Sophie and the Rising Sun (26 page)

The woman’s knock on the leaning screen door of the old house was the last thing the boy heard, because in spite of the sadness of watching the woman walk away from him and the surprise of seeing the magical creature in the brush and the feeling of the wet, wild grasses against his skin and hearing the soft growl of the panther—despite all of these things, the heaviness of his eyelids became too much to bear. His body softened slowly, and he relaxed against the base of the tree, still watching for the beautiful creature-face in the palmettos and with the panther speaking its comforting growl. So he remained where the woman had put him and told him to stay, and despite everything, he drifted away into a deep, sweet sleep and into dreams where the creature-face smiled at him and the panther’s growl was a peaceful lullaby, and where the grass and the trees were soft and dry. And for the rest of the night before that dawn, he did not awaken. Not even when he dreamed human voices, one so familiar and another so foreign to him and a flashlight beam that came wavering toward him from the back of the house. Not even when strange, trembling arms lifted him out of the wet grass and carried him away. Not even when the biscuit dropped from his uncurled fingers and rolled away into the underbrush.

“And why do we keep calling it
him
, is what I want to know.”

“Well, we don’t know, but it sure looks like a
him.”

“You gonna look in that diaper to see for sure?”

“No! We’ll just leave it alone until we get a bath all fixed. It’s too nasty to look, until we can take it all the way off. Now please go on a fix those grits.”

Following the whispered fuss between the two women, the child sensed footsteps retreating and heard a mild and fading grumbling. A door closed softly, and only then did he open his eyes.

The room was dim, despite the fullness of the sunlight on the other side of the drawn shade, and the one finger of sunlight that came through the side of the shade held the promise of a hot summer day ahead. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and searching for the skirt he had watched disappear into the dark. Trying to reach for it, press his face into it.

But there was no skirt. He had not stayed where she told him to stay, so maybe that’s why he couldn’t find the skirt. Tears, far warmer than the long finger of sunlight, tried to come, but he choked, swallowed, pushed the tears away, and made not a sound.

As if she had heard his silent cry, one of the women came back into the room. She was short and round and wore a white chenille bathrobe with a huge peacock woven into the front—a gold, green and blue peacock with a rich crown of delicate feathers on its head. In fact, the peacock seemed to mirror the woman herself, because her head was covered in fine, golden curls, each one a perfect corkscrew. Her curls didn’t stand up as high as the peacock feathers, but they bounced and quivered as she came across the room to the bed where the boy was lying. She gazed at him with sad blue eyes, the curls bobbing softly, then she moved forward, gathering him into her arms. He pushed against her, but she held him, and still, he made not a sound. But, in a breath that was little more than a stifled sob, he inhaled her scent: talcum powder and some aroma like lemons. Or watermelon. And from the soft curls came a perfume he had never known before. Later, he would learn that it was lavender.

Her warm, tender body held him and rocked from side to side, in sadness, in comfort.

Again, he pushed against her, but not quite as hard, and she simply gathered him back, pressing him into her soft warmth.

“There, there,” she crooned, rocking him back and forth. “You’re all right, honey. Don’t you cry now. Fiona’s here, baby. Fiona’s gonna make everything all right. And Glory’s here too, so—you poor, nasty, smelly little thing—don’t you fret! Fiona’s here. Glory’s here.” The words he didn’t understand had the hush of a benediction.

“Glory!” she called over her shoulder. “Put on the kettle and get that washtub ready. We’re gonna wash this child.” To the child, she added softly, “Can’t abide the smell of you another minute, little one!”

When the large, galvanized tub had been put onto the screen porch and half filled with water, Glory lifted the huge kettle from the stove, and using her apron as a protection against the hot handle, she poured the steaming water into the cold water in the tub and swished her hand through it, to check its temperature.

Fiona carried the child to the porch, holding him so that he was mashed securely against the garish peacock on her ample bosom. “That’s good,” Glory pronounced, wiping her wet hand on her apron. The child stood silently while Fiona and Glory started peeling the dirty clothes from him, tugging the dirty shirt over his head and bending his nose in the process. But still, he made not a sound. When they came to the diaper, they struggled against the terrible smell and discovered, to their dismay, that the soiled fabric was firmly adhered to his skin in the back. Discreetly, Glory lifted the front of the diaper away from the child’s bulging stomach and peered into it. “Boy,” she pronounced. “But we already figured that anyway.” Fiona made a few tugs at the stuck fabric in the back of the diaper, bringing forth the first sound he had made—a low whine of anguish.

“Lord have mercy! We’ll have to soak this off him,” Glory pronounced, and the boy looked at her closely, as if he agreed. He studied her dark face—far darker than the face he had seen in the bushes—and breathed in the musky aroma of her body. Her black skin was shining with perspiration as she bent over the tub of water that was to be his bath. Then he studied Fiona again, as well, the pale skin and blonde, corkscrew curls and the faint aroma of lemons from her hands. Silently, those hands lifted him into the warm, soapy water, and while Glory sponged his arms and shoulders, he studied her face—how the whites of her eyes were the color of coffee with milk in it—the way his Mama liked her own coffee. Studying Glory’s face, he could also see his mama’s face as she bent over a steaming cup, blowing into it, and smiling at him.

“It’s too hot, honey,” he heard her golden voice say.

“Hot!” he repeated.

“No, honey,” Fiona soothed him. “It’s not too hot. We wouldn’t put you into a tub if the water was too hot.” Still, Glory reached down and swept her fingers through the water, just to make sure that the boy didn’t have a valid complaint.

“It’s just right,” Glory pronounced, satisfied. So while the boy soaked in the tub of warm water, Fiona began slowly prying the filthy, dried diaper from his tender skin, bit by bit. Once it was off, she dropped it, dripping, into a trashcan and lifted him out of the tub.

“We have to get some fresh water now. Start all over again.”

So they wrapped the child in a towel and dumped the bath water right out onto the floor, where it streamed off under the banisters and fell into the Hydrangea bushes surrounding the porch. Glory poured in fresh water and added another large kettle of steaming hot water from the stove. Again, she swished her hand through it.

“That’s good,” Glory said, and Fiona removed the towel and deposited the child back into the tub. From there, the two women soaped down every inch of him, rubbing his soft skin with their warm hands, scrubbing his matted hair softly with their fingernails, soaping his arms and bloated stomach, cleaning him all the way to the pink toes and the bottoms of his feet, concentrating especially on the grime behind his ears and on the back of his neck and the tender, reddened skin where the diaper had been. And the whole time they bathed him, they murmured rough words of anger at first and glanced at each other, clucking their tongues. Finally, the clucking stopped, and their words became soft and comforting, little whispers that were almost like small songs. They even smiled a little.

“Well, what a handsome little fellow!” Fiona exclaimed. “Who would have thought his hair would be so blonde under all that dirt?” Once again, she lifted him from the tub, and Glory wrapped a clean towel around him.

“What’re we gonna use for clothes to put him in?” Glory asked, with irritation in her voice. “Can’t just let him run around wearing a towel, for Heaven’s sake! And what’re we gonna use for a diaper?”

“I think he’s ‘most too big for diapers,” Fiona mused. “But I’m not sure. We better tear up an old sheet and use that anyway.”

“We still got some of Mr. J. Roy’s old shirts in the closet,” Glory added. “Those’ll do for clothes ‘til we can get him something better. At least he’ll be clean and dry.”

“Yes,” Fiona agreed. “Somebody might as well get some use out of them.” And all the time they were talking, Fiona was rubbing down the small, pink body with a clean towel, and then she got a bottle of hand lotion from her dresser and rubbed the lotion all over him, right up into the edges of his hair, where his neck and ears were bright pink from being scrubbed, and on the reddened bottom where they had peeled away the diaper. The lotion felt smooth and silken on his tender skin, and he liked the aroma of it, the softest perfume-and-soap aroma and the lavender he’d smelled in Fiona’s hair. He rubbed his hands over the lotion she had smoothed on his distended stomach and smelled his fingers.

“Feel lots better, don’t you?” Fiona asked. “Tell you one thing: you sure do
smell
better.” But the child had already forgotten about the glorious scent of the lotion and was gazing through the screen door toward the back yard. He lifted one hand and pointed to the yard, whining softly. Fiona and Glory watched him silently. Then Fiona acknowledged his meaning: “I know. I know.” She crooned. “You want to go look for her, I reckon, but she isn’t there, honey. She isn’t there.”

Glory spoke up. “You gotta say it so he can understand. You gotta say, ‘She’s gone bye-bye.’”

“She’s gone bye-bye,” Fiona repeated, and the child moved his eyes from the door and gazed at her with a solemn expression.

“That’s right,” Fiona said. “Gone bye-bye, honey. So you stay here with us, okay? She’ll come back. You just be good and patient, and she’ll come back.”

“You ought not to tell him that,” Glory whispered. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“It’s okay,” Fiona assured her, but Glory clucked her tongue in disagreement. Then she sighed. “I’ll go get one of them shirts,” she said. “And calamine lotion for the mosquito bites.”

“See?” Fiona said to the child. “It’s going to be all right!” Her voice was bright and musical, as if she were reading a fairy tale to him. He glanced once more toward the screened door and then heaved a small sigh, as if he had finally given in to her words.

They dabbed calamine lotion on the mosquito bites on his legs and arms and then diapered the boy in part of a torn sheet, fastening the makeshift diaper with safety pins.

“Better try to find something like rubber pants to go over that diaper,” Glory suggested. “Else, the minute he wets, everything he’s got on gonna be wet too.”