Ada Unraveled

by Barbara Sullivan

  The words were said with finality but left so many unanswered questions in its wake. She seemed upset and even angry. A second butterfly took flight in my belly. There was something going on here I had yet to identify.

  And why, for heaven’s sake, was I reacting with anxiety? Perhaps it was the excessive caffeine.

  “Rest your eyes, Victoria,” Hannah said, and began massaging her shoulders.

  I waited, letting the silence play out into minutes as I watched them.

  Finally, Elixchel stopped sewing and looked at me, feigning innocence I thought. “We needed a replacement. There has to be eight of us to complete a quilt in one night. It’s always been that way. You don’t have to have a quilt ready until next spring.”

  Then what did Victoria just mean? Mind-reading Ruth didn’t respond. Ruth was rocking gently as she sewed. I thought about how far behind quilting I was falling, playing this silly game. They would tell me when they were ready.

  Hannah completed her work on Victoria and moved to Abigail.

  The view of the little group of women from my new seat by the fire, where I had settled with my tea, was enlightening. A different view than I had when I was sitting amongst them.

  Victoria’s long, steel-gray hair, which had been tightly braided and formed into a knot at the nape of her neck, was beginning to fray in earnest now. The old woman looked exhausted. I began to wonder if she would make it through the night.

  Hannah moved to Andrea who’d stopped sewing minutes before, and was resting with her eyes closed and a smile on her face, clearly in anticipation.

  “Ada would have brought us a quilt to sew in March, I think. Or maybe April.” Ruth said.

  Ada. The woman I’d replaced. Finally a name.

  “Perhaps you should tell me who this Ada is. Ada is the woman who died that I’m replacing.” I made the statement, forcing someone to contradict me, or leave it said. No one did. The room closed in upon itself.

  Maybe this was the real meaning of their name. They quilted and they were very secretive. And I hated the butterflies dancing in my belly. The women sewed like robots in silence. Ah, the anonymity of hiding in a group—a gentler form of mob psychology was spread out before me.

  Finally, Geraldine stood, stretched and faced me. “The answer is yes. She died three months ago. We had a hell of a time finding you, but we did and you’re perfect. And I need a potty break.” She flounced out and into the barely lit zigzag hall.

  Still no answers.

  But that was all I would get now. I moved back toward my chair and asked, “How long has this group been meeting?”

  “Our quilting group has been in existence now for over three hundred years,” Abigail said, perking up. She launched historical essay.

  “It began in the year 1678, in the Colonies,” Victoria Stowall intoned. “One of my female relatives sewed at that first one.”

  Her pride imbued the room with lighter feelings. Abigail rose from her sadness. And promptly joined a debate with Abigail and Elixchel over how many generations ago the group had begun. And promptly joined the debate over how many generations ago the group had begun. Turned out it was forever, as far as Victoria knew.

  “Do you mean the bee has always been in your family, Victoria?” I asked.

  She nodded yes.

  “And how is it you know the exact year?” Then I remembered. “Wait…that was the year of Pilgrim’s Progress, wasn’t it?” My reference librarian’s brain had called up one of its many disassociated pieces of information.

  Victoria beamed, which was a lovely sight to see. Until Elixchel said, “John Bunyan’s real message, his underlying moral, is that mankind lives in a corrupt hell and heaven sits above us.”

  And Elixchel believed that this was true?

  I looked at Elixchel. What a harsh philosophy for such a beautiful young woman.

  I said, “Maybe you should tell your story now, Elixchel.” She nodded agreement and took a breath.

  “My story is about how my parents died. I was almost ten. This event abruptly ended my childhood.

  “They were shopping in Mexico. My mother was from Mexico. They had an accident…and they were trapped in the car…on fire...” her voice wavered and she paused in her story. Finally she resumed.

  “They’d left me home with tia…an aunt. I have little memory of it, just the hysteria, the rage and frustration. They were forced to return to a Mexican hospital barely better than a prison—which is where they would have been sent next, if they’d lived. It was years ago. The hospitals back then were….”

  “They were primitive,” Andrea said. “And they would have gone to prison because their laws presume guilt before trial, the opposite of ours. Napoleonic, it’s called. Primitive, I call it.”

  Elixchel sighed again. “Yes, but the American consulate did nothing to help them. The guilt is on both countries.”

  “Wasn’t much they could do back in those days; it was like a diplomatic dark age between Mexico and the US, wasn’t it?” Andrea.

  “I don’t know. Do you want me to tell my story or not?” Elixchel snapped.

  Andrea smiled—I thought smugly--and bent to her sewing.

  “Anyway they both died, my mother within days from the injuries, my father from pneumonia after several weeks. It still makes me very sad. And yes, it makes me angry…at this country and its attitude toward us. I mean toward us Chicanos.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents, Elixchel. You have every right to be angry over their deaths. But, do you think things are getting better now?” I said.

  “Yes. No. Maybe a little, away from the borders. But I grew up feeling ashamed of being Mexican…Mexican-American.”

  “Which is why you’ve taken a half-Mayan name?”

  “Yes, Andrea. I ran away from my aunts and uncles. I hated their simple, peasant ways. That’s when Victoria adopted me. We’re family anyway. My dad’s line goes back to the Stowalls. He just had a different name.”

  Another Stowall? Was I the only one here who wasn’t a Stowall?

  “So you’ve shared your worst secret.” Andrea said. “So can we call you Liz again?”

  “No. I’ve changed my name legally, so it’s done. Besides, Elixchel, if you say it properly, is beautiful. It’s El-ish-el, Andrea. A soft shushing sound in the middle.” But Andrea knew this. It was for my benefit that Elixchel sounded out her name.

  The rain pummeled the windows as if crazy to get in. I pressed my shoulders down as Hannah had instructed, stretching my neck and back. The massages were long over. I was cramping up again.

  Elixchel rose to put another log on, but paused half-way to the fireplace, cocking her head toward the door. I too heard female voices coming from the direction of the living room, filtered and diminished by the angular hall. Victoria began slowly pushing herself out of her chair, and left the room, with Elixchel trailing close behind. The female voices grew louder. I couldn’t make them out, but they were clearly filled with emotion and struggle.

  Andrea began babbling, started teasing Abigail, making no sense—at least to me. I realized she was attempting to mask the noises in the hall. She was doing a good job. Frustrated, I reached for my tea cup, tilting my head so I could better hear.

  The teacup was empty. My bladder on the other hand was full. And I still couldn’t hear over Andrea and Abigail’s noise. So I stood and prepared to walk either to the food table or better yet, the bathroom out in the hall, when a protest reached my ears.

  “I’m not sleepy! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Several other voices were cooing and murmuring to a…distraught child?

  “I’ve had it with this crap!” Another voice from the hall—this one angry. More clearly adult.

  The front door slammed, which made me turn to look at the chill rain spattering the windows behind me like a hundred spiccato violin bows bouncing on glass strings. What a terrible night to be out.

  Finally Andrea got up and chased after the sounds in the hall. Abigail followed he
r like a puppy. It must be Victoria’s daughters, or some of them at least, perhaps another foster child. I returned to my seat, new cup of tea in hand. If I drank it I knew I’d drown in urine, but now I was uncomfortable about leaving the room. Another shout erupted, a half child’s plea, half adult’s demand.

  “I want daddy. Where’s Jake?”

  Ruth peered at me around Gerry. The miserable woman-child voice began sobbing. At least the other voices were now mostly gentle, I thought. Soothing her fears, distracting her hysteria.

  “Is one of you going to enlighten me?” I finally asked.

  Gerry said, “It’s the Stowall girls. Martha just left. She’s the one with the excessive voice and impatience to match. Jake’s their father, of course. The youngest, Sarah, is the hysterical one you hear.”

  Stowall girls. Sarah was the youngest, Martha has a loud voice. More mental notes.

  While I was wondering how to ask if Sarah was handicapped in some way, Victoria came back into the room, so I kept my question to myself…thank God. One by one the others returned and resumed their sewing as the cooing and sobbing voices moved away.

  Minutes passed before Victoria said, “She’s spending one night. She’s in the room by the kitchen, so please don’t make a lot of noise down that end of the house.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.” Ruth.

  They were back to an earlier discussion, one I was not part of, of whether Victoria needed a helpmate. A caregiver.

  “I’m fine alone. How could she help me, anyway?” Victoria.

  “At least she could call her sisters if you fall. Besides, she’s capable of doing a lot. She could learn to care for you.”

  “No! I don’t need taking care of.” Victoria tried to adjust her chair and winced in pain at the movement. “Why doesn’t someone tell another childhood story?”

  The butterflies were multiplying. Now there were four of them flitting around my belly.

  Chapter 9: Twisted Halls

  A tolling clock, down the hall I think, reminded me that only half this night had passed. And we weren’t even close to turning the quilt. We had at least one more expansion rolled on the dowels before us. Sleep was calling me to bed. But I was six hours away from it even if we ended by five. The drive down the mountain and putting on my jammies would take another hour.

  “All this tea,” I mumbled and pushed my chair back once more, stretching my back and neck as I went.

  The bathroom was down the hall to the right, but I turned left at the door instead, hoping the women at the rack were all looking at their stitching instead of my retreat. Snooping again. Good habit on the job, bad habit when making new friends. Sometimes I had difficulty separating the two.

  Again I noted the dim lighting in the hall. I’ve always found old houses depressing. The picture display once meant to enliven the crazy hall had long been neglected. I realized I was reviewing a family pictorial history that had stopped when the children reached adulthood. One group photograph revealed there had been seven of them.

  Seven children and not one grandchild?

  I peered into the faces of the grainy photo, taken many years ago. Looking for similarities between Victoria in her eighties and the Victoria of this large tribe—then, maybe, in her thirties. I couldn’t find them. Maybe because Victoria and Jake were still so young in this shot. The youngest child was barely more than a toddler. It looked to be a first communion for one of the daughters. She was dressed like a bride, all in white.

  I remembered seeing some of my mother’s old photos of first communions.

  I looked for other family photos, found one a few feet away. This second group photo showed Jake and Victoria well into their fifties. All the children were grown, those that were in attendance. I couldn’t identify the occasion of this second gathering. Two young men and three young women with their aging parents.

  Missing were John, and maybe Sarah? Maybe Sarah was taking the picture. Or John. But why would both of them not be in the grouping? And, I reminded myself, that Sarah’s abilities were limited. Just how limited, I had no idea.

  Victoria’s husband Jake, father of this brood, was holding something up in his right hand. I couldn’t tell what, in the faded picture. Perhaps a stick.

  I thought about how dramatically women aged compared to men. Not a new thought, now that I was in my fifties. I still had difficulty finding the old woman in the other room in this more mature face. Maybe a little similarity. But it could just as easily have been a cousin’s.

  Jake, on the other hand, held his identity through the two to three decades that separated the two photos.

  But there were no more group photos of the family in this hall. Perhaps the relatives had begun picking over the remains of Victoria and Jake’s lives already. It wasn’t uncommon. I guessed the china cabinet would look as scavenged as these walls.

  I listened for any sounds behind me and ahead as I snuck down the hall and around the corner, searching the handful of pictures closer to the kitchen.

  “The bathroom is the other way, Rachel.”

  I startled, but recovered quickly. Sneaks do that.

  “Oh, thanks, Elixchel. I’m completely turned around in this house.”

  She passed by me, her Mayan beauty turning to chiseled rock. Chastened, I retreated back through the broken hallway.

  Rounding the last corner, I saw that Victoria had left the light on in her bedroom, perhaps when she last rested. The room at the end of this twisted house. Dead-ahead and lighted.

  As I neared I could make out Victoria, now lying on the bed in a rumpled pile of loose clothing and blankets. I couldn’t make out her face. She was just a messy bump with arms and feet.

  There might be clues to Jake’s life and death in there, but I couldn’t get to them while Victoria was napping.

  And just this side of her was the bathroom I so desperately needed to visit.

  Our little group of women had grown silent and angry with lack of sleep and hours of monotonous detail work.

  “We need to hear your secret, Rachel,” Abigail said.

  My flock, herd, bevy, cluster, school, or whatever of butterflies lifted off simultaneously.

  “Right. Sure.”

  But not now. I continued sewing, hoping to wait until I pushed through the sleep-deprivation into some sort of second wind.

  I rose to get fresh tea. Stalling.

  A clock chimed as I repositioned myself at the rack, the first two phrases of the Westminster clock tower music. Big Ben’s song in miniature voice. It was lovely, in a melancholy way. I looked around and discovered it was coming from an antique Regulator only a few feet away, high on the wall at the end of the windows.

  Such a small clock to be making such a big sound.

  What I didn’t yet know was that I would grow to hate that clock before the long night of sewing ended.

  I bent to my task, concentrating only on the lovely stitches, not on the torture my fingers were enduring.

  The memory began to coalesce in my sleepy head, from decades ago. My story.

  I nodded, and looked up at Abigail whom I caught staring at me again…or still. Smiling like a cherub about to shoot an arrow. I took a deep breath and began my tale.

  “Frankly, Abigail, I have difficulty separating my real memories from stories I’ve heard while growing up and pictures I’ve seen. This memory happened when I was seven going on eight.

  “In this instance, I’d come to the defense of a girl a head taller than me. A girl who was basically shy. And in that defense, I’d challenged another girl for starting rumors about my shy friend. Called her out. “In the end, the older kids in our gang decided that the two of us combatants should ‘duke it out.’ In a fair fight. A fist fight.

  “We circled each other, me with my sister as my mentor, Erika with her brother as her mentor, Robert Swansen.

  “My sister Rita egged me on. ‘Hit her, Rache. Hit her hard!’ I was thinking, No! I can’t hit anyone!

  “Roger d
id the same, shouting, ‘Hit her Erika! Hit her in the face. Hit her big nose. Hit her, hit her, hit her!’

  “So I did. Hit Erika Swansen right in the eye. Then my sister and I ran away.”

  I was thinking my story had been too personal and too long, until Abigail said, “That was great Rachel. You’re a natural storyteller. I knew you’d be a great addition to our group.”

  Victoria said, “Let’s take a second break. I have fresh pies from my daughters’ bakery.”

  Almost simultaneously the old Regulator wall clock began sounding out the hour phrase of the Westminster chimes and one count. One o’clock. Surely now my energy levels would lift.

  When I asked about it, Hannah said that three of Victoria’s daughters, Martha, Mary and Anne, ran a restaurant and bakery that made pies to die for.

  As we slowly filtered into the kitchen, the pies were pulled from a warming oven and laid on the counter, and the room filled with apple and peach and berry perfumes. My nose had an orgasm.

  We spent a half hour enjoying this break. My hands actually stopped thrumming and began to unclench. And then we paraded our way back to the sewing room, all feeling much better.

  Behind me in the pack, Andrea said, “He’s an innocent. A victim. He needs our protection.”

  Andrea was angrily defending the same mystery man she and Elixchel had argued about earlier. The man with no name. The man that Elixchel didn’t trust, apparently. But I got no more information from them this evening. Just the occasional angry discussion leaving me little usable information.

  Chapter 10: Eddie 3

  The air was filled with smoke. The heat and winds said Santa Ana’s. Eddie was planning once again to take that walk to his grandparents. Trying to muster up the courage.

  When…his grandpa Jake just showed up! Told him to get in his truck. Said it wasn’t safe, that the fires were moving fast. Drove him away. Took him to the long crooked house he remembered from his early years.

  His grandmother was ancient! And his aunts…they were old, too. Maybe in their fifties and sixties. It made him sad. But then they fed him. Told him about their bakery. They seemed happy. Full of joy. At first.