The Beresfords (3 page)

“What are you doing, Frannie? Just leave them in the hamper, and Paola will do them later.”

I dumped two heaping scoops of detergent into the machine, but when Jonathan leaned over to look in, he straightened quickly, and I knew he detected the sharp smell of pee. Shamed, I burst into tears and would have run away if he hadn’t been between me and the door.

“Don’t cry, Frannie,” he said. “Every little kid wets the bed once in a while.”

I only shook my head. I
never
wet the bed. Not once since I was three and Mom had gotten so angry she smashed her beer bottle against the bed rail and made me clean the whole mess up—the broken glass, the beer, the soiled sheets. “I don’t wet the bed,” I sobbed.

“But then—well—” I knew Jonathan heard my sincerity but didn’t know what to do with the evidence before his eyes and nose.

“I don’t wet the bed,” I said again. “But it was raining hard and there was thunder last night, and I was too—too s-scared to go out to the bathroom.”

“O-o-
ohh
.” He understood instantly.

To his credit, he promptly offered to exchange bedrooms with me, but when he suggested it to Aunt Terri, she wouldn’t hear of it. “Move all that furniture and redecorate? Forget it, Jonathan! Wasn’t it enough work for your father to create that room over the garage in the first place and for me to pick the finishes and decorate it? Just be grateful, Frannie. No boogey man’s going to get you out there. And for heaven’s sake, remember to go to the bathroom last thing before you go to bed. No more drinks for you after eight o’clock.”

Even had she not given me the advice, I would have done it on my own. As it was, my sleep became restless. A night rarely passed when I wasn’t up at least once to pee, whether I needed to or not. I never wet the bed again, and the garage room continued mine for another couple years until Tom decided it would be a whole lot easier for him to sneak out nights if he didn’t have to crawl through his window and shinny along the edge of the porch roof, hoping it wouldn’t give any loud cracks.

But I was grateful afterward for my brief exile in the garage because it gave me Jonathan, my first friend. An ally and a guide in a strange new world.

When I first came to the Beresfords, they found me a constant source of wonder. “You’ve never had kiwifruit?” “Aunt Terri, she’s never had kiwis!
Or
pesto
or
sushi
or
salmon!” “You girls have been very fortunate to be exposed to such a variety of healthy, nutritious food—” “Dad, do you mean it, that
Frannie’s
never been to school?” “Not even kindergarten, and she’s already six-and-a-half.” “She’ll be so dumb.” “She’ll be so far behind!” “There’s so much she doesn’t know. Aunt Terri, Frannie didn’t know what the Trinity was—” And so on.

My mother never bothered to send me to school, changing apartments whenever someone hassled her about it, so that, at the age of nearly seven, even Aunt Terri thought me too old for kindergarten and grumblingly recommended to Uncle Paul that they hire a private tutor for the first year. If all went according to plan, I could go to first grade the following fall, only a year behind my age group. I learned embarrassment of my age and ignorance quickly, but to my girl cousins my existence was mortifying. Julie hated the way I would perch on the porch steps when she and her friends came walking home from Mission Elementary. Taller than her, all angles and elbows, my wispy white hair straggling across my bony shoulders, I looked like the scarecrow child I was. She told her friends I was her stepmother’s niece and “staying with them for a while,” which was why I wasn’t enrolled at Mission. Rachel the fourth grader took a different tack: she called me her “short bus cousin” who needed special tutoring for “retardation.” Both girls feared I waited on the porch every afternoon because I wanted to play with them and their friends, but it wasn’t the case. I was waiting for Jonathan.

It was not that my other cousins were unkind, but Rachel and Julie were so alike, so close in age and interests, that there was rarely room for a third. (And
such
a third!) I would do, when they needed someone to be the child in games of House or “it” when they played tag; otherwise
they left me to my shyness and odd ways. Tom largely ignored me, a boy in junior high having little in common with a held-back kindergartener, except for the occasions when he couldn’t resist teasing me for my backwardness, my flyaway white hair, my adoration of Jonathan.

From the time he discovered me washing my sheets and I felt his quick sympathy, Jonathan was the one—not the tutor, not my aunts or uncles—I turned to when I didn’t understand something. He was the one who would quiz me on my math facts, pronounce words I couldn’t figure out, circle ones I’d misspelled, tell me the names of clouds, of rocks, of birds and bugs. Despite his patience, school would never be my strong suit. I loved to read once I learned, but there my brilliance ended, if it could be called that. I really think I loved reading because I could hide there. In the world of books I was not the awkward, ignorant, poor daughter of a drug-addict, dependent for everything on the Beresfords. And without that motivation to escape myself, other subjects eluded me. I had no head for numbers, no intuition for science, no hand for penmanship, no instinct for spelling. If I remembered things, it was not for the facts themselves but because Jonathan taught them to me.

As for my actual benefactor, my uncle Paul, I found him altogether unapproachable. Big, gruff, serious. When I look back on him, I think he must have dreaded that his children might go through a wild stage similar to his own. To forestall this, he maintained strict order, leaning too far in the direction of rules and the outward appearance of obedience and respect. We all toed the line, but Tom and the girls chafed particularly and gave vent to their feelings in Uncle Paul’s absence. And as Uncle Paul moved up the corporate ladder over the years, those absences grew more and more frequent.

Between my two aunts I greatly preferred Marie. Certain expressions and mannerisms of hers reminded me of my lost mother, but in Marie they were softer and slower and never held danger for me. Aunt Marie rarely initiated conversations or showed me physical affection, but neither did she rebuff my attempts to speak to her or push me away if I came to lean against her. She loved me as much—or as little, depending on your perspective—as she did her stepchildren.

I tried to keep my distance from Aunt Terri. Not from fear of rejection but because she was all too present. “Your special tutor is expensive, you know, Frannie, but your uncle pays for her because it is the right thing to do. The least you could do is work harder.” “Why don’t you want to take ballet or gymnastics with Rachel and Julie? Is it because you’d have to be in the beginner class, and they’re in the Advanced? You would catch up in time”—this, with a doubtful look at my scrawny limbs. And, “For heaven’s sake, stand up straight! The way to feel confidence is to act confident. If there’s anything I can’t bear, Frannie, it’s your tendency to skulk around. That, and the mumbling. Please e-nun-
ci
-ate. If you have something to communicate, it’s your responsibility to do it as clearly as possible. Your listeners shouldn’t have to
make
out
what you’re trying to say.”

I wanted to please Aunt Terri at first. Or at least to keep her off my case as much as humanly possible. But even when I gave up on pleasing her, I obeyed to show my gratitude to the Beresfords. I worked harder to learn; I attempted ballet, gymnastics and soccer until I was excused from them and allowed just to watch; I stood up straighter when my aunt looked at me
and spoke to her in the ringing tones of a diction coach. I’m not sure it helped her hear me any better.

I think only two people ever heard and understood me throughout my childhood, and one wasn’t even human. No matter if I mumbled, if I shrunk into myself—I could always count on Jonathan to
make out
what I was trying to say.

Jonathan, and God.

The Beresfords were churchgoers. As I mentioned, Uncle Paul’s father was the president of a Christian college when Aunt Marie was enrolled, and while Uncle Paul had been something of a black sheep growing up—wine, women and song all playing prominent parts—he was tame enough now. There were no family prayer times or Bible readings or that sort of thing, but more Sundays than not found us in church and every Christmas Uncle Paul put a big check in the offering basket. He would never say anything so embarrassing as “the Lord” or “a personal relationship with Jesus,” but when he said we children should grow up with “values,” he meant ones garnered in places where the
professionals
would
use such language.

So, along with my education, my posture and my elocution, Aunt Terri took my salvation upon herself. She regretted not being able to teach my Sunday school class, having already volunteered to lead Rachel and the other fourth graders, and had to make do giving me memory verses and quizzing me on the stories I found in the thick brown Children’s Bible. I was particularly fascinated by the picture of Solomon’s Judgment: the two women before him laying claim to the baby, Solomon’s arm upraised—“Let the baby be split in two and one half given to each”—a look of satisfaction on the false mother’s face and despair on the true’s.

“Aunt Terri, do you think King Solomon would really have cut the baby in two?”

She frowned at the illustration, three vertical lines forming between her eyebrows. “Of course not. That’s why they say he was wise.”

“But what if
both
women acted sad? What would he have done then?”

“Well, both women weren’t sad, Frannie. The woman who was lying would rather they both lose than for the true woman to win.”

“But why would the woman who was telling the truth want her baby raised by a mean liar?”

“She didn’t, Frannie. It was the lesser of two evils. ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion,’ as the Proverb goes.”

“But—”

“For heaven’s sake, you’ll understand when you’re older. Now what do you remember about Solomon building the Temple?”

But the despairing woman haunted me. I thought of her twisted robes, her hands clasped to her chest. I brought the problem to my cousin. “Jonathan, why would the woman want her baby raised by a mean liar?”

“She didn’t.”

“Why didn’t she keep telling the king that it was her baby?”

“Because the other woman would have kept telling Solomon that it was
her
baby. It was no use, Frannie. But she would rather know her baby stayed alive than see justice done.”

“Even if her baby became a mean liar like the bad woman?”

“Not everyone becomes like the people who raised them.” He paused. I knew he was thinking of my own mother. “I guess she trusted God.”

“What do you mean?”

“She trusted that, even if she couldn’t watch over him anymore, God would. And that God loved him even more than she did.”

Jonathan’s ideas about God were thoughtful, strangely personal. To him, the Almighty was more than a concept, more than just a distant country about which we memorized facts. As far as I knew, Rachel and Julie considered God as they would any other subject—they learned what they were taught and that was enough. God was Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, died for our sins, and rose again three days later. End of story. And Tom—if Tom knew or subscribed to any or all of the above, he kept it to himself.

“You’re the only one I can ask questions, Jonathan.”

“You can ask anyone questions, Frannie. You don’t have to save them up for me.”

“But Tom and Rachel and Julie laugh at me.” He didn’t answer, an admission of truth. “And Aunt Marie always says
I don’t know
and Uncle Paul is busy and scary and, if I ask Aunt Terri, she always tells me more than I want to know and then gets impatient.”

Jonathan tapped his long fingers on his knee. We were sitting on a bench in Aunt Marie’s flower garden. Because I was so pale I was in full shade to avoid sunburn. I picked at a mosquito bite, scoring a cross on it with my fingernail so it wouldn’t itch. It would just hurt. A stray sunbeam backlit my cousin, making his light brown hair glow golden at the ends.

“It doesn’t always have to be me,” he said again. “I don’t mind your questions, but there’s someone else you can talk to, too.”

“There is?” I wondered. Did he mean my mother? I wrote her dutifully once a week and had spoken to her on the phone maybe three times since the Beresfords took me. I never asked Mom questions, not even ones like
Will you visit me?
or,
When will it be time for me to come home
?

“There is,” said Jonathan. “You can talk to God.”

“God?” I forgot my mosquito bite to stare at him. Asking God questions sounded as abstract as writing into newspaper advice columns for answers. “How would I ask God a question? And how would he answer me? I think I would be scared if he answered me.”

“You ask by just asking. He answers different ways.”

“You mean out loud? Have you heard God, Jonathan?”

His blue eyes met mine. There was a smile wrinkling their corners. “One time. A long time ago. Tom and I were fighting about something and I went up to his room because I wanted to rip the covers off his favorite comic books. I was in his closet and had a hold of one. Then I heard my name: ‘Jonathan.’ Just that. I was so scared I dropped everything and ran.”