The Velvet Room

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  He was allowing his lips to curve into a slow, scornful smile when suddenly there was a loud whack! The scornful expression dissolved instantly into one of pained surprise. There was nothing slow or deliberate about the way he pulled his head out of the car and stood up. Robin scrambled over to the window in time to see him glaring down at Cary and rubbing the seat of his trousers.

  Cary had Dad’s shovel over his shoulder. The expression on his round, freckled face was a caricature of shocked innocence, but Robin was only too familiar with the wicked twinkle in his blue eyes.

  “Gee!” Cary said, “I’m sorry. I just had this old shovel, and when I turned around I didn’t see where the end of it was going. See, I just turned around quick like this and ....” Cary demonstrated, whirling around quickly, so that this time the shovel whistled by the bigger boy’s stomach.

  “Hey! Watch it!” the boy yelled, jumping backward so quickly that he almost lost his balance and fell. He regained his balance but not his dignity and, still holding the injured area, retreated to the truck.

  Robin and Cary looked at each other. That gleam in Cary’s eye usually made Robin want to wring his neck. She regarded him soberly for a long thoughtful moment. Then very slowly they smiled at each other.

  When, at last, all of the Williamses and their worldly possessions were piled into the truck, Mr. Criley started off down the highway with a screech of gears that scared Shirley into another crying spell. Over Shirley’s yelling and the roar of the truck’s motor, Dad explained what had happened and why they were all bouncing around in the back of the truck.

  “I have a job!” he said, and Robin noticed again the difference in his voice. It was as if for the first time in months he liked the sound of what he was saying. “At least till the end of apricot season and maybe even afterwards. Strangest thing. Rudy and I stopped in at a big ranch just a half mile or so up the road to ask where we could find a service station. There was a sign out front that said Las Palmeras, same as back there on the gatepost we ran into. We just got inside the gate when a man on a horse rode over and asked us what we wanted. I told him about the fix we were in, and he started asking a lot of questions about my experience with mules and citrus and if the family was all healthy ...

  “Was it that Mr. Criley, on the horse?” Mama interrupted.

  “Oh, no,” Dad said. “Mr. Criley’s just a foreman. The fellow on the horse was Mr. McCurdy himself. Owns I don’t know how many hundred acres around here. Seems to be a real nice fellow, too. So anyway, he said that one of his permanent hands quit on him just this morning. He said I can work until the end of apricot season at least, and maybe longer if I fill the bill.”

  As Dad was talking, a question trembled on Robin’s tongue until she felt she would strangle if she didn’t ask it. “Dad!” she nearly shouted, but when Dad turned to her in surprise she could hardly ask for fear the answer would be the wrong one. “Dad, does a house come with the job? I mean, if it’s a permanent job maybe a real house of our own comes with it.”

  Dad smiled and put his arm across her shoulders. “Mr. McCurdy said he provides houses for all his permanent hands. Of course, I haven’t seen it yet, but there is a house, Big Enough, and we’ll be seeing it in just a few minutes.”

  Robin looked up quickly at Dad’s smiling face. He used to call her Big Enough a lot, but that had been a long time ago; it seemed like years and years—so long ago that all she had had to worry about was being too small.

  Despair

  THE NEXT MORNING ROBIN sat on the front steps of her new home with her chin in her hands. The very thing that they had all been praying for had happened—Dad had found a permanent job. But at that moment, there on the stairs, on that June morning in 1937, she was thinking that the word for how she was feeling was—despair.

  Despair was like climbing up a mountain trying to escape from a terrible desert. You struggle on for ages and ages, because you keep thinking that someday you’ll have to reach the top. And then at last you come to the summit and you look over—and before you is another thousand miles of desert. And this time it is worse, so much worse, because now you know there’s no way to escape.

  She realized that she had been foolish. She had hoped for so long that Dad would get a steady job that she had gotten into the habit of thinking that when he did everything would be perfect. It was three years since the depression and the mortgages had made Dad lose his place in Fresno. They had been three years of living in tents and shacks and even in the old Model T; so a steady job for Dad had started to mean more than anything else, a house to live in: a real house with a front porch, shiny floors, and things around that were there just to be beautiful, like pictures and curtains.

  Robin leaned forward and hid her face on her knees. Her eyes felt hot, but she was not going to cry. “What’s the matter with you, anyway,” she told herself. “You should have known better.”

  But she hadn’t known better. At least she hadn’t last night when Dad had said that a house came with the job on Mr. McCurdy’s ranch. How happy she’d been for a few minutes.

  Then the truck had turned off the highway and crunched along a graveled road beside a hedge. Over the hedge Robin had caught sight of a very large house. Trees and shrubs had partly blocked the view, but Robin had gotten an impression of huge gleaming white surfaces, rounded corners, and large expanses of sparkling glass.

  Behind the big modern house there was another broad expanse of tree-studded lawn, and beyond that, a long low wooden building that gleamed immaculately white, even in the twilight. From a double door in the building a horse’s sleek black head had emerged; he was still chewing a mouthful of hay. Beyond the stables the truck had passed through a large dust-whitened yard, surrounded by a confusion of buildings—barnlike structures of various sizes and open sheds full of farm machinery.

  Just beyond the barns Robin had seen something that had made her heart stumble for a moment. Set apart by a white picket fence, a neat little house sat securely on a patch of green lawn. But the truck hadn’t stopped, and as they passed she had noticed that clothes were blowing on a line behind the house. She had known then that it wasn’t the one, but perhaps she had thought, theirs would be like it. She knew now that the white house was where the Crileys lived; and they lived there because Mr. Criley was a foreman. But she hadn’t known that last night.

  Just beyond the Criley’s house the road changed from gravel to badly rutted dirt, and Robin had been forced to hang on tightly to the slats of the truck bed. Ahead she had seen a windbreak—a thickly planted row of towering eucalyptus trees. The rutted road passed through a narrow opening in the row of trees and came to a sudden stop. And there in the narrow alley between the eucalyptus windbreak and the first row of the orange orchard was Las Palmeras Village—the Williamses’ new home. It had been right then that Robin had found out about despair.

  She was still pressing her forehead hard against her knees and squeezing her eyes shut when the noise of an approaching car brought a welcome interruption. She lifted her head to see a Packard coupé shudder over the deep ruts of the road and come to a stop a few feet from the steps on which she was sitting. A small man bustled out of the car carrying a leather bag.

  “You one of the Williamses?” he asked.

  Robin frowned. “I’m Robin,” she said. She thought of saying “I’m not one of anything,” but she didn’t.

  But the little man didn’t wait for an answer anyway. He trotted on up the stairs to where Mama opened the door just as he was about to knock on it. Mama looked startled.

  “Mrs. Williams?” he said. “I’m Doctor Woods. Mr. McCurdy sent me around to see you folks.”

  Theda stopped brushing her hair, and Rudy got up off the floor where he had been trying to plug up a hole in the bottom of the wood stove. His face and hands were smeared with soot. Cary was under the table. Mama tried to make some room for the doctor’s bag, and some tin plates got shoved off the table onto the floor. Mama and the doctor both reached for
them and almost bumped heads.

  “Excuse me,” Mama said, “excuse me. I’m sorry to have you see us in such a mess, Doctor.” Her voice sounded too high, the way it did when she was embarrassed, and she kept trying to smooth down Shirley’s wispy, uncombed hair with her hands. “We just got in last night and ...

  “Of course, of course,” the doctor boomed. “Now if you children will just line up here ...

  “I don’t understand why Mr. McCurdy sent ... Mama interrupted herself, “that is, I mean nobody’s been sick, except of course Shirley here had just a touch of asthma last night, but ...

  “Of course, of course,” Doctor Woods said again, digging into his bag. “Just a precaution. Mr. McCurdy likes to be sure the folks who live here in the Village are in good health—being so close to the big house and all.” He deftly scooped Shirley out from behind Mama and pried her mouth open. “Say ah! That’s a girl.”

  He poked and peered his way down the line, teasing Theda and joking with Cary. Robin was last. “Well, well. Here’s the little bitty girl with the big eyes,” he said. “Let’s take a look at you. Don’t look much like your brothers and sisters, do you? Now just open your mouth. That’s the way. You the last one or are there five or six more around somewhere?” Robin was glad the depressor was holding her tongue down so she didn’t have to answer.

  But Theda did. “There’s Dad,” she said. “He’s working.”

  “Already saw your dad. Mr. Criley told me where to find him, so I just stopped off at the mule barn on my way down here.” He began putting things back in the bag. “Well, you folks have a clean bill of health for the time being, Mrs. Williams. But you ought to try to get a little meat on those kids’ bones. Particularly that little one. Lots of milk would help.”

  As soon as the doctor’s car bounced away through the gap in the eucalyptus trees, Robin drifted out the door and down the steps. She went slowly because if she hurried someone might guess she was doing what the family called “wandering off” and try to stop her. And she just had to get away.

  Bridget

  LAS PALMERAS VILLAGE WAS a row of twelve two-room cabins. At one time they had been covered with a coat of yellow paint, but that had obviously been long ago. They sat up off the ground on foundations of narrow poles, so that to Robin they looked like boxcars with wooden legs instead of wheels. They had a movable, unattached look. It wasn’t a bit hard to imagine the whole string of them stumping off stiffly through the orchard. But of course, they didn’t. Instead they just crouched there on their wooden legs, each one only a few feet from its nearest neighbors. A few pale weeds had found an unhealthy refuge under the houses, but everywhere else the soil of the village had been scoured smooth by many feet. Its barren, dusty surface was varied only by occasional piles of trash, broken boxes, and rusty tin cans. Halfway down the row of cabins, Robin passed the rickety wooden building that held the toilets, the showers, and the laundry tubs for the whole village.

  A Mexican girl of about Robin’s age was coming out of the laundry room carrying a bucket of wet clothing. She had big dark eyes and long black braids. She smiled shyly and said, “Allo.”

  Robin smiled back, but she didn’t stop. Just now she was in a hurry. Before she reached the end of the row of cabins, she began to run. When she came to the orchard, she went on running, but more slowly because the furrowed ground was rough and uneven. Every once in a while she stopped and looked around. By finding the hills over the tops of the orange trees, she could judge her direction. She was sure that if she kept on going south and then turned toward the hills, she would sooner or later come to the stone house.

  It wasn’t as far as she thought it would be. Before she was even completely out of breath from running, she saw ahead of her the tops of the tall shade trees that surrounded the house. She cut toward the hills past two more aisles of orange trees, turned south again, and in just a moment she had come to a stone wall. Climbing over it, she dodged around some tangled shrubbery, and there it was.

  Before her the stone walls of the house rose high with timeless strength. Once you got used to the idea, it didn’t seem to matter very much that the downstairs windows were boarded up and the lawn was a ruined tangle. It wasn’t frightening like other deserted houses. Robin had seen many frightening ones in the last three years—ruined rinds of houses, their doors gaping and windows staring blankly. But this house only waited, as peaceful as the hills that lay behind it.

  After a while Robin wanted to see more and began to walk slowly around the house. It was three stories high, counting what seemed to be some attic rooms with gable windows and a round room in the top part of the tower. Apparently there were three round tower rooms, one on each floor. It was hard to guess just how many rooms there were, but Robin thought there must be at least twenty—maybe even more.

  Behind the main part of the house Robin came upon a wing that looked very different. It was lower and was not made of stone. In places where the rough plaster had fallen away, she could see the surface of adobe bricks. She had seen bricks like that before. Once when they were going through Ventura, they had stopped for groceries on the main street right near the old Spanish mission. Robin had been peeking in the door when a priest came along and said it was all right to go in. She had been all alone in the huge old church. The thick adobe wall shut out the noises of the town, but the deep hush had seemed alive with ancient echoes.

  The adobe wing of the house had a two-story veranda with wooden pillars and wrought-iron railings. The veranda faced a patio whose brick paving was scarcely visible through the dirt and debris. In the center of the patio was what seemed to be a boarded-up well, and near it was a second fountain. But this fountain was crumbling with age, and the stone figure in the center was chipped and broken until it was impossible to tell what it had once represented.

  From the brick patio another stone building was just visible among the trees. It was long and low, and as Robin walked toward it she decided it must once have been a stable or a garage. But before she had come close enough to be sure, she saw something that made her change her direction. The first rolling dips of the foothills began just a few yards ahead, and from the shelter of a tree-covered mound there rose a thin white twist of smoke.

  Curiosity and apprehension seesawed in Robin’s mind as she rounded the wooded rise and saw before her a scene from a storybook.

  A tiny stone house with a rough, shake roof sat up to its diamond-paned windows in hollyhocks and roses, looking like something from another time and place. A neat but faded picket fence enclosed the house and garden. Under the hollyhocks a half dozen black and white speckled chickens scratched and pecked.

  Robin was just thinking that you could almost believe that three bears or perhaps seven dwarfs were going to appear in the doorway, when quite suddenly the door opened and a woman came out. It happened so quickly there was no time to hide. The woman moved toward Robin slowly, leaning on a cane. When she reached the gate, she unlatched it and held it open, smiling and nodding her head.

  It was all so strange and unexpected that Robin was frightened. It was no use telling herself that a tiny, crippled lady was harmless. For one ridiculous moment Hansel and Gretel flitted through her mind. But she didn’t run.

  She didn’t run because of the way she sometimes had of switching places with people in her mind. For just a split second, she was standing there behind the gate, holding it open with an unsteady hand and watching the fear in someone’s eyes. So, although she wasn’t at all comfortable about it, she walked up to the gate and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, my dear,” the woman said. From up close she didn’t look old. She was small and a little bent and her hair was white, but her face was not deeply lined. Her cheeks were pink, and her small chin came to a youthful point. “It’s so nice of you to come calling. Have you just been over at Palmeras House?”

  “I guess so,” Robin said. “I’ve been to that big stone house over there. Do you think anyone minds? I was only looking
at it.”

  “I don’t think anyone would mind in that case,” the woman said. She turned slowly and led the way around the house on a narrow path among the flowers. “Have you been there before?”

  “Just once,” Robin said, “but I want to go back some more if no one cares. I like it there. Do you know who owns it?”

  The woman stopped and turned to Robin smiling. “Why, the McCurdys own it, child. All the land for a mile or so on every side of us belongs to the McCurdys. “I’m surprised you don’t know that. Aren’t you from the Village?”

  For just a minute Robin wondered how the woman knew. Then she glanced down at her bare feet and too-small faded dress. She supposed she looked like a Village girl. She moved her arm quickly to cover the rip at the waist of her dress.

  “Yes, I live at the Village,” she said. “But we just moved in yesterday. I don’t know much about it.”

  The woman nodded. When they reached the back of the little stone house, she said, “I thought you might like to meet the rest of my family. But perhaps I should introduce myself first. I’m called Bridget. And what is your name?”

  “I’m Robin, Robin Williams. Don’t you ... I mean should I call you just Bridget?”

  “That will be fine. I don’t bother with the rest of my name much any more.”

  The back door of the stone cottage opened into a small yard of hard-packed earth, which was surrounded by gardens on both sides. To the rear were two small sheds, which opened into fenced animal yards. The earthen floor of the little backyard had been swept clean, and a weathered rocking chair sat in the shade of an apricot tree near the house. On a bench near the back door Robin noticed a big ball of black and gray fur. The lady named Bridget patted the ball of fur, and it rolled apart and sat up—two separate animals. One was a large gray cat, but the other was—Robin gasped with surprise.