Into the Free (18 page)

But meeting Bill Miller is like sticking my finger into an electric socket. The current is immediate and strong, and it sends me spiraling into my own little world, dark and dizzy. Not in a good way, like River’s currents, but in a way that leaves me feeling burned.

I am washing my hands for supper when Bill Miller walks down the hall and stops dead still in front of the restroom door. I look up to find him staring at me.

“You must be Millie,” he says. “Millie Reynolds, right?”

“Yes, sir,” I answer, trying to dry my hands and not get the cast wet. “It’s very nice to meet you. You sure have a beautiful home.” He looks like a banker. He talks like a banker. He even stands like a banker, serious and straight, his chin tilted up just enough to let the whole world know he is better than the rest of us. That he controls our money. Controls us. No wonder Mama never wanted to put our money in a bank.

“Thank you, Millie. It is very nice to meet you.” I don’t like the way he says the word
very.
Then he leans toward me and whispers, “Has anyone ever told you that you resemble your mother?”

He is formal and polite, but he reminds me a bit too much of Dr. Drimble, the psychiatrist who ordered Mama into East.

It’s been six days and Bill Miller doesn’t ever seem to take his eyes off of me, so I do what I do best. I avoid him. Just like I learned to avoid Jack. It’s not difficult, except for suppertime when Diana insists we all sit down together to enjoy a “well-balanced meal and to engage in meaningful conversation.”

Diana’s idea of meaningful conversation usually involves reading the daily prayer list from church and discussing the various reasons each individual on the list needs our special thoughts. I can’t help but think this is all just a devious way to cloak gossip as a good deed. Still, I enjoy watching Diana and Camille spin silver webs to heaven, and I know they mean well. Who knows how many souls have been saved over mashed potatoes and green beans?

Bill Miller isn’t into saving souls. He rarely talks at all. It’s considered rude to discuss business during dinner, and apparently that is all Bill Miller knows how to talk about. That’s what Camille tells me. He seems completely uninterested in anything his wife and daughter discuss. While they chat along happily and engaged, he slips far away, all the while watching my every move. Diana doesn’t seem to notice.

Aside from supper, I stay out of his way. During the day, it’s easy. He’s at the bank, and since Diana won’t allow me to leave the house, I spend most of my time in my bedroom. I was able to leave the wheelchair at the hospital, but I am still not well enough to go to school. Diana’s not home very often either. She has one of the busiest social calendars I could have ever imagined. I can’t figure out when she works as a nurse until Mabel explains to me that she only goes in a few days a month to “keep her feet wet.” While she plays cards and hosts luncheons, I am blessed with long, lovely hours of solitude before Camille returns each day with an afternoon’s worth of talk.

My best company is Mabel, who brings a fresh tray to my room every hour on the hour. Lemonade, sweet tea, cold water with ice cubes—a luxury I’ve never had. I like the way Mabel smiles all the time, and how she hums while she works. She moves from room to room always singing or whistling. I pretend that’s how Mama used to be.

I’m stirring my tea this morning while Mabel dusts the dresser and sings.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

A long ways from home

Sometimes I feel like I’m almos’ gone

Way up in de heab’nly land

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

A long ways from home

There’s praying everywhere

Tears warm my cheeks as Mabel’s voice covers me with comfort. She turns to leave the room and sees me crying. She pauses for a minute, holding her dust cloth at her hip, as if she’s not sure how to react. She looks cautiously into the hall, listens. Then, she turns, puts her cloth down on the nightstand, and sits next to me on the bed. I wipe my tears, but more follow. She pulls me into her warm, strong arms, and I let her hold me. I close my eyes. She sings.

CHAPTER 27

Not only has Mabel heard a lot about me, she’s heard a lot about Mama, too. Between chores each day, she sits and tells me stories she’s heard from her friends—all the housekeepers who delivered laundry to our house. Stories that help me heal. Stories about Mama sneaking eggs into laundry baskets for housekeepers who were down on their luck. Money, when one of the women’s husbands landed himself in jail. And a train ticket, when one of them needed a fast escape—no questions asked.

“Did you ever come to our house?” I ask, trying to remember if Mabel was one of Mama’s many customers. Wondering if I had ever ironed Diana’s shirts.

“Oh, yes,” Mabel answers. “I went quite a bit for a couple of years, when you were just a little thing. Before Diana insisted I handle the laundry myself. You were always in that tree of yours. Or running around in the woods. Up to no good,” she smiles. “Seemed like Mr. Michaels kept a good eye on you though. Him and that rooster.” She laughs, and the thought of Sloth makes me smile. I try to picture Mabel, coming and going with baskets of linens. I got to know a lot of the housekeepers in the later years, when I was the one doing the laundry as Mama slept away her blues.

“Your mama was a kind soul,” Mabel says. “She helped me through a hard time. When my Jeremiah passed. My only baby. He’d just turned seventeen. Barely a man.”

Mabel holds her chin up. Talks strong and proud, but I can tell she’s fighting a whole wall of tears, right behind the straight face. “That’s nothing a mother ever wants to see,” she says. “Her son in a casket.”

There are no words for this, but of course I think of my brother, a baby born blue. I give her a hug and she squeezes me tight.

As days turn into weeks, Mabel’s songs and stories and sympathy slowly bring me back to life. Diana’s home really does serve as a comforting, safe place for me to land, just as she had promised.

If only we didn’t have to go to church. It’s the only time Diana lets me leave the house, and she insists I join their family every Sunday morning. At nine o’clock sharp, we all pile into the third pew to the right. At least it’s not my grandparents’ church, but still, I despise it. It is the longest hour of my week. Sitting on the cold, hard bench, all dressed up in a fancy new dress, acting a certain way to impress the churchgoers. I do as expected and play the part of a “fine young Christian girl.”

But everything about the sermons, the customs, the tithing—it all seems so hypocritical. Especially when the preacher talks about
Indians
and how they worship false gods. Says they will burn in hell for eternity, as their ancestors have done before them. Same goes for Mormons. Jews. Catholics. Of course, he also counts unwed mothers and those who are divorced.
Negroes,
even if they do go to a Christian church. From what I can tell, anyone not white-skinned, baptized, married, and putting money into this very offering plate every Sunday is destined to infinite torture. “Heaven must not be a very big place,” I whisper to Camille. She laughs and Diana gives us a look.

Of course, suicide results in eternal damnation. And consuming alcohol, too. Dancing. Swearing. Even thinking of sin is as bad as committing sin, according to this guy. So, the way I figure it, with Choctaw blood, an alcoholic father, and a mother who used a secret stash of morphine to take her own life, I have no choice but to burn in hell too. Pretty dresses and shiny shoes won’t help me.

Despite all that, some folks still hold out hope to save my soul. My name is on the prayer list every week, which means families like Diana’s are talking about me over supper, lifting me up to the heavens. The rodeo-trash half-breed.

Today, I come home from church and tell Diana I’m tired. I really just want to get out of this dress and ask God if there’s any chance at all for a girl like me. I look at the wedding picture of Jack and Mama. The one Hilda gave me in the hospital. They look so happy. Like they, too, once had hope. What is it that makes a soul feel hopeless? What is it that makes someone want to beat his own wife? Take her own life? I remember the stray, swallowing her puppies, and all I can think is how desperate Mama must have felt. How she must not have known there was any other choice.

I spend the afternoon planning my route to East. I want to visit the place where Mama died. Part of me won’t believe she’s really gone until I go there and see for myself. I want to know what happened to her there. Why couldn’t they save her? Did she really commit suicide? And if so, did she leave me a note? Was she sorry?

I miss her. I wish I could have stopped all of this from happening. And I’m angry at her. How dare she leave me all alone like this?

I try to clear my mind by reading River’s favorite book,
This Side of Paradise
. I read to the end, where Amory is stretched out across the campus grounds. He is crying out loud, shouting,
“I know myself … but that is all.”

I read it again and again, crying, and feeling more lost than ever.

Mabel comes in to check on me, but I send her away. Claim I have a headache and ask for a little time alone. The grief is finally hitting me. Mama. Jack. River. Sloth. Everyone I love is gone, and I miss them all. Before I know it, I’ve cried my way into night, and the house is quiet.

Since my fall, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Every time I finally plunge into an uneasy slumber, the nightmare comes—the one from my childhood with the doctors from East. Except now, instead of locking up everyone in town, I am the only one they take away. Just me, all alone in a cell with claw marks on the walls, blood on my hands, bars on the windows, and nothing but the maddening cackle of Death beside me.

In my dream, I look out the window for my tree, press my ear to the wall for some echo of her song. I scream to the stars. Beg them to bring my broken pieces back to me. But every night, I wake up in a sweat, all alone, with no tree to climb and no song to bring me promise. Not by Mama. Or Mabel. Or the trees.

Tonight, after a rough and frightful fit of sleep, I open my eyes to see I am not in a cell. And I am not alone. I rub my eyes, try to convince myself it’s Sloth’s ghost again, coming to comfort me. But it’s not Sloth. Bill Miller is standing at the foot of my bed.

“Did she ever talk about me?” He speaks with a quiet voice, but not a whisper. I’m still not sure if he is real or part of the nightmare. “Who?” I ask, trying to wake up enough to process what he is saying and why he is here.

“Marie,” he whispers. “Did she ever tell you about me?”

I sit up against the broad mahogany headboard and try to convince myself this isn’t happening. Bill Miller is wearing a cotton robe over his pinstriped pajamas and his hair is ruffled. I’ve never seen him without a suit and tie and slick hair. Standing next to Mama’s box of secrets, he pulls out the ring. Holds it out toward me. “This is mine.”

The moon lights the room through my window. The ticking silver clock on my nightstand reads 3:15 a.m. Bill Miller is staring at my body. I am wearing a nightgown, and my covers have fallen to my waist. I pull the bedspread up to my chin. I want to pull it over my head. I want him to go away.

“It’s yours?” I ask. I am certain he is confused. He must think I’ve stolen the ring. “No, sir. I promise. It’s Mama’s. I would never take anything from you. Never.”

He paces back and forth in slow strides. His moon shadow falls on top of me, and I flinch.

He looks at me as if there is a hole in him, and it’s my obligation to fill it.

“The wedding was planned. We were building a house. I can show it to you. It’s still there. On the hill behind my father’s place. We had everything in line. She wanted four children. Two girls, two boys. She’d already picked out their names.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, certain he’s talking in his sleep.

“We were engaged, Millie. Your mother and I.”

“Mama?” I ask. “You were engaged to Mama?” I feel unsettled. This can’t be happening.

He spins the ring in his hand. “I loved her,” he says. “I could have given her everything.”

Strands of silence stretch between us. How can this be true? And how in the world could I have landed in this house, of all places, with a man who was engaged to marry my mother?

“She just left. No explanation. No apology.”

I brew in stunned silence. Try to soak it in. Bill Miller stares at the wall above me, as if he can see the past, then turns his attention back to me. I want him out of my room. I want out of his house. I am sorry that fate has brought me to his doorstep. Sorry that Diana’s husband is in my bedroom in the middle of the night.

“I don’t believe you,” I argue. “Mama never mentioned anything about this.”

“Never?” he asks, sounding stung.

“Not a word,” I say. “You must be confused. I don’t think you know my mother. She didn’t come to town much.”

“That’s true. Your mother avoided me. Avoided the whole town, but I’ve seen you running around your whole life. Can’t tell you how many times I almost gave you a letter, a message, something. I needed to talk to her. She refused.”

Bill Miller looks broken, and I feel bad that I have hurt him. That Mama hurt him. I wish Mama hadn’t kept so many secrets. I wish I wouldn’t have gone to the rodeo and would have stayed home with Mama instead. I wish I would have listened to her tell me about the other items in the box instead of saying we’d talk when I got home. I wish she hadn’t let the baby blanket, the ring, the memory of Bill Miller send her back in search of the god of sleep.

“Did he beat her?” he asks. “That bull rider?”

I don’t know what to say. I can’t betray Mama and Jack. I stay silent.

“He did. I know he did.”

I stare at the stars. Make a wish for him to go away.

“I loved her, Millie. I would have never hurt her.”

I don’t know what to feel. I’m afraid. I’m shocked. I only half believe what he’s telling me.

I say the only thing I can think to say. Something to make it all better. For both of us. “You know, Mr. Miller,” I break the quiet, “Mama did tell me once, we don’t get to choose who we love.”