Emmy and the Rats in the Belfry

by Lynne Jonell

  “Why do you call me aunt? I don’t—oh!” The frail Miss Addison, her back so bent that she wasn’t much taller than Emmy, straightened a little in surprise. “Can you be Jimmy’s little girl?”

  Emmy didn’t really think of her father as Jimmy, but she supposed Aunt Emmaline might. “Yes,” she said, relieved. Surely now she would be invited in.

  The door opened a little wider. Great-Aunt Emmaline stood in her slippers and robe, the belt trailing in the dust on the floor. Her eyes darted to the stairway behind her and then back to Emmy’s face, as if she couldn’t think what to do next.

  Emmy had tried her best to be polite, but this was getting ridiculous. And what on earth was her aunt doing in her robe and slippers this late in the day? “I’d like to come in, please, Aunt,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  Aunt Emmaline looked more frightened than ever. “My dear,” she fluttered, “I’m afraid there’s been some mistake. I don’t remember inviting you.”

  “But you sent a letter,” Emmy began—then stopped. She didn’t have time to argue. “Will you please just let me in? I really have to use the bathroom!”

  Emmy sat at the kitchen table, the pet carrier in front of her. Across an expanse of dirty tiled floor, Aunt Emmaline stood at the counter, pouring lemonade from a cracked pitcher into two glasses.

  It wasn’t just the floor that was filthy, thought Emmy as she looked around. The curtains were dingy and stained. The fruit bowl on the counter was filled with blackened bananas. And the sink was piled high with dirty dishes.

  And this was the aunt who was supposed to teach her discipline? Emmy regarded the sticky kitchen table with disgust. Maybe it was the other aunt who was the tidy one. But if so, she hadn’t been on the job lately.

  Aunt Emmaline set the glass of lemonade in front of Emmy with a faltering smile. “I’m sorry if I didn’t seem welcoming, Emmy. I’m afraid it was just so unexpected.”

  “That’s all right, Aunt Emmaline.” Emmy lifted her glass of lemonade and took a sip.

  “Call me Melly, dear. I never did take to the name Emmaline—too long, I always thought—Why, whatever is the matter?”

  Emmy was doing her valiant best to look as if nothing was wrong, but her whole face puckered sharply with the effort. With a heroism she hadn’t known she possessed, she swallowed.

  Aunt Melly took an experimental sip from her own glass. “Oh!” She set it down abruptly, and her face crumpled. “I forgot the sugar! Oh, dear, I can’t remember anything anymore!” She buried her face in her veined, trembling hands.

  “It’s okay!” Emmy said. “Seriously, Aunt Melly, it’s not a big deal—”

  The old lady started to cry.

  Emmy moved back a little in her chair. What was she supposed to do now? She hesitated, then patted the old lady on the shoulder. “Where is Aunt Augusta?” Emmy asked. Maybe the other aunt would be less emotional.

  But at the mention of her sister, Aunt Melly wailed aloud. “It’s all too much—just too much! Oh, Gussie, I don’t know if I can do it!” She put her head down on the sticky table and sobbed.

  Emmy cleared her throat. “Is something … wrong with Aunt Augusta? Is she—is she—”

  “Dead?” Aunt Melly blew her nose with a honk. “No, but she will be soon! And all I can do is make her comfortable, and I’m even failing at that!”

  Emmy stared at her.

  “I’m an old lady,” Aunt Melly went on, mopping her eyes. “I may not look it—I’m only eighty-five—but I feel ninety!”

  Emmy thought Aunt Melly looked to be at least a hundred, but she kept that opinion to herself.

  “Emmy,” said Aunt Melly with sudden firmness, “you’re family, and I can hardly turn you out on the street. But can you keep a secret?”

  Emmy nodded, glancing at the pet carrier. “I keep secrets all the time.”

  “Well, then. Come upstairs and soon you’ll understand everything.”

  Aunt Melly shuffled toward the stairs. Emmy, about to follow, heard a sudden squeak. “Take us with you!”

  Lugging the blue pet carrier, Emmy followed the thin, bent form of her great-aunt past the bookshelves in the hall, around an antique dollhouse on a stand, and up the long, creaking stairs. She trailed one hand along the side of the curved wooden banister, shaving off a layer of dust with her palm. At the top of the staircase, all was dim. In the shadowed landing was an old cedar chest, three burned-out lightbulbs, and a dead potted palm.

  “In here,” said Aunt Melly, opening a door.

  Emmy walked into the room and stopped in surprise. There was no dust in this room, no lightbulbs that had not been replaced, no accumulation of dirt. Starched white curtains swung at the window, open to let in a soft evening breeze. Light from the setting sun touched upon fresh flowers in a crystal vase. A needlepointed cushion sat plumply on a polished wooden rocker.

  In the middle of the room was a bed piled high with pillows. And lying back against the pillows was a tiny old woman with a face almost as white as her neatly arranged hair. Thin blue veins stood out on her neck and on the skeletal hands that rested atop the comforter. Her eyes were closed; she looked so pale and she lay so still that Emmy wondered if she were dead already.

  “Gussie, dear,” said Aunt Melly, “I’ve brought a visitor.”

  The papery eyelids fluttered open to reveal eyes of a surprisingly vivid blue.

  Aunt Melly steered Emmy gently to the bedside. “Gussie, this is Jimmy’s girl. Emmy, this is your great-aunt Augusta.”

  “Oh my!” The voice that issued from the woman on the bed was just a thin thread of sound, but the mouth quirked sweetly. “That Jimmy … was a rascal … but you … look perfectly … lovely!”

  “Don’t talk, dear; you get so out of breath.” Aunt Melly plumped up her sister’s pillows, put a hand on the pale forehead, and looked worried. “Is there much pain?”

  “Not … so much,” whispered Aunt Augusta.

  Now that she looked, Emmy could see the signs of suffering everywhere on the wasted face. The mouth smiled, but the lines on either side were deep. The blue eyes were bright, but the space between them was tensely knit.

  “We’ll let you rest now, dear. But before I go, is there anything you need? Could you eat a little something? A poached egg, perhaps?”

  Aunt Augusta closed her eyes. Her head turned slightly to one side.

  “A nice cup of tea, then, and maybe a cookie? I have Russian tea cakes, Gussie—your favorite kind.” Aunt Melly tightened the belt of her robe and spoke more firmly. “You must eat something to keep up your strength, or I shall have to call the doctor.”

  The eyes flew open, and the blue-veined hands lifted in sudden protest. “No!” Aunt Augusta’s whisper was like the cry of a frightened bird. “You promised, Melly!”

  “Then you must eat something.”

  Aunt Augusta shut her eyes again. “All right,” she said faintly, and was still.

  The bedroom door shut behind them with a click. Aunt Melly sank down on the cedar chest and looked up at Emmy. “You see,” she said.

  Emmy knelt beside her. “Why doesn’t she want you to call the doctor?”

  “Because she knows the doctor would put her in the hospital or a nursing home. But she wants to stay here—where she’s lived all her life—in her own home, in her own room, with me to take care of her.”

  Emmy fiddled with the handle of the pet carrier. Ana and the rats were being unusually quiet, but that probably meant they were listening all the more. “Isn’t it hard for you to take care of her all by yourself?” She tried not to look at the mess all around her.

  “Hard?” Aunt Melly flared. “I bathe her and make her favorite foods and do her laundry and wash her hair and turn her over in bed, and I run up and down the stairs fifty times a day. It’s terribly hard, but I’d do it all ten times over just to keep her with me, if I had the strength.” Aunt Melly stared at her gnarled hands. “At least she doesn’t suspect how I’ve let thin
gs go in the rest of the house. She only sees her room, and I keep that looking nice …”

  Emmy was silent a moment, thinking. The aunts were supposed to be rich, just like Great-Great-Uncle William had been. “Why don’t you hire someone to come in and help you?”

  Aunt Melly lifted a ravaged face. “You don’t suppose I haven’t thought of that? I did hire someone, last winter. But this is such a small neighborhood, the cleaning lady started talking to the neighbors and telling them how ill Gussie was and that she should really be in the hospital, and it was all I could do to convince people that she only had a bad cold. Sometimes people just won’t mind their own business!” she finished fiercely. “Gussie doesn’t want to die in a hospital, all hooked up to tubes and things, and I don’t blame her one bit. And now—” She stood, bracing herself against the wall.

  “And now what?” Emmy asked.

  “And now you know everything,” she said, giving Emmy an appealing look. “But don’t tell your parents. Or anyone else. Please—” She put a hand to her forehead, swaying slightly. “Oh dear …”

  She groped blindly and staggered, her hand hitting the wall and sliding off. Emmy grabbed for the old lady’s arm, but it was too late. Aunt Melly crumpled at the knees and slid slowly to the floor in a dead faint. Two blackened fronds dropped from the potted palm.

  Emmy straightened her aunt’s robe, tucked it around her legs, and sat back on her heels. “Now what?” she said for the second time that day. She opened the carrier door. “Any ideas?”

  Raston breathed loudly through his nose. Cecilia twisted her paws together, looking anxious.

  “I can think of one,” said Ana, hopping out with a flick of her tail. “Kiss me, Sissy. Kiss me twice.”

  Aunt Melly was heavy and awkward to lift, but between them, the two girls carried her to the bedroom next door and tucked her in. Emmy drew the covers up under the old lady’s chin, and Ana shut the blinds. Sissy lined up her slippers neatly on the floor. Raston jumped on her pillow to plump it.

  “She’s all worn out,” said Ana in a low voice. “I know how that feels.”

  Emmy glanced up at the older girl. “You do?” She smoothed the comforter over her great-aunt. “I mean, I know you were a prisoner with the other little girls, but I didn’t think you had to do much actual work.”

  “But I was the oldest,” said Ana. “I had to take care of them. I taught them lessons, and told them stories, and tucked them in, and tried to keep them safe. I just—felt alone, you know? Like it was all up to me.”

  Emmy looked down at Aunt Melly’s lined, care-worn face in sudden pity. “Everything’s been up to her, too.”

  “But now,” said Ana firmly, “it’s up to us.”

  “We’ll help, too,” said Sissy. “Right, Rasty?”

  “You bet,” said Raston. “Got any more pillows to jump on?”

  They began with the kitchen.

  “It’s in the worst shape,” said Ana, “and we’ll want to make something to eat after a while.”

  “Do you know how to cook?” asked Emmy. She was at the sink, scraping crusted food off the dishes.

  “I watched Mr. B do it for years,” Ana answered, making a clatter in the broom closet. She emerged, triumphant, with a bucket, cleaning rags, and a feather duster. “I can make toast and tea, anyway.”

  “I can boil an egg,” said Emmy. She ran a sink full of sudsy water and began to wash the glass-ware, grateful that she had not always been rich with servants to clean up after her. Back before her father had inherited the Addison estate, she had learned to do dishes and vacuum and shovel snow and keep her room tidy. “And I can make grilled cheese and heat up soup. And once I baked cookies.”

  “There are cookbooks on the shelf.” Ana scrubbed at the kitchen table with energy. “We can follow directions. How hard can it be?”

  “Cookbooks?” said Raston, twisting around to look.

  “Hold still, Rasty.” Sissy clawed holes in a rag for Raston’s forearms and stuck feathers from the duster through the cloth. “Now you can dust the books in the hall. Just run over them and twirl around.”

  Raston looked down at his feathered skirt with dismay. “What do you think I am, a ballerina?”

  “Would you rather clean the grout in the bathroom?” Sissy held up a toothbrush.

  “I’d rather bake biscotti! Why don’t you let me be the cook? I’ve always wanted to make filet de boeuf!”

  “Cleaning first,” Ana said firmly. “And you can dust the hall furniture while you’re at it.”

  “But be careful with your claws,” Emmy said. “Don’t scratch anything.”

  The Rat glared at them. “How come everybody’s giving me orders all of a sudden? If it’s because I’m the only boy, then it’s not fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair.” Ana wrung out her wet cloth. “Get used to it.”

  “You’d better start working, Rasty,” Sissy added, “if you want any dinner.”

  Raston stomped off, his feathers quivering with indignation. “How come we have to clean, anyway?” he muttered. “This place looks just fine the way it is.”

  “Poor, pitiful Ratty,” said Ana in a singsong, drying off the table. “He works so hard.”

  “We need another boy around here!” yelled the Rat from the hall. “The professor! Joe! I’d even take Thomas!”

  “Actually,” said Emmy, “we could use Joe. I’m pretty sure he knows how to use a mower.”

  Ana reached for a broom and began to sweep. “But how can we get him invited here? We don’t want to lie to your aunt—”

  “I certainly hope not.” Aunt Melly spoke sharply from the kitchen doorway. “And just who, exactly, are you?”

  14

  EMMY’S HEART BUMPED twice, hard. The broom fell from Ana’s hands with a clatter.

  “Well?” demanded Aunt Melly, gripping the doorknob for support.

  Emmy’s heart settled into a steadier beat. She rinsed the plate she was washing and set it down. What could she tell Aunt Melly? That Ana had gotten off the train by mistake? But then Aunt Melly would call the Children’s Home, and Ana would be sent away to her relatives after all.

  “Don’t tell,” whispered Ana, and her eyes were pleading. “I’ll just go away.”

  Emmy dried her hands on a towel. It was the second time in an hour that someone had begged her not to tell a secret.

  Aunt Melly was talking again. “Speak up, Emmy. What is this strange girl doing in my kitchen?” Her tone was stern, but her voice wavered and the doorknob rattled slightly under her fingers.

  Emmy pulled out a kitchen chair. “Please, Aunt Melly. Sit down.” She glanced around the floor and was relieved to see that Sissy and Ratty had sense enough to stay out of sight.

  Aunt Melly sat down stiffly and knotted her trembling fingers together. “Just because I’m an old lady doesn’t mean you can take over my home and invite strangers in without my permission!”

  Emmy leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Aunt Melly. You have a secret, right?”

  Aunt Melly grew rigid. “Telling secrets to family is one thing. Telling them to strangers is something else entirely.”

  Emmy touched Aunt Melly’s gnarled fingers. “I’m Jimmy’s daughter, I’m named after you, Aunt Emmaline—you can trust me, okay?”

  Aunt Melly blinked. Her eyes grew moist.

  Emmy smoothed the ropy veins on the back of her aunt’s thin hand. “I’ll keep your secret. But I need you to keep mine, too.”

  “And that is?” quavered Aunt Melly.

  Emmy glanced at Ana. They had to come up with some explanation for Ana’s presence, but the true one—that Ana had shrunk and turned into a rat and been brought into the house in a pet carrier—would be a little hard for Aunt Melly to believe.

  Ana quietly found a tissue and tucked it in the old lady’s hand. “I’m the secret,” she said. “I—sort of ran away.”

  Aunt Melly blew her nose. “Well, did you or didn’t you?”

  “I was on
the train with this lady who was taking me to my new home. And I got off the train when it stopped, and I didn’t get back on in time. I didn’t really do it on purpose,” said Ana, and then added in a burst of honesty, “but I’m glad it happened. Because I didn’t want to go live with my relatives, anyway.”

  “They only took her for the money!” added Emmy indignantly.

  Aunt Melly crumpled the tissue and looked from one girl to the other, frowning. “That doesn’t add up. No conductor would let a child get off the train by herself when it wasn’t her stop.”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly see me,” said Ana.

  Aunt Melly narrowed her eyes as if she could draw the entire story from Ana just by looking. Watching her, Emmy suddenly saw what her father had meant when he said the aunts were strict.

  “No, my dear,” said Aunt Melly with sudden decision, “that won’t do. You must tell me the whole truth.”

  “You won’t believe the truth,” said Emmy helplessly.

  “Well, I’m certainly not believing what you’re telling me now.” Aunt Melly tapped a finger on the wooden tabletop. “If I’m going to help you, if I’m going to keep your secret, I must have the facts.”

  Ana and Emmy exchanged glances. “The facts are sort of weird,” said Ana, tracing a pattern on the table with her thumb.

  “Very weird,” added Emmy.

  Aunt Melly gave an elderly snort. “I used to be a schoolteacher, my dears. I’ve heard every story in the book.”

  “You might be surprised,” muttered Emmy. “Okay, Ana, you explain. I’ll find Ratty and Sissy. Maybe they’ll let Aunt Melly see what they can do.”

  She found Cecilia in the bathroom, working patiently at the grout with a toothbrush, and explained where matters stood.

  Sissy tipped back her head. “You’re sure your aunt won’t tell anyone else about us if we show her our powers?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Emmy. “She doesn’t want us to tell about Aunt Gussie.”

  “True.” Sissy’s claws clicked on the bathroom tile as she headed for the hall. “Let’s check with Rasty.”

  They found Raston by the bookshelf. He had abandoned the dusting and was crouched over the pages of an open book, flexing his muscles. The chapter title, featuring a man with an oiled chest that looked remarkably bumpy, read “Are You Weak, Run-Down, Tired of Being Pushed Around? Ditch Your Flab and Get Flabulous!”