I hadn’t told her about the fire. Could she smell it on me? Did she mean the fire or something else?
“Well, let’s hope we do a good job on you,” she added. She smiled. “I’m going to make you a wonderful late breakfast, too,” she said. “You had to sleep, so I let you sleep late, but we don’t sleep late here. You don’t waste any of the day. That’s sinful,” she said, and smiled. “Come on, get yourself into the tub.”
She stepped back, and I walked slowly out of the bedroom and to the bathroom. At the door, I stopped and looked up at her.
“What about Daddy?”
“One thing at a time,” she said. “First, you have to clean up. What would your father think of me if he found you still smelly and dirty?”
She put her hand on my back and practically pushed me into the bathroom. After I took off the pajamas, she held my hand until I was safely sitting in the large tub. It had claw feet, and there was rust around the drain.
“I’ll watch to see how you clean yourself first,” she said, and stood back with her arms folded under her heavy bosom. She was wearing what Mama called a duster. Mama had one the same color, an aqua cloud floral with a zipper front. She watched me scrub myself for a while but then suddenly cried, “Oh, dear, dear!” and rushed at the tub, ripped the washcloth from my hand, and rubbed the soap hard against it.
I thought I was going to cry, so I pressed my lips together hard.
“You have to scrub,” she said, and started on my back and shoulders. “Dirt gets into you and not just on you. Remember that. If my mother could, she’d use sandpaper on me. You’re lucky I don’t use it on you, because the dirt is so deep in you that it will become a memory if we don’t get it out immediately.”
She reached in and scrubbed my legs and between them. She had me stand up to do more and then decided we had to wash my hair to see how that would be. She scrubbed and scrubbed it and then sat me down and dipped me under the water before I had a chance to protest. I nearly gagged. When I sat up, she scrubbed again. She stopped and leaned over me to sniff my head.
“Ugh. No good,” she said. “No good. We’ll have to do something else.”
I didn’t know what she meant until she opened the cabinet and took out a pair of scissors. The blades looked so big.
I started to get out of the tub, but she put her hand on my shoulder and pressed me back into the water.
“It will grow back,” she said. “Clean-smelling, too.”
She began to chop at my hair, dropping the large clumps into the trash can under the sink. I cried out, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. I tried to get out of the tub, but a strong hand kept pushing my shoulder down between cuts at my hair.
“You’ll thank me,” she said. “Weeks and weeks from now, you’ll thank me.”
Weeks and weeks? What did she mean? Wasn’t Daddy coming today?
I tried to pull away, but she kept holding my head firmly. I was crying heavily now, not just sobbing, and the ache hurt in my stomach and my chest.
“Daddy!” I said. I was really calling for help, not asking where he was.
She didn’t say anything until she was finished, and then she said, “There. Get up, and let’s get you dry and dressed for breakfast. Every morning is special, but this is an extra-special one. C’mon, step out.”
She seized my arm, pressing so hard that it hurt. I stood up and stepped out of the tub. I was shivering more from fear than from being cold. She wiped me vigorously and then got me dressed, moving me around as if I was a doll, tugging at this and that roughly, until she was satisfied with how the clothes were fitting me.
“You’re so perfect that you could be in a storefront window,” she said. “Put these on for now.” She handed me the slippers. “We’ll think about new shoes for you today, maybe. I didn’t want to put any on you that weren’t fitted perfectly to your feet. No blisters live in Mazy Dazy’s house.”
I watched her emptying and washing the tub, sucking in my tears, as she worked to scrub it clean.
“Next time, you’ll do this yourself,” she said. “I’m sure of it. Little girls should not turn their mothers into maids.”
What did she mean?
She wasn’t my mother.
When she was done, she washed her hands and then, like every time before, took my hand and led me through the hallway to the kitchen. When we got there, I stopped instantly. I was so surprised I almost couldn’t breathe.
“My coloring book,” I said. There it was on the kitchen table.
Surely this meant Daddy was here.
“Yes, yes. I didn’t want you to lose it.”
“But…” I looked around. “Where’s my daddy?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, who brought my coloring book here?”
“Late last night, Miss Marple, when I realized he still hadn’t come here, I returned to the train station and saw your coloring book and my note still there. If I didn’t get it, the early train people would see it, and some other little girl would probably have taken it. But don’t worry. I wrote out another note and put it on the train-station door. If your daddy comes looking for you today, he’ll see it for sure. Okay?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t okay. What did she mean, If your daddy comes looking for you today? Why wouldn’t he be looking for me?
“Well, after a good breakfast, everything will look better and better to you. You’ll see. We all do better on a full stomach,” she said. “Sit. I’m making you scrambled eggs with cheese and a slice of whole-wheat toast. I have nice strawberry jam. There’s your orange juice. Drink that first.”
I was thirsty. Very thirsty. My skin was still hot from the bath.
She watched me drink. She was looking at me, poised to rush to the left as if she wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to get up and run off, which was exactly what I was thinking I might do. If I ran through the streets screaming for my father, someone would hear. Maybe he was at the wrong house and would hear.
“Okay,” she said, and went to the stove to make the scrambled eggs and toast. Mr. Pebbles returned and, as before, curled up at my feet. She noticed and nodded.
“He’ll be hoping you drop something, even though I give him plenty of cat food.”
I reached up to feel my hair, or really just my head. There wasn’t any hair, just bristles. I was afraid to look at myself. Mama would cry and cry. She was so proud of my hair.
“It will grow back,” the Umbrella Lady muttered, like someone who had eyes in the back of her head. “What doesn’t grow back is youth, so cherish it. Don’t be in a rush to grow up. Every young person is in a rush. If I could, I’d freeze you.”
I felt my eyes widen in fear and my heart thump. My warm skin became cold instantly. Freeze me?
She smiled. “Stop looking so frightened. Of course I won’t freeze you. You’ll never be warmer or more comfortable than you will be here.”
After she brought the eggs and toast to the table, she sat across from me to watch me eat. I couldn’t help being hungry, even though I was still crying inside from what she had done to my hair and how roughly she had washed me.
“Do you know if you have any aunts or uncles?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Your father never mentioned anyone?”
“No.”
“Then you haven’t met any cousins,” she said. “What about your mother’s parents? Did you meet them?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you that they had died?”
“Yes.”
She sat back with a little smile on her face. Why was she smiling? It was sad.
“How did they die?”
“It was a car accident when she was in college.”
She nodded. “And she already had met your father? Was that the story she told you?”
I nodded.
“Love conquers all,” she said. “What did your father tell you about his parents?”
“His father didn’t lik
e him after his mother died from a disease.”
She nodded as if she had expected that answer, too.
“There’s truth buried in all that. Families fall apart because each one thinks he or she is the most important.”
I didn’t understand. Who was more important? What truth?
“The main thing is that you shouldn’t be without someone who cares more for you than she or he does for themselves in this life. Every little girl especially needs someone like that, more than every little boy. Boys have less trouble being alone. That’s what I learned.”
I kept eating, but I saw she was looking at me and thinking hard about me.
“I’m sorry you didn’t have any grandparents. Grandparents can be very important.” She paused and then said, “I have a suspicion about you.”
I drank some more juice as I rattled around the word suspicion in my mind. I didn’t think it meant something good, not the way I remembered hearing it.
“You know what I think?” she asked. She waited, as if she really wanted me to say, What? But I didn’t. She leaned forward, clutching her hands. “I suspect you weren’t loved as much as you should have been until now. Your parents were too into themselves, their own problems, and more often than not, they forgot you even existed. You spent a lot of time alone, too much time alone for a girl your age. And I don’t mean without other little girls and boys. You need someone to be teaching you and telling you important things all the time. You need to be loved. A little girl without love will fade like a flower without water. As long as you’re with me, that’s not going to happen.”
She stared at me a moment and then sat back.
I shook my head. “My mother taught me important things and loved me.”
“Yes, maybe, but I have so much more to teach you.” She smiled. “I’m a witch when it comes to seeing the truth and predicting.”
“I was loved,” I insisted. “My daddy still loves me.”
“Truth can be like stubborn weeds. It just keeps coming no matter how you prune and spray.”
I had no idea what she meant, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t like her smile now.
“When will my daddy come for me?” I asked, practically demanded.
“We’ll see, but don’t worry if it’s quite a while. I’m really a professional teacher like your mother, only better, and this is a nice house, and you will have everything you need. Believe me, I know exactly what you need. When my mother left us, my father looked at me as if he had hoped she would have taken me, too. We didn’t have this nice a house, and I had no one to look after me like I will look after you.”
What she was saying fell like stones into my stomach.
She clapped her hands together. “We have a lot to do. After we clean up the kitchen, we’ll start to paint your room. And soon we’ll go shopping for your new pair of shoes, maybe two pairs. After a while, we’ll buy you more clothes and more coloring books. I have all the other books you’ll need. We’ll never be sad,” she said. “You’ll see. The jar will starve.”
She laughed so hard and loud I widened my eyes.
“Isn’t that funny? The jar will starve?”
I nodded. It was funny, in a way. How could a jar starve? But she had a strange laugh, as if she was laughing at someone who wasn’t here, so I didn’t laugh, too.
“Finish your food,” she said, losing her smile quickly. “We have a lot to do. We’re going to build a world around you. Isn’t that right, Mr. Pebbles?”
I looked at the cat, who was staring at her.
“You can’t tell,” she said, “but Mr. Pebbles is very happy that you’re staying. Why, he’ll probably end up sleeping in your room most of the time.”
“Staying? How long will I stay?”
“Well, you can’t exactly leave until… until it’s safe to leave.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Daddy must be very frightened because he didn’t find me.”
“It wasn’t exactly brain surgery to find you.”
“What? I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“Stop saying that,” she snapped. Then she smiled again. “It’s not important that you understand everything right now. Right, Mr. Pebbles? Right now, we have to do what’s important for right now. People who live entirely on hope pop like bubbles. Look how happy Mr. Pebbles is. I haven’t seen him this happy for years, and it’s all because of you.”
I looked at the cat again. He turned to me as if he really did understand what she was saying.
Even though everything the Umbrella Lady was saying made sense, Mama wouldn’t like this, I thought. She wouldn’t like any of it.
“Shouldn’t we go look for Daddy instead of painting the room?” I asked.
“Where would we look?” She raised her arms. “I’ve been to the train station, and I left the message for him. Why don’t you think it should be the other way around, that he should be looking for you?” she asked angrily. “Why do we have to walk our ankles off?”
“Maybe he didn’t see the note…”
“Oh…” She rolled her eyes. “How convenient an excuse for him. I’m sure that’s exactly what he’ll say.”
“Why don’t you want to find him?” I asked. I knew I was raising my voice and that was impolite, but I couldn’t help it. “Maybe he got lost. He doesn’t live here.”
She shook her head. “The optimism of innocence.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” she said, looking angry now, “you’re warm and safe where you will be well fed. Be grateful. Your daddy can’t miss the note. He has to go into the station to ask if anyone has seen you, right? It’s right at the center of the station door, and the stationmaster said he wouldn’t take it down for a long time. So let’s not worry about that. Let’s think of good things now, okay? We want those nickels in the other jar.”
She stared at me, waiting, but I wasn’t going to say okay.
Suddenly, she went to a drawer and took out something and slammed it on the table so hard that it made me jump in the seat.
“Here,” she growled. “This is your own roll of pennies. You know where the jar is. If you continue to have sad thoughts, we’ll need two jars.” She stared a moment and then looked softer. “Anyway, it’s here. It will help you.”
I looked at the small roll. How would this help me find Daddy or Daddy find me?
Seeing that I didn’t think pennies to put in jars were important, she tried even harder to soften her expression.
“You have to believe,” she said. “Nothing comes true if you don’t first believe in it. Oh, there is so much to teach you. Obviously, your parents didn’t do a good job until now. Just a little of the Bible, a little about daily life and taking care of yourself, and a little, if anything, about planning for the future. Not much education at all.”
“Yes, they did,” I said, tears burning my eyes. “Mama taught me how to read and add and how to be a little lady.”
“That’s just a very basic, simple part of life,” she said. “There is so much more it would fill up this house and pour out of the chimney.”
She clapped.
“Now, I want you to get up, take your dish and glass to the sink. Scrape off the dish, and then rinse both the dish and the glass before you put them into my dishwasher. Let’s see how you do.”
She stepped back, folding her arms over her breasts, and watched me. Did she think this was hard? I did what she wanted and then turned to her.
“Okay. Now we know you can clean up after we eat,” she said. “That will be one of your chores. Right now, we’ll go to your room and see how good you are at taking off your bedsheets and pillowcase. Remember? We have to wash all that and the comforter first. See? We’re going to be so busy that you won’t have much time to think and worry about your daddy. Leave all the worrying to him.”
She waved her hand toward what she was calling the “blue bedroom.”
I looked at the front door.
&nbs
p; “If you run away,” she said, “you’ll freeze to death. We’ll have to put you in hot soup to soften you up so we can bury you.”
The image was terrifying. She waved toward the bedroom again, and I turned and started toward it. As I walked, she sang behind me.
“Bye, baby Bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting, gone to get a rabbit skin to wrap the baby Bunting in.”
I stopped and folded my arms across my chest just the way she did hers.
I could feel her close behind me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not going back to the room until we go to the station and see if the note is on the door,” I said. I said it as firmly as I could. I could feel her breathing on my neck.
“You are very stubborn, a very stubborn little girl. Sometimes that’s good, but right now, it’s not.”
I started to cry. “Maybe the note fell off! Or maybe someone took it off! Daddy won’t know where I am!” I wailed.
She put her hand on my shoulder. I spun around and ran back to the front door, but I couldn’t open it. It was locked. She walked up slowly behind me.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Stop crying. I always lock the door at night to be safe. We’ll go back to the station. Maybe that’s a good idea. It’s always better to look truth in the eye.”
I watched her suspiciously as she stepped forward, took my jacket off the rack, and handed it to me.
“Put on your shoes,” she said.
I sat on the bench and did so as she put on her coat. I didn’t trust her even if we walked out of the house. I thought she would do something to stop us from returning to the station.
She grabbed her umbrella and opened the door.
“Back to the scene of the crime with Miss Marple,” she said, and laughed. She reached for my hand, and we stepped out into the partly sunny but cool morning. At the gate, she stopped. I was afraid this was as far as she would go. “If anyone sees us and asks who you are…”
“What?”
“You tell them you’re my granddaughter,” she said. “Otherwise, the police might come and take you away, and your daddy will never find you—ever—because they’ll put you in a home with orphans no one cares about.”
The Umbrella Lady Page 7
