Dearest Dorothy, Help! I've Lost Myself!

by Charlene Baumbich

  “Oh, honey . . .”

  “It’s not clear to me how long Mom had been in Chicago after leaving Partonville, but some weren’t written until after she was pregnant with me. None of them I’ve read so far were in envelopes or had dates, other than days of the week, and I couldn’t make sense out of their order.

  “I had no idea Mom and Aunt Tess were so close, Dorothy. Not only did the letters make me lonesome for Mom, but they pierced me with guilt that I never bothered to get more acquainted with Aunt Tess after Mom was gone, assuming she’d always been kind of a nut case. But her letters are so sweet. So tender. She was clearly devastated Mom moved, and sounded desperate for her company, in fact she says just that at one point. It crushed me reading about her longing to see my mom. . . . So relatable . . .” Katie stopped and swallowed a couple times. “I wondered, Why didn’t Aunt Tess go visit her? Why didn’t she move with her? And why on earth didn’t Mom come back here more often since she sure talked about Partonville enough?” Dorothy, fingers interlocked, tapped her thumbs together and shifted a bit in her seat.

  “Aunt Tess talks about me all the time, often referring to me as ‘that precious little bundle you’re carrying,’ Mom referring to the ‘gift of grace I’m growing.’” Katie took a quick swipe under her eye with her knuckle. “Some of the letters, though, are confusing . . . almost unsettling.”

  “Unsettling? How so?”

  “If it hadn’t been clear Mom was pregnant with me, I might have thought they were written when the two of them were little girls. There were parts of the letters that were like in some kind of code or something.”

  “Code? You mean like pig Latin?” Dorothy grinned, although the conversation about letters between the sisters had begun to wash up some hard and squirmy memories.

  “There were several references, by both of them, to the Core Four Covenant, and then bunches of capital letters . . .”

  “Oh!” Dorothy exclaimed. Her hand flew up and covered her mouth. Simultaneously, the Hooker members spilled from her home and out onto the porch, saying their good-byes. Dorothy quickly and privately thanked God for the perfect timing that ended this conversation. She also needed a nitroglycerin, but didn’t want to worry Katie.

  “I know you want to get going, Katie, so I’m going to let you get yourself home and get to bed before the ladies capture you again. We’ll talk soon. Good night, dear.” With that, she bolted from the car and briskly headed toward her front door. “Good night, ladies,” she said over her shoulder as she whisked through them, leaving them standing with their mouths open, poised with undelivered Thank-you’s.

  Katie started her vehicle, put it in gear and gunned it, spitting roadside gravel this way and that. When, in her rearview mirror, she noticed Jessica jogging into the road to flag her down, she didn’t stop. She kept right on driving, into the night, into the country, into the black pit of her impending lifetime low.

  May Belle arrived home without her candlewick cake plate and without an ounce of explanation as to why Dorothy had as much as demanded she stop cleaning up, then had shooed her out the door as though the world was on fire. For Dorothy to have acted like that, May Belle knew that surely something was heating up somewhere, and from the gravel she’d seen spitting out behind the tires of Katie’s SUV, she thought she just might know from where the sparks were originating. What it was, however, she had not a clue.

  “Dear, sweet Jesus,” Dorothy prayed aloud at 2:00 A.M., having tossed and turned and been unable to blame her wakefulness on the caffeine in the chocolate, “give me wisdom.” Sheba stood up and moved from the end of the bed to Dorothy’s face, licking her cheek a couple times. Dorothy grabbed a firm hold of her and gave her a mighty hug. “Let me know whether to speak or to remain silent, God. Guard my mouth and heart. And speaking of my heart, while You’re at it, if You do want me to speak, keep my heart beating, Lord, until there is healing, so that precious child of Yours doesn’t have to get through this alone. Oh, I know You’d be with her, but I’m the last person left who knows the whole story and can help explain it to Katie, not to mention everyone else the truth will touch.

  “Now, I know You’ve got plenty else to do, what with everyone bending Your ear day and night. Goodness knows, I’ve done plenty of ear-bending myself lately during all these transitions. But You know me, God, and I do not bug You for signs and wonders. But this time, I need clear assurance as to Your presence in this situation. You know I’m asking on account of Katie, Lord, not for myself. I’m trusting You for that, and I know You won’t let me down, right? When You do your part, I’ll be ready, okay? Because I’m trusting You to give me what I need, right? Over and out.”

  She nuzzled Sheba’s head up under her chin. “And please get me to sleep or I’ll be no earthly good to anyone if or when . . . Oh, there’s gonna be a whopping lot of cover-ups to bust out of. Lord, You tell us the truth sets us free, well, I’m counting on it! Amen again, from Dorothy.” She let go of Sheba, who all but catapulted herself back to the end of the bed as though she were running for her life. Then Dorothy pulled the covers up tightly around her chin and slammed her eyes shut, determined to release any fears. Even though she’d said an official Amen, before she nodded off, she whispered, “Pretty please.”

  At exactly 2:11 A.M., a sign and wonder arrived.

  To anyone else, the sound of a cricket would have been an annoyance; to Dorothy, it was nothing short of a sign and wonder of the most magnificent, miraculous and prayer-answering kind, the kind that talked to her smile without a single word. Clearly God was letting her know that He had His eye on her, and Katie, and the entire situation, and by grace, she hadn’t slept through it.

  As a child, Dorothy had determined that the crickets spent their energies speaking a special language just for her, since their persistent sounds often seemed to bother everyone else. But for Dorothy, their high-spirited voices calling from the depths of the grass had always seemed to her a steady lullaby, soothing her into a sense that all was right with the world. The earth and all of creation is alive with wonder and goodness, and God has put me here to behold it. From childhood on, that’s what she’d felt each time she’d dozed off in the country to the happy songs of the crickets.

  This was the first cricket she’d heard since the move. Glory be, if it isn’t right here in the room with me! On its seventh chirp, she erupted with riotous laughter. She laughed with relief until she cried with thanksgiving at God Almighty’s powerful sign and wonder, delivered in the presence of a cricket.

  Katie’s body jolted and she sat upright in bed, then glanced at her digital clock. It was 2:11 A.M. Like the hazy remnants of a lingering dream, barely perceptible, she had the oddest sensation that she had been awakened by a happy peel of laughter. Although even her most valiant efforts could not produce any details about such a dream, the glorious sound still played in her head, enough so that she relaxed and fell right back to sleep.

  4

  “Wait up, Josh!” Shelby jogged down the school hall toward Josh’s back, her blonde ponytail swaying back and forth like a metronome ticking off the cadence of her steps, backpack thumping into her shoulder blades to the rhythm. Seemed no matter how briskly she was moving toward him, he was getting farther away, and all the other chatter in the halls muffled her call. The five-minute warning bell rang and she stopped abruptly, causing Kevin Mooney to hurdle himself right into her.

  “Hey,” he said after he collected himself, “you oughta put out a warning signal before you brake like that! I could have lost my teeth! You okay?”

  Shelby whirled around. Kevin’s face held a giant grin, as though to showcase those pearly whites he proclaimed had just missed their thwack of peril. As far as he was concerned, she’d been worth running into, what with that sassy little figure of hers. He was six-foot tall with brown wavy hair, eyes to match, dreamy dimples, and a letter in track. He was also, without a doubt, the heartthrob of many a Hethrow High girl. The two of them stood for an awkward moment takin
g each other in, as though they’d never met before, rather than having known each other since grammar school.

  “Sorry, Kevin. Once the bell rang, I figured I didn’t have time to keep going that-a-way”—she pointed her finger toward the direction in which she’d been heading—“rather than this-a-way to my next period science class.” They both looked the direction from which they’d been traveling, the direction to which her finger had now switched to pointing, as though it was a faraway land rather than the steps they’d just taken. He didn’t bother to ask why she’d been rushing in one direction to go in another. Women.

  “Gotta go, kiddo,” Kevin said, giving her a friendly, yet flirty little bonk on the head with his knuckles. “I’m trying to catch up with Josh to let him know about a pickup basketball game at Sunset Park after school today.”

  He disappeared before Shelby could say I wish you’d let him stay home one night. Wehen am I ever going to get to see him again? After all, I’m the one who introduced him to everyone, and now he barely has time to see me! She pursed her lips and let out a disgusted “Jeepers!” as she walked toward room 215, the science lab. Why couldn’t Josh run into me some time? Maybe that way I’d have his attention, even if it knocked all of our teeth out.

  Ever since she’d first seen Joshua Matthew Kinney at his Aunt Tess’s wake last April, she’d had an eye for him. After she’d spent time talking with him the next day at the funeral dinner out at Dorothy’s farm, she was smitten. Some time between attending his surprise sixteenth birthday party after a Wild Musketeers game (the mostly-senior-citizens softball team for which she was the catcher), working with him at Dorothy’s auction and then his move to the farm, she’d found herself hopelessly stuck on him, hook, line and tackle box. Trouble was, even though she thought they’d caught each other, it now seemed he had only favored her until he made new friends after school had started, friends she had in fact introduced him to. What the heck was I thinking? To make matters worse, those new friends of his, who were her growing-up old friends to begin with—most of them boys—barely had time for her anymore either. Tomboy such that she was, she used to be the one they invited to play pickup basketball games. Now, now there was Josh, Mr. Popular.

  Even though Josh was by no stretch a jock, he was, due to his instant popularity with most of those guys, invited to sit at the jocks’ lunch table in the cafeteria—and everyone was aware of anyone who sat at that table, especially the girls in pursuit of a major catch. Never having quite fit in anywhere at Latin School, the expensive private school his mom had forced him to attend in Chicago, Josh fed on his newfound popularity and attention, sending no less than five e-mails a week about it to Alex Gillis, his old Chicago best friend and brownstone neighbor. (“Alex, my man, Guess who’s The Man with a Grand Stand Plan for the Clan of Popular Guys and Gals at Hethrow High? Josh-o, that’s who!”)

  Since Shelby was neither a cheerleader nor one of the “popular kids,” and she hadn’t made the cut for the girls’ softball team—which further explained her joy in catching for the Wild Musketeers—she sat at the lunch table with the “fringe kids,” as they were referred to, and that was just fine with her. She found the fringers, the Wild Musketeers and her great Grannie M, who was none other than Maggie Malone, to be more fun than those full-of-themselves popular jerks anyway since all they seemed to care about was “mascara, building biceps and themselves,” as she’d told Grannie M just the other day. That’s also what she told herself during her entire frog dissection in the science lab, pretending all the while the frog was Josh. How does that feel, Mr. Popular!

  “Nice shot!” Josh said to Kevin as he swished one in from the corner. Why Kevin didn’t go out for the basketball team, nobody could figure out, other than already lettering in one sport was probably enough. “Nice pass, Josh-o,” Kevin shouted back to Josh as they moved toward the other end of the court. Although Kevin was known for making baskets, Josh wasn’t exactly gifted when it came to anything athletic. The fact Kevin had to reach for Josh’s pass was immaterial, since they’d scored. All was well with the play, the day, the friends and the world. At least on the court. Off the court, a storm was brewing among the way-too-wildly cheering spectators of a pickup basketball game. Then again, two of them happened to be cheerleaders who were only doing what came naturally.

  “Just because he hasn’t invited me yet doesn’t mean he’s not going to,” Becky said to Anita as they sat back down on the bench. “As you well know, he’s stopped at our lunch table twice this week, just to talk to me.”

  “Gee, do you think that might be because you sit at the end of the table near the aisle that’s on the way to where we have to return our lunch trays?”

  “A lot of people sit at the ends of the tables in that aisle, and he doesn’t stop to talk to them.”

  “Gee, do you think he stopped to talk to you because once you kicked your purse out in the aisle in front of him, and the other time you made a spectacle of yourself by yelling ‘Wait up! I’ll walk with you!’?”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “Not.”

  “Do.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s not ‘whatever,’ it’s whenever are you going to give up and realize he’s not interested in you, and that he’s not going to invite you to the Pumpkin Festival dance. Once you get that figured out, then you can prepare yourself for the fact that he’s going to ask me.”

  “What on earth makes you think that?”

  “Watch who he glances at when they get back down to this end of the court. Just watch.” The two of them pasted their eyes on Josh, seemingly oblivious to the fact he couldn’t dribble worth a hoot. In fact, it was the second time he’d had the ball stolen on account of his dexterous disabilities, which is why it was some time before his team made it back down toward the girls.

  Nobody. He looked at nobody. At least not the next few trips. But he did finally turn his head their way in response to something Kevin said to him, which the girls thankfully didn’t hear since it was an off-color remark about Josh’s buxom fan club. Both Becky and Anita grinned and waved like goons, flipping their hair this way and that. Josh winked at Anita, then at Becky. Then the ball bounced off of his side since he was busy winking and not watching for a pass.

  “See, I told you he was going to ask me instead of you!” Anita said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because he winked at me first.”

  “That’s because you’re sitting closer to the direction from which he was coming,” Becky responded, sounding as disgusted as all get-out.

  “And that’s exactly my point about your lunchroom seating situation, if you will recall.”

  By some miracle, just then Josh sunk a basket and both girls jumped up and cheered. His one-and-only basket arrived the same time as the end of the game. Kevin nodded his head toward the girls. “Nothing like loving them and leaving them with a ‘score,’ huh?” He’d used his fingers to draw quotations marks around the word “score.” Josh thought it was a crude remark and winced inside, hoping the girls hadn’t heard it. But he laughed loudly anyway. “Have you noticed, Josh-o,” Kevin continued, “that since the Pumpkin Festival dance is closing in on us, girls just seem to be hanging around?”

  “Oh, is that what it’s all about? The dance?” Josh asked.

  “That and the fact you’re a natural chick magnet. Chicks always dig new guys, especially worldly ones from the big city.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re thinking?” Josh asked with an innocent look, which Kevin thought he was feigning, although he hadn’t been. Josh had never even been on a real date.

  Becky and Anita were fussing with their makeup, preening while waiting. “Which one are you inviting to the dance?” Josh asked, trying not to look the girls’ way again while they were talking about them.

  “Neither one of those losers,” Kevin said. “I’ve got somebody else in mind, but I haven’t asked her yet.”

  “Who would that be? Hail
ey? Sondra?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not telling?”

  “Just somebody I ran into.”

  “Is she from our school?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “Yup.” Kevin picked his backpack up off the side-court, looped his arms through the straps and jostled around until he settled it firmly on his back. “See ya tomorrow.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “So, who are you inviting?”

  “I’m not telling. That way, if she shoots me down, nobody but she will be the wiser.”

  “Oh, like any girl would shoot you down!”

  “This isn’t just any girl.”

  “Okay, you’re killing me here. Just tell me. If you tell me who it is and she shoots you down, my lips are sealed. If it’s supposed to be obvious to me, like, you know, last year’s prom queen or something, try to remember I don’t know all the facts and factoids yet.”

  “Factoids?” Kevin looked at him like he’d suddenly grown three noses.

  “Just something Alex says.”

  “Alex? Sounds like a loser.”

  Josh opened his mouth to defend his best friend from the city, but decided to shuttle the conversation back to the topic of women.

  “You were talking about inviting a past prom queen?”

  “No, man! Not Deborah Arnold; she’s last year’s news. Trust me, Josh-o. This girl has not been prom queen. I sincerely doubt she’s ever even been kissed. But for now, I’m outta here. There are fresh lips to conquer!”

  As soon as he ran off, Becky, Anita and a few other girls swarmed around Josh like flies to a picnic. In his backpack, at the other end of the court, his cell phone was ringing, ringing, ringing. . . . The late bus was also passing by the park on its way to drop off the Partonville kids. Shelby craned her neck, straining to see if that was, indeed, Josh in the middle of that flock of perfectly coiffed heads. As the bus passed along in front of them, it was clear: there he stood, talking and making google eyes at one girl after the next. Shelby replayed having earlier removed the frog’s eyes from its lifeless body, but this time, in her imagination, she threw those slimy orbs to the floor and stomped on them. That’s what you get for staring, Mr. Frog, now two eyeballs short of ever becoming a prince.