Old Tanya Gillock (A Short Story)

by C.M. Blackwood

been able to haul in all the corn. Most of it had rotted in the fields.

  This piano was made all of gold, shining brilliantly in the lamplight, like something Shahryar might have given Scheherazade. Before he got tired of her stories, anyway.

  Tanya walked up to the golden bench on trembling legs, and sat down slowly, raising the lid of the piano with careful fingers. She struck a few notes – and the sounds were like drops of whiskey to a man who’d been lost in the desert.

  She began to play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” The result was a majestic one. She used to play for Mama, before Daddy sold the piano. Mama said that she could be great someday.

  “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it,” she murmured to her young daughter, blowing her nose in her spotted handkerchief. “You’re a star, baby. You’re a star!”

  But then the piano was gone, and life was nothing but pitching hay.

  “Pitch it faster, girl, if you want to eat tonight!”

  That’s what Daddy had said. So Tanya had pitched fast as she could, till her small shoulders ached, and there was no feeling left in her skinny arms.

  It went on that way till she was grown. Then Jimmy got caught in the thresher, and Tommy drank himself to death.

  Then Daddy died. He got ill, all of a sudden, and couldn’t get out of bed. His breathing was raspy, and his voice was hoarse. He couldn’t eat, and his sleep was fitful.

  He cried out Jimmy’s name before he died. Maybe he blamed himself. Maybe he was just a good daddy.

  Not long afterwards, Mama disappeared. No one was ever quite sure where she went. Old Timothy Buckland had always been fond of her, ever since high school – and it was obvious he would have taken Mama in after Daddy died.

  People went looking for Timothy, after Mama disappeared. But no one could find him, either.

  The sweet notes spread through the long parlor, as Tanya’s fingers pressed down on the keys. Soon, the whole house was filled with the sound.

  It was a marvelous thing.

  But soon, she stopped playing, and stood up from the bench, looking down at the golden piano as if it were an evil thing.

  “You’ve stopped playing, Miss Gillock,” the man observed from outside the door. “Why have you stopped playing?”

  Tanya didn’t answer. She stood in the middle of the parlor, still as a statue, wondering all the time if this was just a terrible nightmare.

  “Oh, well,” the man said. “Go into the kitchen. Maybe you’ll find something there that you like better.”

  Of course, Tanya didn’t want to go into the kitchen. But the man’s voice was like that of a snake-charmer. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Go into the kitchen,” the man’s voice commanded.

  So Tanya went. She moved in spite of herself, almost involuntarily.

  Soon, she was standing in the big old kitchen, all dark except for a little moonlight coming through the frosty window pane.

  She reached to flip the light switch. Dim, dirty-looking yellow light flooded the room. Everything looked dusty and decayed.

  Except for a tall, shining white refrigerator on the left-hand beside the wooden counter.

  The old brown refrigerator had stopped working in May. Ever since, Tanya and Betty had been ordering bottles of milk from the creamery, delivered in the morning by an old-fashioned dairyman. They kept them in lunch sacks with ice packs from the old freezer in the barn.

  Tanya stared at the white fridge in disbelief. She walked towards it, tottering slightly on her tired legs.

  She opened the door of the fridge, and saw more food than she’d ever seen at one time. Except in a grocery store.

  There was fresh white milk, gallons and gallons of it. There were dozens of eggs. There were six different kinds of cheese.

  In the freezer, there were steaks, chops and roasts – enough to last till spring. Maybe longer.

  Tanya stared into the bright fridge for a long moment. But suddenly, she was filled with a feeling of horror, and she slammed the door shut.

  “No!” she cried. “I don’t want it!”

  “Are you sure?” the man’s voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. Go upstairs.”

  “I don’t want to,” Tanya murmured.

  “Go!” the voice commanded.

  So Tanya went. She climbed the stairs slowly, and the voice waited patiently. It owner didn’t follow her, but there was a strange feeling of oppression that came with her up the stairs. She got to the landing, and stepped out into the moonlit darkness, creeping forward towards the bedroom. The light was on in there, though she knew very well that she hadn’t turned it on.

  She went into the room, and saw a wide down bed there in the center of the floor. It was the biggest bed Tanya had ever seen, with an ornate marble headboard, and a thick satin comforter.

  For many years, Tanya and Betty had slept on a lumpy old mattress with springs poking out of it. Every morning, they woke with more aches and pains than old-time Jews putting up Pharaoh’s pyramids. But they kissed each other when they opened their eyes, and then got up to start their work. Many people hated them, but the poorer people appreciated them, unable as they were to afford new frocks and dungarees. So they blessed the old lovers, who mended their old clothes for a pittance.

  But this, this was a bed befitting a Roman emperor. Old Tanya doubted that even someone as ill-tempered as Nero would have scoffed at it.

  She was so tired, she wanted more than anything to lie down on the bed. She took a shaking step towards it, and came very close to it. But then, she leapt back as if she’d been burned, and she cried out in alarm.

  “No!” she hollered, tearing at her hair. “I don’t want it.”

  “Are you sure?” the man’s voice repeated. It no longer seemed to come from downstairs. It was all around her now. It was almost as if it were inside her head.

  “Yes,” she said firmly.

  “You’re a steady one, Miss Gillock, I’ll grant you that.”

  He paused for a moment, but then added, “I have one more thing to show you.”

  “I don’t want it!” Tanya cried. “I don’t want your pianos, or your food, or your beds. You can keep ‘em!”

  “No,” the man said, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “This is rather different from all that.”

  In spite of herself, Tanya was curious. She saw a strange shimmering light off to the side of the room, where there was a large empty space. The light grew brighter, and then turned into a picture, almost like a movie screen.

  Old Tanya could see her dear Betty, lying on the lumpy old bed, and coughing horribly. Tanya sat beside her, and cooled her forehead with a damp cloth. But then Betty sat up weakly, and began coughing more violently. Dark red blood splashed from her mouth, and stained the dingy white blanket.

  The picture shifted, and Tanya saw a plain pine box, being carried slowly into Westborough Cemetery. Tanya walked on one side, Betty’s son on the other. He cast a hateful glance towards Tanya, and walked on.

  “Oh, no,” Tanya moaned, sinking down to her weak old knees. She didn’t know how she’d ever get up again, but she couldn’t help it. “Oh, Betty.”

  “She has cancer,” the voice said, in that same said voice. “She has only six months to live, they told you.”

  “Yes,” Tanya breathed.

  “I can take it away,” the man promised. “She’ll be well for the rest of her days. And I can assure you, they will be long ones.”

  The image of the pine box lingered in the air. They were lowering it into the ground, now.

  The old woman’s breath came shallowly. She could hardly see through the tears in her eyes. She almost longed to say yes.

  But then she tore at her hair again, and with a strength she couldn’t explain, she hurled herself to her feet. She sliced an angry arm through the image of the coffin, and began to scream.

  “No!” she cried. “I tell you no! Good Lord save me, and
deliver me from this devil!”

  All in an instant, the image of the coffin disappeared, along with the oppressive feeling that had followed Tanya upstairs. The magnificent bed was gone, and the lumpy one was back. The voice spoke no more. Tanya knew in her heart that it had gone away.

  With her legs shaking worse than ever, she hobbled downstairs, and resumed her place by the window to wait for Betty. She didn’t have to look outside the door. She knew the man was gone.

  A few weeks ago, she and Betty had gotten the news from the hospital. Betty had been feeling poorly for a while now. It was lung cancer, they said. Only six months left.

  Still, somehow, Betty’s eyesight was better than Tanya’s, and she insisted on doing the night driving. The order from old Murray had come in late, and he’d called just after supper to let them know. Betty wanted to fetch it before the storm got too bad.

  Old Murray had a soft spot for the old women. He sold them their materials for a song, and he refused to say anything, when people came into his shop speaking ill of them. But he hadn’t driven a car in more than fifteen years, on account of his wooden leg, and he couldn’t make deliveries anymore. So Betty went to get the stuff from his shop.

  Now Tanya waited for her impatiently. Her small foot tapped sharply against the floor, and her thin fingers gripped the arms of her chair.

  Finally, the old Volkswagen pulled into the drive. Tanya hauled herself to her feet, and hobbled to the front door. She opened it for Betty, and smiled at the sight of her, home and safe.

  She stood in the dim porch light, her head covered with a thick bonnet, her shapely old face reddened from the chill air. Her deep