by Mary Rickert
“Miss Engstrom never hurt me,” Rachel says. “She was nice.”
“Nice? She left bruises on your arms, Rachel.”
Rachel sighs. She is sooo tired of stupid grownups and their stupid questions. “I told everyone,” she says, “it wasn’t her. It wasn’t my dad, okay? It was the bones that did it.”
“What bones? What are you talking about?”
But Rachel doesn’t answer. She’s learned a thing or two about answering adults’ questions. Instead, she picks up the salt shaker and salts the table. The Grandmother grabs the shaker. “Just sit and wait for your egg,” she says. “Maybe you could use this time to think about what you’ve done.”
Rachel folds her hands neatly in front of her, just as she learned to do in Miss Engstrom’s class. She is still sitting like that when Miss Engstrom returns with their order.
“You can eat now, Rachel,” the Grandmother says. Rachel unfolds her hands and cuts her egg. The yellow yolk breaks open and smears across her plate. She can feel both Miss Engstrom and the Grandmother watching, but she pretends not to notice. The music is “Frosty the Snowman.” Rachel eats her egg and hums along.
“Stop humming,” says the Grandma; then, to Miss Engstrom, “You can go. We don’t want anything else.”
Miss Engstrom touches Rachel’s head softly. Rachel looks up at Miss Engstrom and sees that she is crying. Miss Engstrom nods at Rachel, one quick nod, as if they have agreed on something, then she sets the bill down on the table and walks away.
“Your father will be happy to see you,” the Grandmother says. “Eat your egg. We’ve still got a long drive ahead of us.”
Rachel’s father does act happy to see her. He says, “I am so happy you are home,” but he hugs her as if she is covered in mud and he doesn’t want to get his clothes dirty.
The Christmas tree is already decorated. Rachel stares at it and the Grandma says, “Do you like it? We did it last night to surprise you.” It is lit with tiny white lights, and oddly decorated with gold and white balls.
“Where are our ornaments?” Rachel asks.
“We decided to do something different this year,” the Grandma says. “Don’t you just love white and gold?”
Rachel doesn’t know what to say. Clearly she is not expected to tell the truth. “Why don’t you go unpack,” the Grandma says, nodding at the suitcase. “Make yourself at home.” She laughs.
Rachel is surprised, when she enters her bedroom, to discover that her bed is gone, replaced by two twin beds, just like at the Freemans’. One bed is covered with Rachel’s old stuffed animals; they stare at her with their black eyes. She assumes this is her bed. Rachel inspects the animals and discovers that the ones she had cut open and stuffed with bones have been sewn shut, all except her white bear, and he is missing. The other bed is covered with a pink lacy spread and several fat pillows. Next to it is a small table with a lamp, a glass of water, a few wadded tissues, and a stack of books.
“Surprise!” the Grandma says. “We’re roomies now. Isn’t this fun?”
Rachel nods. Apparently this is the right thing to do. The Grandma lifts the suitcase onto Rachel’s bed. “Now, let’s unpack your things and we can just forget about your little adventure and get on with our lives.” The Grandma begins unpacking Rachel’s suitcase, refolding the clothes before she puts them in the dresser. “Didn’t anyone there help you with your clothes?” she says, frowning.
Rachel shrugs.
The Grandma closes the suitcase, clasps it shut, and puts it in the closet, right next to a set of plaid luggage. “Do you want a cookie? How about a gingerbread man? I’ve been baking up a storm, let me tell you.”
Rachel follows the Grandma into the kitchen. Baking up a storm? she thinks. Maybe the Grandma is a witch; that would explain a lot. Her father is in the kitchen, talking on the phone, but when he sees her, he stops. He smiles at her, with the new smile of his, and then he says, “She just walked into the kitchen. Can I call you back?” The Grandma is talking at the same time, something about chocolate chip eyes. Rachel’s father says, “I love you too,” softly into the phone but Rachel stares at him in shock. Is he talking to her mother? Rachel knows that doesn’t make sense. She’s not a baby, after all, but who is he talking to?
“Here,” the Grandma says, “choose.”
Rachel looks down into the cookie tin the Grandma has thrust before her. Gingerbread men lie there with chocolate chip eyes and wrinkled red mouths. (“Dried cranberry,” the Grandma says.) Rachel chooses the one at the top and immediately begins eating his face. Her father sits across from her and shakes his head when the Grandma thrusts the tin toward him. “I missed you,” he says.
The gingerbread man is spicy but the eyes and nose are sweet. Rachel doesn’t care for the mouth but that part is gone fast enough.
“Your grandmother has been nice enough to come here to live with us.”
The Grandmother sets a glass of milk down in front of Rachel. “Oh, I was ready for a change. Who needs Milwaukee?”
Rachel doesn’t know what to say about any of it. She chews her gingerbread man and drinks her milk. Her father and the Grandma seem to have run out of ideas as well. They simply watch her eat. When she’s finished, she yawns and the Grandmother says, “Time for bed.”
Rachel looks at her father, expecting him to do something. Just because she yawned doesn’t mean she’s ready for bed! But her father isn’t any help.
“Say good night,” the Grandma says.
“Good night,” says Rachel. She gets up, pushes the chair in, and rinses her glass. The Grandma follows her into the bedroom. She stays there the whole time Rachel is getting undressed. Rachel feels embarrassed but she doesn’t know what else to do, so she pretends she doesn’t mind the Grandma sitting on her bed talking about how much fun it’s going to be to share the room. “Every night just like a slumber party,” she says. After Rachel goes to the bathroom, brushes her teeth, and washes her face and hands, the Grandma tells her to kneel by her bed. The Grandma, complaining the whole time about how difficult it is, kneels down beside her.
“Lord,” she says. “Please help Rachel understand right from wrong, reality from imagination, truth from lies and all that. Thank you for sending her home. Do you have anything to add? Rachel?”
Rachel can’t think of anything to say. She shakes her head. The Grandma makes a lot of noise as she stands up again.
Rachel crawls into bed and the Grandma tucks the covers tight, so tight that Rachel feels like she can’t breathe. Then the Grandma kisses Rachel’s forehead and turns out the light. Rachel waits, for a long time, for her father to come in to kiss her good night but he never does.
It is very dark when Rachel wakes up. The room is dark and there is no light shining under the door. It takes a moment for Rachel to realize why she’s woken up. A soft rustling sound is coming from the closet.
“Grandma?” Rachel whispers, and then, louder, “Grandma?”
The Grandma wakes up, sputtering, “Marla? Is that you?”
“No. It’s me, Rachel. Do you hear that noise?”
They listen for a while. It seems, to Rachel, a very long time and she is just starting to worry that the Grandma will think she is lying when the rustling starts again.
“We’ve got a mouse,” the Grandma says. “Don’t worry, I have a feeling Santa Claus might bring you a cat this year.”
Very soon the Grandma is snoring in her bed. The rustling sound stops and then, just as Rachel is falling asleep, starts again. Rachel stares into the dark with burning eyes. It doesn’t matter what the grownups do, she realizes, she’s not safe anywhere.
Carefully, Rachel feels around in the dark for her bunny slippers. She picks up a shoe by mistake, and is startled by how large it is until she realizes it must belong to the Grandmother. She sets it down and picks up first one slipper, and then the other.
Her bunny slippers on, Rachel tiptoes out of the bedroom into the hallway, which is softly lit by the white glow of
the Sheekles’ Christmas-light reindeer. Rachel isn’t sleepwalking, she is completely awake, but she feels strange, as though somehow she is both entirely awake and asleep at the same time. Rachel feels like she hears a voice calling from a great distance. But she isn’t hearing it with her ears; it’s more like a feeling inside, a feeling inside and outside of herself too. This doesn’t make sense, Rachel knows, but this is what is happening. Maybe the grownups aren’t right about anything, about what is real, or what is possible.
When she walks outside, the bitter cold hits Rachel hard. But she does not go back to her warm bed; instead she walks in the deadly dark of Stone, lit by occasional Christmas lights, and the few cars from which she hides, all the way to Old Burial Hill, where the graves stand in the oddly blue snow, marking the dead who once lived there.
Rachel isn’t afraid. She lies down. It is cold. Well, of course it is. She shivers, staring up at the stars, which, come to think of it, look like chips of bones. Maybe the skull she’s been trapped in has been smashed open by some giant child who is, even now, searching through the pieces, hoping to find her. She closes her eyes.
“No, no. Not your bones. You’ve misunderstood everything.”
Rachel opens her eyes. Standing before her is the old woman.
“Get up. Stamp your feet.”
Rachel just lies there so the woman pulls her up.
“Are you a witch?” Rachel asks.
“Clap your hands and stamp your feet.”
“Are you real?”
But the old woman is gone and Rachel’s father is running toward her. “What are you doing here?” he says. “Rachel, what is happening to you?”
He wraps her tight in his arms and picks her up. One of her bunny slippers falls from her foot and lands softly on the snow-covered grave but he doesn’t notice. He is running down the hill. Rachel, bouncing in his arms, watches the bunny slipper get smaller and smaller. She holds her father tight.
The Grandma is waiting for them in the kitchen where she is heating milk on the stove. She has on a flowered robe; her pinky-red hair, sparkling in the light, circles her face like a clown.
“She was in the graveyard,” Rachel’s father says.
The Grandma touches Rachel’s bare arm with her own icy fingers. “Get a blanket. She’s chilled to the bone.”
Rachel’s father sets her on the kitchen chair. He gently pries her fingers from around his neck. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “You have to let me go.”
Rachel watches the doorway until he returns, carrying the white comforter from his bed. He wraps Rachel in it (“like a sausage,” he used to say in happier times) then sits down with her on his lap.
Rachel’s father kisses her head. She starts to feel warm. “Rachel,” her father says, “never do that again. We’ll visit your mother’s grave in Boston more often, if that’s what you want, but don’t just leave in the middle of the night. Don’t scare us like that.”
Rachel nods. The Grandmother hands her a Santa Claus–face mug of hot chocolate, and sets another on the table in front of Rachel’s father.
Rachel sips her hot chocolate, gives the Grandma a close look.
“Good, isn’t it?” the Grandma says.
Rachel nods.
“Milk. That’s the secret ingredient. None of that watery stuff.”
The Grandmother sets the tin of gingerbread men on the table and Rachel reaches for one, teetering on her father’s lap. He hands her a gingerbread man and takes one for himself.
“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t fall asleep out there,” the Grandma says.
Rachel swallows the gingerbread foot. “I started to but someone woke me up. I think it was that witch, Wilmot Redd. She found me and she made me stand up. She told me she didn’t want my bones.”
Rachel’s father and the Grandmother look at each other. Rachel stops chewing and stares straight ahead, waiting to see if her father will make her get off his lap or if the Grandma will call the lady to come and take her away again.
“Rachel, Wilmot Redd was just some old lady. A fisherman’s wife,” Rachel’s father says gently.
The Grandma sits down at the kitchen table. She looks at Rachel so hard that Rachel finally has to look back at her. The Grandma’s face is extraordinarily white and Rachel thinks it looks just a little bit like a paper snowflake.
“I think I know who it might have been,” she says. “Have you ever heard of La Befana? She’s an old woman. Much older than me. And scary looking. Ugly. She carries around a big old sack filled with gifts that she gives to children. A long time ago the three wise men stopped by her house to get directions to Bethlehem, to see the Christ Child, you know. And after she gave them directions they invited her along but she didn’t go with them ’cause she had too much housework to do. Of course she immediately regretted being so stupid and she’s been trying to catch up ever since, so she goes around giving gifts to all the children just in case one of them is the Savior she neglected to visit, all those years ago, just ’cause she had dirty laundry to take care of. I bet that’s who helped you tonight. Old La Befana herself.” The Grandmother turns to look at Rachel’s father. “It’s about time this family had some luck, right? And what could be luckier than to be part of a real live Christmas miracle?”
Rachel’s father hugs her and says, “Well, this little miracle better go to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, you don’t want to sleep through it, do you?”
The Grandmother takes the mug of hot chocolate and the half-eaten gingerbread man from Rachel. Her father carries her to bed, tucks her in, and kisses her forehead. Rachel is falling asleep, listening to the faint murmuring voices of her father and the Grandmother, when she hears the noise. She goes to the closet, opens it, and sees right away, the Halloween treat bag in the corner, rustling as though the mouse is trapped inside. She is just about to shut the door when the small hand reaches out of the bag, grasps the paper edge, and another hand appears, and then, a tiny bone head.
“Is that you?” Rachel whispers.
The bones don’t answer. They just come walking toward her, their sharp points squeaking.
Rachel slams the closet door shut. She runs out of her room. The Grandma and her father are sitting next to the tree. When they turn to her, their faces are flicked with yellow, blue, and green, they grin the wide skeletal grin of skulls. “Honey, is something the matter?” her father asks. Rachel shakes her head. “Are you sure? You look like you’ve seen—”
The Grandma interrupts, “Is it the mouse? Did you see the mouse?”
Rachel nods.
“Don’t worry about it,” the Grandma says. “Maybe Santa Claus will bring you a kitty this year.”
Rachel refuses to go back to bed until her father and the Grandmother walk with her. They tuck her in, and again her father kisses her forehead, and the Grandma does the same, and then they leave her alone in the dark. After a while she hears the bones squeaking across the floor. Rachel feels around in the dark until she finds the Grandmother’s big shoe. Rachel waits until she hears the squeaking start once more. When it does, she pounds where the sound comes from, and the first two times, she hits only the floor but the next five or six, she hears the breaking of bones, the small cries and curses. Her father and Grandmother run into the room and turn on the light. “Well, you killed it,” the Grandma says, looking at her strangely. “I’ll go get the broom and dustpan.”
Rachel’s father doesn’t say anything. They just stand there, looking at the mess on the floor, and then at the mess on the bottom of the Grandmother’s shoe.
Later, after it’s all cleaned up, Rachel crawls back into bed. She pulls the blankets to her chin and rolls to her side. Her father and the Grandmother stand there for a while before they walk out of the room. For a long time Rachel listens in the dark but all she hears is her own breathing, and she falls asleep to the comforting sound.
When she wakes again it is Christmas Eve and snowing outside, glistening white flakes that tumble do
wn the sky from the snow queen’s garden, the Grandma says.
Because it is a special day the Grandma lets Rachel have gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate for breakfast on the couch while her father sleeps late. “He’s worn out after everything you’ve been through,” the Grandma says. Occasionally Rachel thinks she hears mewing from her father’s room but the Grandma says, “Anyone can sound like a cat. It’s probably just a sound he makes in his sleep. You, for instance, last night you were singing in your sleep.”
“I was?” Rachel asks.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that before? You sing in your sleep.”
“I do?”
The Grandma nods. “You’re a very strange little girl, you know,” she says.
Rachel chews the gingerbread face and sighs.
“Now what do you suppose this is all about?”
The Grandma stands next to the Christmas tree, looking out the window. Rachel gets off the couch and squeezes between the Grandma and the tree. A gray cat meanders down the crooked sidewalk in front of the house. In its mouth it holds a limp mouse. Walking behind the cat is a straggling line of children in half-buttoned winter coats and loosely tied scarves, tiptoeing in boots and wet sneakers, not talking to each other or catching snowflakes on their tongues, only intently watching the cat with their bright eyes.
“Like the Pied Piper,” the Grandma says.
Rachel shrugs and goes back to the couch. “It’s just a bunch of the little kids,” she says. “Who’s the Pied Piper?”
The Grandma sighs. “Don’t they teach you anything important these days?”
Rachel shakes her head.
“Well, it looks like I’ll have to,” the Grandma says.
