Rush Home Road

by Lori Lansens

  By the time Addy reached Warren and Peggy’s office her hip was aching and she was well out of breath. Warren’s big German shepherd greeted her at the door with a wag and a bark. She patted his head but said, “Go on, Chipper. I don’t trust you one bit.”

  Addy sat for a moment in the musty chair by Warren’s desk and was glad when he offered a cigarette. Then she remembered the promise to Leam and shook her head. Warren didn’t mind loaning the sprinkler but wondered if her hose was long enough to reach the field. She said it was, and he remembered, “I got a call from Frank Kuiper yesterday. That’s his cow pasture out back.”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “He says trailer kids been climbing the fence again and someone’s gonna get hurt. You think a cow’s a gentle animal, eh, but that ain’t always the case.”

  “I’ll talk to Sharla again and make sure she won’t go climbing. I think she’s got more sense but she does get led astray.”

  “Don’t we all.” Warren laughed.

  Addy took the heavy sprinkler and rose to go. Warren checked to make sure his wife hadn’t entered through the back office door and stopped Addy, asking quietly, “You heard from Collette?”

  The question took Addy by surprise. She shook her head.

  “Let me know if you do, will you, Mizz Shadd?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Course I will. Course I will, Warren.” She knew she was being nosy but couldn’t help it. “You got business with Collette?”

  “She owes me a few hundred, but Christ, don’t say nothing to Peg, eh?”

  Addy nodded.

  Warren looked serious. “You thought about calling the police?”

  “Police?” Addy’s heart thumped.

  “Well, yeah, I mean, Collette just up and left the kid. Never said where she was going or when she’d be back or if she’d be back. I mean, yeah, I’d think about calling the police.”

  “If I called the police they’d take that child to foster care.”

  “Likely. Peg and I were saying that might be the best thing though.”

  Addy couldn’t tell any more if Warren was friend or foe. Did he mean to have Sharla taken away? She cleared her throat and asked quietly, “You think it’s so bad the child’s living with me, Warren?”

  “No. I just—Christ, Mizz Shadd, you don’t want her, do you? I mean, you’re getting up there, no offence. Peg and I looked after the kid for Collette a couple of times. Not an easy child to like.”

  “I like her fine.”

  “I just figure you don’t need some brat eating up your pension.”

  “Well, Warren, truth is, Sharla ain’t no brat. She’s a sweet thing, really, and gives me comfort. But I am getting old, like you say, and seeing it don’t look like Collette’s coming back, I did have a mind to find her a more permanent place to live. I called Collette’s father.”

  Warren whistled and shook his head. “He’s quite the bastard, eh? ’Scuse my French, but…”

  “You know him?”

  Warren nodded. “We were neighbours. I’ve known Collette since, oh, way before her mother died. When I got my job here I helped her out, you know, like you do. Guess we were going steady for a while. But Collette isn’t exactly a one-man woman.” He checked the back door again and gestured with a hand to his throat. “Peggy’s the jealous type though, so.”

  “Why you think so lowly of Reggie Depuis? What’d he do to her?”

  “You know Collette’s Mum died of cancer?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Arla. I knew them a little, way back when.”

  “Then you know Reggie married that Delia woman right away.”

  “Yes. Yes. I knew about that.”

  “Well, Delia moves into the house and first thing she does is get rid of the family dog. Said she was allergic but no one believed her. He was an old dog, sure, but…Collette never did get over that.”

  “I imagine she didn’t.”

  “Reggie and Delia were always going out for dinners and card parties and whatever. Pretty much left Collette to fend for herself, so.”

  “You know Sharla’s Daddy, Warren?”

  Warren shrugged. “Saw him once or twice at roller-skating. Collette told me his name was Cody. I don’t know. He’s a coloured fella. Sorry, Mizz Shadd. I should say black, eh?”

  Addy laughed. “I’m too old to know the right word, Warren. I think you say what you say with your intention and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Well, anyway, Cody was a big fella, kinda fat. Not exactly good-looking. Not exactly somebody you’d expect Collette to go for.”

  Addy nodded. “Don’t know nothing about where he lived?”

  “Far as I know she only went out with him the one time. My Mom wouldn’t let my little sister go roller-skating on account of what happened to Collette. She’s pretty racial, eh, so.”

  Addy nodded, knowing what Warren meant and how his mother thought. Coloured boys went roller-skating and coloured boys made white girls pregnant.

  “Well, I best be getting on, Warren. I can get the sprinkler back by tomorrow.”

  “Sure, leave it with Peggy, and don’t say nothing about Collette, eh, or my ass is grass.”

  “I understand, Son.”

  Addy left the office with a queasy feeling and it wasn’t the heat. Leam was walking beside her now and offered his arm for support when she stumbled.

  “You think Warren’s gonna call the police about Sharla, Leam?”

  “No. You heard him. He’s a good fella.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “I know, Addy. Been a long hot summer already. You feel better when the north wind blows again.”

  “What if I die before then, Leam? What’s gonna happen to that little girl?”

  “Nothing good, Addy.”

  “If I could just find her Daddy. If I could just find her Daddy.”

  “Who you talking to?” The voice Addy heard was not Leam’s but a squeaky little girl’s voice and for a second Addy’s heart stopped, thinking it might be Chick. She looked up ahead of her on the road and saw a familiar child swinging her arms and staring. Addy looked at the white-haired child, searching for her name and the context of their knowing each other.

  “Hello, Child.”

  Fawn Trochaud smalled her eyes and asked again, “Who were you talking to?”

  Addy shrugged. “Oh, just my own self. Old ladies do that, you know.”

  Fawn fell into step beside her. “Aunt Krystal buried Trixie out back the trailer.”

  “Trixie?”

  “It stunk like poo, too.”

  “Trixie?”

  “She said you should have stayed to help. She was mad.”

  Addy remembered. “Oh! You’re Sharla’s little friend. Dear. Dear? That your name? Dear?”

  “Try Fawn,” she sassed.

  “Fawn. Well, what a lucky thing to see you, Fawn. Let’s go on over to your Aunt’s place a minute. Which one is it again?”

  Fawn pointed to a shabby trailer a few yards away where Krystal Trochaud lay stretched out on a cat hair blanket, stuffed into a too-small bikini, letting the sun at her greasy pink flesh.

  Addy called out, “Hello there!”

  Krystal glanced up and closed her eyes again, calling, “Whatever you come to ask the answer’s no.”

  Addy reached the edge of the blanket. “Beg pardon?”

  “Whatever you’re asking me to do, I can’t do it. I can’t take Sharla. I won’t take Sharla. Not for a day. Not for an hour.”

  “Well, actually, I came to ask if Fawn here wants to come to Sharla’s birthday party tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Krystal sat up, imagining a day all to herself.

  Fawn shook her head. “I don’t want to go.”

  Addy laughed, thinking the little girl was just being sassy again. “Course you do. Sharla’s your friend. And it’s gonna be fun. We’ll have hot dogs and whatnot. Games and all, and I’m running this big sprinkler here so bring your swimsuit too.”

  Fawn crossed her arms over h
er chest. “I hate Sharla’s guts.”

  Krystal lit a Kool and told Fawn evenly, “Too bad, Brat. You’re going.”

  Addy told Krystal the time and reminded her to send Fawn with her swimsuit. She walked away from the char-broiled woman and the sassy child and knew she’d just made a big mistake.

  In bed that night, after Addy’d finished reading Sharla a favourite book from the Chatham library, she wondered should she tell Sharla now about Fawn coming or leave it till tomorrow. She decided to leave it. Sharla nestled against Addy’s shoulder and put her hand on Addy’s thigh. She yawned, “Mu-um…?”

  “Yes, Honey?”

  “Is it really my birthday tomorrow or just pretend?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Just pretend?”

  “Why you think that?”

  “Nedda says you’re just a pretend Mum and not a real Mum.”

  “Never mind what Nedda says, Honey. I don’t think she’s getting much good mothering herself, but don’t repeat that and make her feel bad the way she done to you.”

  “You do good mothering.”

  Addy smiled and brushed her lips against Sharla’s forehead. “I love you like you are my own little girl. Do you love me like I’m your own Mum?”

  Sharla nodded.

  “Well,” Addy continued, “that’s good enough.”

  “Collette’s my real real Mum.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I want to live here with you.”

  “We just have to see what happens, Honey. Ain’t really in our hands.”

  “Whose hands it in?”

  “Well, the Lord’s hands, I guess.”

  “Does the Lord like us?”

  Addy laughed. “Course he likes us.”

  “Much as people who live in Chatham?”

  “Yes, Sharla. He likes us all the same.”

  “’Cept for when you do a bad thing though.”

  “Even when you do a bad thing.”

  “I wish we had red licorice for my birthday.”

  “Did you go sneaking through my cupboards?”

  “No.” Sharla looked away, guilty.

  “Well, you might get your wish.”

  Sharla grinned about the licorice, then paused before she asked, “Are you a real real Mum too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you have your own little girl when you weren’t old?”

  Addy was still. “Yes I did, Sharla.”

  Sharla looked surprised. “What’s her name?”

  “Well, I had two babies, Honey,” Addy whispered.

  “What’s their names?”

  Addy couldn’t remember the last time she spoke her children’s names to anyone living and wondered if she could, till she did. “I had a little girl called Beatrice, but we all called her Chick.”

  Sharla giggled. “Chick. That’s like chicken.”

  “Mmm-hmm. That’s short for Chicken and that’s what we called her.”

  “And what’s the other baby?”

  “Well, the other baby was—he was named after my brother, Leam.”

  “Leam.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Chick and Leam.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  Addy nodded.

  “Does Collette miss me?”

  “She sure does.”

  They were quiet for a moment and let the sounds of the crickets and the rustling trees and the lowing cows in the distance fill the room. Addy broke the silence. “Suppose I could sleep here with you on your bed tonight, Honey?”

  Sharla breathed deeply and nodded, half asleep. “Mmm-hmm.”

  Apple Snow

  BY DECEMBER THE ICE had not yet frozen solid on the river but rose to the surface in ragged chunks that tore at the fragile wooden boats and cost the bootleggers their fortunes. Addy could stroll down to the river’s edge to watch the ice chunks float past and allow her heartstrings to be tugged by quiet thoughts of Chester and Leam. She wondered if Chester’s body’d ever been found, or if it was just loose bones now, making broth out of the river. She tried to talk to Chester’s ghost the way she did Leam’s, but she was answered by silence when she called, “Chester? You there, Chester?”

  Adelaide had found a home with Poppa and Riley on Chestnut Street, but Detroit City was not Rusholme and it would take some adjusting and educating to understand and accept the difference. It was Poppa whom Addy turned to when she had questions, for after that first morning when she woke to find Riley Rippey sitting by her bedside, she’d seen little of him and exchanged only a few words each day. He was polite, even pleasant, but Addy feared he’d changed his mind and didn’t want her there after all.

  A week or so after her arrival, Poppa took a grey wool coat from Verilynn’s closet and, though it looked hardly worn, said, “Very got herself a fancy new coat this year so this old one is yours now and just big enough, I think, not to tell the world of your misfortune.”

  Addy was sorry that Poppa said misfortune. “I won’t hate this baby, Poppa. Even though I hate how it came to be.”

  Poppa said, “Of course not, Adelaide. Forgive me.”

  “I understand you feel ashamed of me. I feel ashamed of myself. But I don’t, and I won’t, feel ashamed of my baby.” She paused, making a circle on her stomach. She’d been worried about something and thought there was no right time to ask. “When this baby is born, Poppa, do you know any lady who can come and be with me?”

  Poppa reckoned he could call on Emeline Fraser, reminding Addy she’d met her that first day she came to the house. Addy recalled the kind older woman and was relieved to learn she lived just around the corner.

  Poppa helped Addy into Verilynn’s coat, saying, “Let me take you outside now, Adelaide, and show you this place we call Black Bottom.” He wanted Addy to know he was not ashamed to walk with her down Chestnut Street and took her arm to prove it. They strolled through the neighbourhood, Poppa teaching her how to pronounce the hard French street names—St. Antoine, St. Aubin, Beaubien, Joseph Campau— and pointing out the fish market and the butcher and the grocer. Finally, when her soles were tender and aching, Poppa brought her to the chili parlour on Hastings Street.

  Never having been to a chili parlour, and never having tasted chili, Addy was not sure she was pleased to make the stop. She was even less sure when Poppa said, “We’ll be eating in today, thank you,” to the man behind the counter who’d started to pack their order in a brown paper bag. The man looked directly at Addy’s big baby stomach and arched a brow before he took the crackers out of the bag and ladled the spicy chili into large china bowls. Sitting in the uncomfortable iron chairs, Poppa shrugged and told Addy, “Folks judge. If you can say you’ve never done so yourself, be righteous. If you can’t, forgive them, Adelaide, and let’s enjoy our chili and some pleasant conversation.”

  A tall, thin young man, a friend of Riley’s, stopped by the table and told Poppa excitedly that he’d left his job at the mine and was going to work on the assembly line at Henry Ford’s Rouge plant. The young man looked Addy directly in the eye and said it was a pleasure to make her acquaintance, then surprised her by adding, “Riley told me about you. He said you were pretty and you are.”

  It was cruel, Addy thought, for the thin man to mock her like that, and she wondered why Poppa didn’t scold him. After he left, Addy said, “I didn’t know there was a coal mine near Detroit.”

  Poppa said, “Not a coal mine, Adelaide. That fellow was working for the Detroit Rock Salt Company. Don’t you know about the salt mines? Right here.” He stomped on the floor with his boot. “A thousand feet below us, right under the city, is the country’s largest salt mine. I went down there once. Quite a sight. Bright and clean. Won’t make you cough. Salt mining won’t ever make a man sick.”

  No matter how she tried, Addy could not picture the salt mine and could not believe it was there under the very earth they trod upon. She wondered out loud, “E
verything’s salt? The walls and floors and ceilings? Why don’t it crumble? What if it gets wet?”

  Poppa tried to explain about the hardness and density of the rock salt, but Addy’d been distracted by the end of her chili and crackers and the hope that she could have another bowl. She recited the street names Poppa’d taught her: St. Antoine, St. Aubin, Beaubien, Joseph Campau, Fort, Woodward, Gratiot.

  Poppa ordered a second bowl of chili even though Addy hadn’t asked and wished silently that Riley could get work in the salt mines, or better still at the Ford Motor Company with his tall, thin friend. Riley worked in the warehouse at the Detroit Free Press, putting the big newspaper together, tying it in bundles to ready for the deliverymen. It was good work for a sickly, walleyed fellow and paid the bills on Chestnut Street well enough, but Poppa worried about Riley’s future.

  Poppa himself didn’t work and had never been ashamed to accept charity in one form or another since long before he became a preacher. It was charity sending Verilynn to school in Cleveland. An old friend of Poppa’s, “Rich Enos” was what Riley called him, insisted on paying for Verilynn’s education and would not be dissuaded. Rich Enos had offered to send Riley to school too, but Riley couldn’t leave his father alone with his dying mother and had never understood what made Verilynn so different that she could.

  Riley came home each night with inky fingers and the smell of newsprint burned into his black-smudged clothes. Addy thought to herself that just scrubbing such ink stains was enough to send a woman to her grave and wondered how exactly Poppa’s wife, Rosalie, did die. She was concerned the same disease would be taking Poppa soon, for he never looked too well or rose too quickly from a chair.

  A few days after their visit to the chili parlour, when Addy felt she had her strength back and wanted to be useful, Poppa’d agreed she could venture out on her own. “You go on to the grocery and get yourself some things for your pantry, why don’t you, Adelaide?”

  Addy had been thrilled with the way Poppa described the pantry as hers. And the way he called Verilynn’s bedroom your room. And the way both he and Riley called her Adelaide and never Addy, because it made her feel different and not at all like the girl from Rusholme. Poppa reached into his trouser pockets and found several dollar bills, which he passed to her and said with a wink, “Won’t hurt to get a piece of peppermint candy, Adelaide. I got a sweet tooth for it and I bet you do too.”