How It Happened in Peach Hill (21 page)

“What happened? Who did this to you?”

“He never touched my face before,” said Helen, struggling to make her lips move properly. “It wouldn’t look right on Sunday.”

“He? You mean your father? He hits you? Where was your mother? Why didn’t she stop him?”

“She was drunk,” whispered Helen. “She can’t do anything when she’s drunk.”

“Wilky’s Silky,” I said.

“The best thing she did last night was to pass out on the floor so’d he trip and fall on top of her.” Helen paused to run the tip of her tongue slowly over her lips. “That gave me a minute, so’s I could go to my room. I rammed a chair under the doorknob and prayed to that Lord of his to smite him into cinders.”

“Holy Hell.”

“That’s it exactly.” Helen croaked out a laugh and then winced. “Holy Hell.” She shivered and pulled the shirt tighter around her. “I’ve been skimming the collection, so I’ve got some money, just not all of it.”

“Is that what ticked him off?”

She looked at me, suddenly accusing. “No! It was you! I forgot! It’s your fault. You musta told that creepy rat policeman that I was with you.”

“No, it wasn’t me! I swear, I never would! I think it was Delia. She heard us at school, out on the steps, remember?”

“He came looking for me, poking around, making my father crazy. Daddy’s a small operation, they don’t bother him usually, they never busted up the still or anything.” Helen licked her lips again and kept going. “But this time the copper kept asking me questions with the Rev standing
there, so he knew I’d done something coulda made lots of trouble.”

“I was coming to find you,” I said. “Does it hurt too much to move?”

“He got in one whack at the backs of my knees,” said Helen. “Before I kicked and ran. It’s achy but not so bad. I’m okay to walk, I think.”

“You can lean on me if you need to. Let’s just go, so we’re not so close to your house.”

“Where we going?”

“Your face is a mess. You should go to a doctor.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Who could look after her? Mama was out of the question. Peg was the one. Peg would rinse her and soothe her and patch her. But I was ashamed to realize that although I knew the street Peg lived on, I didn’t know which house was hers. Who else?

“I’ve thought of somewhere.”

“Where we going?”

“To a safe place.”

“Not a doctor!”

“No, I promise.”

“Not your house?”

“Not likely.”

“Don’t touch my bag!”

I jumped back. I’d bumped the bag she had tied around her waist.

“I’m not touching your bag,” I said. “But you’ll have to walk for us to get anywhere. Breathe deeply, or whatever it
takes, because this is a rescue mission.” Shaking with cold and hobbling, we left the Way and shuffled into town.

I knew the alleys well enough to worm through Peach Hill without entering the square or using a main street. We moved slowly, but we kept going. How much of her daddy’s money did she have in that little bag, I wondered, and how much madder would he be if he knew? What was she planning to do with it? But her breaths were scratchy and it wasn’t the time to be asking questions.

There was not a lit window on Crossing Avenue. I hesitated on the pavement, doubting for a moment that I had the right house. Helen sagged against me, and I was afraid she’d faint.

“Come on.” I recognized the bamboo window shade. I pulled Helen up the walk and propped her, like a garden ornament, against the porch railing.

“Thank you, Annie,” she mumbled. “I need to lie down now.”

Nearly too late, I’d remembered something.

“Helen,” I whispered. “After you left the other night? At Mr. Poole’s house?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Well, I—I—” How to make this sound like a reasonable act? “I pretended I hurt myself, falling from the fence. I pretended my brain went funny so I couldn’t tell them anything or give them your name.” Helen’s one good eye was staring at me intently. “So I haven’t been back to school either, since then. Mrs. Newman came to find me and I—I acted loony. So you can’t tell her otherwise, okay?”

“You brought me to Mrs. Newman’s house?” She wobbled, trying to turn around.

“Helen, you have to get fixed up. It’s only for a couple of nights, till we think of something else.”

She nodded, closed her eyes and swayed slightly. I knocked on the window that was set into the door. For too long there was no sound. Helen moaned quietly. I knocked again and pressed my ear against the glass. Suddenly, a light went on above our heads—an electric light suspended from the porch ceiling.

A curtain swished to reveal Old Horse’s sleepy face. I found myself waving and then pointed at Helen. The curtain twitched again and Mrs. Newman peered out. She looked odd with her hair in braids and no pansied hat on top, her mouth an Oh! of bewilderment.

She opened the door at once.

“Heavens!” She stared at Helen in alarm.

“Help,” I bleated, in my idiot voice.

Fussing and hushing, Mrs. Newman and her husband maneuvered us into their home. We laid Helen down on the brown-striped sofa and looked at her injuries under the light. Her face was misshapen, livid, swollen on one side. There was dried blood in a trickle next to her ear. One red welt across the back of her knees was deepening to purple.

Tears popped from my eyes without my meaning to cry. Mrs. Newman, kneeling beside Helen, gave her husband a list. “Warm water, vinegar, a clean sponge, ice chips, gauze …” He hurried out.

“Who did this?” she asked me, very low.

Helen stirred abruptly. “No one,” she mumbled. “I fell down the stairs.”

Mrs. Newman looked at me and raised that eyebrow. I shook my head. She knew.

“Have to go.” I squeezed Helen’s hand and left.

I was running before I noticed, running hard through the dark town, my breath huffing and my heart thudding in my chest. I crossed the square more slowly and crept past the doors of St. Alphonse as the bell rang three times. The wind had died down; the dry leaves lay still on the ground. The windows on Needle Street were black patches under thin moonlight.

I fell asleep without thinking another thought but sprang awake at dawn. It was a moment before I heard the tapping that must have woken me, tiny sharp clicks on the window.

Helen’s battered face peered in, paper white with patches of violet and crimson. I motioned her to the kitchen door and drew her in with the first glimmer of day.

“What are you doing here?”

“I left,” she whispered. “I’m leaving. I came to get you.” She fumbled with the pouch at her waist. “I got money, see? You bring some of yours and we can go together.”

“But … but … what about Mrs. Newman?”

“Aw, Annie, she’s a good lady but not for me. You got anything to eat?”

I cut and buttered two thick slices of bread while I tried to think. Just leave? It seemed so simple. Could it be as simple as that? I felt dizzy, felt a whooshing, in my ears; I was trying to hold a thought too big to think.

I’d left places in a hurry before. I could see it all, like in a moving picture. Helen would wait at the doorway listening in case my mother woke up. I would go to the hall closet and pull out a carpetbag. I’d fetch out the sugar sack and take two bundles of money. In my room, I’d pack a change of clothes, some underthings, a sweater and … what else? What object did I have that I could not bear to leave behind? Helen would hiss from the kitchen, “Pssst! Hurry!” The photograph of my father was out of reach in my mother’s drawer, and it might not even be him. I had no picture of my mother. In the end I’d snatch up my notebook with the little gold pen and toss it into the bag.

Running away …

Now I thought of Mama, surprised to find an empty house; pictured her face as she slowly noticed what else was gone; saw her fuming, and then dismayed to realize that her daughter was a coward and a sneak.

What Mama might think shouldn’t matter … Helen needed me. Or at least, she wanted me enough to ask. Maybe we needed each other. I’d only just found her.

But going with Helen would be running away instead of changing course.

Was that what I wanted? No, I wanted a home, in one place.

Helen watched me.

“You could stay here,” I said. A ridiculous suggestion. “I mean, maybe not here, but near here, somewhere safe—”

Her face wrinkled. “So it’s no? You have the key but you’re staying in the cage?”

“I’m sorry, Helen. I’m … I’m not ready to leave yet. But if you run into trouble … if you ever need help …”

She nodded and blinked. I wrapped the bread in waxed paper and handed it over. Her fingers already gripped the door handle. I felt something rip inside as I watched her shuffle into the alley and away. It was new to me, this feeling, and now I’d had it twice in one week; first when Mama sent Peg away, and here again with Helen. I could only prevent the jagged-edged hole inside me from getting bigger if I stayed very still, if I managed not to breathe or let my head sink down, as it longed to do, between my two sagging shoulders.

No one had ever known me. Peg had loved me, tenderly and loyally, but she’d loved a pretend me. I wouldn’t have said that Helen loved me, but everything Helen knew about Annie Grey was a true thing. That had never happened before. Helen had turned me into a friend.

And into a thief. I opened the sugar sack, leaning against the broken-handled bucket in the pantry. I took out two rolls of bills and carried them to my room. Just a precaution, I thought. The scalloped front of my chest of drawers left an inch-high gap above the floor, too narrow for a broom or anything other than knowing fingers; an ideal bank.

I lay on my bed, too sad to sleep, waiting for the day to move along far enough so that I could get up again and start over, telling the truth from now on.

Eventually, I got hungry and went to the kitchen to make myself the same breakfast I’d given Helen.

I was caught off guard by the sight of Sammy sitting at our kitchen table with a cup of tea and a grin like a present.

“Oh, Annie, dear,” said Mama. “Good morning, sleepyhead. We’ve been waiting.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Eyeball,” as if she were kissing my cheek. I had forgotten, in the surprise of seeing Sammy, that I was an idiot. Sammy hopped up, tipping half his tea into the saucer in his eagerness. Oh, what was Mama up to now? Hadn’t I just resolved No more? But here I was, smack in the path of an unavoidable collision!

“We’re going out for a walk, darling.” Mama spoke carefully to her moronic daughter.

What?

“Why, Mama?” I used a softer version of my dreadful hoot.

“You and me and your little friend, Sam.”

Coat, hat, gloves; they dressed me as if I were a child. The nearly sleepless night was catching up with me. My eyelids felt gravelly, my ears full of fog. Sammy took my hand, gently, like a trainer with a performing bear. I couldn’t understand how he’d gotten there, or why he was happy, or where they were taking me. And even though I had just decided never to be instructed by Mama again, I went along because of Sammy. Mama had selected good bait.

Closing my eyes while we walked was easier than jiggling my eyeball. from Needle Street to Picker’s Lane, onto Main Street and across the square, I glanced down at the curbs, but otherwise I floated, guided by firm hands.

“Here she is!”

“She’s here, look, she’s coming!”

My eyes flew open at the shouts, and my legs froze to the spot. I jerked my hand from Sammy’s and pulled free of Mama’s hold. The steps of St. Alphonse were crowded with people, and as I stared, I realized they were mostly people I knew.

It was the hour of morning traffic, with children gathering before school, people pausing on their way to factories and shops and offices.

“No!” I shook my head in a frenzy of protest.

“Thank you, Sam,” said Mama quickly. “You go on ahead. We’ll be there in just another minute. Oh! And pass out the rest of these!” She handed him a sheaf of papers, artfully announcing the morning’s event: SEE THE IDIOT RESTORED TO REASON!

“He’s a sweet boy,” she said vaguely, watching Sammy dash off at her command.

“What are you thinking?”
I wailed. “I told you no! I said I would not participate in a public healing! I am finished, Mama, done! I will not perform another humiliating pantomime. Why can’t you hear me?”

“We don’t have to make threats or promises about the future,” said Mama, too calmly. “All we need right now is one small miracle in front of an excited audience. You can do that much for me, can’t you, Annie?”

My voice sighed out like air from a bicycle tire. “No, Mama. I can’t do that. I’ve made a vow not to lie anymore, not to trick people or be a sham.”

She laughed, sharply. “Annie, this is not the time. The audience is waiting.”

I didn’t move.

“Your disloyalty is making me very angry, Annie.”

I didn’t blink.

She pursed her lips and tried again. “I need you to assist me, darling.… If you do not go up those stairs and perform that marvelous twitching seizure of yours, I will be compromised beyond repair. What would become of us then? You’re too smart for such silliness, Annie. With that brute of a police officer standing there, you know enough not to put us in danger. So let’s just get this over with, shall we? They’re becoming impatient.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. But I can’t. I won’t. I’m going to tell them the truth and face whatever consequences come our way.”

“I can’t go to prison again, Annie. I’ve never hurt anyone. I do not kill or steal or even cheat, not really. I do my
best to comfort people. I give them something to look forward to. Everyone who comes through my door goes back out with a spark of hope.”

“Everyone except me, Mama,” I whispered. “You never comfort me.”

“Oh, Annie.”

She reached out to put her hands on my shoulders, but I stepped back. It was too late.

“Annie,” she whispered. “Look at all the people waiting. They’ve come because they believe in me, in both of us. They want the best for you, they want you cured. Can’t you give them that?”

I looked toward the crowd to see Sammy waving, urging us on. I knew I had to tell him the truth, but maybe not in front of the whole town. I felt my body relent before my mind had agreed. Mama seized the moment and hurried me along while she could. Sammy, like a little boy with a new wagon, came bounding over to help. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t like holding his hand, because it was under Mama’s command.