by Mona Simpson
Then she opened her eyes and all the silver in the kitchen—faucets, fixtures, the tin bread box, handles on the cupboards—was glistening with maintenance and care and it would someday be Carol’s and if my mother wanted it more than everything, if she picked the first star in the sky every night of her life and wished, she still could not have it, ever.
The screen door slammed and it was Benny. He stamped in, heavy on the floor, hands at his sides, grinning. He wore glasses now, small glasses with thin gold rims. He was shy because he had a present. Just Benny in the room, standing, tall and awkward, breathing like a light lift of sawdust, seemed to let Carol’s shoulders relax. He justified the position of the land.
I took my present from his hand. He hadn’t wrapped it. He’d been over in the garage, working, he’d finished just this second. It was a metal box, tin, with a hinged lid. Inside was a cushion of blue satin. I kept staring into it, I didn’t want to look anywhere else, it was perfect.
“It’s for jewelry.”
“He made that all by himself.” Carol nodded.
Benny and I ran outside, to the lilacs and the pussywillows behind the garage. We were too old to play anymore. We just stood there, our bare arms long and weak, kicking dirt. Our parents were coming out now, down the porch to the car. We could hear the dog yapping at their heels.
“Oh, you shush now, you,” my grandmother said to him. I imagined her bending down, patting his back. He had to be quiet. He would be here forever; in a minute, we would be gone.
They couldn’t see where Benny and I were and they hadn’t thought yet to call or look. We were behind the garage, in the bushes, left alone a secret there. There was wind that day that seemed to make you want to move; I thought after we drove away that Benny would start running. The sky was plain and clear, the air where we were was old. There was nothing in the birdbath. Everything was in its place just where it was.
Suddenly, we heard our mothers, each of them, calling our names.
“Ben-ny.”
“Ann. Ann.”
They were calling loud, as if we were farther away than we were. Their two voices echoed in the air off the trees. They must have been cupping their hands. We looked at each other, suddenly scared, and hard. We had a minute—they thought we had farther to come—before they would start looking for us.
Then it was black and Benny was hugging me and we were dizzy, turning, standing up. That was something about Benny, always. He could hug you so hard, hanging on as if he were dying, falling off the spinning planet, out of the earth’s fall, and his fingernails bit into you and you were there, black, for a second.
We fell to the ground then and apart. We opened our eyes on the grass. I looked at him one second, then ran to my mother.
“Well, well, there you are.” They were slow still, by the car, a family in a picture, in blue and white sailor suits, the dresses rustling in the breeze. Then I saw behind her glasses my grandmother was crying, the tears slow on her skin like drops of water on a peach. My bike was leaning against the garage, my bike that Benny was going to give the Grilings.
We stood by the car with the door open, the wind was there all around us, we heard a thin distant constant moving wind. My grandmother came in close. Everyone else was farther back, like croquet balls, anything colored and still, scattered on the grass.
There were three pairs of shoes, my grandmother’s, my mother’s and mine, all white. “Here,” she said, and far above, she handed my mother a blue envelope. “It’s nothing much, just go buy yourself one of those little portable televisions with it once you get there.”
Her hand slapped against the skirt of her dress to call her dog away, away from the white wheels of our car, us, the open window, the gravel white and sparkling as we were driving away.
“Well, remember,” she said, and then there was just the wind louder and the indifferent changing sky and Benny was running somewhere on the edge of the lawn and I saw nothing and we were gone.
LILLIAN
4
THE AGE OF THE YEAR
My mother had seven sisters and they all lived near us in Malgoma. I can still remember them on my hands: Hattie, Clara, Ruth, Irene, Alma, Ellie and Jen. My mother was Ida, right in the middle. They were all married except Ruth, and Ruth lived at home with their father. So each one had her own house. Once a week I went to those houses because they’d decided I could make piecrusts. They used to say you were born with a feel for it, like with gardening, especially there near the water where the air changed so much day to day. Their mother was one such a one and Hattie, but Hattie had arthritis. I never used a recipe. I just mixed flour and water, sugar and lard, sometimes a speck of spice or nuts. It would take me all morning every Saturday, going from house to house. The aunt would generally sit with me, talking, and doing something else, sewing or sorting the wash. There was a lot more housework in those days. You had to do everything by hand.
I carried notes between the sisters. They sent everything back and forth—recipes, gossip, what the one was making for supper that night. And if someone spilled something that made a stain, she’d write a note and ask what would take it out. They were each different but they all got along. You don’t see that so much anymore, close sisters. Alma was the pretty one. She wasn’t the youngest, but she was a baby. She was always the father’s favorite and the others knew it. They envied her, especially Ruth, who stayed there cooking his meals and cleaning up after him, but they never held a grudge. They were just the opposite. They fawned over her.
I remember the older ones brushing out and braiding her hair. She would just sit there and let them fuss. Alma loved to be touched. Sometimes, when I was there, she held out her arm and asked me would I tickle her. But she had her share of hard luck, too. She married a vaudeville piano player and he was gone a lot, always on tour. First he was in John Johnson’s band, then it was Hans Hansen. And by the end, she lost all her hair, poor Alma. I used to visit him in the nursing home. Alma had passed away long ago. He still had his two pictures—one of her, with her long hair, and one of him with his band. They aren’t allowed to have anything in there, so his doctor prescribed two shots of whiskey a day, that was Frank’s best medicine. Even into his eighties Frank was still a handsome man. The ladies there liked him too and they tried to get him to play the piano. But he was a loner. He said, what do I want with those old biddies? And every time I visited, he’d tell me the same stories again and again. He’d fingered those two pictures so much, the edges were ruffled like fluted pies.
Each one of the sisters had a real different kitchen. It was like having eight houses, I knew my way around each one. I knew where to find the sifters, where they hid the cherry bounce. We had the smallest house. It was only my father and my mother, my brother Milton and me. My father was a welder and they worked long hours. And when he was home, he was a quiet man. My mother really ruled the roost. I don’t think she was too proud of him, either. I think she wanted him to be something better. I know she would have liked to have more children. She played the piano, she embroidered such hairpin lace on the pillowcases and sheets, she made all her own doilies. I suppose she thought she would have made a good doctor’s wife or banker’s wife. But she only had us. So she paid a lot of attention to Milton, she spoiled him. He was her favorite and he was a pretty boy. It would just have to be a boy that got those curls. And such blond, blond hair. He had long eyelashes too. I didn’t have hair like that, mine was straight as a board, until I learned how to braid it. Then it curls when you take it out. Now it’s been braided for so many years it curls by itself. I wouldn’t know how to make it straight again.
The place I grew up was fifty miles from here. Now it seems like the next town over, but then there were five or ten villages in between. None of them have names anymore. They were just carriage stops really, a hotel and a drugstore and a few houses. There was that huge fire in the canning factory, that closed down Pulaco and Suaminee. And the rest, the people just moved, I suppose. They had
to leave to find work. A few farms are still standing, but most of those houses look empty.
We were a small family for that time—all those around us had more. And I always wished for a sister. Then, for a while, we had another girl in our house. I was down by the railroad tracks cutting pussywillows for a tablesetting, one night. It was in the fall, around five o’clock, just before supper. There was a girl and a cat behind her, walking on the coals. We were out there a little while and then a storm came real quick and it started pouring. I turned to go home, but when I looked back, the girl was still there, on the rails. I shouted, did she want to come with me to my house? She didn’t look like she heard me, so I went down and took her wrist and then she understood. She followed me, both of us running. I held the pussywillows close to my side and she was carrying that cat up under her dress.
It took us awhile to decide she was dumb. She was filthy dirty, you could see when she was inside under the light, with coal on her arms and face. She had long black hair, all matted. It was thick hair, so when you looked down into it, under the lamp, there were all different colors, blues and greens. I remember that because we brought her into the bathroom and washed her in our big tub. Milton carried in the hot water from the stove and helped us hold her down. You wouldn’t believe the ants that came out of that heavy hair, thick streams into the water.
“How old are you?” my mother shouted at her. “Do you hear me now, say if you understand.” The girl just stared straight ahead. She looked pitiful and small in our big tub. We figured out that she couldn’t talk. She looked to be about seven or eight, she was the same size as I was, and we had no idea where she came from. We thought someone may have just left her off, migrants, maybe, going south for the winter. She was pretty then, once we’d fixed her up. We’d washed her and combed her hair and put her in one of my dresses, like a doll. I’d tried to keep the cat out in the yard, with my boot, but she wanted him in, so he was drinking milk from a saucer, under the kitchen table.
The next day my mother and I went to the convent. We knew there was a nun who taught the deaf. They all went to school together in Malgoma, the deaf, the blind, I suppose they were lucky to go to school at all then. We waited at the door while the novice went to get Sister Mary Bead. We had a cherry kuchen with us; we never went anywhere without something baked. We told the Sister about the girl and she said she’d take her into her class and then we had to pick a name. My mother said Louise. That was what she had wanted to name me, but my father thought it sounded like an old woman. Too much like one of those sisters you already have, he’d told her. I wanted to call the girl Penny and they let me have my way. I suppose so she was more like a sister.
Sister Mary Bead used an old one-room school, with a stove in the corner and a dunce cap up on a bureau. I went to regular school with three rooms. Three rooms was big stuff in those days. Not everyone went to school then. Some of the farmers needed their kids to stay at home and help out. And if they lived too far in the country to walk, they stayed home, that’s all there was to it. And in school, it was nice, the older ones helped the little ones. I always had my brother Milton in my class.
On the way home for noon lunch, Milton and I stopped to pick up Penny. Sometimes we stood in the doorway and watched. They went very very slowly. It wasn’t noisy like our class. Sister Mary Bead held something up in her hand and the class—there were only four or five there—would try to say the word. Paper. Pencil. Ordinary things. They’d make funny, strange sounds trying to say it. I suppose it’s different learning to say a word if you’ve never heard it.
Then one day in December, I went there by myself. It was a blizzard and my mother had kept Milton home. I walked, reciting my poem to keep my feet from freezing. Did we learn the poems! I must have known fifty. “The small rain down must rain.” When I stood at the door Sister Mary Bead was holding up an orange. It was like a little globe in that classroom, against the blackboard and her brown and white habit. Then there weren’t oranges like now in the supermarkets, so you can get them all year round. They had to ship them in freight trains from California and Florida and they only came in around Christmas. And even then, they were expensive. Milton and I each got one in our stocking and that was it for the year. But oh, did they taste good. They were darker, almost a red, and heavy with juice. They tasted sweeter then. It was a special meal for us Christmas morning; when our presents were open, there was still something left.
For a long time, Sister Mary Bead stood in front of a teacher’s desk, holding up the orange. Strange sounds came from her pupils, every time she said the word. Penny sat with her hands clasped in front of her on the wooden desk. She was louder than the others. I could understand what she said, more than I could the rest, but maybe it was because I was used to her. Outside the windows, snow was falling as if it were stitching such even seams on the darkness and the wood stove whispered in the corner. They spoke in unison and their voices wobbled, almost like singing. By the end, the sound of the class seemed rounder, finished, like a word. Then Sister Mary Bead took out a pearl-handled knife and peeled the orange, holding it in one hand, between her thumb and first finger. The skin came off in one curled ribbon. And they passed it around among themselves, down the rows of desks, and each one took only a section, so there was more than half left at the end. Sister Mary Bead offered it to me. I took a section, too.
We all went to church on Sundays and there we had to be good, because any one of the sisters could shush us or slap our hands, it was like having eight mothers looking down on us from all over. And they were each one tall. All we knew then was that Penny didn’t like church. She didn’t want to go. At first my mother just made her. But then, once the service was on and we were all kneeling, singing the hymns, Penny scooted out. We couldn’t get up and chase her. After supper, that day, she came home again, all dirty and full of burrs. The next Sunday, it was the same thing. She left when my mother walked up for communion. That day, when we went home, a blueberry pie was missing from the kitchen. I’d baked two pies that morning and left them to cool on the mangle.
Later on, we found cans and mason jars missing from the cellar. Ellie’s husband, my uncle Shaw, worked for the Great Lakes Railroad Company and he got us dented cans for almost nothing. They couldn’t sell them in the stores but what was inside was still good. And we did our own canning from the garden every fall. We didn’t notice in the cellar for a long time, though, and Penny was probably going into it every Sunday. She stopped coming to church altogether and Sister Mary Bead told my mother just to leave her be.
Wherever Penny went, that black cat followed along. The cat slept under her desk at school and up on the foot of her bed. We named the cat Silk, but I don’t remember anyone ever saying its name. Then one day that spring, the cat bit Penny on our porch. It bit her in two places, on the calf and just above the knee. She came in bleeding and crying, choking noises we’d never heard before. Right away, Milton said, Where is that cat? He understood the cat would run away. Well, the bites were nothing, they weren’t deep. We washed and bandaged them and she was all right, they’d heal, but she was frantic all night over that black cat. When she was in the tub and we were cleaning her off, she tried to get up and go outside after it. She slipped away from us—she was so darn skinny and slippery then with soap—and my mother had to stand at the top of the stairs and yell for Milton to catch her. He got her, naked on the front lawn, and carried her upstairs kicking.
My mother sent me with a note to the doctor, this was before we had telephones. The doctor was just Ross Smittie, Clara’s husband. I went in through the back door, the way I always came to their kitchen. Their kitchen was the biggest and they had a new pantry, all black and white tiles and cookie-cut woodwork. I told them what happened and right away he said he worried about rabies. He walked back over with me and looked at Penny’s leg. He said she’d have to have rabies shots, one each day for fourteen days, unless we found the cat.
I think maybe holding her naked and ki
cking like that had given Milton ideas. They were such opposites, the two of them; him so white and her dark. But every day, the minute school was out, he went running in the woods to look for that cat. See, if we had the cat, they could test him for rabies. But after three days were up, we hadn’t found him and Penny had to start in with the shots. The doctor walked every day to our house. He stood by the window filling his syringe. Ugh, I hated to see that yellow liquid flowing from the little bottle. They were such long long needles. Penny would lie back on my bed while he kneaded her stomach and then pressed the needle in, her legs hanging down over the dust ruffle, still as if they were dead. All that time, she never once cried.
Wouldn’t you know it, Milton found the cat two days after the shots were done. And that was when we found out everything. Penny wasn’t alone, she had a father. He was living in the foundations of an old house out by the railroad depot. He had a tent strung over the top for a roof and down inside he got the furnace working. He cooked his meals right there. Milton said he found all our dented cans, empty, piled up neat in one corner. The man was apparently clean. But Milton hadn’t said anything to him; he’d turned around and run home, without even taking the cat. He’d been scared to death, he said, he’d never seen anyone so ugly.
So a group of men went, my father, the doctor, three or four of the other sisters’ husbands. They left that same night, with lanterns, the doctor carried Penny piggyback. It was summer already and warm late. My mother and Milton and I stayed out on the porch, shucking corncobs, waiting.
