Tending to Grace (6 page)

46

A jeep drives up with lights flashing and stops at the mailbox as I walk across the yard. A man reaches out and pushes a couple of letters into the folds of Agatha's smashed metal mailbox. When he sees me, he motions for me to come over.

“How come the old lady never fixes this mailbox?” He chomps down on his cigar and hunts through the box on the seat beside him.

He points to the house. “I've seen you around here a few times. You a relative of hers?”

I nod.

“Well,” he continues, “there's rules about how to keep your mailbox, you know. Tell her.”

He hands me an armload of mail. “Everything's gonna get all wet if she doesn't do something about this.” He shakes his head, puts the jeep into gear, and drives off.

When I walk into the kitchen, Agatha is sorting through dried lentils, pulling out bits of stone.

“Throw it in that bucket over there,” she says, looking up.

“Where?” I look around. “You mean the trash?”

“No, by the stove. Now hurry and put these beans on. If we don't get them on, we won't be having supper.”

“But there m-m-m-might be something in here you need.” I look at the flyer. There's a sale on coffee at the A&P.

“Don't think so.” She pulls a tiny stone out of the lentils and drops it in a cup.

“But there may be bills or s-s-s-s-something.”

She looks up at me, exasperated. “Bills come the first of the month. When there's a need to pay them, I do.”

I sift through the rest of the pile. There's nothing from my mother.

47

“You can't go to t-t-t-town like that,” I snap as Agatha climbs into the truck.

She has topped off her usual attire of overalls and moccasins with the purple hat. She ignores me. The cracked seat in the truck bakes in the heat, and as we drive off and along the road into the next town, it just gets hotter. By the time we climb out of the truck and walk along the sidewalk to the bank, my throat feels as hot as the street.

“I d-d-d-don't see why you just don't write those checks at home and send off the bills like everyone else. Then we wouldn't have to be out here in all this heat.”

“Always done it this way,” she grumbles as she crosses the parking lot. Her moccasins scuff quietly along the hot pavement.

A long line of customers loops around a course set by velvet cords inside the bank. An older man in black-rimmed glasses considers Agatha intently as her feather flies in the breeze of an oversized fan on the floor. When she realizes he's staring at her, she looks up and he looks down at his watch.

Agatha shuffles through her bills as she waits. She doesn't read them; she just fans through them with her hands.

I wait behind. I pick up a bank newsletter from a stack on a table and back up a few paces and bump into a man in a flannel shirt with the arms cut short.

Papers fly out of his hand. “I'm s-s-s . . .” I stop and bend down and pick up a check that has fluttered to the floor and hand it to him.

“Watch what you're doing,” he says, pulling his check from my hand.

“I'm s-s-s . . . ,” I try again.

He looks up from his bills. “What's the matter with you?”

I take a breath and blow it out. “I'm s-s-s-sorry.” I look at the floor.

He shakes his head and walks into the line.

“Next!” the bank clerk says, and Agatha walks to the window. She turns and motions for me to join her. I watch her feather swing as I make my way to the front of the line without looking at the man in the flannel shirt.

“I need your help readin' these,” she whispers. “I ain't got glasses.”

Agatha lays the oil bill, the tax bill, the telephone bill, and the electric bill on the counter and places four blank checks beside them.

“Sure is hot out there, isn't it, Agatha?” the clerk says as she picks up the blank checks and rolls them into her typewriter.

Agatha nods.

The clerk begins typing, and when she finishes, she hands the typed checks back to Agatha.

“You can sign all of these, Mrs. Thornhill. But there's not enough in the account for this one.”

“I'll be skippin' that one for another month, then, Betty.” Agatha stuffs the telephone bill into the pocket of her overalls.

Agatha nods to the man in the flannel shirt as we walk past while I look at my feet. “Pete,” she says. He grumbles something that I can't make out.

“This is a t-terrible amount of work, coming here like this to write bills,” I complain again as we walk out into the heat, despairing that my mother won't be able to call me for another month.

“Always is.” Agatha climbs into the truck and starts the engine. I open the door and climb in beside her. “That's why,” she says, “I was tellin' you I only do it once a month.”

48

“I could use some ice cream,” Agatha says as we back out of the parking space.

She pulls out into traffic and drives about a mile before stopping in front of Hal's Ice Cream.

A long line of mothers and fathers and children stands waiting for takeout. One father in front of us pulls a toddler up into his arms while another child sends a toy truck roaring along the floor.

I stare at the menu hanging on the wall to keep my mind off the waitress, who rushes through her customers. “What can I get you?” she asks when it is our turn. She eyes Agatha's hat and feather.

“Let's see,” says Agatha. “Do you want to order first, Cornelia?” I shake my head quickly and begin turning myself to stone.

“All right, then.” Agatha looks over to see what a young couple is eating. The waitress taps her pencil against her order pad. “Yes, that's it,” Agatha says finally. “I'll have a hot fudge sundae with strawberry ice cream, whipped cream, and nuts. Extra nuts. A large sundae. Extra large.” Agatha chuckles and her feather bobs.

“What will you have?” The waitress has turned to me.

I turn to Agatha. “Order for m-m-m-me,” I whisper.

“No,” she says in a voice three times as loud as mine. “You got to make your own way.” She rustles through her overall pockets, looking for money.

“I don't care who orders, but somebody's got to.” The waitress looks up at the clock.

I take a deep breath.

“C-c-c-c-o ...” The waitress sighs and taps her pencil. I push my foot into the floor, trying to force the sounds out. “C-c-c-c ...” Then I look at the floor.

“Well, make up your mind—I haven't got all day, you know.” The waitress looks away.

“C-c-c-o ...” I stop again.

“Chocolate?” She taps her pencil faster. “Is that what you're trying to say? Chocolate?”

I shake my head miserably. I look up at Agatha. She looks straight at me.

“No. Not ch-ch-ch . . .” The waitress looks at a woman beside us and rolls her eyes.

“Is there something the matter with you?” the waitress asks.

I fold into myself. Where's my mother? I look for her in the crowd.

“Can you please order for this girl?” the waitress asks Agatha.

Agatha shakes her head.

“Strawberry,” I say in a voice so quiet I can hardly hear myself.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” the waitress snaps. “Don't think I don't have enough to do,” she says loud enough for nearly everyone else to hear—and everyone does, I'm sure, because they are staring at me.

In a moment the waitress hands Agatha a sundae the size of a sky-scraper. I lick my cone slowly because I hate strawberry ice cream.

49

At home Agatha carefully signs her checks. She writes like a child, in slow, wobbly handwriting. Then she puts a stamp on each envelope and carries them out to the mailbox.

50

The little girl comes back with another loaf of bread one day, and then, as the beans begin to ripen, she shows up every day and goes straight to the garden, where she helps Agatha pick. Most days she carries a bag filled with green beans and wax beans and zucchini and lettuce and parsley home with her.

They laugh when they garden together. I can hardly believe the girl stays out there so long. When they finish one day, they head for the woods and a while later the girl and Agatha drag another tree into the backyard.

I'm hanging out laundry one day when the girl walks up behind me.

“Have you ever seen one so big?” She laughs delightedly as she holds out a frog the size of one of her boots.

Its bulging eyes look at me without blinking. Its legs hang down, its webbed feet spread.

“Ugh,” I say, holding a towel in front of me.

“Oh, don't worry none,” she says, giggling. “He won't hurt you.” She puts the frog into a canvas bag. “There's a race at the school on Friday. I catched this big guy in the creek across the road. Want to come race him?”

Naaaaah, I think. I shake my head and hang up Agatha's purple T-shirt.

“How come you never talk to the Crow Lady and me or nothing?” She buckles the flap of the bag over the frog. I shrug and hang up some of Agatha's underwear.

“This is really going to be fun, you know. It's a frog race.”

“No th-th-thanks.” I reach over and grab a pair of my socks.

“What can be more fun than racin' a frog?”

I hang the socks on the line, toe to the top. “Cl-cl-cl-climbing that m-m-m-m-mountain.” I nod to the horizon.

“It's far up there. My pa would kill me if I went.” She swings the pack over her shoulders. “I know another mountain that's closer. I'll take you there if you don't tell anyone and if you promise to go to the frog race.”

I consider her offer.

“My name's Bo.” She holds out her hand. I check it for frog goo.

51

“Wh-wh-where's the mountain?” I sputter.

Bo points to a church steeple in the center of town. We have just run most of the three miles here.

“That's no m-m-m-mountain.”

“It is so.” She laughs.

I stand straight and face her. “I r-r-ran all this way, I was expecting a m-m-m-mountain.”

“It is. Don't be mad. We'll see clear to Boston up here.”

Bo runs up the stone steps and pushes the front door open and walks inside. I look behind myself and then follow her. I feel like a burglar.

“It's always open,” she tells me. “For people to come pray.”

We walk into a front hall. Straight ahead, sunlight rushes into the sanctuary through stained glass windows, and a statue of Mary, crowned in roses, watches me. Please don't tell anyone I'm here, I tell her. I don't want to be a hypocrite or a fool.

“There's not much to hold on to up there,” Bo says as she reaches up and climbs onto a ladder that runs up against the back wall and through a hole in the ceiling. “Watch out for the nails. And whatever you do, don't touch that rope. ”A thick rope hangs through the hole and ends in a coil on the floor. “It rings the bell.”

Someone's going to come is all I can think. Bo climbs through the hole in the ceiling and disappears. I take my first step and by the time I have crawled through the first hole and see that I am climbing up through the attic of the church, she has climbed through another hole, up another story. Old hymnbooks and robes for the choir, broken chairs, a box of opened paint cans, and a piano stool with its legs hacked off lie on the floor. Having lived with Agatha all these weeks, I know the difference between a mousetrap and a rat trap. Rat traps lie in a heap near a rolled-up carpet. My arm touches a spiderweb as I wrap my fingers around the ladder rungs and climb.

Next I'm inside a narrow space, almost as wide as our outhouse. Rusted nails poke in from the outside. The wood smells tired. I think of a tinderbox and keep climbing.

“You got to keep moving,” Bo says. “Else you get scared. That's the trick of the whole thing.”

The wood creaks something terrible each time the steeple sways with the wind. I keep looking below me because the creaking sounds as if someone is following.

The steeple rises another story. Bo scurries up through another hole. My legs ache from the climb and my fingers ache from wrapping so tightly around the rungs. Cars whiz past far below. “If you pull that rope, we go deaf,” Bo yells down to me.

When I finally pull myself through another hole, I am flooded by light. A bell the size of our kitchen table hangs silent and still above me. Large windows covered with screens light the space. Bo sits on a wide beam below the bell, her feet hanging down into the emptiness.

“Isn't this the greatest place you've ever been?”

I climb up next to her, grabbing on to a beam above me. My legs hang down and my socks catch the sun. The tower sways, and I grab tighter.

“I watched a guy come fix the bell one day. I watched him climb up. Now I come a lot.” She laughs. “What's your name, anyway?” she asks. “You never told me.”

I pretend I don't hear. I look out the screen closest to me. A newspaper truck dashes past.

“Do you have a name? Of course you do. Everyone has a name. Even the bell has a name. I call him Big Ben. What's yours?”

“Uh-uh-uh.” I tap my finger on my leg, trying to concentrate on my taps instead of what I'm going to say. “C-c-c-c-c-cornelia.”

“Nice name.” Bo looks straight at me. “How come you talk funny sometimes?”

I shrug. Sweat begins to form on the back of my neck.

“I mean, it doesn't sound bad or nothing, just different. Slower or something. I don't mind, though.”

“No?”

“No. Everyone's got something. My pa's got a rotten temper. Me, I can't read too good.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I just don't get it. The letters get all mixed up. There's a summer class at the school, but it costs twenty-five dollars and my pa says he's not paying nothing extra to the school.”

A group of boys walk past us down below. One bounces a ball. We see them, small as beetles.

“How long is the Crow Lady gonna watch you?”

I shrug. “Until my m-m-m-mother comes back. Why do they call her the C-crow Lady?”

“My ma told me that people say that when she was a little girl, they all got so hungry in that house they ate crows. People get wind of something like that, they never let it go, I guess.”

I shrug and tell her Agatha really is kind of a crazy lady and the kids in town probably should hold their breath when they walk past her house. “Why do they do that, anyway?”

“It's silly. It's like not stepping on a crack, something like that. It's really dumb 'cause she's nice to me. And to my ma and the rest of us.”

“I've n-n-n-never seen her do anything but w-w-work in the garden. Or chop trees. What's she d-doing with those trees, anyway?”

“I promised I wouldn't tell.”

Bo giggles. A tractor-trailer downshifts on the road below. The steeple creaks, a long thin backbone rising to the sky. The bell sways silently above me.

I breathe deeply, look up at the bell. I consider for the first time that maybe my speech might not be so terrible, that my throat may not be so wounded after all, and that I may not be alone.