Tender Graces (27 page)

“What would you like?”

“I don’t care.”

He went to the bookshelf to get his book of plays. I heard Rebekha washing dishes, Andy talking to Bobby, music from Micah’s room, and the air crackling with things nobody was saying.

Daddy opened the book. “I’m pretty tired, Bitty Bug, how about I just read a passage?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Here, from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.” He cleared his throat. “‘Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentary as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream, brief as the lightening in the collied night, that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth; and ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.’” He closed the book and sighed.

I kissed his cheek, went to my room, and shut the door. I changed into a nightgown Rebekha bought for me. It had tiny roses all over it and a ruffle at the bottom. It was girly, but I didn’t mind too much. At least it wasn’t pink. I climbed into bed without brushing my teeth. I heard Rebekha still rattling around in the kitchen, and then the sound of a broom across the floor. I fell asleep and dreamed about Fionadala, Miss Darla, and Grandma Faith. The two women were talking to each other while I stood off to the side, still in my gown. Fionadala was a real live horse and she pawed the ground, nodding her head up and down, snorting. I wanted to ride her, but she ran into the mists. Miss Darla and Grandma turned to me. Behind them, my mountain rose up higher than ever, making a shadow across them. Fionadala was all the way at the top, stamping her foot.

I woke up to a noise in the living room. My glow in the dark clock showed two in the morning. I got out of bed and peeked out my door. Daddy was just then getting off the couch, heading towards his bedroom, walking as if he was a hundred and eight years old. I wanted to call out to him, but my lips glued together and a lump of coal stuck in my throat. Getting back into bed, I lay face up. I didn’t know I had any tears, until I felt just a bit of wet trickle in my ear.

Chapter 23

So, these are his children

In the developed Elvis-and-hamburger-night pictures, we were all grinning like a big sack full of happy. Rebekha looked like one of us kids. I imagined what she was like at my age, in a room with Barbie dolls and hula hoops, at her dresser brushing her hair.

I put the pictures away in a shoebox, and hid them under my bed. When I wandered into the kitchen, Rebekha was cleaning the icebox, wearing Daddy’s old brown sweatshirt and a pair of blue jean britches with a hole in the knee.

“Rebekha?”

“Yes?” She stopped swishing the sponge around and waited. Her eyes were droopy, as if she hadn’t drank enough coffee.

“Do you have pictures of you when you were my age?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t picture you young.” But I could.

She laughed, said, “Thanks a lot,” then stood up and threw the sponge in the sink. “Come on. I have some old photographs stuck in my closet. I’m sick of cleaning anyway.”

I followed her to her room and stood in the doorway after she went in.

“You can come in, Hon.”

I thought how I’d never sat on her floor and watched her dress, put on lipstick, or powder, or Pond’s cold cream.

“You’re welcome in here anytime, unless I have the door closed, then I’d appreciate a knock.” She opened her closet, reached up to push things aside on the shelf.

I looked around. A white bedspread was smoothed without a wrinkle, with a dark green blanket folded at the bottom; the walls were white, with a green and white shag rug on either side of the bed. The bed, chest of drawers, and dresser were dark wood like mine. On the left side of the bed, over a small table with a lamp and a stack of books, was a wedding picture of a happy-gap-toothed-grinned Rebekha and a silly-lopsided-smiling Daddy. There were more books on a bookshelf across the room, and another stack on the floor by the dresser. I never thought before how much Rebekha liked books, just like me.

“You can sit on the bed, if you like.”

I was afraid I’d leave a dent, so I kept standing.

The suits, shirts, and britches were together by color. It made me feel ashamed of the way I threw and stuffed things in my room.

“Aha. Got it.” She placed a wooden box on the bed, smoothing back her hair before opening it. I was excited to see something secret. Something hidden away. Inside, there was a stack of letters with a rubber band around them. Looking at one of the envelopes, I saw Rebekha’s name written in Daddy’s handwriting. She picked up the bundle and held it with two hands, as if she thought the words inside were heavy. “Love letters from your father.” She put those aside, and pulled out a photo album with
My Life
written in dark-blue ink. At the bottom of the box, I saw a framed picture of her parents.

“That’s my parents’ tenth wedding anniversary photograph.” She frowned down at them in all their fancy. Her daddy was smiling without showing any teeth; her momma had a sucked–on-a-lemon look. Earl and Victoria Patterson. We’d visited them only once, before Bobby was born. Earl joked around a lot, but Victoria thought her poop didn’t stink.

Rebekha didn’t have many pictures of her parents around. She had pictures of us in her room, though—all us kids, not just Bobby. We grinned out on her dresser and on the wall. I liked seeing us there, it made me feel as if I belonged. Rebekha put the letters back on top of her parents and closed the box. Picking up the picture album, she said, “Well, let’s go look at these old things over a snack.”

We sat at the table, our shoulders touching as we leaned over the album, with a plate of  chocolate chip cookies, and two glasses of ice-cold milk.

She rubbed her hand over the leather. “Well, let’s see here.” She opened the album.

Rebekha and her momma stared out with their pale skin and that reddish-blond hair. But, Victoria was slitty-eyed and had a poochy pout mouth. As Rebekha turned pages, Victoria’s hair was always the same, whether young or old, it was stiff and flipped up at the ends. She dressed up in almost every picture, never in britches.

Earl was near-bald, even in the wedding pictures, and he was smiling all the time. Most times, his smiles were so big, they didn’t look real. Seemed to me Mr. Patterson didn’t care about dressing, but Mrs. Patterson dressed like it mattered a lot.

Rebekha flipped fast through her life.

“You don’t have to hurry up. I like looking at them.”

“Oh. Well. They’re just old pictures, boring stuff.”

“Did you like being an only child?”

Rebekha put her finger on her chin, staring down at the faces staring back. “It was lonely.”

“Sometimes I want to be an only child when my brothers bug me.”

“We all want what we can’t have I suppose. The different thing, you know?”

“I guess so.” I pointed to a photo of her on a horse with a collie puppy running behind with its tongue slapping around. “Oh! You had a horse and a dog.” I chomped my cookie and slurped my milk and wished I had them, too.

“The horse was Buster Keaton and the pup was Ranger. My mother hated pets, but my father talked her into letting us have a dog. She didn’t consider the horse a pet. I sneaked in a couple of cats, hid them out in the stable. My favorite was Miss Emma the cat.” Rebekha smiled, thinking about her animals, her finger petting the horse’s mane. “Mother never went into the stable; she thought it smelled too bad.”

“I liked the stable that time we visited.”

“Yes, I remember.”

Rebekha grew up in an old plantation house near Thibodaux. There was a tiny slave house in the back that leaned in one direction where the wind had pushed it, trying to knock it down to the ground where it belonged. The slaves were long gone off, but I thought it had ghosts flying around. I was mad that people had to live in a tiny rough house while the other people got to live in the big nice house. It didn’t seem fair just because someone’s skin color was different. When we visited there, I’d pushed on the shack with the wind and the ghosts, but it didn’t fall down.

Rebekha walked inside my head and pulled out my thoughts. “A fancy stable, with a fancy house, and a fancy mother to keep everything fancy. I hated those old slave quarters and all it represented, but my mother thought it was quaint. Quaint!” Her voice sounded like chewing on gravel. “And I blame my mother for Leona’s death. She worked her like a horse. She always called her
the help
. But she was my friend.”

“I liked Leona.”

“I loved her.” She turned the page so hard, it ripped a bit. On the next page were only two photos, one of a little red-haired girl holding a baby and another of a little girl with brown-hair. Rebekha said, “Oh!” and her mouth pulled down, her eyes wide and staring, the same look as the red-haired girl in the picture. She began to turn the page again, but I stopped her.

“Wait. Who are they, Rebekha?”

She didn’t answer for a spell. When she did, her voice was froggy. “That’s me holding my brother, and the other girl is my sister.”

“You have a brother and sister?”

“Yes, but they didn’t survive.”

“They didn’t?”

She hitched a sigh.

“What happened?” I wanted to take back what I said about being an only child then, for I didn’t want anything to happen to my brothers.

“They’re resting side by side on a pretty little hill. Their names were . . . are . . . Laurence and Maria.” She took a sip of her milk, then said, “Laurence died at two weeks old. Maria was born five years before me. I never knew her at all, just by photos.” She pointed to the brown- haired girl who was holding a baby bunny, had pigtails, fat cheeks, and big brown eyes. “Isn’t she like a china doll? She was three when she died.”

I stared at the little girl and I couldn’t picture how it felt to be so little and have to die. I near-whispered, “Why did they die?”

Rebekha stared way off. “A bad trick of the genes, I suppose. One of my mother’s siblings died, too.” She looked at the picture again. “When Maria died, my mother decided not to have any more children. Then I came along, unplanned.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was sick a lot at first, but grew strong. My father wanted me to have a sibling, my mother didn’t. He must have convinced her that everything would work out, since I had lived and thrived.” She stroked her sister’s face. “When Laurence died, too, she never forgave my father. But, she was angry with me, too.”

“Why would she be mad at you? You didn’t do anything.” I thought about Victoria Patterson’s sour face.

“Maybe because I survived, they had Laurence and had to go through losing a child again. I made them feel safe, when they weren’t after all.”

“I don’t get it.”

She shrugged, then turned to face me. “Hon, it’s why I didn’t tell you about Bobby until he was almost born. I thought I’d jinx it. Like if something good happens and I feel wonderful about it, it’ll be taken away from me. But if I ignore it, pretend it doesn’t matter, it’ll all work out. Does that make any sense at all?”

I nodded. It made all kinds of sense.

She pinched her nose. “So long ago.”

“Is that why you’re so sad in the picture with Laurence? Because he’s sick?”

“He was dead. My mother wanted that picture.” Rebekha hurried and flipped to the next page.

I couldn’t even think on how it felt to hold your dead brother while someone took a picture. Thinking about sad little Rebekha with that tiny dead baby in her arms, I had goose pimples raised up all on my arms and my throat felt clogged up with eighty sobbing frogs.

She said, real quiet. “He felt so heavy. It was just the second time I got to hold him. I was surprised. I thought once his spirit left, he’d be lighter, but he wasn’t.”

“Maybe our spirits keep us light?”

“Well, I think you’re a smart girl.” She took a bite of cookie, chewed, swallowed, said, “I can’t imagine why my mother thought it a good idea to take that photograph. I don’t know why I’ve kept it all these years.”

“Because you don’t have another one of your brother?” I finished my cookie.

“Yes, I suppose that’s it.” She drank the rest of her milk, then said, “I worried about Bobby all the time right after he was born—that’s why I quit working full time. I shudder to think how I almost chickened out and we’d never have had our Bobby.”

“Bobby’s okay now, isn’t he?” My stomach did a big flop over. “He’s not going to . . . to  go away?”

“Oh, Hon, no. He’ll be okay; he’s strong like I was.” She touched my shoulder. “When you children came, I was so scared. What if I wasn’t a good mother? You’ve heard all the fairy tales about evil stepmothers.” She laughed one of those cartoon bad-guy laughs and made her fingers claws.

“You aren’t like that.”

“Thank you. We’re a family now, it feels like to me.” She got busy turning the pages of her album. “Look at me. What a gawky girl I was.”

I laughed at her teenager outfits and hair-dos.

“Oh, this was my prom.” She laughed, then said, “Isn’t that dress a pink horror of ruffles and bows? You know, I’m thinking pink is a terrible color, and there I’ve plastered it all over your room just because my mother did that to me.” She looked at me with a crooked grin. “Tell me the truth; the pink is awful, isn’t it?”

“Um, no.” I wanted real bad to say yes.

“I think you’re trying to spare my feelings.” She pulled the picture out of the album and stared at it. “Colin Robicheaux.” She smiled. “You remember those curved stairs at my parents’ place?”

I nodded as I imagined her walking down them, her hair pulled back with pink ribbons. Her legs just shaved with a Sunbeam and she’d missed a few spots. Her dress swished against the new smooth as she smiled down at Colin Robicheaux, his breath taken right away off to the wind by her pretty. They went arm in arm to the prom while her parents waved and blew kisses.

“At the bottom of the stairs, I tripped and fell on my face. My dress hiked up for all to see my undies. Colin laughed.” She snickered, said, “My father was laughing, too. So I sat up, giggling away, with my petticoats all twisted up. My shoes had scuff marks and there was a rip in the ugly dress my mother bought at some oo la la fancy department store.”