Singing Hands (6 page)

I dropped onto all fours, then slowly lowered myself to the hardwood floor. The dressing table was over near the window seat, only a stone's throw away, but before me lay a minefield of obstacles—a stack of old
Ladies' Home Journals,
two hooked throw rugs, a laundry basket full of folded clothes, and Mother's high heels. I started at a creep, stopping every couple of feet to peer in Mother's direction, or when I heard Nell suck in her breath as my foot moved dangerously close to the leaning stack of magazines. But once I had passed the bed and the hooked rugs, I picked up speed, sliding the worn knees of my dungarees along the smooth floorboards.

When I reached the dressing table, I carefully pushed myself up on the pink satin stool and gave a little wave to Nell's cloudy reflection in the old mirror. She swiped her hand at me, telling me to hurry up. But I couldn't rush this last part. Bit by bit I inched the narrow drawer of the vanity open. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw the keys on the ring labeled "3rd floor" resting in their usual place next to Mother's cameo brooch and pairs of clip-on earrings. Graceful as a ballerina, I fished up the key ring with one finger and smoothly slid the drawer shut again. Then, for a final flourish, I turned and jingled the keys at Nell.

"Stop it!" she mouthed, squeezing her small hands into fists and hitting the air.

"Why?" I asked out loud.

Nell froze. Her eyes filled with panic.

"She can't hear us, remember?" I said. I stood perfectly still, calmly dangling the key ring from my finger. "See? She's snoozing away. We just can't make—any—vibrations—" Nell looked as if she might wet her pants. I clapped my free hand over my mouth to hold back a burst of laughter.

"I'm leaving!" she said in a strangled whisper. But just as she started to turn, the doorbell rang.

On its own, the doorbell wouldn't have been much of a problem. But in our house, whenever the bell rang, specially wired light bulbs scattered throughout the first and second floors flashed on and off to let our parents know when someone had come to call. In Mother's room the light bulb happened to be fixed to the wall directly over her bedside table.

Now it was my turn to freeze. I stared at Mother, waiting for her eyes to pop open when the light bulb blinked.

"Get the door!" I whispered frantically to Nell, and dropped to my knees as she turned and tiptoed toward the staircase. With the keys clenched in one hand I shimmied toward the hallway, praying for Mother to stay asleep. I could hear Nell downstairs greeting someone, her voice sounding strangely high and full of cheer.

Just as I reached the side of her bed, Mother stirred. I felt her above me rolling over on her side, and the next thing I knew, her magazine had slid onto my head. I let out a little yelp. And now Nell was coming up the steps with whoever had rung the bell. Mother's door was wide open, and there I was sprawled on the floor in clear view. What else could I do?

I wriggled under the bed.

"What a featherhead," a woman's breathless voice was saying. "I went to work this afternoon to catch up on some accounts, and I must have left my keys sitting right on my desk at the office." It was Mrs. Fernley. It sounded as if she and Nell had stopped on the landing.

"But I'm perplexed," she went on. "In the entire time I've been living here, I never remember your parents keeping the front door locked."

"Oh, that must have been Margaret who locked up," Nell told her. "She's terrified about that escaped convict sneaking in here to kidnap us. You know, the one from Atmore? Birthmark Baines?"

I could feel a drop of sweat trickling down my hairline. Slowly I laid my cheek on the gritty floor and blew at a dust ball that had settled near my nose. Thank goodness the box springs above me had stopped creaking. Mother must have dozed off again. But Nell was
still
stalling on the stairs, probably trying to keep Mrs. Fernley on the landing while I ran for cover.

She rattled on and on. "That's right. Margaret's an awful worrywart, but I guess you can't blame her. People say he could be hiding anywhere in Birmingham. Maybe right in this neighborhood..."

"Oh, I'm sure Margaret needn't worry about this Baines character," Mrs. Fernley said rather impatiently. "This is a very safe neighborhood. I really only lock the door to my room out of habit.... Now, dear, I do hate to disturb your mother, but if you'll please just go and ask her for the duplicate of my key."

"Are you sure you don't want to wait downstairs where it's more comfortable?" Nell asked nervously. "This might take a while. Mother's awfully hard to wake up from her nap sometimes."

"I see," Mrs. Fernley said. "Well, I think I'll just wait for you upstairs. Please apologize to your mother for the interruption."

"Yes. I'll be sure and do that," Nell announced loudly. Then I heard her rush up the stairs ahead of Mrs. Fernley. I could see her legs from my spot under the bed. She had planted herself in front of Mother's doorway.

Once Mrs. Fernley was on her way to the third floor, Nell tiptoed into the bedroom. "Gussie?" she hissed.

I thrust my hand with the keys out from under the bed and jingled them. Nell snatched them away, then scrambled toward the dressing table. Over my head the box springs gave a sudden squeak. I held my breath, waiting for the worst, but Nell must have heard the noise and wheeled around in time to see Mother sitting up in bed.

"Oh, you're awake!" Nell practically shouted. She took a few steps closer so Mother could read her lips. "I was just getting the keys from your drawer for Mrs. Fernley. She's locked herself out of her room."

Mother's stocking feet appeared beside me, resting lightly on the floor. Her voice sounded woozy with sleep, even fuzzier than usual. "Locked out? Why didn't you come get me?"

I knew Nell must be signing as she explained. I could hear the keys jingling. "You were so tired. I didn't want to bother you."

"It's all right," Mother said, getting to her feet. I clenched my arms closer to my body, trying to make myself smaller. "You go take the keys to Mrs. Fernley. I just need to splash some water on my face."

Nell hurried off as Mother shuffled toward the bathroom down the hall. I waited to hear the door close behind her and the rush of water filling the sink. It was simple, almost
too
simple, to crawl out from under the bed, dust myself off, and slip from her room unnoticed. Maybe if it had been more difficult in the end, I would have dropped my far-fetched plan for getting revenge on Margaret. But we had the keys now. We even had Mother's permission to take them!

Yes, there was no doubt about it. The Birthmark Baines dummy was meant to be.

I didn't have second thoughts about my plan until I saw Corporal Homewood staring up at me from the box in Miss Grace's closet. His dark eyes gazed out from the same silver-framed photograph I had caught a glimpse of the first day Miss Grace moved in. I had expected that the picture would be on display, on the dresser or the bedside table. But now, here it was, still nestled in the cardboard carton on top of his old things. No wonder she's hidden the picture away, I thought. It would make her too sad to look at her dead husband's face every day.

Even though it was warm and stuffy in Miss Grace's little room on the third floor, a cold chill prickled along the back of my neck. Still kneeling by the closet, I glanced over my shoulder into the dim corners. I hardly knew Miss Grace, but I could feel her all around me. A faint trace of the rose water she wore hung in the air. And strands of her white-blond hair trailed from the enamel brush sitting on the small table next to her neatly made bed. How perfect they must have looked together, the corporal with his dark hair and eyes, and Miss Grace so small and fair.

I felt a little better once I started trying to make sense of the objects in the room. Kneeling there, I felt like I was finding the lost parts of a jigsaw puzzle. I hadn't known that Miss Grace went to the Alabama School for the Deaf like Daddy did when he was young, but there was her ASD diploma hanging on the wall over her desk. My father paid visits to ASD often to hold chapel services for the students there. He had probably met Miss Grace on one of those trips.

Nell would be sorry she had turned chicken and refused to be my lookout. She was probably flopped on the glider on the front porch now, bored senseless and sulking over how I had snatched the third-floor keys from her hand and called her a yellow-tailed crybaby. I didn't need Nell to stand watch anyway. It was only two o'clock. Miss Grace's parents wouldn't bring her home from Sunday dinner for at least another couple of hours.

I stood up and tiptoed over to the tidy desk for a closer look. It was almost bare except for a pile of blank stationery stacked in the middle with a small wooden paperweight perched on top. I carefully picked up the paperweight and set it down again, admiring the unusual design and the smooth ridges in the wood. It was shaped like a perfect, small hand, pressing whatever was underneath into order.

The only other object on the desk was a framed photograph of a young couple gazing down at a towheaded toddler in her father's arms. The baby girl was wearing a sunsuit and beaming at the camera. Her mother was on the verge of laughing, tickled with some clever thing her child had just done. I bent closer. Was that a picture of Miss Grace with her parents when she was little? I hardly recognized those delighted faces. Miss Grace's parents seemed as cold as stone whenever they came to fetch their daughter on Sunday mornings. Several times I had peeked around the drapes in the parlor to see them sitting at the curb in their long black Oldsmobile, staring blankly ahead until Miss Grace slipped out of the house to meet them.

Once, Mother had joined me at the window to watch over my shoulder as they drove away. "Why don't they ever come up on the porch to say hello?" I had asked.

"They're hearing," Mother had signed. Then she had added another little gesture—a quick brush of her finger under the tip of her nose while she pursed her lips, as if she had just bitten down on something sour. I knew what she meant. Miss Grace's parents were Uppish Hearing. Too high and mighty to try to communicate with simple deaf folks like Mother and Daddy, who lived on the wrong side of town and rented out rooms on the third floor.

"But what about Miss Grace?" I had asked, pushing for as many answers as I could get before Mother grew impatient. "Their own
daughter
is deaf."

Mother had shrugged as she signed. "They can't stop wishing she wasn't."

I had frowned, lifting my hand to fire out more questions. But Mother had already turned away from the window and was rushing off to clear the breakfast dishes from the table.

I moved back to the box of Corporal Homewood's things, feeling a little squeamish as I suddenly remembered my mission: to get a pair of trousers and shoes for the Birthmark Baines dummy. Mrs. Fernley's opera music seeping through the back wall of the closet didn't help to calm my nerves. It was a recording I had never heard before—something wild and frantic, with dueling voices and clashing cymbals that made me think of armies charging into battle. My heart thumped along with the music as I set the corporal's photo aside and fumbled through the box, searching for what I wanted. On the top of the pile were a striped necktie and a fine gray wool suit, with suspenders still buttoned to the pants and traces of a sharp crease running down the front of each leg. Too swanky for Birthmark, I decided, and carefully laid the suit on the floor. Next came a worn baseball mitt and a white sweater with a blue border around the V-neck—the kind I had seen tennis players wearing at Aunt Glo's country club. No help.

A red silk bathrobe. No.

Flannel pajamas. No.

Growing impatient, I yanked out the next piece of clothing in the pile and then caught myself as I slowly realized what I was holding. It was the military jacket Corporal Homewood was wearing in his photograph. My hands tingled as I laid the dark blue jacket in my lap and ran one finger over the gold buttons and the colored military badges still fastened over the breast pocket. An awful thought crept into my mind, and I leaned closer, examining the pocket for holes. He had been shot through the heart. What if this was the jacket he had been wearing?

"Snap out of it, Gussie," I whispered. This was his dress uniform. He would have been wearing soldiers' fatigues on Okinawa. I closed my eyes for a second, then thrust my hand down to the bottom of the box and pulled out the matching pants of the uniform.

I groaned under my breath. They were light blue with red trim. I'd never be able to pull off Birthmark Baines with a pair of marine pants. Feeling defeated, I returned the clothes and the photograph to the box, making sure to get them in the right order. Then I shut the cardboard flaps and shoved the carton back into the closet. I was giving the closet one last look to make sure nothing was out of place when I noticed the stack of shoe boxes on the top shelf.

Shoes!
I had almost forgotten. If I just had some halfway convincing men's shoes to stick out from under Margaret's bed, maybe I could make my trick work after all. I stood on the tips of my toes and pulled down the boxes. Mrs. Fernley's music was getting louder, practically vibrating Miss Grace's clothes hangers on the rod as I lifted the lids on sandals and high-heeled pumps and rain galoshes.

I was tempted to give up after the disappointing set of screwdrivers under the fourth lid, but there was one shoe box left at the far end of the shelf. And now through the wall I could hear a huge cast of singers joining in with the orchestra, their triumphant voices soaring and urging me on to victory. I dove back into the rising cloud of mothball dust and lavender sachet and reached for the last box. My heart sank at first. It felt much too light to hold the heavy leather clodhoppers I was looking for. Just to make sure though, I opened the lid.

Of course I knew it was wrong. Of course I shouldn't have been in the room in the first place. I shouldn't have been digging through a dead soldier's last earthly possessions. And I definitely shouldn't have perched myself on the edge of Miss Grace's bed and pulled the end of the ribbon tying the stack of old letters in the shoe box together. But there were no envelopes hiding the letters, and she was such a mystery to me, and here were all the clues to her lost life with Corporal Homewood at my fingertips.