Dotty’s Suitcase (2 page)

“No danger,” Aunt Martha said wryly. “No danger whatsoever. You look pale. You take your tonic?”

“I am pale. I am always pale. I can't help it. I was born pale and I'll die pale.”

“Most folks do.”

“I have been reading
The Secret Garden,
” Dotty said, to change the subject. “Have you ever read it?”

“Don't believe so. Sounds nice. What's it about?”

“Well, this ugly little girl comes from India where her parents have been killed in a cholera plague,” Dotty said, “and she goes to live with her eccentric uncle in a house on the moors in England. If I ever get my suitcase,” Dotty went on, “that's where I'll go, first thing. To the moors in England. That's where my heart is, that's where I long to go. I think in one of my other lives I was a girl who lived in a cottage on the moors. What do you think you were in your other life, Aunt Martha?”

“Don't talk foolishness, Dotty,” Aunt Martha said sharply. “I am what I am and have always been. This is the only life I've ever had, and when I die, I hope and pray I will go straight to the good Lord and that He'll be gentle with me.”

“When I die,” said Dotty, “the world dies with me.”

“There's too much talk of dying,” Aunt Martha said. “I don't hold with such things. I don't like you saying things like that.”

“I didn't say it,” Dotty said. “I think Emily Dickinson did.”

“I don't know any Emily Dickinson.”

“She was a poet. ‘When I die, the world dies with me.' That's very profound. Think about it. ‘When I die …'”

“That's enough,” Aunt Martha announced firmly. “Time to scrape the carrots and get them in the stew. I'll leave everything ready so when the girls get home you can go ahead and have your supper. Your daddy will be late tonight, so you start without him.”

Dotty went to work on the carrots. “Don't you want to hear any more about
The Secret Garden
?” she asked. “I have a great deal in common with Mary, the girl in the book. As I said, she's ugly.”

“You're not ugly, child,” Aunt Martha protested. “You're a nice-looking girl and bound to get better.”

“I've got nowhere to go but up,” Dotty said, but she was pleased, if not convinced, that her aunt was right and she would indeed get better looking in time.

“You have a very nice smile,” Aunt Martha said, smoothing the hair off Dotty's forehead. “When you think to use it. And your hands and feet are just like your mother's. Long and thin. Don't know where she got those hands and feet. No one else in her family had anything like 'em. They were aristocratic-like. We used to tease her, say she got 'em from the king of the gypsies or someone like that.”

Dotty flung herself at her aunt, almost knocking her off her feet. “King of the gypsies!” she cried. “I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. Why didn't you tell me before? My darling little mother,” Dotty said, dancing around the kitchen and finally plopping down in a chair. “A gypsy queen!”

“Get on with your secret garden story,” her aunt said. “You got my curiosity going.”

“Well, this little girl's name was Mary,” Dotty continued, “and she's very unpleasant, ordering everyone around on account of she's been living in India, as I said, and has always been used to a lot of servants.”

Aunt Martha nodded. “There's them as knows how to treat servants and them as don't. I've had experience with both kinds.”

“Mary had an ayah, you see,” Dotty explained. “‘Ayah' means ‘nurse' in Hindu, and Mary's ayah obeyed her every command. Tied her shoes, brushed her teeth, dressed her, everything. The poor thing didn't know how to do one single thing for herself. And she bossed her old ayah around so she naturally thought she could boss everyone around, even these people in the house on the moors. But the people there wouldn't put up with her for a minute.” Dotty scowled. “It was her uncle's house in Yorkshire, which is in England, you see, and in Yorkshire they weren't used to such terrible manners as Mary had. But it wasn't really her fault she had such bad manners.”

“I don't hold with young folks telling their elders what they should do and not do.” Aunt Martha shook her head disapprovingly. She exchanged her apron for her old gray coat. “That Mary child has to learn that's not right and proper. Someone will have to teach her some manners, and that's all there is to it.” She laid her cheek on the air for Dotty to kiss.

“I best be getting home or Uncle Tom will think something's happened to me.”

“I'll come with you!” Dotty cried. She looked at the clock. It was 5:25, almost time for her favorite program,
The Singing Lady
. She turned on the radio so that when she got home The Singing Lady's voice would be filling the room, almost as if she were there in person, warm, friendly, like a mother's voice might be.

“Don't fuss,” Aunt Martha said. “I can manage alone.”

“I want to fuss!” Dotty cried.

“Well, then, if you're coming, put on something warm. That cape wouldn't keep a flea from freezing,” Aunt Martha ordered, already out the door.

“Anyway”—Dotty followed her, still wrapped in burlap—“this Mary had a very sallow complexion. She'd been sick a lot, you see. ‘Sallow.' That's a word I must use more often.”

“Don't imagine you'll have much call for it,” Aunt Martha commented. “You left the door on the latch, did you? Won't be gone but a minute.”

“Make haste,” said Dotty, “for the night is coming.”

“There's nothing to fear in the night if your conscience is clear,” Aunt Martha said, putting one foot in front of the other as fast as she was able. “When I was a child, I was afraid of the shadows. But now that I'm old, I know there's nothing there. If you're coming, get a move on.” She journeyed down the path so swiftly her skirts belled out, and she moved so rapidly, so smoothly it was as if she wore roller skates.

They traveled silently for a minute or two.

Dotty caught up. “As I was saying, Mary has this sallow complexion and no one likes her because not only is her complexion sallow but also, as I told you, she's very bossy.”

“People shouldn't hold a person's looks against them,” Aunt Martha said as she sped toward home. “A pretty face can hide a heap of sins.”

“But you see, it wasn't just her face, it was her bad disposition,” Dotty said, her breath coming rapidly. Aunt Martha might be old but she was fast on her feet.

In the failing light Dotty could see her aunt nodding. “A bad disposition is the worst thing in the world,” she agreed. “Almost.”

Nothing moved but the wind and the birds and the creatures of the field. The light left the sky and Dotty Fickett shivered.

“I can see your house, Aunt Martha!” she cried. “I'm going back now. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow!”

Aunt Martha lifted her hand in farewell and continued on her way. Dotty turned and raced toward home. Halfway there, she stopped, stamped her feet like an Arabian stallion, and whinnied to the empty sky. Her breath caught sharply in her throat and she whinnied again, half expecting an answering whinny. In an instant the wind died, and in the silence Dotty heard the sound of a door closing. The sound of a door closing in an empty house is a strange and lonely sound.

CHAPTER 3

There was no one there. She was sure of it. I am not afraid. I am not afraid. Olive said if you repeated something many times, you began to believe it. I am not afraid.

Dotty leaned against the house, looking in, ready to run if someone looked out at her. I am an intruder, come to rob this place. As long as I remain on the outside, on the porch, I'll be all right. This I know for a fact.

Inside, the kitchen was the same, untouched, in order. The stew pot was stewing, sending out little puffs of delicious smells from under its lid. Aunt Martha's discarded apron hung in limp disarray on its hook. The kettle sat on the back of the stove, as complacent as a cat. The big old clock in the corner ticked away the silent minutes as it had always done. And on the wall, in its usual place, hung the picture that Dotty loved. It showed a lively, gay young woman squinting into the sun, holding up for the world's inspection a baby. That baby, as hairless as a baby bird not yet out of the nest, was Dotty. Her mother looked so proud. So proud. A short while after the picture had been taken, Dotty's mother had died, leaving her father with a sad heart (“I never saw a man so sad,” Aunt Martha had told Dotty), three little daughters to clothe and feed, a rattly old car, and his hardware store, which provided them with a meager living. Luckily for them, Mr. Fickett's oldest sister, Martha, came to live nearby with her husband, Tom, and things looked up a bit. Martha had no children. She gathered the Fickett girls to her heart, cherishing and scolding them as if they'd been her own. They couldn't have managed without Aunt Martha.

A sneaky blast of wind crept around the corner of the porch and crawled inside Dotty's cape, making her shiver and stamp her feet. If only Olive were here, I would be brave. I know I would, Dotty told herself through chattering teeth.

Dotty hadn't believed Olive was really moving until she saw Mr. Doherty, with the help of Olive's three brothers, load the truck. First came all his carpenter's tools, then Mrs. Doherty's davenport. The davenport, covered in pale silk purchased years ago in Paris by Olive's grandmother, had stuffing hanging down in an abandoned and rather carefree manner, which spoke eloquently to Dotty of past glories.

“If she'd used some good sturdy material in a nice brown or gray,” Aunt Martha had sniffed after she'd been to the Dohertys' for a cup of coffee, “it would've lasted a lifetime.”

Then came the bed. Olive's four-poster bed, the most beautiful bed Dotty had ever seen and probably ever would see. Its slender posts were made of rosewood, rubbed smooth and fine, and it had once boasted a canopy of organdy and lace, Olive told Dotty in hushed tones.

The bed was the family treasure, although only Olive slept in it. It was a three-quarter bed, not wide enough for Mr. and Mrs. Doherty. Mrs. Doherty, though not known for her housekeeping, faithfully polished the bed once a week. All over. Not spit and polish. Everywhere. There was a hand-quilted blue-and-white coverlet, too, to add the final touch of elegance. Olive was not, of course, allowed to sit on her bed, and when Dotty went over after school, they always sat on the floor.

“You're not sitting on the bed, are you?” Mrs. Doherty invariably called out.

“No, Mama,” Olive would answer.

The bed was Olive's inheritance from the same grandmother who had bought silk in Paris and whose picture was everywhere displayed in the Doherty house. The grandmother's face seemed to Dotty to be filled with disdain. She seemed to be saying, “You, out there, you are not as good as I. You are not as rich or as stylish or as anything as I am.” Her eyes, set rather too close together to suit Dotty's taste, had a sly look, and her clothing held her flesh in a tight embrace, which may have been the reason for her somewhat strained smile and her prominent eyes that bulged out in a rather alarming fashion.

But what did it matter what Olive's grandmother looked like? She had handed down the beautiful bed to Olive, and that was what counted. The bed was a symbol of what had once been and would be again.

Olive's grandmother was also said to be widely traveled, which made her more interesting to Dotty than any other thing about her. She had been to any place on the globe anyone would care to mention. And some other places, besides. But Dotty had made a careful study of the many photographs of her displayed in all the rooms (there was even one of her in the kitchen!) and never once had she seen a suitcase. Never once. Not in one photograph.

When Dotty had asked about this lack, Olive had answered airily, “Oh, they have porters to load on the luggage. When you travel on an ocean liner, you don't carry on your own baggage.” Olive had raised her eyebrows and trilled a laugh, unlike her usual laughter, which rocked the walls. “Mercy sakes, no!” she'd said, making Dotty feel like an ignorant peasant. Once in a while, even if they were the best, the truest of friends, Olive gave Dotty a pain. Not often, just once in a while.

An ocean liner. Dotty had been astounded. When she got her suitcase, she'd planned on taking a bus and maybe even a train or two, in addition to the small boat up the Nile she'd mentioned to Jud, but never, in her wildest dreams, had she thought of an ocean liner. New vistas, new possibilities of modes of travel were revealed to her.

Even now, standing on the porch, listening to the soft words, the music and songs coming from the radio, Dotty could see Mrs. Doherty, following close behind the four-poster, wringing her hands, imploring Mr. Doherty and her sons to be careful of the magnificent bed.

“Watch it, Pa!” she'd cried. “Careful of the sides. They're delicate. Boys, think of your grandmother! If anything happens to that bed, she'll come back to haunt us all.” Thinking of the grandmother's face, Dotty shivered deliciously and thought, She will, too.

Finally Mr. Doherty had revved up the family truck, which had not been handed down by the grandmother but might as well have been. It too was an antique with delusions of grandeur.

Dotty could feel Olive's arms squeezing the breath out of her, could hear Olive's voice whispering fiercely in her ear, “You write me, hear? We can't be eternal friends if you don't write.”

“Come along now. It's a long trip and we'd best be going.” Mr. Doherty had shaken Dotty's hand, and Mrs. Doherty had pressed her dry cheek against Dotty's.

“Oh, how I'll miss you!” Olive had cried as the truck took off in a cloud of dust.

“Write to me!” Olive called repeatedly as her voice diminished, then was gone.