The House on Malcolm Street

by Leisha Kelly

  “Do you always make so many? Goodness, we couldn’t begin to eat that much.”

  She smiled. “Won’t have to. Twice a week I send a bundleful on the train.”

  On the train? Biscuits? I didn’t have time to ask what she was talking about. The back door creaked behind me and I turned in time to see Mr. Walsh step into the kitchen with a wire basket filled with eggs.

  “My, oh my, that’s a generous many,” Aunt Mari proclaimed. “Did Mr. Abraham insist on sharing again?”

  “That he did,” Josiah answered. “Of course he knows it’s Tuesday, but he also said he saw the light in your room upstairs and knew it wouldn’t be you up there. So he figured you’d rented it out and had another mouth to feed.”

  “Nosy old coot,” Aunt Marigold said with a mysterious smile. “It’s no business of his what we’re doing over here.”

  “Maybe he’s hankering for a fresh-baked pie again.”

  “Maybe. But it’ll have to wait. It’s biscuit day and when we’re done with these, I’m going to let the oven rest at least until this afternoon.”

  Josiah set the egg basket on the counter, glancing in my direction for the first time. He looked so tall, far taller than he had last night. Fair-haired like John but broader of shoulder. I hoped he’d be in a great hurry to leave for his work.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  I nodded, not wanting to elaborate in any manner.

  “Somebody have a bumpy start this morning?”

  Had he heard my precipitous tumble from the bed? Or worse, had I cried out? I couldn’t remember, but it was certainly a possibility. John had wakened me from the nightmare more than once after hearing me yell.

  I stared at him, wondering what I could answer without having to explain myself. He didn’t walk away and busy himself at something, which would have been the gracious thing to do. He just stood watching me and waiting.

  “I assure you that we’re both fine,” I told him, a bit more curtly than I’d intended.

  He narrowed his eyes a bit, as if questioning me, and then turned abruptly away. “Good. Has anyone carried the milk in?”

  “Haven’t got to that yet,” Marigold answered immediately.

  “I didn’t mean you,” Josiah told her. “I’ll get it.”

  Why hadn’t I thought when I saw the milk wagon down the street that there might be milk on the front step? I could’ve saved someone some steps. Mr. Walsh obviously believed I should’ve. I’d have to be on my toes around here or he’d quickly draw the conclusion that I wasn’t doing enough. Maybe Marigold had told him she was letting me stay without paying. I could understand that the apparent double standard could be upsetting, but there was nothing I could do to remedy that yet.

  He brought the milk in silence and then without waiting for anyone else, plopped jam onto a warm biscuit and began gobbling it down.

  “Want eggs?” Aunt Marigold asked him without a shred of criticism.

  “Sure.”

  She turned to me. “How do you ladies like your eggs? I’ll be making some for everybody, but Josiah first. He’ll be out the door before we know it. I’ve got to get the rest of these biscuits in the oven. Don’t want to make anybody late.”

  “Train won’t leave without me on biscuit day,” Josiah added, and I still had no idea what they were talking about but didn’t think it was my place to ask.

  “We’ll eat eggs any way you fix them,” I answered Marigold. “But I’d be happy to cook them if you wish.”

  “That’d be wonderful, dear,” she said quickly. “It’ll give me a chance to help the little baker here finish cutting the last few biscuits. Josiah likes three hard fried when he can get them and I’ll take one scrambled.” She turned happily to Ellie. “You’re doing a great job, sweetie.”

  Eliza smiled as Marigold helped her fill a second tray of biscuits for the oven. But I noticed Josiah’s frown and got the sinking feeling that he was very unhappy with our presence.

  “I can cook my own eggs,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” Marigold told him. “I want you to read to me, same as usual.”

  I wasn’t sure what to think as he moved to the table in silence and picked up a leather-bound book from a small shelf in the corner that I hadn’t even noticed before. Obviously, he respected his aunt enough to do what she asked even when he didn’t like it.

  “Chapter 139,” Marigold prompted.

  I didn’t know what to expect as he turned pages and began to read, but it was a psalm, from the Bible. I recognized it immediately, though I couldn’t remember when or where I’d heard it before.

  “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.”

  Did Mr. Walsh appreciate the Scripture as much as his aunt did, or was he simply being nice? It was impossible to tell, but I wished he would refuse her request, or at least stop after the first verse or two. Marigold had set a skillet and grease beside the stove for the eggs, but it was frightfully hard to concentrate with the Word of God going on in the background.

  “Thou compasseth my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.”

  I tried to busy myself and pay no attention. He wasn’t reading to me, and the words had no bearing on my situation. Why bother with them?

  “There is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.”

  Marigold’s wonderful gas stove lit with ease. Noisily, I fumbled in a drawer for the utensils I needed and melted a dab of grease in the pan. Mr. Walsh wanted three eggs, hard fried. Just what John had always requested. Must be a family thing. I reached for the egg basket as he read on.

  “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

  The words stopped me cold. An egg slipped from my hand, I don’t know how. But before I could catch it, the thing cracked against the corner of the stove and slid to the floor with a squishy plop.

  Josiah stopped reading and looked up at me. Wonderful. I certainly was not making a very good impression. Staring down at the egg on Marigold’s hard wood floor, my eyes filled with tears. This was so stupid. It was absolutely the worst moment to draw attention to myself. I hadn’t been trying to flee God’s presence. I’d only wanted a roof over our heads. And now – now here we were in this strange house in Illinois with perfect strangers. And I was acting like an absolute ninny in front of them, to be so clumsy and so . . . so emotional.

  Marigold hurried toward me with a cleaning rag. “Don’t you worry about it, now, dearie,” she admonished quickly. “One egg is no big thing. Nobody here’s starvin’.”

  Glancing over at my daughter, I could see the hint of anxiety in her eyes. Had she wondered if Aunt Marigold might get mad at my carelessness? Or even ask us to leave? Such an outcome would be devastating.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to say, maybe as much to Eliza as to anyone else.

  “Like I said, it’s no big thing,” Marigold repeated. “We’ve got plenty more this morning.”

  True enough. But that started me wondering. Did they have other mornings when they did without? Josiah had said a neighbor sent the eggs at least partly because he thought Marigold had extra boarders. Did she have any chickens of her own? Had she been struggling for enough food to put on the table? We would be a terrible burden if that were the case.

  “Go right on readin’,” Marigold told her nephew, and I wished she’d let it go. I couldn’t remember the number of the psalm she’d chosen, but it had started out unnerving and hadn’t gotten any better.

  “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me . . .”

  Suddenly I remembered w
here I’d heard those words before. John had read them late one night as I walked and prayed, trying to coax our baby to sleep. Poor little Johnny James had been so ill several times in the few short months of his life. And John had been so confident in his recovery. All for naught.

  Marigold motioned at me to keep cooking. She insisted on cleaning up the mess herself. I tried to concentrate, to show her and her nephew that I could be a decent cook, a decent help to them. But I broke an egg against the side of the pan and another got a little overdone as I tried to scrape up the splatter. They’d not be very pretty eggs, but hopefully they’d taste all right.

  Marigold had the last of the biscuits in the oven in two shakes and then sat down across the table from her nephew, bringing him more biscuits and jam. Eliza sat beside her and accepted a biscuit immediately. But Josiah just kept reading.

  “Thou hast possessed my reins; thou hast covered me from my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”

  I took him a plate of eggs. He stopped and looked down at it but didn’t say a word.

  “Go ahead and eat,” Marigold told him. “You’ll have to be out the door pretty quick.”

  He set the Bible aside, glanced at me, and then bowed his head for a moment before lifting his fork. I wished I knew if prayer was his regular habit or only a precaution under the circumstances. But I tried to act as if I hadn’t noticed and set to work scrambling a batch of eggs for the rest of us.

  “What does ‘possessed my reins’ mean?” Eliza suddenly asked.

  I drew a breath. It was hard enough to answer some of her questions privately, but in front of Aunt Mari and Mr. Walsh? I was about to reluctantly admit that I wasn’t sure when Marigold answered confidently.

  “That means God had control of the making of you before you were even born,” she explained. “He knew all about you and worked out every detail to make you the special person you are.”

  “Before I was born?” Ellie questioned. “Did I have curly hair even back then?”

  “In God’s eyes you did.”

  I hoped they would stop before the conversation progressed any further. But my Eliza was too much of a thinker and too full of questions for that.

  “Did he know all about my baby brother too?”

  Marigold put her arm around my daughter’s shoulders. “He knows everything there is to know about every one of us, child. No matter how old or young. He made us who we are.”

  “Then did he make my brother sick?”

  I would not have been prepared for such an abrupt question, nor would I have handled it very well. But the words were not spoken with any kind of bitterness, and Marigold didn’t seem troubled by them in the least. Her words were steady and strong, as though she’d had plenty of time to think them through.

  “Whether God formed him weak of body or whether the enemy in this world caused that for trouble, I can’t say. But I know that child was purposed of God and loved by him just as much as anyone that’s ever been born.”

  I suddenly realized that Josiah was watching me as he ate, probably waiting for some kind of reaction. Did he know about my baby? Surely he did. How could a relative staying here with Marigold not know? So what did he want to see? More tears?

  I turned off the burner beneath the eggs and excused myself to find the washroom. I wouldn’t give him a reaction. None at all. Let him call me a poor cook or anything else he liked. I’d not give him occasion to think me any more of an emotional weakling than he might already.

  5

  Leah

  Josiah was finished eating when I rejoined them in the kitchen, and Marigold was taking the last of the biscuits out of the oven. I didn’t realize until that moment how hungry I was, but I said nothing and did not venture to the table. The eggs were still on the stove where I’d left them. Marigold separated a plate of biscuits and piled the rest in a heap in the middle of a large double cloth.

  “This’ll keep ’em fairly warm. They’ll be nice and soft too,” she explained.

  Josiah was lacing his work boots as she pulled two corners of the cloth over her biscuits to the center and tied them. Then she did the same with the remaining corners and, using the knot as a handle, lifted the bundle and swung it around a bit.

  “Nothing’s gonna fall outta there.”

  Eliza was fascinated. “Is that Mr. Josiah’s lunch? It’s the biggest lunch I ever seen. Must be four whole plates heaped full, maybe five.”

  Marigold laughed. “He can snitch him a biscuit or two for his lunch, same as the brakeman always does. But the rest of ’em’s going to the Kurchers.”

  “Where is that?” I asked, genuinely curious about this “biscuit day” idea.

  “The Kurchers live close to Maple Falls, east by the train track. Lovely family. He passed on a couple of years ago, but she keeps things together the best she can. Most amazing thing you ever saw, with twenty-one children – ”

  “Twenty-one?”

  She smiled. “I suppose they’re down a few by now, with her oldest girls grown and married. They had fourteen of their own, then took in five when her younger brother and his wife both died in the influenza epidemic.” Her voice grew quieter. “Someone they didn’t even know left the other two. Just abandoned them on the front porch. A baby and a little thing smaller than your girl. Can you imagine? Hilda didn’t have to, but she kept them. A lot of love, that woman. I send her biscuits every Tuesday and Friday, just to help a little. Eggs too, when we can. What do you think, Josiah? Can you carry eggs today without any getting broken?”

  He nodded. “Pad the layers with a towel.”

  I stood and stared at them. My parents had never been givers. John and I had seldom had the means. Was it just routine for them here? Had I been mistaken earlier? Was Aunt Marigold well-to-do? Or saintly despite her own need? Either way, I surely did not belong here, and I felt terrible that I had broken an egg earlier that might have fed one of the Kurcher children. For a moment I forgot that we had not yet eaten, but Marigold quickly reminded me.

  “We’ll sit down and breakfast leisurely as soon as Josiah’s gone,” she said. “Can you help me pack the eggs?”

  Marigold only kept back two besides the ones I’d cooked. We layered the others carefully in a basket between folds of dishtowel, and Josiah was ready to leave as soon as we were done.

  “Don’t forget you promised me a pie,” he told Aunt Marigold right before he left, his rugged features softened slightly by a youthful smile.

  I didn’t know what to think of either of them, but Marigold gave me little time to wonder. As soon as he was gone, she set my pan of cooked eggs on the table beside the biscuits and jam that were already there and motioned to me to sit down.

  “Sorry we didn’t have a chance to finish our psalm today. That happens sometimes, but we can finish up tomorrow. I’d have you read me the rest, but I think it’s good for Josiah to be a-listenin’.”

  I wasn’t sure why she thought it might be important to me. I would have been more comfortable for her not to bring up the subject of Scriptures again at all. But as usual, Eliza was overflowing with boundless curiosity.

  “Can’t you read it by yourself?” she wanted to know.

  “Oh, I used to. Every single morning. But my eyes is dim for that sort of thing now. The print’s too small. Been a godsend for me to have Josiah here reading for me. I started him on it the very first day he came. Been good for both of us.”

  Now my curiosity was piqued. “How long has he been here?”

  “A little more than a year. But enough about him. Tell me more about yourself. What sorts of things you like to do, that sort of thing.”

  “I – I’m afraid I don’t have many real preferences. And I wouldn’t want you to cater to them if I had. I’d like to help you while we’re here. Starting today. If there’s any housework – ”

  She smiled. “Actually, it’s supposed to be a beautiful day. I
’d much rather spend some time getting a few things done outof-doors if it’s all right with you.” She looked at the food on the table and then at Eliza, who was breaking open a biscuit. “Has anyone asked the blessing?”

  “Mr. Josiah did,” Eliza answered cheerfully, and I hoped Marigold wouldn’t think her cheeky.

  Apparently she didn’t. “Well enough, then.” She passed me the eggs. “Do help yourself. It’s delightful to have your company. I’m so used to being left alone anymore.”

  I took a spoon or two of scrambled eggs and gave Eliza a scoop of them because she wouldn’t eat them if I didn’t set them on her plate. The girl loved biscuits more than anything else, and I’m sure the fun of helping roll them herself just made the appeal that much greater.

  Soon I could discern the sound of a train in the distance, and my stomach knotted. I’d heard it in the city sometimes, not quite so close at hand. It helped to know that the tracks were four blocks away at the closest point. The whistle wasn’t terribly jarring, at least not in the house with the windows shut. I was sure it was something I could manage to get used to. I decided to try to make conversation to take my mind off it.

  “Aunt Marigold – I appreciate so much you welcoming us here.”

  “You told me that last night. And believe me, it’s a pleasure to have you. But I do want you to tell me more about yourself. Do you sew or crochet? Do you like to bake? Or embroider, perhaps?”

  “I’m acquainted with all of those. But not terribly good at any of them, I’m afraid.”

  “You mentioned that you might seek work in town. Did you learn marketable skills before you married?”

  Gracious, she was straight to the point! Maybe she did need a rent payment from me as soon as possible. “I’m afraid the only thing I did before marriage was help with the chores and orchard work.”

  “Orchard? Really? Did you grow up on one?”

  “Yes, you could say that, but a very small orchard. Father only had two acres of trees not far from town.”

  “A person could put a lot of trees on two acres if he was of a mind to. At least I could. Apples?”