"Aye, she's family,” Becky said, leading the way back into the house. Her big brother had found himself a sweet wife. Maybe now the two of them would stick around.
Ж
“Do you want to see your picture?” the pert little pixie asked with a newfound burst of energy. “I drew it last week. Nobody knew who it was, but I told them that it was my Uncle Benji and his wife. I also told Mommy that you were coming here, both of you,” she said as she grabbed her Uncle Benji’s hand. “Come on,” she called back to Jane when she saw that she wasn’t following them. She waved her hand in a ‘come hither’ movement. “It looks just like you.”
Benji grinned as he walked through the front door. It was a habit, one born of safety, that he automatically dipped his head as he walked into a room. He noticed that the doorway was tall enough that he didn’t have to do more than nod. He could probably walk through it upright if he wasn’t wearing boots. He paused inside the hallway, waiting for Jane and baby Jim to join him.
“It’s in here,” Bibby called impatiently from the living room. “See, it looks just like you, huh?”
Benji led Jane and her little charge into the room. He remembered the stairs, the slash marks from the second Uprising when Grandpa Jody was a young man over 250 years ago. The smells were familiar, too. The furniture had changed, though, as had the picture on the mantle. Jane and Benji gasped at the same time. ‘Uncle Benji and Aunt Jane by Jenny Pomeroy-Hart, August, 1782’ was printed at the bottom of the framed charcoal drawing of a happy couple, one tall man with short red ochre colored hair and one black-skinned woman in a blue sarong, both of them wearing oversized smiles.
“It looks jest like the picture Jenny drew for me before we left,” Benji said to Jane. “She wanted to give it to me, but I told her I kent what I looked like, and I wouldna leave yer side, so,” he paused in his revelation to his now expanding audience, “I told Jenny to keep it to remember us by. I told her we were takin’ a long, long trip, and I probably would never see her again.”
“Uh, huh,” Bibby said. “And she told me to draw a picture just like it for you, so you’d have it here. See, I even wrote her name. I spelled it right, huh?”
“Aye, ye did.” Benji looked to his sister who was now in the doorway. He gave her a questioning look, hoping she would add some insight on how her precocious daughter had managed to produce the miraculous artifact.
“Bibby is smart beyond her years and she, um, evidently has ‘the sight.’ My husband’s great, great—oh, we don’t even count how many times over—grandmother had ‘the sight’, too. Her name was Leah Melbourne…”
Kerplunk. Benji had fainted, falling backwards to the floor. He was saved from cracking his skull on the hearth by his quick thinking wife, her one arm clutching the baby at her hip, the other, supporting his shoulders.
“Water?” Jane called, hoping that someone would get some for her. She didn’t know where the water was in this house and didn’t want to leave her fainted husband’s side.
“Here,” Becky said as she gave her the cup, exchanging it for baby Jim. “Oh, and here, wet this and put it on the back of his neck if you can reach it. Otherwise, slap it on his forehead.” Becky had pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to her new sister-in-law. “I’m glad you were there to catch him, because he sure got big!”
“Aye, weel, the bigger they are, the harder they fall…oof!” The now awake Benji groaned as he struggled to sit upright. He used the wet cloth to try and wipe the embarrassment off his face. Finally, feeling more composed, he asked, “Ye say that Leah is yer husband’s ancestor?”
“And my children’s. Big Jim is from Australia. We met on a school excursion ten years ago. We did the long distance romance for a while and then I went Down Under for a year. I really didn’t like the heat, and he said he’d give Scotland a try. I’m really glad he liked it because we’ve been here ever since. Mom and Dad moved to Edinburgh, but they come out every couple of weeks or so. Dad can’t keep his hands off the kids, and Mom is always trying to either update or restore something around here.”
“My daddy got a picture like this from his great-great—shoot, I don’t remember how many greats—Grandma Jenny. She married Mommy’s first cousin’s son, but we’re not supposed to talk about it because no one would believe us, but it’s true.”
“Your father doesn’t have any picture like that!” Becky exclaimed with frustration at her imaginative daughter.
“Yes, he does,” asserted Bibby. “He just hasn’t found it yet. But he will. I know he will. Hmph!” she added in mild defiance.
Becky rolled her eyes in defeat at her daughter’s insistent attitude.
“I take it that this happens all the time?” asked Benji, still seated on the floor, cradled by his equally intrigued wife.
“Yes, if she tells you something, you’d better believe it, or at least prepare for it, because it’s going to come to pass. I think I’m going to have to home school this one. I don’t want to think what would happen if she started spouting her little revelations around the other students. Plus, I doubt she’d learn much if she knew the answers before the questions were even written!”
“I can read already, huh, Mommy?” Bibby interjected.
“Yes, dear, you can read and do your numbers, but that doesn’t mean you’re better than anyone else, right?”
“I know, I know,” Bibby said in exasperation, as if she had heard the lecture eight times too many already, and then recited dryly, “We are all special, and everyone has gifts. It’s just that we don’t always know what our gifts are when we’re young, and sometimes people never do find out what they are.” Bibby suddenly brightened up. “Can I teach you to read, Aunt Janie? It is okay if I call you Aunt Janie instead of Aunt Jane, right?”
Becky sputtered at her daughter’s impudence, but Benji held up his hand for her to hold off with her scolding. He wanted to see what would happen without their interference.
“Aunt Janie is fine, and I would love for you to teach me. “Do you know that you remind me of someone?”
“Who?” Bibby asked, although she was only being polite; she already knew the answer.
“You don’t look like Jenny Pomeroy-Hart, and you’re a lot younger than she was when we left, but you have her, her…” Jane couldn’t think of the word to use and was spared embarrassment by Benji.
“Ye have yer Grandma Jenny’s spunk,” Benji said. “And ye ken who she is, aye?”
“Oh, yes sir! Mom used to think that she was my imaginary friend, but now she knows she’s a real person, huh, Mom?”
“Yes, dear. I believe everything you tell me, now. But remember, I won’t believe anything you ever tell me again if you lie to me even one time, right?”
Bibby nodded, then went to the side drawer in the rolltop desk. She pulled out a tattered box that held a partial set of pastels. “See, I got these from the white elephant sale at church. They really didn’t have any white elephants, just a bunch of stuff from people’s attics and garages. Jenny’s going to get some of these, too, from Poppi, but not until Christmas. But, she has some black sticks with cloth around them and a piece of an old clay pot. That’s how she colored your hair. But, she did that after you left. She didn’t have any blue crayons. I just did it by myself because I knew the dress was blue. But, the picture she drew for you was only gray, huh? ”
“Aye, it’s true. Did ye ken that I made the charcoal sticks fer yer Grandma Jenny so she could draw that picture? Her daddy, Grannie’s brother, yer Uncle Wallace, must have found her the red clay to use fer the color of my hair.”
Bibb Elizabeth nodded then changed subjects. She was eager to find out about her new kin. She could ‘see’ many things, but could tell that her uncle was undecided about where he was going to live. “Are you going to move to Barden Hall? We got lots of room here,” she practically begged. “I was trying to build you a house in the back. Mommy said my tree house was too small, so I was trying to make it bigger. But, I
don’t think I can make it that big. You’re real tall…and so are you. You’re even taller than Nana, my Grannie. I only have one Grannie and one Grandpa, though, because Daddy’s parents are both dead. And I have a Great-Grannie and Great-Grandpa, but I can’t see them. They’re far, far away, but we have letters that they wrote to us. We get to read them once in a while, but Grandpa doesn’t really read them. He holds onto the paper and tells us what they say. He’s read them so many times, he has them memorized. Nana cries when he reads them sometimes, but she says they’re happy tears. They’re gonna be here soon, too—Nana and Grandpa, not Great-Grannie and Great-Grandpa.”
Becky had been mute during her daughter’s rambling conversation. She’d get her chance to talk to her brother later. Right now, she was enjoying the initial bonding her daughter was having with her one and only uncle. “What?” she suddenly blurted, as she realized what Bibby Liz had just said. “Your grandparents are on holiday. They were supposed to leave for Greece yesterday morning.”
“Unh, unh,” the four-year-old wonder proclaimed. “I called them and told them that Uncle Benji and Aunt Janie were gonna be here today, about noon. They said, ‘thank you,’ and that they would try to be on time, but not early. They wanted me to get a chance to meet my new kin first,” she bragged.
“How did you ken yesterday that we were gonna be here today?” Benji asked.
“I kent two days ago,” she said. “I know things early, but I’m not supposed to talk about it to anybody except family. But, you’re family, so I can tell you.”
“Okay,” Benji said slowly. “I can see that you’re definitely Leah’s descendent. I mean, the dark, thick hair and hazel eyes were a tell, but the second sight is a dead giveaway. I mean, what can ye tell me about us?” he asked as he stretched tall and put his arm around his new wife.
Bibby cocked her head and said, “You’re gonna have six children… I think.”
“Oh, ye dinna ken?” Benji teased.
“Oh, I know about the six for sure. It’s just that there’s one more, but he doesn’t look like the others. I mean he’s real white and has red hair, but he’s kinda yours and kinda not…”
Benji jumped right in and explained, “That’s my godson, Mac. He’s mine as if he were born to me, even if he doesna have my name. He’s a brawly lad, though, not even a year old. As a matter of fact, he’s about the same age as yer brother…” Benji paused for effect, then added, “and he has the same last name! Now how’s that fer coincidence. I’ll bet ye dinna see that one, did ye?” he boasted in a teasing manner.
“Well, kinda,” Bibby said meekly, “It’s just that sometimes I think it’s better not to tell everything I know.”
“Weel, lass, since ye’ve already learned that lesson, the rest of yer life should be a breeze.”
Jane picked up on her husband’s chagrin and suddenly felt brave: she’d speak up and change the subject to spare him further humiliation. “Our godson in America is about Wee Jim’s age. When is his birthday?” she asked, then blew across the top of his head, tousling his curls.
“He just turned six months old. He was born May 1st,” Bibby announced proudly.
“Aye, the boys are twins: zodiac twins. They were born of different mothers and fathers in different lands, but on the same day. They’ll have the same traits if what the astrologers say is true.”
“Do I have a twin in America? Do you have a goddaughter the same age as me?” Bibby begged hopefully.
Jane gave Benji a stern look that he could feel, even though he hadn’t seen it. He smiled broadly and answered his niece, “Not that I’m aware of, or rather, not that I could even be remotely responsible fer.” He added a nod to Jane. ‘Nope,’ he said with body language, ‘not even a slim chance.’
“But, what about the other ones; the ones you were with last month?” Bibby asked.
Benji sighed deeply. He couldn’t hide anything from this little psychic, so shouldn’t even try. “That would be yer Great-Grandpa and Great-Grannie’s youngest sons and yer Great-Grandma Bibby back in America. Wee Julian, Raymond, and Wee Bibby were all born on that same day.”
Benji came over to Jane’s side to play with his happy young nephew. He suddenly realized that, although all five bairns were born on May 1st and were all six months old, they were 231 years apart. He shook his head to clear his own confusion. It was only a few weeks ago that he was playing with this lad’s ancestors. “Do I need to try and explain it to ye, or do ye have a handle on it, lass?”
“I,” Bibby held up her arm and clenched her hand into a fist, “have a handle on it. But, I don’t think I could explain it to anyone. I don’t think they’d believe me, if I tried. But, we ‘ken,’ aye?” she asked with a smug grin. She liked her Uncle Benji and his wife. Her face fell quickly. But she was sad that they were going to leave.
48 Red-eyed Reunion
B enji looked up from his one-sided, ear-bending conversation with his enchanting and precocious niece. Jane was staring at the door, her brow furrowed, apparently wishing she were outside. Benji reached his left arm out and grabbed little Bibb Elizabeth the magpie around the waist, held her close, and spun her around in a tight circle, both of them giggling and dancing in an awkward pirouette. "How about if we take this ballet outside into the fresh autumn air?" he suggested brightly as he set her down, smiling broadly at Jane so she knew that she was the reason for the change in venue.
"Ooh, ooh; can we play basketball?” Bibby begged, jumping up and down, hands clenched together under her chin in the classic gesture of prayer. “Daddy put up a hoop for me. He was going to put it down low, but I told him I was going to grow up real fast and besides, I should learn to shoot at regulation height baskets. Do you know how to play basketball, Uncle Benji?"
"Aye, I do." He took his wife's hand and gently urged bouncing Bibby ahead of the two of them through the doorway.
“Over here, over here,” Bibby called back.
"She sure reminds me of Jenny," he said to Jane as they exited into the brisk outside air. He sighed in memory of the courtyard. Someone had recently done a major renovation of the barren ground. The British had salted their historical rose garden during the Second Uprising. They didn’t want the lowly Scots to have anything beautiful, especially a garden with such exquisite roses, so they ruined the ground with salt taken from the family’s own larder. Two centuries of hauling out the spoiled soil and replacing it with fresh dirt hadn’t worked. A concrete basketball court was evidently his parent’s, or sister’s, solution to the constant frustration at the eyesore.
"Now this weather is jest right fer playin' basketball. If it were any warmer, we'd get too hot. Now, Janie, this is the game I was tellin' ye of; jest perfect fer people like ye and me, people of height and with big hands. The object of the game is to throw this ball,” Benji picked up the ball from the chair beside the court and twirled it around on the tip of his middle finger, “through that hoop; we call it a basket. But, ye see, ye have to start at one end then move to the other. Now, ye canna jest run with it. Ye see, the other team—those are the others who are playin' and tryin’ to get the ball from ye—will want to sink, that is throw, the ball through their hoop. Weel, I'll be," said Benji as he looked to the far end of the hard concrete court. "Ye have two baskets!"
"Uh, huh," Bibby said. "That's because Daddy's friends come out and play, too. He has lots of friends."
"Anyway," Benji said, as he started bouncing the ball, "this is called dribblin’. Now dinna get that confused with droolin'..." He wiped imaginary spittle off of his chin, and darted out toward the basket, bouncing the ball down the court, jumping up and releasing the ball to make a perfect basket. "Two!" he hollered, then looked back to see Jane.
"That's like you showed me the first day at the creek. But, you used a rock and threw it at a boulder," she said, grinning in recollection. She liked talking. Her days of staying mute and being afraid of speaking were over.
“Do ye want to try?" Benji asked as he tossed
her the ball. "But, watch yer side. This game can get rough with the other team tryin' to grab the ball from ye."
Jane’s reflexes were spot on as she caught the orange orb. She held up the ball to her nose and sniffed. "It stinks," she said, then dropped it. She saw that it bounced almost all the way back up to her without slamming it down. She picked it up with one hand and clutched it, and then turned it over, her long fingers enabling her to keep a grip on it even when upside down. This time she put force behind the ball as she threw it to the ground, copying Benji's smacking of the brown, bumpy ball to make it bounce back up to her. She continued pushing the ball down, and then realized she didn’t need to use so much effort. She started giggling when she realized that she could walk and bounce it at the same time, just like Benji did.
"Come on over here and run a little. See if ye can dribble it down the court, that's the area here, and make, er, throw it through the basket."
"Do I use one hand or both when I dribble it?" she asked, bouncing it first left-handed then switching to batting it in a controlled manner with her right, getting faster and faster as she proceeded to get acquainted with the air-filled stink ball.
"Jest one hand at a time and dinna stop, hold the ball, and then start dribblin' again. If ye stop, then ye have to shoot, that is throw, the ball, either to another player or try fer the basket. But dinna throw it to anyone on the other team..."
Jane was already racing down the court, still giggling as she controlled the ball with a natural finesse. Yes, the basketball felt like it belonged in her hand. She looked up and saw her target: the chain curtained metal hoop. "Two!" she shouted as she tossed the ball with one hand, making her first basket without hitting the backboard or the ring.
"See, dinna I tell ye that ye’d be a natural," Benji crowed. "Now, there are a few tricks we can show ye, right Bibby?"
"Uh, huh. I can show you how to bounce it off the back, that’s called a lay up, and Daddy can do a real neat trick. He can throw it down on the court, that’s the ground, so hard that it bounces back up and makes a basket when it comes back down!"
The Great Big Fairy Page 40
