The Star Garden

by Nancy E. Turner

  She mopped at her brow and held the cloth to her face. “Oh, Mama. I’m expecting another baby.”

  I smiled. “That’s just wonderful. When’s it coming?”

  “May or June.”

  I held her hands. “I’ll get to be with you for this one,” I said.

  She groaned and said, “I’m faint. Would you undo my stays for me?”

  “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Right here. I don’t think I can make it upstairs.”

  I opened her buttons and loosened her stays. I couldn’t stop smiling. I saw the skin of her back had grown puffy, already ripening. She gasped for air when the bands came loose. By that time, the children found us, and I threw my shawl around her shoulders to hide her open dress. April told her son, Vallary, to go fetch their maid to throw out the poor fern.

  It was settled that if she were able, April would accompany us the next day as soon as the stores opened, to help her uncle choose the right chairs and such. I’ve never known finery except the things Jack ordered mail order. Just a few short years have turned Tucson into a big place. There are stores selling things I didn’t even know I could want.

  That afternoon Albert and his boys, Clover, Ezra, and Zack, along with Mary Pearl, arrived. Savannah and Rebeccah had stayed at home for want of the surrey we’d used. Albert said they had some errands to do for Savannah, but he drove to fetch Rachel from the schoolhouse where she lived and worked. We’d have one more night on the floor, and then a busy day tomorrow.

  Rachel has been small and frail compared to her twin, Rebeccah, ever since she took rheumatic fever a few years ago. Her frame seemed as delicate as Granny’s, though her eyes were bright and her mind plenty quick to handle all these children.

  As Harland introduced them to their new governess, Story piped up with, “Does this mean we can go to regular school again, or are you our teacher like Aunt Sarah?”

  “Regular school. But if you got the measles and missed a day, I’ve been a teacher and I’ll help you out.”

  I saw Harland’s boys cut eyes at each other. No telling what their experiences had been in San Francisco with schoolteachers, but it didn’t look as if they were pleased to have one for a governess. Small as Rachel was, I figured the children would be in good hands. She was Savannah’s daughter, after all.

  Next thing, I went in the kitchen to start supper and Harland got a newspaper to see if there was an advertisement of someone wanting to be a house girl. While he went to visit a lady who’d run a notice, I started up a big pot of soup and made myself a list of things I needed to buy to take back home. I counted out thirty dollars and folded the bills up tightly, tied them with string, and put the money in my pocket for tomorrow.

  April and Rachel decided they’d stay at the house and visit, so I told them to keep the fire going, then took up my cloak to go back to town and get my own errands done. Just then there was a knock at the door. Two women in dark hoods and cloaks stood there, their arms loaded down with baskets of bread and cakes. The Methodist ladies were having a baked-goods sale to raise money. The taller lady said one fund was to put a new stove in the parson’s kitchen, as his wife heated it so hot the top sank in and none of her pans will sit up straight nor hold half a pint of water. Well, I told them to tell her to just cook in the yard on a spit, the way I grew up doing. Folks who think they have to have a stove need to think again. Then the shorter lady said they had another collection, which was to take food and building supplies to the townspeople of Clifton. They said the entire town had washed away in the recent rains, and the money was to help them move and rebuild everything higher up on the hills.

  One powerful storm and all my memories had been pulled from under me as if they were no more than sand. Harland’s, too, when he’d lost the house in the earthquake. I knew exactly what the people were feeling. Flattened out like dried leather. No idea where to turn. I felt the lump of money weighing down my skirt. Harland’s little ones and Ezra and Zachary, Albert’s youngest boys, crowded about my back, sniffing the air like foxes. Those boys would eat cake any time of the day, any day of the week.

  “Would you try the cinnamon cake? It’s my grandmother’s recipe. She always claimed it was very good for warding off the grippe, too. It must have been so, since I never had it until I left home.”

  The children made appreciative noises. My neighbors had built me a house and given me more than a roof. They’d made it a palace. I needed the money in my pocket, but here were neighbors I didn’t know in straits I knew all too well. “How much?” I said.

  “Fifty cents for a cake. But it’s for charity.”

  As I untied the string I’d just fixed, another flood of feelings swept through me. I said, “Let us have two. We’ve a lot of children here today.” I handed over the cash and took two cakes. “And would you please send along an extra dollar—two dollars?” Those poor folks needed the money, but still, I had to think that three dollars gone was a day’s wages for a man. A week’s worth for a poor one.

  “Oh, do take another cake for it.”

  “No,” I said. “You sell that, and two extra dollars will buy a few pounds of nails. Mind, this is for the people who lost their houses, not for the parson’s wife to melt her stove.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And thank you,” she said.

  The children crowed with happiness as I carried those two big cakes, still warm and smelling like Christmas Day, into the kitchen. They hollered when I told them they had to wait until after supper to eat them.

  Then I left so I could run some errands of my own. Might as well find Udell’s hinges and get some goods for the ranch before nightfall so we could head home in the morning.

  First I went through Sharp’s Candy Store and got some horehound in case the ague or the quinsy made the rounds of our family again this winter. I got some Foley’s Honey and Tar Cure, too. Nearby was a store I dared not go in. Corbett’s books and toys was as spellbinding a place to me as it was to the smallest babe in the family, for they had books for sale. Everything I owned I’d read at least twice, some several times. I stopped and looked in the window. There was a large volume on a display stand, propped open, bound in heavy leather and illustrated with amazing watercolor paintings.

  The man behind the counter saw me at the door, came right outside and said, “Well, good afternoon, Mrs. Elliot. How lovely to see you.” He took my arm and led me in the door. I must admit, I didn’t resist the tug much at all, but fell into that den of sore temptation like a common drunk toward a saloon.

  “I’m just thinking,” I said. “Looking and thinking.”

  “You know your credit is always good here. No need for cash. You can pay next summer after the cattle sales.”

  I pictured my horde of nephews and nieces languishing in front of those cakes in the kitchen with the same tortured hunger I felt standing in this store where the air was perfumed with the delicious fragrance unique to an unsavored book. “Thinking,” I said, “that it’s a nice day, and I’ve got more shopping to do.”

  The man’s face fell for an instant, but he said, “We have the most complete line of toys and dolls. Santa Claus is coming, after all. There must be some apple of your eye deserving of a gift on the tree this year?”

  I sighed. “Many, many children.” I could see beyond the books now, to where charming dollies stared, unblinking, their china heads longing to be loved by some little girl. Beyond them, baseballs and leather gloves and carved wooden bats hung over tin trains and lead soldiers, paint sets and hobby horses. “I’ll be making them shirts and pinafores for Christmas.”

  “What about a nice volume for yourself? The Family Mark Twain is popular. Have you seen the Peerless Reciter Or Popular Program?. Rich with tableaux and readings for young and old. Briar Rose, Romeo and Juliet—”

  “I’ve got those.” Nearly worn them out, making all the children read.

  He pulled a different book off the shelf and opened it. The back of it made that lovely sound, pages starched and
perfect as a man’s new shirt collar, too stiff to lie flat, loosening their grip on each other. “Here we have The Advance of the British Empire. Are you interested in Egyptian secrets from the tombs of the pharaohs?”

  I reached for the book, then took my hand away without touching it. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I never really meant to come inside. There’s a man over there wanting to buy that flashlight machine.” I left the store fast as my feet would go down the boarded walk. I’d better do my dreaming in a general store. I had a family to think of.

  Christmas was coming. I’d need more whole cloth and ticking. Knowing the cash in my pocket was all I had left caused that now-familiar surge of nerves to awaken, and as I ordered things off the list, I spoke slowly, watching Mr. Griego stack goods on the counter, all the while feeling on the verge of panic. What if the flour got weevils, the beans got mold? Should I buy twenty pounds and risk mice eating it up?

  In no time I had a bolt of muslin, boxes of nails, bags of beans, sacks of Indian flour and wheat and coffee. A new paper of pins. Five cards of buttons. Axle grease. Hide glue. Baking soda and liniment. I paused in front of a pyramid stack of five jars of Hagan’s Magnolia Balm, where a sign underneath said the stuff was guaranteed to keep a woman from looking old and worn. I shook my head, wondering how a woman knew when she looked old and worn. There was a handy mirror right next to the balms, just to check. Instead, I took a box of headache powders. When everything was totaled up it was nearly twenty dollars’ worth. I paid off the credit I owed Mr. Griego, too, another three dollars and eleven cents. I tied my string around a thinner roll of bills.

  Well, I was ready to leave when I spied a peculiar item under the glass at the register. “Will you show me that?” I asked Mr. Griego. It looked to be some kind of kitchen tool I’d never seen. A metal box with a glass inside.

  Mr. Griego squinted and felt around until I nodded when he took hold of the box. He said, “A spirit level, this one? A spirit level is a tool for men to put on things they building. To see is she flat and square. See these air bubble in the oil? When she’s lined up in these line, you got you a flat place. It’s not flat, it’s no good. House going to fall down. Got to be level, and only way is to put this on and see. Keeps everything straight. Just like, you no like when the floor go sideways and the stove don’t stand up straight. This fix it. Don’t build her crooked.”

  I set the spirit level on his counter. It was off by a quarter bubble. “A person needs this to build a house?”

  “Sí. This mesilla, she is too many peoples leaning their arms.” “Level would be better. Makes sense to me.”

  “Si. Less than two dollars for a tool she is indispensable. Is good price. Fine instrument.”

  I couldn’t possibly give Udell Hanna a shirt the way I’d do for my own family. That was far too personal. But this, this was the kind of thing a man might use if he had it. A better thing than another pair of gloves, fancier than a hammer. Useful but unusual. I counted out the dollar and ninety-one cents very carefully. I tucked the spirit level into my pocket next to the rolled-up bills, where it bumbled back and forth as I walked to the buggy.

  Harland had been busy, and he’d found a lady to cook and clean, too. The place began to feel less mine with every tick of the clock.

  Next morning, Harland and I fetched April and off we went. He bought over two hundred dollars’ worth of furniture and rugs and lamps from Caldwell’s store. Their wagons were loaded and sent to the house in quick order. April said she felt fine and that her baby sickness came on her some days and not others, so Harland took us to lunch at Bell’s Pharmacy where we had sandwiches and phosphates.

  The wagons full of goods arrived that afternoon, and then we were all a-flurry, setting things right. Rachel had brought her own bedstead and two chests, and we prettied up a room for her on the second floor. With everyone helping out, it began to look like a real home in no time. I had become a guest in my own house. It smelled different. Looked different.

  I sent Zack, who is ten, to the attic to sweep so there’d be a clean place to store the few remnants of my furniture. Then I told Ezra to go around all the windowsills with a wet rag. Well, before long I heard them howling up the chimneys at each other, when suddenly Ezra came tearing out of the parlor like a scalded cat, stringing dust and dirt from his hair as he galloped up the stairs threatening to hang Zack out a window. Pretty soon, down they both came, Zack just ahead of his brother, when he tripped and went nose over like a barrel down the stairs. He landed at the bottom with a thud and sprawled, unmoving. Truth and Story came on his heels, with Honor a few steps behind. Those three were cheering and hollering like wild coyotes.

  Ezra ran to Zack, shouting, “Get up, you. I’m gonna make you eat a pound of dirt. Just you blink one eye, you yellow dog. Just you breathe one snort.”

  The rest of us watched in horror. “Zack?” everyone called at once. The boy didn’t move. Albert went to him. “Son?” he said.

  Zack opened one eye. “Don’t let him pound me, Papa. I didn’t know he’d stuck his big dumb head up the chimney. I was doing my chores like I was told.”

  Ezra said, “Ah, I knew he was playing possum. You bum.”

  “There’ll be no calling names,” Albert said. “Now, boys—”

  Zack crossed his arms and said, “He was owl-hooting up the chimney like he was being some ghost.”

  “Was not.”

  “Was, too. He said Uncle Jack’s ghost was walking around up in that attic and if I moved the dust, the ghost would get me. Then he starts—”

  “You were bragging you didn’t care about being up there. Bragging’s a sin.”

  “—hooting up the chimney like he was a ghost. The only way to see a ghost is when they walk through dust, so I dusted him.”

  Albert held both of them by the collars of their shirts. He said, “Ezra, go outside and shake that out of your hair. Then you sweep every speck of dust you spread through this house and finish the attic yourself.” Albert went on, jostling Zack by his neck, “You apologize to Aunt Sarah, then get in that kitchen, find the stove black and start painting that stove. And don’t you spill one single drop.”

  I turned around to keep from laughing at their antics, but I kept a strong face while Albert scolded. A couple of men were busy tying netting over an oil painting of a river where cows grazed under a big tree. Even they were laughing.

  In the midst of it all, I spied Blessing sitting at the top of the stairway. I went toward her, but she hopped up and ran for one of the bedrooms. She closed the door before I got there. I stopped outside the portal, wondering what I should do. Blessing had been her mother’s darling. Her father’s, too, I’d reckon. Far too headstrong and willful for a child. I thought of Harland hiring Rachel. An inexperienced girl would have her hands full with this bunch. Far as I could see it wasn’t the lack of a governess that caused them to be sassy and spoiled. My brother had put aside his responsibility for rearing them because it was easier to see them through eyes of pity than courage.

  “Blessing?” I said, opening the door. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” came a little voice. She was seated on a rocking horse, staring out the window.

  “Well, that’s not the reaction I expected, after you ran away from me just now.”

  “Poppy said I have to say ‘yes, ma’am’ to you for my own good, or I’ll go to hell when I die.”

  “Ah.”

  “Poppy says we have to live in your house now and we should be thankful.”

  “Are you thankful?”

  “I want to go home to our own house. Mommy’s there waiting for us. She doesn’t know where to find us, or she’d have come. I don’t want to live in your old house. It’s too far for her.”

  I sat down on the window seat next to her. She turned her head and stared out the window in another direction. I said, “You know your house burned down. Remember the earthquake?”

  “No.”

  “Remember how sick your momm
y got? Remember she was in bed in that awful tent and then you went with her in a train to Chicago, waiting for her to get well?”

  “There wasn’t anything to eat.”

  “I know.”

  “Poppy said you came to take us to a safe place. To save Mommy. Where did you put her?”

  “Blessing, you know your mother went to heaven with the angels.”

  Blessing turned a red face toward me. Tears shot forth from her eyes and a slick of spittle came from the corner of her mouth. “She did not! She did not! She’s lost and she’s looking for me. My mommy would never go to heaven without me. She needs me. She said so.”

  “I know she needs you. You were her favorite little girl in the whole world. You were a special gift to her from God. But He needed her up there with Him.”

  “I hate God! He doesn’t need my mommy. I need her. I’m going to run away and find her. You’ll see. I’m leaving.”

  There are people I know who would spank a child for saying to an adult anything so impertinent. But I knew how she felt. “Shall I help you pack?”

  She made a choking sound and nodded “yes.”

  I pulled her valise from under the new bed all decked with fluffy down coverlets and stuffed toys. “What would you like to take? This bear?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll need some drawers and stockings. How about one of these dresses?”

  “I hate that one.” She slid off the wooden horse and pulled open a drawer on a chest between the windows. “This is my favorite nightie.” She folded it carefully and laid it on the bed. It was an old one that had belonged to one of Savannah’s girls that I’d restitched for her when she’d gotten to my ranch house. For some reason, it warmed my hands to touch it. “I want my dolls from home. Poppy said I can’t have them.”

  “They are all lost, honey,” I said. I tucked the nightie in, along with stockings and two sets of pantaloons and the brand-new tortoiseshell hairbrush from her dressing stand. “Do you want the doll Granny made?”