“She telephoned me a couple of days before,” Roger breaks in.
“Who?” Joelle asks him.
“Your mother. She’d call me every once in a while, probably out of habit from before Ma died. I was still living at the old house. This time, Sylvie told me things were going downhill fast with Sylvia and she wasn’t going to stop them. Sylvia had suffered enough. She asked me: Was there any way I could come out and take care of Sissie for a spell? She didn’t want you there, Joelle, when the end came. So I said, yes, I’d take some time off. And I was on my way. God knows, I was on the road, driving out there, when . . .”
Vernon clears his throat loudly, and speaks. “He would’ve been there the next night, as you all know,” he tells the room at large. “Roger was coming. Sylvie knew he was coming. Now, Joelle, this is what happened.
“A social worker came by Sylvie’s apartment to check up on how things were, and she saw little Sylvia and ran off to get help. And Sylvie wouldn’t let her back in the door, so this social worker called Emergency. Then the medics came and Sylvie wouldn’t let them in either. When they tried to break in anyway—”
“My mother made me stay in the bedroom,” Joelle says. Her voice surprises her. It sounds high and squeaky like a child’s.
“You remember this?” Vernon looks at her hard.
“I’m just now remembering some things.”
“Well, you were there, of course. Nobody was going to ask you what happened. You were too little.”
“She said I had to stay. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Your fault?” asks Uncle Roger, but Joelle hardly hears him.
Inside her mind she’s gazing far off to another time, to a place so well forgotten it was all but erased. It’s a room with a window that looks out over an open-air porch.
“She told me she was going out the window, onto the porch with Sylvia, because Sylvia had to go away, and she couldn’t go alone,” Joelle remembers. “Somebody was pounding on the door.”
“Well, that was most likely Emergency,” Vernon says quietly. The uncles are not eating anything. They’ve forgotten they have plates on their knees.
“I said, ‘I want to come too. I am supposed to take care of her,’ ” Joelle recalls, “but she wouldn’t listen.”
She sees the room’s four walls now, the big window and the two beds with their green quilted bedspreads. One bed is for Mother. The other is for Sissie and Sylvia, who always sleep together, even when Sylvia is very sick, just as they always do everything together. They have to, so Sylvia won’t be afraid and Sissie can keep her safe.
“My mother said she was the only person who could keep Sylvia safe now. I had to stay and wait. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go!”
“Your mother wasn’t thinking straight,” Uncle Roger says. “If she was herself, she never would have left you like that.” He shakes his head hard, as if he’s trying to shake something out of it.
“She told me not to cry or Sylvia would be scared, and I didn’t,” Joelle remembers. “I sat there and waited, and I never cried once. Even when they broke down the door, I never cried.”
“Well, you are now, honey,” Uncle Greg says, and Joelle notices that she is. Without any trouble at all, with no fighting back or holding on, her eyes have filled up and overflowed. The uncles have become a wobbling, shimmering sea of heads and bodies. Then their arms are around her, and everybody is crying together for Sylvie and Sylvia. And for her.
* * *
Aunt Mary Louise would have been amazed to see how well her house took in the company that night. Those tiny rooms expanded to fit the uncles with no trouble at all. There could have been even a few more bodies squeezed in—and maybe this will come to pass, Joelle thinks, if any of the dozen or so cousins she’s been hearing about decides to pay a visit. Considering that she was running out of space before, filling the place up all by herself, it’s a remarkable alteration.
On her way through the living room to the kitchen the next morning, Joelle steps over the snoring forms of the twin uncles, Jerry and Jodie. They’re tucked into a couple of sleeping bags, using rolled-up sweatshirts for pillows. Uncle Franko is sprawled on the couch in his underwear, and Uncle Greg’s mass of black braid is sticking out from a snarl of blankets beside the dining table.
Uncle Roger is asleep upstairs with Vernon, the last six inches of his six-foot three-inch frame hanging off the bottom end of Aunt Mary Louise’s side of the bed. Joelle caught a glimpse going by in the hall, and it gave her a good feeling. She’s not sure what Aunt Mary Louise would think, but she likes seeing Uncle Roger there. His tallness is her tallness. Uncle Greg’s black tuft of braid looks a lot like her hair when she gets up in the morning. These men knew her mother when she was Joelle’s age. They grew up with her in the same house and spoke to her every day. They’re sitting on top of an entire world she’s going to get to know—and one that’s going to get to know her.
She’s on her way to school. School of all things! In the middle of all this. It’s Monday morning, and unlike Vernon and the uncles—who are not setting a very good example in this regard—she can’t call in sick or take time off. Not anymore. A day job you can fudge, but school marches ahead, with or without you. It’s up to you to hang in there. One thing Joelle’s been sure of for the last few months is that she’s going to carry on for Aunt Mary Louise. Now she has Sylvie and Sylvia to work for too. This morning, as a start, she’s planning to ace a Spanish test on irregular verbs. Standing at the kitchen counter, she’s eating a bowl of cereal and studying her Spanish textbook when:
“Joelle?”
It’s Vernon, unshaved, barefoot, staring at her from the kitchen doorway with red-rimmed eyes.
“What?”
“I just wondered how you’re fixed for today.”
“If you mean lunch money, I’ve got it.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Vernon lowers his voice to a whisper. “What I wonder is, how you’re doing with—”
“I’m okay,” she says quickly. “I might be late getting home this afternoon. I have to talk to someone.”
“Who?”
“Just somebody. Will anyone still be here?”
“Roger and Jerry and Jodie, from the look of it. I’ll get up a dinner. You’re taking it pretty well, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought after you found out . . . well, you might be disgusted or angry or . . .” Vernon, in his usual roundabout way, is asking her for something. Joelle knows what it is.
“Do you think I should be angry?”
He shrugs. He looks desperate.
“I don’t know how I am yet,” she answers him truthfully. “It’ll take me a while to figure out. I’m still going to live here, though, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t plan on moving in with any of these guys.” She gestures toward the sleepers in the living room. “Did you really believe I would leave?”
“I didn’t know.” Vernon hangs his head. “I have a lot to apologize for,” he mumbles. “I didn’t handle things like I should. I wish your Aunt Mary Louise were here to say what she thinks.”
Joelle takes in his misery and closes her Spanish book. “I know what she’d think.”
Vernon shakes his head.
“I do. She’d say it was okay.”
“Really?” Vernon glances up.
Joelle nods. “She wouldn’t leave either.”
Vernon looks about ready to cry. “How do you know?” he asks.
“Well, that’s the biggest mistake you made of all. You should think about it,” Joelle tells him. “You could figure it out if you tried.”
“I could?”
“Yes.”
He looks faintly hopeful, but also on the verge of asking her How? when a series of knocks sounds on the front door. From outside, an urgent voice rings out.
“Joelle! Where are you? It’s me! We’re going to be late!”
“I have to leave; that’s my tribe calling,�
� Joelle says with a grin. She puts out her hand and touches his as she goes by, maybe just to help her squeeze past, but maybe not.
“See you tonight,” Vernon says when she’s half out the door.
“See you,” Joelle answers. And that feels good too.
17
WITH THE COMING OF APRIL, and then May, the weather in Marshfield gradually warms. Showers muddy the yards and gardens frequently at first, then give way to days of sunshine. The swallows return and nest. The catbirds shriek and mimic the cries of babies. Trees break into leaf, and Joelle’s interest in the early Narragansetts, now that she knows they’re her people, revives. Her interest in Carlos revives too. He’s wised up from their early days, and their research sessions in the library now often end as sparring matches.
Joelle, reading out loud (with a slight smirk) from a book titled Indian New England, 1524–1674:
“The men, for the most part, live idly; they do nothing but hunt and fish. Their wives set their corn and do all the other work.
—FRANCES HIGGINSON, 1629”
“Oh, yeah?” Carlos counters. “Well listen to this:
“Narragansett men shouldered the most dangerous and exhausting duties—hunting and fishing, making the bows, arrows, and canoes, and protecting the tribe and family.
—INDIAN NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIMS”
“So? What about this?” Joelle says. She reads:
“It is almost incredible what burdens the poor women carry of corn, of fish, of beans, of mats, and a child besides.
—ROGER WILLIAMS, 1643”
Carlos laughs scornfully and reads from another source: “ ‘For all the assertion that the woman was overburdened . . . or that her health was ruined by labor, little direct evidence can be found. The excellent physical health attributed to women of the agricultural tribes is testimony to the contrary.’ ”
“Wait a minute. How could they possibly know Narragansett women were in such excellent physical health?” Joelle demands. “Most of us were wiped out, remember?”
“They found graves. It says right here: ‘Narragansett burial sites support evidence of powerful women of extraordinary height.’ ”
“Well, that doesn’t mean we didn’t work harder than the men.”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“I’m just making sure you understand. Women were important back then.”
“I understand.”
“Hunting and fishing were sidelines for the Narragansetts. Their tribes depended on food that was grown, harvested, and stored by women. Women were crucial to survival!”
“They definitely were. And not only that, they still are,” Carlos replies, looking up at her with such ardent sincerity that Joelle is left feeling like an entire Spanish armada becalmed in the heat of battle.
They are friends again. And perhaps a little more than friends, as people usually are who have telephoned each other late at night, and heard each others’ extraordinary stories, and discovered links between their lives that are invisible to others.
Carlos has asked: “So Queenie knew you were coming to the New London freight depot?”
And Joelle has answered, as if she’d always known it: “Oh, sure. She was part of my uncles’ plan. I needed to drop out of sight for a while, and Queenie was the perfect cover. Vernon told Aunt Mary Louise that I was a lost child picked up by the police, but it was all part of the plan. The Family Services Center she always talked about was a fake my uncles arranged. I was the only kid there. Queenie had just driven me up from the New London depot, where we’d been hanging out that summer.”
Joelle has asked him: “How are you and your dad getting along? Is he still going on a lot of trips?”
And Carlos has answered: “He’s taking us on a trip, my mother and me. We’re visiting some Sioux historical sites in South Dakota this summer.”
In the midst of this new closeness, there remain private zones between them, places that seem to lie beyond the reach of words or explanations. Even knowing what she now does about Sylvie, Joelle can’t imagine how her mother did what she did. Sylvie’s choice, and the part Joelle played in it, are matters Joelle can’t explain to herself, and she keeps the frightening room in the high-rise apartment building locked behind its door in her mind.
Somehow, Carlos is aware of this and doesn’t trespass. With equal understanding, Joelle stays away from the subject of Daniel’s fall. Though Carlos’s father has spoken to him, it’s not enough. She can tell that Daniel is often on his mind, a shadowy form following silently behind him on hikes through the woods, a figure watching from the edge of the picture.
Like Sylvia.
Joelle recognizes her twin now. She was there the whole time, as close as Joelle’s own skin, separated by only a twist of imagination, which shows how close the past can be to the present. Invisible as Sylvia was before, now that Joelle knows what to look for, she sees her everywhere in her life.
“Remember that long-haired cat I told you about?” she asks Carlos one day, trudging home from school. “The one that came with me from Chicago on the freight train and ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I’ve just figured it out: That was my sister, Sylvia.”
“It was?”
“Yes. She wasn’t going to be left behind.”
“Or you weren’t going to leave her,” Carlos points out.
“Maybe, but remember the feeling I had that I was being tracked through the woods when we hiked to the Crying Rocks?”
“You also had it coming back,” Carlos reminds her.
“That was Sylvia too. She was following secretly in my footsteps, just as our mother taught her to do.”
Carlos appears doubtful. “So she’s somehow around here in spirit form?”
“In a way. She was that little dog who slept with me in my box at the railroad depot.”
“This is all in your mind, of course,” Carlos says, to reassure himself of her sanity. Or maybe his.
“Queenie wouldn’t think so. Ghosts are real to her. That painting in the library . . .”
“Oh, that painting! I never should have told you about it. You’re turning into a dangerously haunted person,” Carlos kids her.
“Maybe I am, but Sylvia is there. That’s a picture of her, standing with me in the bushes. I’m holding her hand the way I used to in Chicago. We’re looking at our village.”
“Seriously haunted,” Carlos repeats, shaking his head. “It’s a bad case of ancestor worship.”
“As if someone who’s only one-sixteenth Indian would know anything about my ancestors,” Joelle says with a smile.
Carlos nods and grins. “You certainly beat me there.” A moment later, his face changes.
“Speaking of ghosts,” he whispers. He points behind them, up the sidewalk.
Swinging around to look, Joelle catches sight of a bobble of little-girl heads sneaking along behind the hedge.
“If you don’t mind, I’m heading back to the ranchero,” he says. “I don’t want to be yelled at. Your royal followers have been getting a little out of control lately. I think you’re beginning to lose your charm.”
He takes off at top speed leaving Joelle to face her troops. They are back to wearing braids again, and going a step further, are all sporting beaded bands with exotic feathers from various long-winged birds. Whether they talked their mothers into buying these crazy headdresses at a costume store or made them themselves, it’s hard to tell. Whatever, enough is enough. This spy operation must come to an end.
“Buenos días, Indian princesses!” Joelle calls out determinedly.
A storm of giggles arises from behind the hedge.
“Come forth and show yourselves!” Joelle calls. “I have a proposition.”
“A what?” says one princess, sticking her head around the hedge. They all file out with suspicious eyes. This is the first, the very first time Joelle has consented to speak to them. They’re gazing at her skeptically, wondering if it’s some kind of trick. Over on
one side of the pack, Joelle is happy to see Michiko. She’s worked things out, it seems, and is back with the others.
“I wish to speak of tribal matters,” Joelle addresses them formally. “Give me your leader.”
“We can’t,” one of the princesses pipes up.
“Why not?”
“We threw her out!”
“You did?” Joelle glances at Michiko. “You never told me! You threw Penny Perrino out of her own club?”
“It wasn’t hers anymore. She was too mean,” Michiko says.
“Penny wasn’t even in our grade. All she wanted was to boss us around,” another princess explains. “Now we have meetings when we feel like it, and nobody gets cut out.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Joelle says. “Here’s what I was thinking. How’d you all like to know a real Indian queen?”
“Oh, come on. An Indian queen is still alive?”
“How can you tell she’s really a queen?”
“Because she told me, and I believe her,” Joelle informs them solemnly. “Come and meet her, you’ll see.” She strides off on her long legs toward the park, the whole of her tribe trotting doubtfully behind.
* * *
Vernon would not approve, but ever since hearing her story from the uncles, Joelle has been visiting Queenie. She finds her in the park in the late afternoons or, spotting Queenie’s red Bug parked outside the library, looks for her there. It’s more than information she’s after. Some old feeling of comfort and safety has lingered from their days at the depot, though Joelle still recalls little from that time. Being with Queenie simply makes her happy.
Often they sit together without saying anything. The old woman is not always prepared to talk. Certain questions anger her and mention of past events introduces strain and confusion. Whether any event is truly past or is merely biding its time, waiting to come round again, is an issue for her. Small pieces of new information have reached Joelle’s ear, though, and there is even the occasional jewel.
About Sylvie, Queenie had volunteered: “She is crying for you. Do you know she misses you?”
The Crying Rocks Page 15
