“Where we going?”
“Your face is a mess. You should go to a doctor.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Who could look after her? Mama was out of the question. Peg was the one. Peg would rinse her and soothe her and patch her. But I was ashamed to realize that although I knew the street Peg lived on, I didn’t know which house was hers. Who else?
“I’ve thought of somewhere.”
“Where we going?”
“To a safe place.”
“Not a doctor!”
“No, I promise.”
“Not your house?”
“Not likely.”
“Don’t touch my bag!”
I jumped back. I’d bumped the bag she had tied around her waist.
“I’m not touching your bag,” I said. “But you’ll have to walk for us to get anywhere. Breathe deeply, or whatever it takes, because this is a rescue mission.” Shaking with cold and hobbling, we left the Way and shuffled into town.
I knew the alleys well enough to worm through Peach Hill without entering the square or using a main street. We moved slowly, but we kept going. How much of her daddy’s money did she have in that little bag, I wondered, and how much madder would he be if he knew? What was she planning to do with it? But her breaths were scratchy and it wasn’t the time to be asking questions.
There was not a lit window on Crossing Avenue. I hesitated on the pavement, doubting for a moment that I had the right house. Helen sagged against me, and I was afraid she’d faint.
“Come on.” I recognized the bamboo window shade. I pulled Helen up the walk and propped her, like a garden ornament, against the porch railing.
“Thank you, Annie,” she mumbled. “I need to lie down now.”
Nearly too late, I’d remembered something.
“Helen,” I whispered. “After you left the other night? At Mr. Poole’s house?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Well, I—I—” How to make this sound like a reasonable act? “I pretended I hurt myself, falling from the fence. I pretended my brain went funny so I couldn’t tell them anything or give them your name.” Helen’s one good eye was staring at me intently. “So I haven’t been back to school either, since then. Mrs. Newman came to find me and I—I acted loony. So you can’t tell her otherwise, okay?”
“You brought me to Mrs. Newman’s house?” She wobbled, trying to turn around.
“Helen, you have to get fixed up. It’s only for a couple of nights, till we think of something else.”
She nodded, closed her eyes and swayed slightly. I knocked on the window that was set into the door. For too long there was no sound. Helen moaned quietly. I knocked again and pressed my ear against the glass. Suddenly, a light went on above our heads—an electric light suspended from the porch ceiling.
A curtain swished to reveal Old Horse’s sleepy face. I found myself waving and then pointed at Helen. The curtain twitched again and Mrs. Newman peered out. She looked odd with her hair in braids and no pansied hat on top, her mouth an Oh! of bewilderment.
She opened the door at once.
“Heavens!” She stared at Helen in alarm.
“Help,” I bleated, in my idiot voice.
Fussing and hushing, Mrs. Newman and her husband maneuvered us into their home. We laid Helen down on the brown-striped sofa and looked at her injuries under the light. Her face was misshapen, livid, swollen on one side. There was dried blood in a trickle next to her ear. One red welt across the back of her knees was deepening to purple.
Tears popped from my eyes without my meaning to cry. Mrs. Newman, kneeling beside Helen, gave her husband a list. “Warm water, vinegar, a clean sponge, ice chips, gauze …” He hurried out.
“Who did this?” she asked me, very low.
Helen stirred abruptly. “No one,” she mumbled. “I fell down the stairs.”
Mrs. Newman looked at me and raised that eyebrow. I shook my head. She knew.
“Have to go.” I squeezed Helen’s hand and left.
I was running before I noticed, running hard through the dark town, my breath huffing and my heart thudding in my chest. I crossed the square more slowly and crept past the doors of St. Alphonse as the bell rang three times. The wind had died down; the dry leaves lay still on the ground. The windows on Needle Street were black patches under thin moonlight.
I fell asleep without thinking another thought but sprang awake at dawn. It was a moment before I heard the tapping that must have woken me, tiny sharp clicks on the window.
Helen’s battered face peered in, paper white with patches of violet and crimson. I motioned her to the kitchen door and drew her in with the first glimmer of day.
“What are you doing here?”
“I left,” she whispered. “I’m leaving. I came to get you.” She fumbled with the pouch at her waist. “I got money, see? You bring some of yours and we can go together.”
“But … but … what about Mrs. Newman?”
“Aw, Annie, she’s a good lady but not for me. You got anything to eat?”
I cut and buttered two thick slices of bread while I tried to think. Just leave? It seemed so simple. Could it be as simple as that? I felt dizzy, felt a whooshing, in my ears; I was trying to hold a thought too big to think.
I’d left places in a hurry before. I could see it all, like in a moving picture. Helen would wait at the doorway listening in case my mother woke up. I would go to the hall closet and pull out a carpetbag. I’d fetch out the sugar sack and take two bundles of money. In my room, I’d pack a change of clothes, some underthings, a sweater and … what else? What object did I have that I could not bear to leave behind? Helen would hiss from the kitchen, “Pssst! Hurry!” The photograph of my father was out of reach in my mother’s drawer, and it might not even be him. I had no picture of my mother. In the end I’d snatch up my notebook with the little gold pen and toss it into the bag.
Running away …
Now I thought of Mama, surprised to find an empty house; pictured her face as she slowly noticed what else was gone; saw her fuming, and then dismayed to realize that her daughter was a coward and a sneak.
What Mama might think shouldn’t matter … Helen needed me. Or at least, she wanted me enough to ask. Maybe we needed each other. I’d only just found her.
But going with Helen would be running away instead of changing course.
Was that what I wanted? No, I wanted a home, in one place.
Helen watched me.
“You could stay here,” I said. A ridiculous suggestion. “I mean, maybe not here, but near here, somewhere safe—”
Her face wrinkled. “So it’s no? You have the key but you’re staying in the cage?”
“I’m sorry, Helen. I’m … I’m not ready to leave yet. But if you run into trouble … if you ever need help …”
She nodded and blinked. I wrapped the bread in waxed paper and handed it over. Her fingers already gripped the door handle. I felt something rip inside as I watched her shuffle into the alley and away. It was new to me, this feeling, and now I’d had it twice in one week; first when Mama sent Peg away, and here again with Helen. I could only prevent the jagged-edged hole inside me from getting bigger if I stayed very still, if I managed not to breathe or let my head sink down, as it longed to do, between my two sagging shoulders.
No one had ever known me. Peg had loved me, tenderly and loyally, but she’d loved a pretend me. I wouldn’t have said that Helen loved me, but everything Helen knew about Annie Grey was a true thing. That had never happened before. Helen had turned me into a friend.
And into a thief. I opened the sugar sack, leaning against the broken-handled bucket in the pantry. I took out two rolls of bills and carried them to my room. Just a precaution, I thought. The scalloped front of my chest of drawers left an inch-high gap above the floor, too narrow for a broom or anything other than knowing fingers; an ideal bank.
I lay on my bed, too sad to sleep, waiting for the day to move along f
ar enough so that I could get up again and start over, telling the truth from now on.
27
In Old English, the word
“silly” meant “blessed.”
Eventually, I got hungry and went to the kitchen to make myself the same breakfast I’d given Helen.
I was caught off guard by the sight of Sammy sitting at our kitchen table with a cup of tea and a grin like a present.
“Oh, Annie, dear,” said Mama. “Good morning, sleepyhead. We’ve been waiting.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Eyeball,” as if she were kissing my cheek. I had forgotten, in the surprise of seeing Sammy, that I was an idiot. Sammy hopped up, tipping half his tea into the saucer in his eagerness. Oh, what was Mama up to now? Hadn’t I just resolved No more? But here I was, smack in the path of an unavoidable collision!
“We’re going out for a walk, darling.” Mama spoke carefully to her moronic daughter.
What?
“Why, Mama?” I used a softer version of my dreadful hoot.
“You and me and your little friend, Sam.”
Coat, hat, gloves; they dressed me as if I were a child. The nearly sleepless night was catching up with me. My eyelids felt gravelly, my ears full of fog. Sammy took my hand, gently, like a trainer with a performing bear. I couldn’t understand how he’d gotten there, or why he was happy, or where they were taking me. And even though I had just decided never to be instructed by Mama again, I went along because of Sammy. Mama had selected good bait.
Closing my eyes while we walked was easier than jiggling my eyeball. from Needle Street to Picker’s Lane, onto Main Street and across the square, I glanced down at the curbs, but otherwise I floated, guided by firm hands.
“Here she is!”
“She’s here, look, she’s coming!”
My eyes flew open at the shouts, and my legs froze to the spot. I jerked my hand from Sammy’s and pulled free of Mama’s hold. The steps of St. Alphonse were crowded with people, and as I stared, I realized they were mostly people I knew.
It was the hour of morning traffic, with children gathering before school, people pausing on their way to factories and shops and offices.
“No!” I shook my head in a frenzy of protest.
“Thank you, Sam,” said Mama quickly. “You go on ahead. We’ll be there in just another minute. Oh! And pass out the rest of these!” She handed him a sheaf of papers, artfully announcing the morning’s event: SEE THE IDIOT RESTORED TO REASON!
“He’s a sweet boy,” she said vaguely, watching Sammy dash off at her command.
“What are you thinking?” I wailed. “I told you no! I said I would not participate in a public healing! I am finished, Mama, done! I will not perform another humiliating pantomime. Why can’t you hear me?”
“We don’t have to make threats or promises about the future,” said Mama, too calmly. “All we need right now is one small miracle in front of an excited audience. You can do that much for me, can’t you, Annie?”
My voice sighed out like air from a bicycle tire. “No, Mama. I can’t do that. I’ve made a vow not to lie anymore, not to trick people or be a sham.”
She laughed, sharply. “Annie, this is not the time. The audience is waiting.”
I didn’t move.
“Your disloyalty is making me very angry, Annie.”
I didn’t blink.
She pursed her lips and tried again. “I need you to assist me, darling.… If you do not go up those stairs and perform that marvelous twitching seizure of yours, I will be compromised beyond repair. What would become of us then? You’re too smart for such silliness, Annie. With that brute of a police officer standing there, you know enough not to put us in danger. So let’s just get this over with, shall we? They’re becoming impatient.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. But I can’t. I won’t. I’m going to tell them the truth and face whatever consequences come our way.”
“I can’t go to prison again, Annie. I’ve never hurt anyone. I do not kill or steal or even cheat, not really. I do my best to comfort people. I give them something to look forward to. Everyone who comes through my door goes back out with a spark of hope.”
“Everyone except me, Mama,” I whispered. “You never comfort me.”
“Oh, Annie.”
She reached out to put her hands on my shoulders, but I stepped back. It was too late.
“Annie,” she whispered. “Look at all the people waiting. They’ve come because they believe in me, in both of us. They want the best for you, they want you cured. Can’t you give them that?”
I looked toward the crowd to see Sammy waving, urging us on. I knew I had to tell him the truth, but maybe not in front of the whole town. I felt my body relent before my mind had agreed. Mama seized the moment and hurried me along while she could. Sammy, like a little boy with a new wagon, came bounding over to help. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t like holding his hand, because it was under Mama’s command.
It seemed that half the population of Peach Hill was gathered outside the old church. They shifted to let us through, but I felt hands patting me, grabbing, rubbing, poking the about-to-be miracle girl.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut to prevent any chance of tears. My toe hit the granite step and I stumbled as Sammy and Mama pulled me upward. I should just collapse, go into a keening fit and be done!
But we’d arrived at the top.
“How I have prayed!” cried Mama at once, not waiting to risk another rebellion. Sammy was still holding my arm, but she waved him off.
“I have not stopped praying.” Mama’s clear voice rang out like the church bell itself. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders. “All night and all day and all night again, since this new affliction befell my dearest girl.”
She was doing something with her fingers around my head, not touching but making my scalp itch from the fluttering breeze.
“I am calling on the guardian spirits,” said Mama, “who mind us here on the earthly plain. I am pleading for the bright light of my child’s smile to be restored to us. Can we all do together what I once did alone?”
There was a ripple of noise, not quite a chorus, but friendly. Mama carried on, beginning to hum now. Sammy waved his arms, urging everyone to join her.
I saw Peg arrive at the back of the crowd, out to do her marketing. She waved and blew me a kiss. Mr. Poole stood by the church railing, his head bowed while he spoke to a man in a battered fedora. I felt a cold lump in my throat. Mr. Poole was the reason I was standing there like an idiot. When he moved, pointing up at Mama and me, I realized that the other fellow had a big camera slung around his neck on a strap.
I glanced back at Mama to see her arms outstretched and her face tipped up to the pale autumn sun, as if receiving a blessing from the Other Side.
Pop! A small flash as the first photograph was taken.
“No!” I shouted. Pop! “No!”
Mr. Poole had chosen exactly the wrong method of winning us over. Mama looked at me in panic.
“Go, Mama,” I said. “Go, now!” She reached out to me, but I was already lunging toward the photographer. People scattered, thinking I was a charging lunatic. Pop!
“No pictures!” I yelled, and then tripped, flailing for balance on the stone stairs. The audience gasped, but no one moved quickly enough. I teetered and fell, meeting the ground with a terrible whack!
Did I imagine an instant of vibrating silence, or was it real? The pain was real, attacking the same ankle as before and cutting like a cold knife through my forehead. I curled up as tightly as I could and lay on my side, wishing to be anywhere other than there—thinking, this is absolutely the last time, if I live to be ninety-seven, that I huddle on the ground for the benefit of someone else.
“Are you all right, Annie?” Sammy was on his knees next to me.
“Where’s Mama?” I said. Did she get away?
“Over there.” He pointed in the direction of Picker’s Lane and Needle Street. “She’s moving
pretty fast for an older woman.”
“Let me in, that’s my girl lying there.” Peg pushed her way through, never minding the toes her whopping shoes were treading on. She crouched down, ready to cluck and coo. But one look at her dear, bony nose and springy hair, and I made up my mind.
“I’m all right, Peg! Better than all right!”
Her smile was big enough to have me laughing out loud.
“It worked!” Sammy stood up and shouted to the world.
“Annie is healed! The idiot is gone!”
With Sammy and Peg each under one elbow, I was scooped up from the cobbles, head and ankle howling. The audience cheered. But it wasn’t over yet. This was only the first act.
“Wait here,” I said to Sammy. “Annie loves Peg,” I said to Peg. I limped to the top step and turned to face the crowd.
“Thank you,” I said, looking out across the square. Mama’s red coat flashed like an ember before she vanished. There was no sign of Mr. Poole or the photographer.
But Sammy was there, and Peg. I focused slowly on the other faces surrounding me. Clusters of schoolchildren and high schoolers; Lexie, Jean and Ruthie, with her mouth wide open; Sally and Delia, who looked more curious than hostile; Frankie Romero, next to his mother. The Peach Hill police department was watching from the sidelines. There were a dozen ladies or more who had spent time in our front room, including Miss Weather and Mildred, who had finally said farewell to her husband at Mr. Poole’s party. Mrs. Peers gave me a happy little wave from the front row.
“Thank you for coming here today. I have a confession to make.”
“That’s inside the church!” somebody called out.
I waited until the laughter faded. “Or perhaps not a confession exactly, but an explanation.”
So many of these people had told us secrets, and in return we had told them lies. But they didn’t know that. As far as they knew, we’d given hope and sympathy and maybe even wisdom. Would they despair if they were told the truth now? Mildred had been so grateful on Saturday, believing that Edmund’s spirit was watching over her. How could I say for certain that he wasn’t? Wouldn’t it be cruel of me to announce to a grieving woman—to a dozen grieving women—that it had all been a trick?
How It Happened in Peach Hill Page 17
