Isn't that funny? Emma could be very funny, only she didn't like to be thought of as funny. If I told her she said something funny, she told me I missed the point."
Ian's more like Grandmother Emma than he thinks he is, I thought.
"When would we go visit her and my mother?" I pursued.
"Oh. I don't know. Soon, soon," she said. She didn't sound as positive about it as she first had. "Now then." Great-aunt Frances continued, her face returning to the face I was accustomed to seeing, "let's think about tonight's dinner. I can make spaghetti and meatballs. That's not hard. We still have lots of ice cream for dessert. Is that all right? Is it enough?"
"We always have a salad with our dinner," I said.
"Salad? Oh. yes. I'm sorry I didn't think of it last night."
"I can make a salad for us."
"Oh, could you? Good. You make the salad. I'll cook the spaghetti and meatballs and I'll find Italian music and we'll pretend we're in Italy being serenaded under the window by some handsome young men. We'll look out the window and imagine them below us in the piazza. We'll smile at them, but we won't say anything or do too much of anything to give them hope. We're supposed to tease them. They expect it."
Why did we have to pretend something every time we had dinner? I wondered, but I didn't ask.
Mae Betty came out of the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. "I've done the best I can with that kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. You got to wipe up when you spill something."
"Oh, we surely will," Great-aunt Frances said. "Make sure she does," Mae Betty told me.
"We're going to make a salad," Great-aunt Frances said instead of listening to her. "Do we have tomatoes, lettuce and... what else, Jordan?"
"I like celery, onions, green olives. too."
"Oh, do we have that?"
"I don't know what you have, woman," Mae Betty said. She threw her arms down in frustration and returned to the kitchen. I looked at Great-aunt Frances, who shrugged, and then I followed Mae Betty. She looked in the refrigerator and in the bin by the sink.
"There's onions in there. They look older than me. You got tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. My father must've put it in here recently. I never saw her make a salad. She eats tomatoes like apples and lets it drip down her clothes and all over the chairs, table, floor. I can't imagine what her salad will look like."
"I'11 make the salad," I said.
"You will?"
I nodded, She almost smiled before she started out. She stopped in the doorway and turned back to me. "I heard you went shopping today with that daughter of mine. She steal anything?"
"No," I said, shaking my head, shocked at the question.
"Because if she does and you're with her, they'll blame you, too, you know. Well?"
She didn't steal anything."
"Um," she said, her eyes dark and narrow with disbelief. "She smoke at the mall?"
I shook my head again. Alanis hadn't smoked at the mall. but I was sure I wasn't very convincing,
"She teach you how to lie already?" she asked me. "You don't need to answer, but I'm warning you. You get in trouble 'cause of her, it's still your own fault. I can't be looking after you. and I about gave up looking after her."
I felt my forehead scrunch up. How can a mother not like her own daughter so much? Maybe she saw the question in my face. She shook her head.
"I
do all this work just to keep clothes on her back and food in her stomach because
I
don't have a man to take care of us anymore, and you think she would say thank you, just once? You think she would help on her own without being reminded and chased? You just watch out. That girl will lead you to the Devil himself." she said, waving her finger at me. Then she turned and walked out of the house.
How could a mother speak like that about her own daughter?
I
stood there looking after her. Maybe she was one of Ian's insects.
I
thought, and worried more about her being the one who had read his letters.
I
started to prepare a salad, slicing the tomatoes, onions and the lettuce the way I remembered Nancy would. I didn't find anything to use as a salad dressing. so I just squeezed a lemon over it.
I'd
once seen her do that. I waited for Great-aunt Frances to come in to start making the spaghetti and meatballs, but she didn't.
I
heard the television set again and went to see what she was doing.
"I'll be right there," she said, glancing at me in the doorway. "I just love this movie."
I watched her watching the movie and thought if she could crawl into the television set, she would. She didn't look out the window as much as she looked at that set. I returned to the kitchen, where I waited and waited and began to nibble on the salad. Finally. I went to the pantry to find the box of spaghetti and read the directions to make it myself.
After that I wondered about the meatballs. When I looked in the freezer. I didn't see any meat. And what would be our spaghetti sauce?