“I wrote this little toast last night,” the director said. “So don’t anyone make fun of me. I’m not a poet, I just love all of you.”
She raised her cup and waited for everyone else to do the same.
“To all who risked their life and limb, to serve us and protect, we thank you all with gratitude, and wish you all the best.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Happy holidays!”
“Merry Christmas!”
“Happy Hanukkah!”
Sonnet started up at the piano, soft at first, then louder and faster until all the veterans rocked out to Christmas songs. James carried the gift bag around the room. Old, gnarled hands reached inside for the brightly wrapped packages, and within minutes, the floor was littered with red and green and silver paper. Strings of gold and white ribbon flew so fast we couldn’t keep up with it, trying to stuff it all into trash bags.
I’d never seen people so happy over such simple gifts. No gold cuff links, no crystal champagne flutes. They got wooden puzzles, snow globes, pretend eyeglasses with bouncy Santas waving over their heads, and tubes of rose-scented hand lotion. Their eyes shone like little kids. They laughed and compared presents and traded until everyone was happy. It was a perfect, beautiful moment, and I didn’t want it to end.
The blue-bathrobe lady put on a pair of oversize Santa sunglasses. “Looky here, lovey, I’m Mrs. Claus!” I went over to straighten them for her and she clasped her hand over mine. “What’s your name?”
“Maggie,” I said.
“Short for Margaret?”
“No, ma’am, my full name is Magnolia Grace. Magnolia Grace Austin.”
She pulled her hand away and took the glasses off. “Magnolia Grace Austin. I thought that might be you. It’s the accent that gave it away.”
I stepped back, startled. “Do I know you?”
“Not unless your mother talks about me as much as she talks about you. I’m Freda. Freda from Alameda, that’s what she calls me.”
“My mother?”
“Isn’t your mother Delilah?”
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“Honey, your mother is our favorite volunteer. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we can’t wait for her to come!”
“Volunteer?”
Freda clasped her hands together and smiled. “She tells us the wildest stories, all about the places she’s traveled, and why she decided on Vermont to raise you. I’ve never known anyone who has actually been inside the Vatican and got to tell a joke to the pope!”
“The Vatican?”
“And riding an elephant, as elegant as she is, who would imagine? Every time I think about her swaying side to side so much she got sick, I can’t stop laughing.”
“An elephant?”
Freda smiled like she and I had a secret. Behind me, Sonnet started playing “O Holy Night” on the piano, and the energy in the room shifted. The veterans’ holiday party was winding down. Freda leaned forward in her wheelchair and placed her hand next to her mouth so no one else would hear what she was about to say.
“Mind you, Magnolia Grace, I’m not sure all her stories are true, but she makes us laugh and brings us joy, so at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“The only reason they had the Kwanzaa stuff was because of me,” Kendra grumbled. “There wasn’t one black person in that whole nursing home.”
“If that’s true, it’s quite an honor,” Kori said.
“It’s not an honor. It’s an obligation. People think they have to do it so I don’t feel different.”
“Um, hello, excuse me?” James raised his pant leg and exposed the titanium prosthesis. “Who is different?”
“Um, hello, excuse me?” Biz pushed her hair aside to show the curved scar James called her third elbow.
“Um, hello, excuse me?” Lucy had nothing to show except the gap where a front tooth had fallen out that morning.
“Why do you always repeat everything everyone says?” Kendra snarled. “Don’t you ever have an independent thought?”
She threw a box of tinsel on the floor and stormed from the room. I stood still and quiet, expecting pandemonium after her tantrum, but everyone kept decorating the tree as if nothing had happened.
We’d found the perfect balsam fir not too deep in the woods, and the whole house smelled like a forest. Sonnet unfolded layers of tissue and held up a homemade ceramic ornament of a horse and sleigh.
“You can tell Lucy painted this one—look at the pink dots on the tail.”
“What’s wrong with pink dots?” Lucy asked.
“Nothing,” James said. “It’s exactly the way Sassy Pants’s tail looked after you gave her a glitter shampoo.”
“She likes glitter!”
Biz scowled. “Not the day before my very first horse show. Everybody laughed at me!”
Lucy beamed at her mischief.
Sue came in from the kitchen. “Who wants fried worms for dinner?”
Kori’s voice was right behind her. “It’s not worm night, it’s frog leg night. Straight from France!”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s potpie, I already saw,” Lucy said.
She twirled in place, wrapping braided gold ribbon around her body, and giggling. Biz held the end and when Lucy was wrapped so tight she couldn’t move her arms, Biz yanked. They both squealed. Lucy spun in circles until she toppled, landing under the tree.
James pulled her to her feet. “Careful, or you’ll knock the whole thing over.”
She wrapped her arms around his real leg. “Better look out or I’ll tip you over!”
“No chance. I’m Titanium Man, remember?”
Kendra came back the same time Haily appeared, and the living room vibrated with bodies and tissue and ornaments and boxes and Christmas cards they hung from the wall.
“Don’t forget, you have to put ornaments all around the tree,” Haily said. She sounded unusually sweet. “We share the tree.”
“What do you mean?” Kendra asked.
Haily pointed to the window and held a frosted crimson ball up. “When people drive by, they’ll be able to see our tree from the road. We didn’t spend all these years making ornaments to keep them to ourselves. Share, share, share.”
James looked at her like she’d gone crazy and shrugged.
“What’s wrong?” Haily asked.
“Nothing, we just thought you’d forgotten you had an actual family, that’s all.”
“What does that mean?”
Lucy climbed onto the arm of the couch, put her hands on her hips, and swished. “Because of Ethan Edward. You like him better and forgot all about us!”
Haily laid strands of tinsel over a branch. “You never forget your own family.”
The phone rang. A minute later Sue motioned for me to go into the kitchen. “Your mom really wants to talk to you.”
I took the phone and put it to my ear. “Hi.”
“Hi, sugar, are y’all having fun?”
“Yup.”
“Oh good, I’m so happy. I want you to know I’ve had great success. I’m glad I came.”
“I don’t even know what you’re doing there,” I said. Except maybe digging up more Mr. Jims.
“You’ll find out soon enough. I’ll be back tomorrow early afternoon. I’m bringing us something special for Christmas Eve.”
She sounded so hopeful, like a little kid. I moved away from the door and spoke quietly into the phone. “Mama, are you volunteering at the veterans home?”
Long pause. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Because we were there today and I met Freda from Alameda.”
Another long pause, then she laughed softly. “Oh, that Freda, she’s full of fun stories. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home, sugar, okay? I’ll see you about two.”
“I’m going skiing, so I won’t be back yet.”
“Skiing? Oh. Okay, sugar, have fun. Bye.”
“Bye—”
<
br /> Click.
Sue and Kori watched me hang up the phone. “Everything good?” Sue asked.
“I guess,” I said. “Do you know what she’s in Boston for?”
They looked at each other quickly. “It has to do with Christmas, so we can’t tell,” Kori said.
“But you’ll like it,” Sue added.
I’d never told them about Mama wanting to leave as soon as our year was up, because every time I was with them it was so easy to pretend nothing was wrong. Sometimes I felt jealous, because after I went home each day, they all still had each other. They were a family. A pieced-together one, but a whole complete family with two parents, sisters who got into fights, and a big brother with a leg buried in the backyard who let them climb all over him in a river. For a fleeting second I thought about Peter and Albert back in Georgia, sharing their first Christmas together, and I hoped they’d found with each other what the Parkers already had.
The noise coming from the others in the living room died down. Sue, Kori, and I went in from the kitchen. All six kids stood together, staring at an open box on the floor. Inside was a pile of polished wood ornaments attached to loops of thin leather. The magnolias. Their magnolias.
Kendra came to my side. “I don’t have one either,” she said. Not mournfully, not whiny, just a fact, as if this piece of news joined the two of us together in a way none of the others could share.
“That’s because you weren’t here yet,” Lucy said. “If you’d been here, he’d have made one for you.”
Biz dug her elbow into Lucy’s side. “Shhh, you’re not making it better.”
Sonnet picked up the box. “You can hang these if you want.”
“They’re carved from one of the old maple trees,” Sue said.
My brain tripped over itself inside my head, trying to make sense of the rawness billowing through me. James took a magnolia off the top, laid it in my hands, and placed my thumb on the smooth wood, streaked reddish brown, beautifully sculpted, and my daddy was there again.
“These are maple trees, our maple trees. They’re almost as beautiful as magnolias, but they don’t have a princess named after them.”
One by one I hung the magnolias on the tree. Sue and Kori’s were on the bottom of the box. I handed them to Kendra. “I should have given you more.”
She hung the last two side by side, front and center. When she was done, we all stepped back and James plugged in the lights. The tree came alive with color and history like a rainbow quilt—like this family who had been brought together from the discarded scraps of other people’s lives. I don’t remember my heart ever feeling so full.
We drank tiny cups of eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg and ate miniature mince pies. Sonnet brought her keyboard into the living room and let her fingers bring music to our ears, music that made me feel happy, and safe, and loved. I was sure nothing could possibly penetrate the strength, the perseverance, the dignity of that evening in the Parkers’ home.
“We belong here, Magnolia Grace,” he’d said. “We come from these woods.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the morning, delicate webs of ice crystals framed the living room windows. White lights above the door outside blinked off and on, and the reflection burst onto each streak of frost so they looked like miniature branches laced with tiny, twinkling stars. Snow drifted from the sky, soft and slow. For one short, delicious moment it felt like I’d woken up inside a snow globe, instead of on the couch in the Parkers’ living room.
Biz and Lucy scrambled up and rocked the cushions. “It’s Christmas Eve!”
Kendra rolled her eyes on her way to the kitchen. “Jeez, give it a rest, would you? You’d think she was the second coming of Christ.”
“Look what the toof fairy brought me!” Lucy held a silver dollar between her fingers and kept jumping.
Biz tugged my pajama sleeve. “We’re going to give Sassy a hot bran mash this morning.” Her cheeks were flushed, like she’d already been outside in arctic air. “When it gets cold really fast like last night, we have to give her bran so she’ll poop.”
Lucy giggled and rolled on top of my ankles. “Yeah, so she’ll poop.”
James waved from the kitchen and held out a Tupperware container. “Morning, Maggie. Girls, here’s the stuff for the mash.”
Lucy and Biz each grabbed the container and started a tug-of-war over who got to carry it outside. Haily ran into the room and crashed between them. Chunks of cut-up carrot, apple slices, and raisins scattered across the floor.
Lucy pushed both fists into Haily’s stomach. “Look what you did!”
“Oh, get a grip. You’re driving me crazy! Both of you. Which one of you took my curling iron for your stupid stuffed horses?”
Both girls shrugged, but the corner of Lucy’s mouth twitched.
“I’m going in your room and if you take it again I’m going to burn your butts with it—” Her voice faded with the sound of her feet pounding up the stairs.
Sue appeared from the kitchen with a wooden spoon in one hand. A smile flickered on her face and she crossed her eyes. “Stop taking her curling iron!” She pointed the spoon at the girls and a glob of something white dropped to the floor. “Whoops! Morning, Maggie. Merry Christmas Eve, and welcome to the crazy house!”
Kori hauled a basket of clean laundry from downstairs. Under a red flannel shirt, she wore a T-shirt that read I’m one of them! across the front. “My dream house has a washer and drier on every floor.” She set the basket on the coffee table and peered at me. “How’d you sleep?”
“Okay.”
“Good. What time are you skiing today?”
I pulled the blanket over half my face and looked sheepishly at her. “I’m not. I didn’t want to have to go home early.”
“Oh,” Kori said. “Well, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Haily raced down the stairs, holding the curling iron like a weapon. “It’s broken!” she screeched. “You two broke my curling iron and Ethan Edward will be here in five minutes! I’ll never forgive you!” She disappeared again.
“Poor Ethan Edward, having such an ugly girlfriend with no curling iron,” James said.
Biz and Lucy giggled. “Ugly girlfriend, ugly girlfriend!”
They ran to the door at the bottom of the stairs and tried to slam it, but Sonnet pushed through and shoved them aside. “Stop with the annoying stuff. It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Nonstop drama,” Kori said. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” She picked up the laundry basket and headed off down the hall.
“Water’s boiling, you ready for the mash?” Sue called. The girls ran around gathering boots and hats and coats.
“I can’t get my mittens on!” Lucy pulled and tugged and tried to wrangle her hand into the mitten until her face turned as red as the skin on the apple slices.
Kendra walked through with a plate of pancakes in one hand, a glass of juice in the other. “They’re on the wrong hands, duh.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sue asked.
“To eat in my room, away from the heathens.”
Biz waved her hands in the air. “Heathens! Heathens!”
“Heathens!” Lucy mimicked.
“See? They’re giving me a stomachache.”
“Back to the kitchen,” Sue told her.
“Sonnet got to eat in her room for almost five months, all I want is one morning!”
Sue pointed to the kitchen “Go.”
“Whatever,” Kendra said.
“Biz, Lucy, wait downstairs. Out!”
All three girls disappeared. Sue let out a big sigh and smiled at me. “We’ll be cleared out soon, don’t worry.”
“Where is everyone going?”
Kori stuck her head around the doorway. “Last-minute errands, but I’ll be here for a bit. You can stay if you want.”
I was barely awake. I needed time to think before Mama got home. I needed strength, perseverance, dignity, all the things that came from my name.
“You sure it’s okay?”
“Of course.” She went back to the basket of laundry.
Between the two moms, Sue was always good for a strong hug or giving directions to the masses. She wasn’t the one I’d automatically go to for tender words like I would Kori. But this morning she changed the rules.
“I know you’re not happy at home right now, kiddo,” she said softly. “But it’ll be okay. Cross my heart. Promise.” She drew an imaginary X across her chest.
“It’ll be okay,” he’d said. “Cross my heart. Promise.”
He’d made an X over his chest with his fingers, set me on the stone wall, and kissed my cheek. I’d believed him. I had no reason to think anything else. So, I’d stayed on that wall until the stones grew cold, and the light faded to strange shadows, and unknown voices called my name.
THIRTY-NINE
Kori handed me a plate of pancakes with a blueberry happy face on top. “What time is your mom getting home?”
“Two, I think.”
“Well, good. We can have a leisurely breakfast then.” She dipped a triangular piece of pancake into a little cup she’d microwaved with her syrup and butter mixed together.
“Your dad’s syrup is the best. He gave us enough to last until the little girls are in college.”
“Did you ever watch him make it?”
“Oh yeah, every year. He was a really good friend, not just to me and Sue but to the kids.”
“Did he have other friends?”
“That’s a tricky question. He wasn’t one to go out and seek friendships, but he was well regarded in Vermont. Beloved, even.”
Beloved.
“And, he was instrumental in Sonnet’s progress when she first came. That’s how we got to be close.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Sue and I first bought the store, we only had Haily and James. They were little, under ten. We’d filed to become adoptive parents, then social services called one day and asked if we could foster an emergency placement. Sonnet came that night, barely six. I’ll never forget. She was in a pink dress and half the lace around the bottom was ripped. She had different shoes on each foot, those huge brown eyes, and no voice.”
Georgia Rules Page 15
