Her mother Ruth.
Gerry. “John Wheatley and his wife were enlightened. They allowed Phillis the life of a white person, and her brilliance was sometimes recognized and sometimes disdained.”
“Depending on whether you thought slaves should be given full rights or not.” Hannah.
“When did she die?” Elixchel.
“John Wheatley, her protector and mentor, died in 1778 and she was freed as per his will. She married a John Peters. Little is known about him, except that he was an African American, and that they had three children and lived in abject poverty in Boston. She died alone after the deaths of her three children in 1784. She was not yet thirty-nine.” Gerry.
“She died of slavery. The whole family died of slavery.” Andrea.
“But she was freed,” Elixchel.
“Yeah. But the world around her wasn’t happy with that. They couldn’t find decent work. They lived in a slum. Her whole family died way too young.”
Hannah said, “You should wander the old graveyards of New England. It wasn’t uncommon for babies to die young in those days. It wasn’t uncommon for people to have short, hard lives.”
“True.” Gerry.
“Before modern medicine and indoor plumbing,” Anne said.
“True.” Gerry.
“But the rich white people lived longer by far than their slaves.” Andrea.
“True. All true. Aren’t we wonderfully educated ladies?” Gerry.
We collectively smiled again and bowed our heads in concentration once more, and stitch after stitch was laid down on Abigail’s quilt.
Chapter 72
The next two teen stories came from Gerry the wife of a billionaire and former high school Spanish teacher, and Andrea, the disgruntled pixie with civil rights issues.
Gerry’s was a sweet tale of innocence. Apparently she spent her high school years bouncing from one crush to another without connecting with a boy. My thinking on this, beautiful girls can be too threatening for young men to approach, especially if they were at all shy. That seemed to be Gerry’s saving grace.
Finally she lapsed into another discussion of the early history of American quilts and quilting which got everyone involved. Gerry had found a website making the claim that Betsy Ross’ flags were actually quilts. No one at the bee disputed this assertion.
I made another run for the bathroom, and as I returned I overheard Andrea’s strident pixie voice.
“…Luke should never have been allowed out of Donovan….”
The now deceased Luke was Victoria’s second born son. In his early days he killed his older brother Mark in a drunken bar fight over Ada. In the end, he was responsible for more familial crimes.
“Andrea! For heaven’s sake, what earthly purpose could such a statement have?” Gerry was red-faced livid under her fountain of blond curls.
Victoria rose painfully from her chair at the quilt and lumbered toward me as I was arriving back in on the porch. I thought perhaps she was headed for the now vacant toilet, but she turned toward a comfy chair in a dark corner of the living room and lowered her heavy body into it.
Elixchel scooted an ottoman under her feet. And I watched as Victoria’s face retreated into the shadows. She slept for a while.
Returning to the rack Elixchel made brief eye contact with me and shook her head ruefully.
“When Victoria returns Andrea, you will formally apologize to her, do you hear me?”
“Yes.” A contrite pixie.
Then out of the blue Elixchel asserts that Mexicans feet the same way today as the British did about their former Colonies, that their property was stolen from them—only for Mexicans it’s the thirteen contested southwestern states. Like they’ve been kidnapped.
Huh? Contested what? My mind had drifted.
“Thirteen contested states..?”
Elixchel glared at me, and snapped, “You want to talk slavery, talk Chicano.”
Then she returned her glare to Andrea.
Victoria, mostly silent--and I thought pretty depressed given her illness and her family troubles--was no longer a barrier between her two foster children. I wondered if they’d go at it again.
But they held their animosity in and the room fell silent for another half hour--until Andrea started telling her tale, a few minutes after Victoria’s return.
“Just change the pronouns and you’ll know what my teenage experience was. Except it wasn’t with another teen. My first sexual encounter was with my gym teacher, Ms. Oakley. I spent every gym class mooning at her and she noticed.
“Catherine Oakley is beautiful, her curves are all muscle. Her hair is curly like a guys, she was so like a guy I got confused when we finally got together at her apartment…”
“When was this?’ Victoria suddenly demanded.
“Years ago, forget about it, Grandma.”
“I’m not…”
They stared at each other, realizing something had changed. Andrea’s grin widened into a real smile. Victoria matched her grin and raised her one.
“Yep. You’re a grandma!”
The last time I heard Andrea call her Grandma Victoria had shouted that she was no one’s grandma. But now we all knew about Eddie and he was her grandson.
Another thought flitted through my mind like an exhausted butterfly--Grandma Victoria and strange Eddie Stowall were connected.
This was when Andrea went where I thought no one should go. Story telling was supposed to be voluntary.
“But Gerry, billionaire friend of mine, what was that mushy story you told all about? Are we to believe you are a real air-head? A dumb bunny blond? A brainless fool? Surely something weird must have happened to you in your teen years.”
Gerry looked up, a sudden look of…guilt? fear? anger? flashing across her face, and then she willed her face into a smooth mask.
“So how about you tell us a teen story that reveals who you really were at that age.
Gerry inhaled slowly, brought her blond flop of curls up as high above us all as she could, and said, “Okay.” She turned a Godfather’s smile on Andrea.
“Okay. But you have to promise not to….”
The room resounded in a simultaneous and unanimous agreement to non-disclose. Hannah even crossed her heart and put her right hand up, although she never said, “Hope to die.”
“Okay.”
That was her third okay. This was going to be good.
“When I was seventeen, in my second month on campus….”
“UC Santa Barbara.” Hannah.
Gerry looked at her. Then she returned to her story.
“It was October fourth, the Sunday night after a long weekend away celebrating little bro’s birthday, which is October third, so I’m certain about the date. And I was sitting on my miserable college bed, alone in our room, slamming out a quick paper on the American Revolution, something to do with taxation without representation, my typewriter wedged between my thighs….”
“Oh.” Andrea.
“…when my right hand, all of its own, slid off the typewriter and discovered my—pleasure point.”
She looked around at us, checking our willingness to go further. We were willing.
“Okay. Well, the next part is unbelievable but true. I was such a virgin. I was such an innocent.” She closed her eyes tight and breathed three times.
“I didn’t finish the paper, I hardly slept all night, I kept staring at the girls in my dorm, wondering—wondering who had brought this…this…lesbian behavior out of me.”
Andrea burst into screaming laughter and fell over backwards off her wooden chair on the floor. She was ROFL-ing. She was still laughing when Elixchel picked her up. I was wondering if her laughter was overdone.
“Okay, you’re right. I was one dumb bunny….”
Again, she was interrupted when Andrea shouted, “Sexually retarded!”
“…but I couldn’t figure out why else such a strange and probably immoral thing was happening to me, so I walked around campus trying
to look busy all day, even climbed the stairs to the top of the psych department and waited outside the office wondering if this was where to get an appointment to see a shrink. At long last I finally called my mom.”
“What did she say?” Hannah. Her laughter was more peaceful--more a low chuckle.
“Well, of course she told me it was normal. Told me she’d been masturbating since she was thirteen—what took me so long? God, what an ugly word that is.” Gerry put her red face in her hands and stayed that way for a few moments.
It took us another ten minutes to resume sewing and stop giggling. Of course, as I look back on it now I realize this was a turning point for us this night. A point at which the stark terror of a missing Abigail turned into something we could manage, something we needed to work hard to rectify. And then a final thought occurred to me which I spoke.
“Gerry, why did you give me an incomplete genealogy last month?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, the one you gave me was a smaller version from the one I found at the library. Yours didn’t show my connection to the Stowall family tree. The one in John’s book does.”
Looks passed between Gerry and Victoria, and I suddenly knew that Gerry had been given the genealogy by Victoria, so my brain began analyzing.
“My mother gave me that copy, Rachel. It was the only copy I’d ever seen.” Okay, so I was wrong. Gerry seemed disappointed.
“So you’re related to us then?” Hannah said.
“Great! We’re all in the same family.” Andrea quipped. Sarcasm?
“Everyone is, ladies. Everyone has always been in the same family.” Elixchel.
Of course she meant biblically, as in all of us are derived from Adam and Eve, according to the bible, I reasoned.
“Even if you discount dis Judeo-Christian account of our beginnings, even if you belief in Darvinism, you must ultimately see us as all connected now dat we’ve identified so much of the DNA common to humans.” Gloria. Very analytical.
“And fish. And plants, for that matter.” Andrea.
“Who-who.” Anne. Then I wondered what Anne meant by that.
Chapter 73
From Matthew’s LIRI Journal
Sunday, Nov. 2, 12:45 pm
I slipped by the nurses’ station while they were in the back office setting up patient meds. Found Lewis alone and apparently asleep. He opened his eyes when I touched his hand, tried to speak and had a coughing fit. I gave him some water but reminded him he was on IV liquids and to take it easy.
I was tired and distracted and told him Abigail was missing too abruptly. His heart rate sped up and threatened to trip the monitor alarms. I told him to breathe deeply and stay calm and asked him if he knew where she might be. He indicated she had a boyfriend named Buddy and seemed head-over-heels about him. Just as I asked him for a last name, a nurse stuck her head in and started a ruckus. Luis shook his head and I ducked out before I could get thrown out.
Called Rachel from the emergency exit stairwell to tell her but she cut me off saying she “couldn’t talk in the pie room,” whatever the hell that means. Just as well. Didn’t want her trying to find Buddy herself. Glad she doesn’t have a car there. Hope she doesn’t try to borrow one.
Chapter 74
I drifted away from the quilting rack around one, and suddenly found myself climbing the stairs toward Abigail’s bedroom. I needed to search for clues. I’d thought about this earlier, but Gloria had said she already searched. It was time for me to give it a try.
Standing on the threshold of her very messy, little girl’s room, I was driven to the brink of tears. She was so young. Just a baby, really, with stuffed animals on her unmade bed and a closet full of pastel clothes. Feminine. Much more feminine and child-like than her art. I wondered if Gloria had a hand in decorating the room.
“I’ve searched.” It was Gloria. She’d followed me.
“You said.”
“Tvice. That’s vy it’s such a mess. The second time I vas…hysterical. No, I vas angry. I just threw stuff.”
I nodded. So probably looking for clues in here was now pointless. But I spent ten minutes searching places she hadn’t, including taking apart a framed photograph I found tucked way in the back of the closet shelf.
“Dat’s her father,” Gloria whispered. “I didn’t know vat she’d done with that picture.”
There was nothing hidden between the cardboard backing and the picture. Maybe the jewelry box had a false bottom. But she didn’t have a jewelry box that I could see. I stooped to look under her bed. A lone sock. Some dust. Crumpled paper. The rug was much thicker and healthier under there.
“How long have you lived here, Gloria?”
“Ve built the add-on for Joe. Abigail was three when ve move in.”
Ten years. But her secret life was new, so I decided she hadn’t turned to cutting holes in the walls to hide things yet. I didn’t move the furniture. There were eight or ten of her paintings on the walls. I decided not to take them down for further examination. This was all too recent, Abigail’s rebellion. That sort of stealthy behavior would come later.
“Okay, let’s get back downstairs with the others.”
But it was too late. Gloria was quietly weeping, actually more like seeping, the tears gently rolling down her cheeks, her mouth aquiver--but making no sound. She seemed practiced at this silent crying, maybe she’d learned the technique in Ukraine, where privacy was hard to come by. Maybe she’d practiced it here in America, with her new husband who didn’t seem able to cope, who refused a kidney transplant even though her status as a nurse made him quickly eligible for one. It was an odd thing to see, a silent cry.
My mother had learned to do this in her eight years of dying. The doctor had called it depression crying.
By the time we returned to the rack I was really down and I knew another shot of sugar wouldn’t help. Then my phone sent a shot of adrenaline through me.
I raced into the bathroom like I had the runs and pressed my phone to my ear.
“Matt?”
“Who else? Can you talk now?” He was referring to our last call.
“Okay, don’t get edgy. Tell me what you know.”
But I wasn’t angry, I was cheered. His voice did that, and now his words. He gave me hope, as he told me Luis was awake, and what he’d learned from him. My tired brain got stuck on Luis.
“He’s awake? He’s going to be okay?” Me.
“Yes and yes, I’m waiting.” Matt.
Right. Buddy’s last name. “I’ll call back.”
I raced back into the quilting room—as I was now coming to think of it. They looked the same—heads bowed, concentrating on their sewing--until I heard Elixchel’s words.
They stopped me in my tracks. Her voice held a barely contained sob.
“Heavenly Father we beseech you, send us your comfort. Send us an answer that saves our little sister, Abigail. Bring her back to us now. Tell us where she is so we can bring her home safe and sound. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, amen.”
I raised my own head, unclasped my hands and spoke from the elevated living room stair. I had something I simply had to ask them immediately, prayer giving or no.
“Who knows Buddy’s last name? Buddy is a name, not another word for friend. Luis thinks that might be where she is.”
“Luis is awake?” Gerry said. But her words were instantly eclipsed.
Gloria shot up out of her chair and turned to face me. She looked like the weight of the world had just been lifted from her shoulders. She was beaming a hopeful smile under a brow heavy with fear. She looked borderline insane.
Oh no. We couldn’t afford to get our hopes up that high.
“Wait. Buddy Zinzer? Do you mean Judi Zinzer’s younger brother?” Andrea said.
Zinzer. The family at the hospital looking in on Jimmy Winters as he lay dying. “He’s a chubby guy?” I said.
“Chubby guys don’t haf sex. The fat makes estrogen,”
she told herself.
Definitely edging toward madness. Gloria had suddenly gone from worrying if her child was alive to worrying if she was having sex.
“Well, yeah. I mean he’s thirteen or fourteen. He’s still got his baby fat. So I guess you could call him chubby.” Andrea.
“Where do they live?”
“I don’t know. I just know them from art classes. Judi was a so-so artist who took instruction from the same guy I did, a Frank Rizzo. He was a babe…according to Judi. And of course Abigail was in class. I guess….”
Andrea was still talking but from the looks on their faces I could tell no one knew where the Zinzers lived, so I stepped away and began dialing Matt, praying he was still near his phone. I busied myself as I waited for him to answer, searching Gloria’s kitchen.
“Vat are you looking for?” Gloria said.
“Your phonebook. I want to look up the Zinzer’s address.”
“I’ll do it.” She was eager to do something, anything, to help.
“He’s probably on the road…” I muttered.
“Here it is, one twelve Avenida Riada.” Desperation laced her words.
I drummed my fingers on the counter as the call slid to voice mail. I left a quick message then redialed.
I redialed again, and another time, getting more frustrated by the minute, worrying that maybe his phone had gone dead and he wouldn’t receive my messages.
“Maybe I should get in my car and…shoot. I don’t have my car.”
“I’ll drive you.” Hannah and Gerry both said, and we were preparing to leave the house when my phone rang again.
“Matt!”
I listened as he told me he got the message and they were on their way. He added I was not to call him again. He would call me when he had some news. Then abruptly hung up before I could say another word.
“Weird.”
“What?”
I looked up. “Oh nothing, Gloria. He was really rushed, is all. They’re going over to the Zinzers’ now.” And he’d told me not to call him again. Huh?
I have to tell you that was when my thoughts turned from dutiful wife-partner to…. But not yet. First I returned to sewing, to think.
Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel Page 27
