The Trials of Nellie Belle

by Sydney Avey

  Leone sat stone still and let the truth wash over her, seep into the loam of her being, and feed her discontent. Her grandmother had not been forced to go to work because her husband had divorced her, she had divorced her husband because she wanted more out of life. Grandmother, so concerned with the proper way to behave, had up and run away. Hardly the brave doyenne holding together a fractured family by sacrifice and hard work; no, she was a reckless adventuress having her way with the world.

  The radio switched off. Crayons spilled back into the cigar box. Leone returned the journal to the letterbox and arranged herself so it rested in the curve of her knees under the afghan.

  Her mother walked into the front room, drawing her thumb-sucking, shuffling child by the hand. Sharp-eyed Jane threw Leone a mean look.

  “What are you hiding?” Jane stiffened her knees and planted her feet on the floorboards.

  “Very sharp teeth, Little Red Riding Hood.” Leone narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth at her sister. Jane burst into tears.

  “Leone, that’s enough. Now I’ll never get her to sleep.” Opal scooped up the four-year-old and whisked her off to bed.

  Leone lay back on a fussy satin pillow covered with lace crochet and pondered her new knowledge. Her grandmother had run away from home! Little wonder she offers no argument when I threaten to leave home. And my mother? She lit out for Broadway before she even finished school. They have no right to stop me.

  That her mother had regrets, she was aware. Leone supposed it was her birth that had ruined her mother’s stage career. The young Opal Nellie Scott who posed in photographs, wearing dance costumes trimmed with ribbons, looked at the world through eyes brimming with hope. The older O.N. Wolff who juggled a teenager, a toddler, and an entourage of students took them in with tired eyes filled with concern. Except when she stood before them with her rubber-tipped teaching stick. The years fell away when she corrected a young dancer’s form or demonstrated an arabesque.

  The only other thing that lit up her mother’s eyes was Leone’s report cards. Why did her mother harp so on education? Education opens doors, her mother said. Doors to what? Not to anything Leone cared about. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and focused on tiny specks that appeared to move slowly toward the light. They might be specks in her eyes, but nearby a spider’s web rippled in the soft rhythm of an unseen bellow puffing cold air through a gap above the door. The spider tucked herself up in the corner and watched her progeny roll away.

  Leone folded her fingers around the lovely writing pen she had discovered under her grandmother’s letters. Of course, she planned to return the pen at some later date. After all, the sheaf of stories she uncovered at the bottom of the box wanted closer examination.

  A voice droned through the thin walls that separated the front room from the bedrooms, her mother reading bedtime stories to Jane, saying prayers with her. Before Leone began attending Saint Mary’s, she had never heard a prayer. When had her mother started to pray? In Leone’s growing up years, when it was just the two of them, had she prayed for God to send her a second husband, the tedious Felix? Was a traveling salesman the answer to her mother’s prayers?

  Leone reached into her pocket and pulled out the crumpled story her grandmother had left on the table. She pulled herself back up and sat forward, smoothing the paper. Another piece of the puzzle. Why not use this new information in my family history assignment? Ha! That should get a rise out of Sister Isabel.

  R

  Sister Isabel, 3rd Period English

  Family History Assignment

  By Leone Barry

  My Grandmother’s New Life

  At the turn of the century, my grandmother, Nellie Belle Scott, traveled to Spokane and recast herself as “a woman who had lost her husband and had children to support.” No one in her new life needed to know she “lost” him in a divorce she initiated herself.

  She abandoned her only son to the rakish ways of his father and took her daughters to live with my Aunt Jessie while she got on her feet, as they say. My Aunt Mabel (whom I never knew) graduated from high school, got a job, and moved into a boarding house. But then tragedy struck. Aunt Mabel drank creek water and died.

  My grief-stricken grandmother moved herself and my mother into the new Hotel Ridpath, a modern building that housed many people who were moving into the city. She found a job as a stenographer in a law office at the nearby Rookery Building. My mother went to school and gave dancing lessons to the children who lived at the hotel. She was only ten years old, but hard-working parents were happy to pay her to occupy their children while they toiled in offices and kept shops. She used her wages to pay for her dance lessons, and when she was sixteen, she set off for the vaudeville stages in New York, Toronto, and Chicago.

  My grandmother was devastated. She had lost both of her daughters! She could not bear to slave away any longer in the stenographers’ pool. By the grace of God, she was given the opportunity to travel with circuit court judges and report the lives and crimes of people who required their day in court.

  A young girl who once rode her horse across the plains of Kansas in search of a lost book, spurned the marriage proposal of its wealthy owner, and lived in an orange grove with a tinker and their three children, now wrote her own ticket in a world of law and disorder in the Wild West.

  My grandmother is writing a book about her adventures as an itinerant court reporter. As soon as I finish school, I plan to follow my own star and move to Hollywood.

  The End

  A week later, Leone received her assignment back from Sister Isabel, a familiar judgment printed in fat, red, block letters on the last page: This is not a life that our Lord would bless. Your story does not have the ring of truth. The sister had pulled her aside and delivered a verbal reprimand as well. “Family history is fact, Leone. When you let your imagination get the better of you, the result is drivel—lies, and fiction.”

  Leone stared at the letter grade in the corner of the page until the U blurred, divided in two, and made her dizzy. Unsatisfactory. Well, what is grace, then, if not to lift a person out of despair? How dare Sister Isabel condemn my grandmother to a life of perpetual sorrow!

  21 - Discontent

  21

  Discontent

  Her last week of high school, Leone had babysitting duties every afternoon. Today she sat on the front step minding her sister while her mother taught a class. The boredom of having to babysit and the sting of a bad grade from Sister Isabel stirred discontent.

  What is the truth, anyway? Leone reached into her school bag and pulled out the assignment that had earned her a U. Brandishing the papers in the air, she raised her voice. “Who are the nuns to tell me that my story about my grandmother, if not entirely accurate, isn’t mostly true?”

  Roxie rolled her big brown eyes in anguish. Rump down, the pup cocked her head and thumped her tail on the paved walkway that led to the house, a dwelling indistinguishable from its neighbors but for peeling paint.

  “You don’t care, do you; you just want this.” Leone stood up and pulled a treat from her pocket. Roxie’s tail thumped faster. Leone balanced the biscuit on the dog’s nose. Roxie went rigid.

  “Wait.” She held up her hand. The dog trembled.

  “Wait.” Roxie fixed her eyes on the end of her nose.

  “Now.” Roxie flipped the biscuit into the air and snapped it between her jaws. Two crunches and she bounded off.

  Wait. That’s all I seem to do. Wait to graduate. Wait to grow up. Wait to get out of here. Leone scowled at the offending letter grade. Sister Isabel had scribed the U so heavily into the top margin that Leone could feel the mark with her fingers from the backside of the paper.

  “Some parts of my story are facts.” She shouted at the white tip of the black tail that disappeared around the side of the house.

  Throwing her head back, she spread her arms wide and addressed the gray clouds passing overhead.

  “The parts I don’t know, I made up.” The cl
ouds ignored her. “So what? That’s what makes a good story.”

  Something in the bushes snorted. Leone straightened up and glared at the rustling branches. Jane dragged herself out from under a scraggly rhododendron and came to stand in front of Leone.

  “You are just like Roxie, always wanting attention.” Leone looked down at her sister. Sunlight bounced off the top of the little girl’s short straight bob, hair so white it made her head look like a waxing gibbous moon. The child looked up at her with sullen blue eyes and began to retreat.

  “Oh come on, Jane, I didn’t mean it. Sit here by me and let me tell you a thing or two.” Leone sat back down on the cracked concrete porch step. Cold moisture seeped through the skirt of her school uniform and dampened her white cotton underpants. Jane took a few steps to stand in front of her, but she refused to sit.

  “Old Sister Isabel called me a liar.” Leone held up the offending pages.

  Jane stared at the red mark and mouthed a U. “That’s a U.”

  Leone steamed. “We aren’t doing your letters, Jane. The old hag thinks I’m unsatisfactory because my truth doesn’t fit her virginal view of a world where women have two choices: serve God or serve men.”

  Jane’s smile took on a knowing air. “What does virgin-al mean?” She cocked her head. Wisps of her white hair fanned out in the gathering breeze and were illuminated against a peek of sunlight just before the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud.

  Leone glared at her. “That’s hardly the point. Listen to what I’m telling you. The truth is, the women in our family arrange evidence to support whatever story they choose to tell. And no one knows better than Grandmother that the evidence does not always support the truth of a matter.”

  “You sound like some of the attorneys I used to work for.”

  Leone froze. The voice came from inside the house, just behind the screen door. Grandmother must have left work early and snuck in the back door. Leone jumped to her feet, and Jane scooted away.

  “I’m looking for my letter box, Leone, have you seen it?”

  “No, Grandmother, but I’ll help you look.” Leone reached around to unstick her skirt from the backs of her legs. She tugged at the rotted elastic that barely held her underpants together. Might as well not wear any.

  Once inside the house, Leone made a show of going room-to-room, opening drawers, and poking into corners. She managed to slip into her bedroom to retrieve the box.

  “Grandmother, I found your letter box in that old trunk you keep in the closet. You must have missed it.” Leone placed the box in Nellie’s outstretched hands.

  A knowing smile crept slowly across Nellie’s well-maintained face. “That’s my girl. I think I’ll just take this back to my room at the boarding house. Less temptation.” She looked directly into Leone’s eyes.

  Leone reddened and lowered her gaze to the stitching on her stylish high-heeled shoes.

  Nellie followed her gaze. “New?”

  Leone swept her foot along the floor in a circular movement and brought it to rest lightly where her grandmother could get a good look. “For my graduation.”

  “Pretty.” Nellie leaned back on her heels. “Now I must go. I have class tonight.

  R

  After dinner, after Jane fell into a sound sleep in the twin bed next to hers, Leone tugged the chain on the small dresser lamp and leaned into the mirror to examine her face. She had her mother’s smile, her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones and no-nonsense nose, and the same deep-set brown eyes as both, eyes that sparkled with intelligence in her grandmother but reflected some deep sadness in her mother.

  I am your girl, Nellie. And I am not sticking around this joint to lead a boring life of work, child rearing, and husband pleasing.

  Leone pulled a nightdress over her head and crawled into bed. She lay on her back and fit the thin coverlet up under her chin. Through the naked front bedroom window, the moon threw light on the ceiling. In the wind, a budding lilac tree scraped the stucco wall outside the room, its branches casting shadows above her head. Whoosh: they trembled and swayed. Stillness: they came to rest, unbent, unbroken. Leone, who said prayers by rote in school throughout the day, consulted no one but herself at night. I’m going to be a dancer and an actress. Or maybe I’ll be a writer.

  She turned over on her side, tucked her arm under her head, and tried to remember all the places her grandmother had described in the stories she found in the letterbox. Good thing I read them before Grandmother caught me prying.

  Has an artistic (so-called) ending of grim realism, someone had scribbled in red pen at the bottom of a story titled “The Miner’s Wife.” Leone kicked at her covers, flipped over on her back, and lay stiff. That detestable red pen! She forced herself to relax and smiled up at the ceiling. I rather liked the grim realism.

  Good possibilities; however, we doubt the ability of this drab, sad-eyed woman to succeed as you describe, the red pen pronounced. Leone’s jaw tightened. Her head throbbed. Do teachers not read newspapers? The news was full of stories about people who rise above their circumstances.

  Make her success more plausible. The red pen ran into the margin and stopped. Fiddlesticks! Leone’s heartbeat drummed in her ears. The less plausible, the more interesting. She sat up in bed and hugged her knees.

  A few feet away, Jane snored in the soft, looping way of children. Muffled voices vibrated the thin wall that separated the bedroom from the front room. Felix must have returned from his monthly round of sales calls.

  How could this drafty house feel so airless? Implausibility. Her new watchword. She would not rest until she had made headlines.

  “Isn’t that the girl you gave a U?” the nuns would say to Sister Isabel.

  “Leone Barry has written a novel of great promise,” critics would hail. “One day, she will be known to all the literary world.” One day, to be known. Her body warmed, and sleep soothed her brow with a soft hand. She fell back into her pillow.

  Behind closed eyes, her mind would not release her body to slumber. Grandmother wrote with the detachment of a tourist traveling through strange events of life, or a reporter, which, of course, she was. As far as Leone knew, only she and the red pen wielder had read the stories. Why should it be different for me?

  I’m starting out younger, and free as a bird. But hadn’t her mother started out with both those advantages? What if her mother had not succumbed to the attentions of a fellow dancer and returned to Spokane with her infant self? Well, I wouldn’t be here, would I? What if her father had not mysteriously died en route to join his family when his contract was up? At least that is what Mother told me. Very suspicious.

  Enough what ifs. A ghost-like Indian woman walked a beach; a young wife lay dead in her honeymoon cabin--the strange-but-true stories that raised doubt in the minds of stodgy academics raised hairs on the back of Leone’s neck. Yielding to sleep, she entered the stories. The grave markers for the miner’s wife and the hunter’s bride morphed into books on a shelf. They bore eulogies that floated off the page, hung in the air, and dissipated like skywriting. Stories are a library of life the locusts cannot destroy.

  Leone fought to open her tightly shuttered eyes. The last image she saw before Morpheus administered the final dose was the gravestone of the forgotten child on a lonely hillside.

  To be forgotten. The god of sleep and dreams murmured. Isn’t that the harshest reality of all?

  It will be different for me. I will not be forgotten.

  22 - Graduation

  22

  Graduation

  Leone sashayed into the living room where her grandmother sat fingering the grosgrain ribbon on a black straw hat. “Très chic.” She pointed to the hat and executed a pirouette. “How do I look, Grandmother?”

  The skirt on Leone’s simple white dress skimmed her shapely knees. Nellie looked her up and down. From the top of her head of curly bobbed hair to the toe of her white-kid one-strap pumps, she looked angelic, but for one detail.

  “I thin
k you can get away with the mascara, but the red lipstick? Your lips enter the room before you do. The monsignor will have a heart attack.”

  Leone laughed and used a tissue to blot her lips. “Better?”

  “Come here.”

  Leone approached her grandmother and bent over to present her face. Nellie held out her hand for the tissue. Leone stuck out her tongue for Nellie to wet the tissue and rub off more color.

  “There.”

  Leone and Nellie sat together in companionable silence, waiting for the tardier members of the family to finish dressing for Leone’s graduation ceremony from Saint Mary’s.

  “Grandmother, remember that story you told me about the woman who got tossed out onto the street because her lover died and his mother took revenge? What happened to her?”

  Nellie pulled a compact out of her pocketbook and checked her face powder. She smoothed an eyebrow and patted a wave of hair into place.

  “Grandmother? Did she write to Loraine and tell her what happened?”

  Nellie clicked the pocket mirror shut and picked up her story exactly where she had left it.

  “Clara did not wish to be a burden on her daughter.”

  “But surely Clara let Loraine know of her desperate situation.”

  “What a memory you have. Clara was a stubborn, proud woman, but yes, she wrote to Loraine.”

  “And she went to live with her?”

  “Her letter was returned, stamped No Longer at This Address.”

  “You mean to tell me she never saw her daughter again?”

  “That’s right. Clara lived out the rest of her days at the Salvation Army Home that I helped her get into. When she died, she was buried in a potter’s field.”

  “What’s that?”

  The measured click of mid-heeled shoes down the hallway alerted the two women that their conversation had likely been overheard. Opal walked into the room, pulling a hairpin from between her lips. She laced it through a few strands of hair that had fallen loose from a carefully sculpted curl.