JEWEL (51 page)

Then the clapping and cheering was picked up by the rest of the children, healthy sounds of young people happy at what success they could find.

Mr. White turned to me, smiling. “You see what I mean? This program is certainly a triumph. A far cry from a church parking lot. And a far cry from that dismal start with Miss what’s-her-name.”

“Klausman, ” I said, and he nodded, looked back to the children, Marcella stepping up for her chance now.

But I was looking at his navy suit coat, at how, with his arms crossed, the cuffs of his white shirt poked out the sleeves, the cuff links he had on with some insignia on them, and I remember thinking how this was his own uniform, his identification, the clothes he wore saying simply philanthropist. And suddenly I saw Leston’s white shortsleeve shirt and wing tips and black ties, his uniform, Head of Maintenance, it spoke, and there came to me the picture of my two sons wearing their Royal Crown uniforms, Salesman, and I wondered, too, if James, standing before his high-school Ag. class, didn’t wear a white laboratory coat like my old science teachers at Pearl River Junior College wore, those coats saying Teacher. And I thought of Billie Jean, her white outfit and paper hat tacked high up on her head, Nurse.

I looked out at the children there, Stan doing the same act again with Marcella’s birdie, the birdie arcing high, then falling, falling, and I looked at Brenda Kay, at what she had on, blue cotton shortsleeve blouse, blue slacks to hide her scars, white orthopedic shoes, Retarded daughter.

And finally, I looked down at my own clothes, at the gray and blue plaid dress, buttons down the front, thin little collar, black shoes with a low heel.

Mr. White turned to me again, uncrossed his arms, jammed his hands back into his pockets. Those cuff links’d gone, just disappeared.

“Your husband, I imagine, has family there? In Mississippi.”

“Oh, yes, ” I said, nodded, thought of that photograph of Toxie, his two fingers there at his hip. “Spread around the state. We’ll be seeing them.”

“I want you to know how truly sorry I am to hear this from you, hear of your husband’s choosing to leave, ” he said, and here came his hand to my shoulder again, him on stage as always, his touching me meant to convey how genuine was his emotion.

He said, “I’ve never been married, so I can only imagine how difficult it must be to have to form your own will to someone else’s. It must be tremendously difficult, and for that I admire you. Giving up one’s own will for the judgment of another, ” he said, “even at the risk of sacrificing Brenda Kay’s education.” He stopped, slowly shook his head, then said, “I can only imagine.”

And though I nodded, knew in his words was a kernel of truth this was not the best thing for Brenda Kay another part of me seethe , wanted his hand off my shoulder, his words out of my head. I nodded, while inside I shook my head as hard as I could, You can not imagine, I screamed. You can not.

He smiled, gave my shoulder a gentle shake. He said, “We’ll have a party for you and Brenda Kay before you go.”

I lay awake each night, and each night my mind and the pictures I came up with worked right through the same cycle, first, what new occurrences I could use as ammunition against my husband, crash away at him and his own wrongheaded resolve to make us stay here, even if Brenda Kay’d been so scared by that fish beneath her feet she wouldn’t even dangle her feet off the dock now, wouldn’t even climb into the jonboat Leston’d bought off a friend of Toxie’s. Each night I hoped for more occurrences such as that one in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, even if they’d be at the expense of my baby daughter.

Next came pictures of the life ahead, those pictures prophecies, I knew, the image of Brenda Kay’s name scrawled across the bottom of a picture I might name “Waves at the Beach” as great a glory as I could figure on seeing in my life, a glory I knew would some day be mine.

And lastly there came to me each night that blue and gray plaid dress, my eyes looking down at it, that word Wife and the uniform I knew I’d wear the rest of my days no matter what clothes I had on come to haunt me, me still Lying there awake in bed, still here in Mississippi, still trying to find some way back.

I never knew when or how I fell asleep, only knew that when I awoke each morning I sat straight up in bed, my nightgown soaked with sweat, and shot my eyes round the room in an effort to remember where I was, and who this man in bed next to me was, and why that word Wife still circled me, swirled round me like a fearless ghost in the pale, wet light of dawn on a bayou, outside the open window behind me the lonesome, measured drone of a woodpecker high up in a cypress, this next day in Mississippi already begun. , . f CHAPTER 35.

BUT IT WAS LESTON TO CALL DOWN GOD’S ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS, MY husband to make happen our moving back to California, though he’d no way to know that was what he was doing. On just one day my husband put into motion our lives in a way that led to our leaving this place, and put us back on the narrow path.

One morning in July he woke up before me, and when I sat up in bed he was already at the dresser, pants on, cigarette at his lips. He tucked in the old shirt he had on, then started to buckle the belt, all with his back to me. Sunlight came in from behind me, through that open window, so that his clothes seemed to shine, white in the light as I blinked my eyes, rubbed back the little sleep I’d gotten.

He said, “Taking Brenda Kay fishing. If that’s fine with you.”

He cinched the belt, reached to the dresser for his pocketknife and change. He half-turned to me, smoke snaking up from the cigarette. He blinked at the light shining in on him as he looked at me. “No need to worry, ” he said, and smiled. “You get her dressed, and I’ll entertain her awhile. Give you some time to yourself.” He paused. “Thought maybe, too, we’d take a drive after lunch.”

In his smile was that same confident and powerful man, the one who, the evening he came home and told us he wouldn’t be wearing a gray uniform anymore, had lifted me off my feet, nearly swung me round the kitchen, and for a few minutes while I got myself dressed, then made my way to Brenda Kay’s room, roused her from sleep and led her to the bathroom, there seemed some jagged edge of remorse in me for giving him all the grief I knew I did each day. There’d been the business I’d given him about his knowing there were rays out in the Gulf, for example, or the ten or twelve new mosquito bites Brenda Kay woke up with each morning, me leading her into the kitchen where Leston sipped his coffee and rolled his cigarettes. Then I’d stand his baby daughter in front of him, lift the bottom edge of her nightgown, point out the small red welts.

Each morning I said, “Take a look at these, Leston, ” the red welts on her scarred skin an even deeper red than those about her ankles or arms.

Then I always turned Brenda Kay around, led her right back out the kitchen and to her room before Leston was able to say a word.

Yet still here was my husband, up and out of bed and, I could hear through the bathroom floor, already down in the storeroom under the house, fiddling with his tackle box, making ready, I knew, the old bamboo pole he’d found down there when we’d moved in, fixing right then a bobber to the line, a hook and weight, so that his daughter could fish with him, this same daughter sitting on the toilet and yawning.

Remorse is what I felt, even through the humidity and heat of the day rising up around me. I reached down, reeled off the right number of sheets of toilet paper for Brenda Kay she’d already jammed the toilet four times for using too much of it, the water pressure here nowhere near what it used to be in Manhattan Beach and I smiled at the fact it didn’t matter how fine the plumbing in a house was, if a pipe got plugged, it got plugged.

She finished, and I heard Leston stomp up the porch steps, the screen door bang closed.

“Ready yet? ” he called out from the front room, and Brenda Kay stood, pulled her underdrawers up, flushed the toilet. She watched it like she does, watched it until the water swirled down and disappeared. She looked at me, smiled, proud.

“Daddy’s taking you fishing today, ” I said, and that remorse I was feeling made me smile all the harder, guilt working its way through me.

I said, “You’re going to have a fine time with him. You two catch some fish and I’ll fry it up for supper, all right? ” “Fish? ” she said, and slowly lifted a hand to her head, scratched.

“That’s right.” I turned on the water at the sink, said, “Now let’s wash up first, then we’ll get dressed and you can head out the dock.”

She bent to the sink, put her hands under the water like every morning, but then turned her head, looked up at me. “Fish? ” she said. Her hands were still beneath the water, her eyes steady on me.

He’d never asked her to go before, never showed her a thing about surfcasting, nor crabbing. Nothing. This was a fact I knew, but only now did I see what was different about all this, it was Brenda Kay who’d realized it, too, her eyes on me a question, asking, Is it true?

It hadn’t taken me long to find out how little I could teach Brenda Kay on my own, for all the hours I spent each day working on the alphabet at the kitchen table with her, showing her her name printed out carefully in big block letters on tablet paper, Brenda Kay never once made an effort to write out the letter R. Instead, she dissolved into tears after the first twenty minutes of my urging, my holding her hand and tracing the letters, so that still all she churned out the first two months we were here were rows and rows of letter B’s, and scribble drawings, and collage pictures we made with white glue and pages clipped from the Reader’s Digest.

But that spark she had, the spark I was determined not to let die, was still here, this early morning in July she’d perceived a change in her daddy’s behavior herself, one more piece of evidence that there was hope for her. There was a spark in her eyes, the same spark I believed must have been in the eyes of Mr. White’s baby brother himself, and I thought of how that spark’d been lost, burned out. This was my baby daughter, and I knew that if she were only in the right place and surrounded by the right people, the right activities, she could grow, could find a way to write her name, to figure the number of sheets of toilet paper she needed. She needed those other children around her, needed the teachers, needed the time swinging badminton rackets in order for her to learn.

I called to Leston, “Out in a minute, ” took the bar of soap in my hands, lathered it up hard and fast.

I had sausage already going on the stove, and stood now at the sink filling the coffee pot. I could see the two of them on the dock, the sun above them now so I didn’t have to squint so hard. Leston’s plan was that I’d make a little breakfast, bring it out to them when it was ready, then the three of us could relax awhile outside, watch whatever he or Brenda Kay pulled in.

I finished with the pot, brought it to the stove. It sounded like a fine enough plan to me, but when I went back to the cupboard by the sink for flour for the biscuits the house wasn’t that much of a palace, after all, what with no pantry, food stocked just into shelves, the washing machine planted right here in one corner of the kitchen I glanced out the window to see Brenda Kay, her already given in to swatting at mosquitoes.

Leston said something to her, took hold of her pole and lifted it so that it pointed up, the bobber some ten feet or so out away from the dock. He stood next to her holding his own pole in one hand, he hadn’t yet cast out. He towered over her, and spoke at her. His words, though I couldn’t make them out, were loud, as though she might be hard of hearing. With his free hand he pointed at the water, then made a few quick circles in the air with his fingers.

Brenda Kay said nothing, didn’t nod or otherwise suggest she’d heard any of it. Instead, she stood with her mouth open, her eyes on the water.

Then, slowly, she let the tip of her pole start moving down to the water again, and Leston reached to it, quick brought it back up again.

Brenda Kay swatted at her cheek.

Leston spoke to her again, made the same circles in the air, then bent down close to her, smiled hard at her. Still she wouldn’t look at him.

He looked at her a moment longer, then took a few steps down the dock, bent over a tobacco tin, laced a worm through the end of his hook. He checked the line, cast off from the end of the dock. The worm and hook and bobber dropped to make smooth, clean circles on the morning water out there.

I smiled, reached for the flour tin and the baking powder both, brought them down. Biscuits and sausage it would be for breakfast, nothing heavy. So far it’d been a prosperous day, that look of puzzlement in Brenda Kay’s face enough to keep me going at least the rest of it.

Remorse was gone, I had more evidence now that we needed home, and soon.

All I needed was a way to introduce it to my husband, make him see in the surprise on her face a call for us to head back to the Foundation, to his children and grandchildren.

I poured out the flour, pinched in a little baking powder, mixed it up with a fork, made a hole down the center of the flour to the bottom of the bowl. I tipped a little buttermilk into the center, worked it around with my fingertips, then picked up the ball of it, rolled it between my palms, laid it on the baking pan on the stove.

I had eight or ten of them made when I heard Leston’s voice again, thought maybe he or, if this day was shaping out the way it’d started to so far, maybe Brenda Kay herself’d caught something, and I went to the window, fingers heavy with biscuit dough.

Brenda Kay’s pole was dipped down into the water now, and she was swinging it back and forth, cutting up the water. Then Leston was beside her, and grabbed the pole out of Brenda Kay’s hands. He was talking at her again, this time no smile. She swatted at her cheek once, then at her neck, then her chin, three swats right in a row.

Leston swatted at the back of his neck, waved a hand in front of his face, shooing away mosquitoes. He was still talking to her, two poles in his hands now.

He set his pole down on the dock, pulled her line in, lifted it to show the hook was bare. He stepped over to the tobacco tin, brought up another worm.