Until She Comes Home (14 page)

“He’ll be terribly upset if you tell him I’ve lied.”

Day 5

T
he next morning, Grace stays home, keeping herself busy in the kitchen as the other ladies travel to Willingham to do their shopping. While the quiet of an empty house gives her too much time to think, it’s easier to tolerate than the fear of boarding the morning bus and sitting next to one of the ladies, most likely Julia. As she scrubs her sink and cleans out her nearly empty refrigerator, Grace listens for the twins. The other children in the neighborhood are too old to run through the back alley or play in the front yards. They are teenagers with cars and jobs, too old to be shooed off the street by the likes of Grace. When ten o’clock draws near, she hears the squeal of a rusted chair being unfolded in the alley, but no sign of the girls. Perhaps the threat of Orin Schofield scared them inside, or perhaps it’s the heavy drizzle after so many dry, hot days that has kept them behind closed doors. By the time Grace combs out her hair, dresses for the day, and boards the midday bus bound for Willingham, Julia will have finished her shopping and returned home. It’s the best Grace can do to keep the girls safe.

No ladies rode the bus at the later hour, and on Willingham, none scurry from store to store. They will be at the church, where they’ll stay all afternoon and evening, ignoring the shifts Malina assigned. And so Willingham Avenue is quiet except for the sounds of the factory—the pounding and drumming as the men stamp out the parts, metal on metal, and sharp edges being rounded off and made smooth. The gray sky hangs low, and rain drips off Grace’s pillbox hat and down her cheeks and nose.

“You are being soaked to the bone,” Mrs. Nowack says when Grace walks through the bakery’s door. As she normally does, Mrs. Nowack wears a full gray skirt that skims the floor and a bib apron tied around her thick waist. She squints at Grace through small, round glasses and frowns, which causes her wrinkled cheeks to plump up and her thin lips to draw in on themselves. “Come, child, get out of that weather.”

Inside the small shop, the air is gritty. It’s flour, and sugar, too, that cloud the air. While Mrs. Nowack calls out for someone to bring a dry towel, Grace removes the pins that secure her hat and adjusts the hair on the crown of her head so she’s sure that spot won’t show. From behind a black curtain that separates the back room from the front of the shop, a young colored woman appears, a white towel hung from one arm. She wears slim red pants that nip in at her ankles and a white sleeveless blouse with a slender lapel. Her dark hair is round and thick, too wide for her narrow face. The girl gives Mrs. Nowack the towel and glances in Grace’s direction before slipping behind the curtain.

“You are coming late today, yes?” After handing Grace the towel, Mrs. Nowack removes her glasses, rubs the lenses with an apron corner, and puts them on again. She dips her head and studies Grace over the tops of the lenses. “What is it I can be getting for you?”

“I’d like to make pierogi,” Grace says, patting her face and neck with the soft towel. No matter how upset James might be with her for leaving the house, Mother always says idle hands are troubled hands. “For the bake sale. I’m preparing them this year and have never had much luck on my own. I was hoping you might teach me.”

Mrs. Nowack slips behind her counter, her gray skirt swinging from side to side and making her appear to float. “You are seeing I have little else to do, yes?” She lays both hands on top of the glass shelves that run the length of the store. “The others, they are not shopping here anymore. This is what they are telling me.”

Tattered signs, some written in English, others in Polish, hang from shelves that are empty except for a few trays of braided bread. The wide loaves, knotted and golden brown, glisten where they were brushed with egg whites. While James has told Grace little of the search for Elizabeth and nothing of the dead woman from the alley, he was willing to share the ladies’ plan to boycott Mrs. Nowack.

“I’m sorry,” Grace says. “I only heard. I wasn’t here that day.”

Mrs. Nowack waves away the unpleasantness with one plump hand. “Come,” she says, holding open the black curtain that leads to the back of the shop. “You are having lunch with us and then we will be making pierogi.”

This is where Mrs. Nowack does her baking. Her double-stacked oven shines and the burners on the stovetop have been freshly lined with aluminum foil. Large bags of flour sit on the bottom rung of the wooden shelves pushed along the far wall, and on the higher rungs, square jars of spices sit side by side, their black-and-white labels perfectly aligned. Near the back door, silver pots and pans have been stacked and left to dry on the counter. Grace follows Mrs. Nowack through the small room, out the back door, and onto a narrow concrete patio. The rain has stopped, and for now the air is cool and light, though probably not for long.

“You can be sitting here,” Mrs. Nowack says, nudging Grace toward a wooden picnic table. “Go ahead. There is being plenty of room. I will be having lunch out soon.”

While Mrs. Nowack returns to the bakery to fetch lunch, Grace stands in the center of the concrete patio, wraps her arms around her chest so that they rest on her large stomach, and stares straight ahead. Three colored women already sit at the picnic table. One of them sits backward on a damp bench, her legs extended, one ankle crossed over the other. A strong brow shades her wide-set eyes and balances her square jaw. Long, thin braids hang over her shoulders and down her back. A small colored bead is threaded on the end of each, so that when she moves they must knock against one another and sound much like a wind chime. A second woman sits on the bench opposite the first, her legs tucked under the table in a more proper fashion. Plump brown rolls pop out of the deep, rounded neckline of her red blouse. Whereas the face of the first woman is defined by sharp angles, the second woman has round cheeks and a small dimple in the center of her chin. The last woman at the table is standing, one foot propped up on the bench. She is the one who brought Grace a dry towel. Her face is shaped like a perfect heart—large brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a tapered chin. Mrs. Nowack had called her Cassia. She is slender like a girl, but she’s not a girl. A black baby carriage, covered with a yellow quilt, stands next to her.

•   •   •

Steady thumping echoes up and down Alder Avenue, disrupting the typically quiet lunch hour. With the break in the rain, someone has decided to pound her rugs. Malina wraps both hands around the water spigot’s red handle, gives two turns, and grabs the end of the hose. Cold water spills from the brass coupling and splashes on her nylons. Tiny droplets dribble down her legs and into her shoes. Now, she’ll have to change her clothes before going to the church. Had they gotten a better dose of rain, she’d have skipped the watering, but it was scarcely enough to discolor her concrete walk. She drags the hose to the front yard and folds one thumb over the coupling so the water squirts in a narrow fan, soaking her snapdragons. Three of the towering plants, all of them pink, have been crushed as if by a large boot or perhaps two pairs of small white sneakers.

Near the street, the thumping is louder. It’s Betty Lawson. Standing on her porch, she swings a broom as if it were a baseball bat and pounds the dust from her rugs. Across Alder Avenue, those twins stand outside Julia’s house, both of them twirling ridiculous hoops around their waists. One of the twins is quite good at it, her hips moving smoothly, the large hoop swinging freely around her waist. The other moves with jerky motions and her hoop sags, dropping first to her knees and then to her feet. Tossing aside the hose, Malina shouts out that the twins should get themselves back inside and keep their grubby feet away from her flowers. After all that nonsense with Orin Schofield, they should know better. Then she stomps her soggy white shoes and hurries toward Betty’s house.

“Hello, Betty,” Malina shouts. “Did you see the twins? What will these kids think of next?”

Betty leans on her corn-bristled broom, one hand on her hip, her elbow cocked out to the side. She has yet to comb out her pin curls from her dull brown hair and is still dressed in a lavender duster. Three small rugs, all of them multicolored and braided, hang over the porch’s railing. Without answering Malina’s greeting, Betty lifts the broom by its wooden handle and slaps it against the rug hanging closest to Malina. A cloud of dust flies into the air.

“I’ll be leaving for the church shortly,” Malina says. “Can I run any errands for you? Maybe you need something for the little one.”

“What is it that you want, Malina?” Betty says.

“Very well,” Malina says, backing down the sidewalk in case Betty should take another swipe at the rugs. A few doors down, the twins still twirl their hoops. Every so often, one of them falls and rattles on the concrete. When next she gets a good look at those twins, she’ll check the bottom of their white sneakers for pink stains. “It’s your husband.”

“Yes.”

“I’d rather prefer he not drag me into his troubles.”

“And I’d rather prefer my husband not go to jail.” Betty lifts her broom overhead and smacks the next rug.

“Don’t be silly,” Malina says. “No one is going to jail. I’d simply prefer he not insist he saw me driving about after dark.”

Betty walks to the edge of her porch so her feet hang over the first stair. “Do you have any idea the trouble you have caused? Do you have any idea what people are saying?”

“I hardly think I’m to blame for your husband’s troubles.”

“Why won’t you tell the truth? You saw Jerry that night, standing right here. You saw him, even waved at him.”

“I can’t say something that isn’t true. It’s really quite important Jerry make clear to Mr. Herze that he was mistaken. You’re both mistaken. It’s quite important Jerry tell Mr. Herze I was not the one he saw on the street.”

Betty hugs the broom handle to her chest and angles her head off to one side. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” she says, dropping the bristled end of the broom to the first stair and in one motion sweeping it clean. “You’re afraid of your own husband.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Malina says. “I’ve every reason to ask that Jerry stop spreading lies about me.”

“Go home, Malina,” Betty says, dropping her broom to the next stair.

Malina backs farther down the sidewalk. The clouds have thinned and in some spots, given way to clear sky. The sun breaks through and warms her face and arms. The bright light does her no justice. Her skin has thinned in recent years. It used to sparkle like the skin on those two girls. Almond-colored freckles sparkle on the girls’ smooth skin and their blue eyes shine. Malina has always wished for blue eyes. Hers are a rather ordinary brown. In her younger days, people often complimented her perfect skin. Like silk, they would sometimes say, or satin. Which is more lovely? She was careless in those early days. She knows better now. It was a silly lie. After so many years, she knows better. At the sound of a car engine, Malina whirls around, but it’s not Mr. Herze. Two houses down, those twins still twirl their hoops. One of them counts out loud and doesn’t stop until the hoop falls to her feet. When Malina turns back, Betty Lawson is leaning on the broom and slowly shaking her head.

“My husband might have a weak character,” Betty says, “but he’s never given me cause to fear him. Other people saw my Jerry that night, and they’ve been good enough to tell the truth. I guess it’s only right I warn you. The police said you lacked credibility. That’s what they said of your account. That means they know you were lying. That means your Warren knows too.”

•   •   •

“You just going to stand there?” the Negro woman with the rounded red neckline says to Grace. The others call her Sylvie. She has wide shoulders, almost like a man’s, and if she were to stand she’d be a full head taller than Grace. “Come. Sit.”

Clutching her handbag to her side, Grace tiptoes through the thin layer of mud left by the rain and slides onto the end of the nearest bench. She places her bag in her lap and crosses her hands on the tabletop, which is rough where long slivers of it have torn or rotted away. Sitting opposite Grace, the woman who wears the plunging red blouse picks at the soft wood and flicks bits of it onto the ground.

“Bet that keeps breaking open on you, doesn’t it?” The large woman stops picking at the wood, brushes her hands together, and points at Grace’s lip. The woman has painted tiny white crescents over the root of each fingernail. They glitter like rhinestones on the tips of her dark fingers.

Grace lifts a hand to cover her lip. Studying Grace’s face and pregnant stomach, the woman—Sylvie—leans back when Mrs. Nowack reappears with a plate and sets it in front of her. With her fork, Sylvie pokes at the hollowed-out pepper stuffed with ground beef and stares at Grace while Mrs. Nowack delivers three more plates.

The woman sitting next to Grace finally swings her feet around and tucks her legs under the table. Just as Grace thought they would, the small beads on the ends of the woman’s braids clatter like a chime when she moves. Mrs. Nowack calls her Lucille. She leans forward to get a look at Grace’s split lip but says nothing.

“Your man do it to you?” It’s Cassia, the one who brought Grace the towel. She bends over the carriage, peeks under the thin quilt. “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” she says, looking again at Grace. Thick black lashes frame the girl’s brown eyes.

“We bumped heads,” Grace says. “Mother and I.”

Cassia lowers the corner of the quilt but continues to rest one hand on the carriage’s handle. “I know a lip that’s been split by the back of a hand,” she says.

Lucille leans forward again, squints as if trying to get a better look, and then nods.

“It’s all right,” Sylvie says, laying aside her fork, tilting her face toward the sky, and stretching her broad shoulders. The rolls of her chest rise out of her rounded neckline. “Ain’t nothing we don’t already know about.”

Cassia slides her fingers off the carriage’s handle, reaches across the table and, with one hand, cups Grace’s chin. With the other, she touches the tender spot on Grace’s upper lip.

“Not so bad,” she says.

Trailing two fingers up the side of Grace’s face, Cassia brushes back Grace’s bangs as if inspecting her for hidden cuts and bruises. The tiny hands are like a child’s, frail and delicate, Grace barely able to feel them. Finding nothing, Cassia smooths Grace’s hair into place. Grace leans back until her chin slips from the tender hand.