The Train of Small Mercies (12 page)

“You can buy little girls all the dolls and doll dresses and whatnot, but in the end they like to play with hair as much as anything,” Molly's mother said. This got a polite laugh.

“She's a quiet one, your little girl,” the other woman said. “Is she shy?”

Delores often heard this question about Rebecca, and she had come to resent it. Why did Rebecca's reserve seem to bother people? Weren't there enough children talking endlessly and asking every variation of tedious questions? She admired Rebecca's quiet manner; she believed Rebecca was taking in everything around her when she was so quiet. If others considered Rebecca to be a little dull, Delores had decided that she was smarter than any other child her age. Even Arch had wondered out loud about Rebecca. That spring, he and Delores were watching an episode of
Family Affair
that centered around Buffy and her strong attachment to her doll, Mrs. Beasley. After it was over he stayed in his chair and mulled over what he wanted to say. “Sometimes I worry that Rebecca is a little slow. Do you ever think that?”

On the monkey bars Rebecca sat with her back to Molly, as Molly ran her fingers through Rebecca's short bob. “We should be able to do
wonders
with this,” she said, which felt too shopworn a sentiment even to her.

The other girl reached over to Rebecca's hair for her own assessment. “Let's wash it first,” she said, and held her hand above Rebecca, as if holding a spray gun, and began making a hissing sound. Rebecca was alarmed at first, but she sat still until Molly said, “Okay, it's all clean.”

The little boy had wandered over to the bottom of the monkey bars by now. “What are you doing up there?” he asked. He was a couple years older than Rebecca, but his voice had retained a high-pitched, soft pronunciation of the hard syllables.

“You can't come up,” Molly said. “It's only for girls.”

The boy put his hand on the first bar to test that idea. “I can if I want to.”

On the bench the two women resumed their conversation about the local elementary school, only in quieter voices.

“No you can't,” said Molly, who stopped combing Rebecca's hair with her fingers. “No.”

“You can't boss me,” he replied.

“Just go
away
,” said the other girl, who was used to helping Molly deny her brother. “Go swing.”

“What are you doing to that girl?” he asked. Now he was on the level just beneath them. Delores took a couple of steps closer.

“Nothing. We're fixing her hair,” Molly said. “Now
go
.”

Delores turned to see if Molly's mother might intervene, but she was not paying attention to the disruption at the salon.

“Did she ask you to?” the boy said.

“You're
annoying
us,” Molly said.

The boy reached out and tugged on his sister's foot once. Then she kicked out at him, hitting a bar instead.

“Missed!” the boy cried out.

Delores began walking over, her eyes trained on Rebecca. Before she could reach them, the boy climbed another rung and grabbed his sister's leg, and this time he held on. Molly gripped the bars on both sides of her to get more leverage, then swung her leg back and forth, trying to shake him. Delores saw what could happen, and she quickened her steps, her hands out in front of her.

“Rebecca—” What she had intended to say was, “Rebecca, let's go explore this balance beam over here,” or “Let's say good-bye to the salon now,” or some variation of an exit line that she, as a mother, had said countless times in so many situations over so many years. Instead, Molly's leg swung fiercely, and she broke free of her brother's grip at last, sending her leg upward and into Rebecca's side, and Rebecca toppled through the space below. Delores was ten feet away then, and even as the toe of her open sandal dug into the grass, she knew she could not catch her. The monkey bars had four levels, and Rebecca fell cleanly through the top two, sailing past the boy, who watched in horror—less for the girl than for the punishment he was sure to receive for his role in all of this. But her body turned as she descended, and the side of her head knocked against first one bar, and then, as she twisted further, another on the level below, this time striking the back of her skull. The two impacts rang out in a way that defied how anyone there might have imagined the sound of a child's head against a metal bar. There was a musical pitch in the blows, as if what had struck the bars was another piece of metal or a mallet. She hit the ground not all at once, but in a blur of stages, like a dropped marionette. One arm landed first, then a leg, then the side of her face. The weight of her torso followed last.

What came out of Delores's mouth as Rebecca hit the ground was a sound so shrill that the birds in the trees on the playground perimeter turned their heads in curious admiration. Since Rebecca's body was within the narrow confines of the bars, Delores had to dive under and crawl in. Rebecca's eyes were closed, but her lips were moving, and Delores could see that in a few seconds Rebecca was about to release a torrent of pain and upset. One side of her face was already starting to turn deep plum.

“Baby girl,” Delores whispered, straining to breathe herself. She scanned Rebecca's body—making sure her arms and legs were moving—and then reached carefully behind Rebecca's head to feel for blood or a deep cut. At the touch Rebecca let out a remarkable howl, and Delores gingerly tried to scoop her off the ground and into her arms. Only then did Delores feel the eyes of the boy and the girls, looming over them. Rebecca's scream came in waves, each more forceful than the one before. The two mothers were in front of Delores now, panting.

“Oh my God!” Molly's mother said. “The little sweetheart. She just fell the
whole way
down.”

Delores had no intention of responding. If they had been paying attention to their goddamn children, this wouldn't have happened. Molly knew that being this high up, away from her mother, was to her advantage, and she showed no signs of coming down. The boy jumped down and watched from a distance.

“Is she going to be all right?” he asked quietly, because he knew he should.

Delores whispered, “Tell me all the places it hurts, honey. Can you do that? Do your arms hurt, or your legs?” Rebecca's face was swelling, the colors churning underneath the skin. Delores began to slide out on her backside, cradling Rebecca with one arm. When Delores could stand up, Rebecca's body still limp in her arms, all the things that were supposed to occur to her, as a mother, swirled around in her head like a high-speed merry-go-round.

“Poor, poor
thing
,” Molly's mother said. “You might want to take her to the hospital, just to get checked out. I know she hit her head. Oh, so awful.” She then remembered Molly up top, watching. “Come down right this minute,” she said to her, and Molly scrambled down.

“She's going to need ice on that,” the other woman said. “She did, she just hit her head so
hard
. There's a grocery story just around the corner. You could get ice there.”

Delores wanted to get away from them as quickly as she could, but Rebecca's shrieks were making it difficult to make a decision. She was worried about broken bones, the blow to Rebecca's head. She had checked her teeth, which were unharmed. She rebalanced Rebecca in her arms and broke into a trot to their car, the women trailing behind.

“You're going to be all right, honey,” Delores said. “Mommy's right here. Mommy's always right here.”

“Are you sure we can't do anything?” Molly's mother called. “I'm
so
sorry. Molly didn't—”

Delores opened up the passenger's side of the car, and Rebecca crumpled toward the steering wheel. The women watched Delores get in, and they both offered delicate half-waves as she pulled out, as if to say,
No hard feelings?

“Okay, let's just think now,” Delores said when she got to the end of the street. She put the car in park and tried to hold Rebecca's wet face in her hands. She had seen the grocery store on the way in, and now she tried to remember if it was left or right. “Rebecca, can you move your hands and your feet for Mommy? Do you think you can?”

Rebecca curled her fingers inward, then resumed her crying.

“Okay, that's good, sweetheart. I know. I know. And your arms don't hurt? You can move them around? I'm worried about your sweet head, too.” Delores thought about the hospital more clearly now, and then just as quickly she wondered how she would explain to Arch what had happened. She couldn't make up anything more about a birthday party because he might want details—
Who was in charge? Why wasn't anyone watching her?
She knew the explanation to Arch should be the least of her worries, but she had built the day around lies, and everything felt more tangled up.

“Rebecca, we're going to get you some ice for your face, to keep the bruise from getting so bad. Now I just need to remember which way.” She thought for another moment. Then: “Rebecca, how old are you, honey? Can you tell me how old you are?” Delores repeated, and Rebecca nodded without saying anything.

“How old are you, Rebecca? Mommy forgot for a moment. Can you remind me?”

Rebecca could feel another wave of sobbing coming on, but she managed to stifle it for the moment. “Four and three-quarters.”

“That's right! That's exactly right. That's a good sign. I think we're going to be okay.”

G
eorgia was floating on one of the two rubber rafts, and Edwin and Lolly were tossing the beach ball back and forth. Ted kept swimming underneath Georgia and tugging on her feet, which made her giggle. It was time for lunch, and Edwin dreaded having to step out and put the chicken on. Even in the water the extreme heat of the day was draining their energies.

“So Lolly wants to go see Kennedy's funeral train later,” Edwin said.

“Oh, I want to go,” Georgia said. “Can I go?”

“Sure, whoever wants to go,” Lolly said.

“I still can't believe it,” Georgia said. “Did you know that his wife is pregnant with his
eleventh
child? How do you even have eleven children?”

“You're asking the wrong girl,” Lolly said. Then she went under to avoid looking at Edwin.

“I don't want Nixon in the White House, that's for sure,” Ted said. “He gives me the creeps, man. That guy is Lon Chaney.”

“Who do you like, McCarthy?” Edwin asked.

“I guess,” Ted said. Then he jumped onto Georgia's raft. When she shrieked Edwin watched her long leg kick into the air, the tendons as clear as stems in a glass vase. Ted was on top of her, and as they kissed, their wet lips smacked in the air. Georgia settled her hands on the top of his shorts before Ted made the raft capsize.

“You think there's anything to Humphrey?” Edwin wanted to know.

“It's hard to tell with a vice president,” Ted said. “I just really liked Kennedy. Kennedy told it like it is, you know? He was the one talking about ending the war long before the others. Kennedy gave a fuck. I liked how he was always talking about the Indian. I thought that was cool, saying how much the white man had let the Indian down. And that's the truth, man. Those Indians, they have it tough. On the reservation, no jobs, no food. Because we screwed them. They're the poorest people in the country, the Indians. Now that Kennedy's dead, Humphrey, McCarthy, they're kind of the same to me. Kennedy was about hope, you know? What are they about?”

Edwin arched his eyebrows. “When did you get so up on things? I didn't know you followed politics.”

Ted shrugged.

“I think he was going to win it all,” Lolly said. “A lot of people feel like that. He might have even been a better president than his brother. Remember how he went into Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King was killed, and that was the only big city that didn't have a riot? He came in there, talked to them, and in just a few minutes they just went home. That's what he could do. He could touch people like that.”

“What time is the train coming?” Georgia asked.

“The paper said soon after three,” Lolly said.

“It's going to be crowded,” Edwin said.

“We should probably get lunch started,” Lolly said.

“All right,” Edwin said, and he floated over to the ladder. Immediately the beads of water on his back and shoulders began to melt away in the intense sunlight. Ted followed and dried his shorts with his purple towel, then dug around in Georgia's bag.

“Who wants to get high?” Ted asked. He held a marijuana cigarette above his head.

Edwin glanced quickly at Lolly. “Sure,” he whispered.

“I do, I do,” Georgia said.

Ted lit the joint, and his face fell into a tight clinch. He nodded his approval and sauntered over to Georgia. He held the joint between his fingers while she took a drag.

“Is that from Elliot? From Jamaica?” Georgia asked.

“No, I bought it off Iggy. Elliot's stuff was never from Jamaica, Iggy said.”

“Oh,” Georgia said. She thought about this a moment, looking to Ted for the significance of that.

“How about you, Lolly?” Ted asked. He started toward her, but Lolly shook her head.

“Lolly doesn't smoke anymore,” Edwin called out. Lolly paddled over toward the ladder.

“It's no big deal,” she said. “Who cares, Edwin?” She wrapped her hair around her finger.

“No one,” he said. “I'm just saying.”

“Well, you said it.”

Ted took another toke and, holding the smoke in his mouth, reached over and kissed Georgia full-on. This immediately sent her into a coughing fit. Her eyes were streaming tears.