Rebecca & Heart

by Deanna K. Klingel

  The city is a mess; buildings collapsed, train tracks hanging everywhere. Nothing is how it should be. Folks try to get their businesses back up and running. Cardboard’s taped over missing glass panes, tarpaulins flap from roof tops. The air smells thick. Rubble’s strewn throughout the city. People walk everywhere, carrying their bumbershoots and coats, ready for anything. Rail and underground service is down, the streets too full of craters for street cars. Yet, the city seems determined to show the world that London is recovering. On the other side of the city closer to home, things aren’t quite so bad.

  Most of our neighborhood looks pretty good. Ash sprinkles every roof and tree branch. Unusual pieces of rubbish that seem to have come from somewhere else, have been randomly tossed about.

  I’m glad to finally escape from the Daimler. Rebecca is glad to be home, too, I think. She and Heart wander about the yard for a while, looking puzzled. Heart stops to sniff everything, getting reacquainted and discovering much newness. I visit the dirty, empty goldfish pond and walk about the garden, stretching my wings. They feel quite fragile these days. Brittle, perhaps. I’m past my prime, for sure.

  The father carries in the luggage, the mother the pile of mail. Cook and Butler unload the town car while Gardener inspects his garden, now weedy and in need of water. Rebecca, Heart, and I stay outside with him. We can hear the activity inside the house with the family moving back in.

  It takes a few days for us to settle back in comfortably. Cook has located shops with food, Butler finds open routes to get there. Rebecca stays quietly around the house. I wonder if she’s missing Charlie? Heart stays close by, getting reacquainted with smells and checking out new suspicious odors. I walk up and down the windows peeking through the ash that’s settled on the screens. Everything that is familiar is somehow different.

  Nothing much is happening, until a lady from the Red Cross comes by to talk to us. She wants to say thank you for taking the children, Charlie and Sophie, in to our country place.

  The mother offers her tea. Then the Red Cross worker says something rather strange.

  “I’ve been told you have an odd daughter. Well, that is, one with odd behaviors. Is that correct?”

  “I don’t believe that’s any concern of yours.” The mother, I think, is a bit insulted at first.

  “Oh, I don’t mean to intrude. It’s just that, there are others you know. Other children with behaviors that make it difficult for them to get on in day-to-day ways. She’s not the only one, you see. Some have more oddities, more difficulties than your daughter has, some less. There’s a wide variance for these unusual behaviors in children.

  “I have brought you some information about a school of thought in America about this oddness. Some doctors at the Johns Hopkins University believe it to be a distinct diagnosable condition. They’re calling it autistic behavior. Autism. Have you heard of it? I only want to say that if Rebecca were my child, I’d be heading to America to the Johns Hopkins in the city of Baltimore to see what can be done for her. She’ll not always be a child, you know. You might need to think about how her life will be as an adult. Wouldn’t you want it to be as easy for her as possible? That’s all I have to say. Please don’t think me rude or unkind. I simply felt it was important to tell you. Thank you again for helping with the evacuated children. In spite of the dreadful circumstances in London, Charlie and Sophie have had an extraordinary experience with your family, while being kept safe. Thank you again and good day.”

  I wonder if the mother will ever get around to discussing this with the father. I guess she really has to think it through first. I listen to her practicing, talking to the mirror at her dressing table, to get it all sorted out.

  “It’s been hard for us to understand how and why Rebecca is different. It’s reassuring to hear there are others. Rebecca can’t become the daughter we had dreamed of, but perhaps she can be even more than we’d dreamed. Maybe we can help her excel at what she can do, rather than think of what she can’t do. Perhaps the experts can help her do even more. Perhaps, it’s time we should talk about it and make a plan.” She practices this over and over to the mirror. I wonder if she’ll ever discuss it with him. Finally she talks to the father.

  “America? Why would we take Rebecca to America? What could they do for her that can’t be done here? She’s odd, no one can change that. We’re not going to America, Gwyneth.”

  That seems pretty final. The Red Cross lady is right about one thing. Rebecca is growing up. I watch Rebecca poring over Carrie’s books and school work. Sometimes Rebecca points something out to Carrie. Carrie studies it, then erases her answer. Rebecca reads Carrie’s books faster than Carrie. Learning isn’t Rebecca’s problem. It’s the classroom that’s her problem. She’s come a long way since that first classroom where I first met her.

  Time moves on for everyone. The hobbling old gardener passes in his sleep one night.

  “God rest his soul,” everyone says.

  “To his heavenly rose garden,” others say.

  Cook’s arthritic hands make a lot of tasks more difficult for her these days, but Rebecca is here to help her, learning and accomplishing new things. Cook welcomes the assistance of the humming Rebecca, who sits on the step and shells peas and who has learned to make jam and gingersnaps from watching.

  “The girl’s a natural, she is. You’d think she’d shelled peas all her life.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Actually, she has.” But, of course, no one knows that but me, and no one hears me.

  The mother and the father, whose shiny hair is turning to gray, have long ago given up on ever understanding their eldest child. But they are proud of how far she’s come from the first day they brought her home and how much she’s learned to do for herself.

  Chapter 21

  Carry On

  Days and nights pass uneventfully for the most part, in Rebecca’s and Heart’s lives. The sun comes up, the sun sets. Rebecca likes it that way. They eat meals, shell peas, wash the dishes, play the piano and read. The household has learned to accept Heart and Rebecca and not question their behaviors.

  So it isn’t a surprise, to all of us who watch their relationship every day, that it’s Rebecca who first notices the changes in Heart. When he doesn’t eat, she brings him peas and meats from the pantry and feeds them to him one bite at a time. His stiff joints make it hard to get up on their bed, so she sleeps on the floor beside him. Sometimes at night when he’s restless, she covers him and strokes him.

  When he can’t get off the floor at all, Rebecca cradles his head in her lap, as I’ve seen him do so often for her. She begins to sway. His tail thumps in rhythm. I climb to the top of her canopy bed. She hums softly. It’s little more than a one-note growl in her throat, but I think it’s comforting to Heart. He pricks up his ears to hear her, and thumps his tail in perfect accompaniment. I buzz quietly along.

  Rebecca notices her hand is no longer being warmed by Heart’s head. She looks into his eyes; he no longer sees her. His tail fell asleep a little while ago. Rebecca covers Heart with the old army blanket. She sits on the bed with the collar in her hand and the red leash on her lap. She sits perfectly still, quiet and expressionless. I stay above her and try not to intrude on her sorrow. I don’t know how long we stay here together before Cook comes to find her.

  For several days she sits by the lilac bush holding the collar and leash, humming to herself. Rebecca is too big to fit under the lilac bush anymore and really hasn’t been here much in the last year. But, now, I guess she needs to go back there where she spent so much of her life with Heart. She fills the water bowl regularly and walks, dragging the red leash behind her. I flit from hedge to fence post, keeping her in my sight. Rebecca talks to the leash. She makes signs with her hands. She lines peas up in a straight line near the hedge.

  Somehow in the empty quiet that always follows a loss, Rebecca begins to smile again. The family watches. Cook saw it first and took her cookies and milk. And whenever she smiles, everyone nearb
y reports a mysterious thumping against the step. They say if you’re quiet, your heart can hear what the thumping says. Yes, yes, I hear it.

  Cook pauses by the steps, listens and smiles. She claims she never hears the thumping. Her hearing isn’t what it used to be, she says. But I know she hears that thumping, when a smile crosses her lips and a tear rests in the corner of her eye.

  It’s the quiet, observant, young-at-heart Butler who’s got the story right. He and I see the girl making signs, dragging the leash, extending her hand and laughing. And no doubt about it, we hear the thumping against the step whenever she smiles. Butler wonders why everyone can’t hear it. He and I know exactly what it is. It’s the joyful thumping tail of Rebecca’s Heart.

  Things to Talk About and Think About

  Let’s talk about this:

  Who in our story doesn’t understand Rebecca?

  What happens because of the lack of understanding?

  Why do you think the other orphans make fun of Rebecca?

  Who is the first to try to understand Rebecca?

  How does that change anything for Rebecca?

  How does Heart’s friendship with Rebecca change her life?

  How does their relationship change others in the household?

  Let’s think about these things:

  Do you know anyone in your class or in your school or neighborhood who’s different in some way from everyone else?

  How is that person being treated?

  How have you treated that person?

  If you could see that person from the perspective of the fly on the wall, what do you think you would see differently?

  In what ways are you different from others you know?

  How do you like to be treated?

  If you see someone being unkind to someone who is different, what will you say, or do?

  Fly says there’s more to a person than we can see. Do you agree with that?

  Let’s discuss this:

  What are some ways you and your friends might help someone who feels “odd” or different to feel more accepted?

  If you meet someone like Rebecca who doesn’t want to be touched or doesn’t speak, or doesn’t seem to notice you, what are some ways you can show that person you accept them and care about them?

  Can you show friendship to someone who doesn’t seem to show it back? How did the fly on the wall do this? Can you be a fly on the wall, a quiet unobtrusive friend to someone who might need a quiet friend?

  Deanna K. Klingel

  Deanna K. Klingel, author of many books for young readers from Pre K to high school, lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband and their golden retriever. They have seven grown children all married, and twelve grandchildren. She is a member of SCBWI-Carolinas, NCWNwest, Catholic Writers Guild, and other professional organizations. She frequently visits schools, museums, reenactments and events, and gives presentations at schools, conferences, and museums.

  Rebecca & Heart is the first story Deanna wrote intended for publication. Since beginning Rebecca & Heart in 2007, she has completed and published fifteen other books. Whenever she learned something new, she took it back to Rebecca & Heart. She never stopped editing, expanding, rewriting, and reorganizing R & H until she felt it was as good as she could make it after ten years.

  Other published books by this author:

  Amanda & the Lazy Garden Fairy

  Avery’s Battlefield

  Avery’s Crossroad

  Beth’s Backyard Friends, also available in Spanish

  Beth’s Birds

  Blue-Eyed Doll

  Bread Upon the Water

  Cracks in the Ice

  Just for the Moment: The Remarkable Gift of the Therapy Dog

  McIntosh Summer

  The Mysterious Life of Jim Limber

  Rock and a Hard Place, A Lithuanian Love Story

  Spirit the Tiny White Reindeer

  Walker Hound of Park Avenue

  Spokes

  Look for them wherever books are sold.

  Booksbydeanna.com

  @deannakklingel

  fb: Deanna K. Klingel Author

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