Borrowed Children

by George Ella Lyon

  That’s so true I’d like to print it in the paper.

  Anyway, now Aunt Laura and Uncle Cress live in a house on Catalpa Street. But that doesn’t mean Aunt Laura breaks her nails scrubbing laundry and baseboards. She has servants. And servants are not the same as Help. Mama had Help after Helen was born, a poor girl from up on Big Goose. Stayed with us a month, doing wash and looking hungry, her eyes as dull as a dry creek stone. Help is somebody you know you’re helping too. Servants are trained. They don’t eat with you.

  So I am looking forward to seeing Aunt Laura. Maybe I can tell her how I feel about different centers. And how I don’t want babies. How I didn’t sprout up in the coffee-ground garden either. Maybe she will take me to the theater. She can drive a motor car herself, you know. Maybe she’ll take me for a ride. Maybe she’ll even let me sit behind the wheel.

  14

  As we pull into Union Station, I see Omie and Opie waiting, as much a pair as bookends. Their clothes aren’t alike, Opie’s gray coat and Omie’s rose, but they stand close and their faces look for the same thing.

  Me.

  All of a sudden, I feel shy, backward. My going-away dress Mama was so proud of looks dull and homely. My hair hangs limp, like someone cut it in the kitchen, which Mama did.

  But Omie and Opie don’t seem to notice.

  “She’s grown a mile!” Opie exclaims, giving me a hug.

  “She’ll outstrip her mother in no time.”

  “Let me see your hands, child,” Omie says, putting her gloved hand palm to palm with mine. “Heavens, yes. Your hands are already larger than Rena’s. You must take after me.”

  Omie is tall, and draws herself up as she says this.

  Mama calls her “Tall and handsome.”

  Daddy always adds, “Like a sailing ship.”

  We ride home in Opie’s car—black with curtains and a bud vase. There’s a rosebud in it, pink and tight as a baby’s fist.

  When we get to the house on Poplar, Omie sends me up to bathe while she finishes Sunday dinner.

  Like magic, hot water comes out of a pipe into the huge cold tub. I’m used to bathing in a washtub in the kitchen in shared water. I cant believe all this luxury is for me. I take off my clothes and slide in, like a spoon in a big sauce boat, and lie back and close my eyes. There’s a wonderful smell of enamel and rosewater soap drifting over the soothing sway of the bath. It’s like the train only quiet and sweet smelling. Like the train …

  “Dinnertime, Mandy!”

  I must have been asleep! The water is cool and I haven’t even washed. I do my face and hands and feet and climb out quickly. It wouldn’t do to keep them waiting.

  Omie's table is not just set, it’s arranged. Everything has a special dish and they all match. I set myself down slowly, not wanting to break even the silence.

  But of course Omie and Opie want to hear all about home—Omie asking about Mama and the babies, and Opie asking about Daddy and the mill. And the lads, as he calls David and Ben.

  “Do they know their wood?” he asks me. “Can they walk a boundary of timber?”

  The truth is, I don’t know whether they can or not.

  “They can wash clothes,” I tell him.

  “Wash clothes!” he rumbles.

  Opie never thunders, but he lets on like he might. His eyes are gray and what hair he has is white and stands out like lightning. He’s just a little taller than Omie, and portly.

  “Yes, wash clothes,” answers Omie. I can’t answer. My mouth is full. “Rena has been sick you will remember.” Then she says she’s proud of how we all managed. “Especially you, Mandy,” she says, reaching for my hand. “Your mama told me you helped with the house and the baby like you’d been doing it all your life.”

  Not exactly, I want to say, remembering the time I set Willie’s clothes on fire; and the time I served spoiled meat, not recognizing the smell; and the time I tried to make cookies with leftover oatmeal. Not exactly. But I just smile.

  “You’ll be that much ahead when you’re a wife and mother yourself,” Omie goes on. “A baby won’t be a jolt to you.”

  No indeed, I think, because I won’t have one. But I don’t say that. I butter the roll I’ve lifted from Omie’s silver basket. It’s light as a baby’s breath.

  After dinner and dishes, we sit at a card table in the living room playing Rummy. There’s never time to play cards at home—too many bodies to look after. I’m just about to say this when Opie says, “Remember how Rena loved to play bridge? I never knew a soul better at it. She could beat us all when she’d been playing only two weeks.”

  That’s a surprise. I’ve never seen Mama play cards.

  “Of course, she played wild,” Opie continues.

  “Wanted to take the bid regardless of her cards. But her bluff was sufficient.”

  That sounds even less like Mama.

  “And as soon as you realized that,” Omie says, “you made her your partner. That meant you both were going to win.”

  “Have to look out for your prospects,” Opie answers, sweeping up the cards to shuffle. “Can’t do millwork if you don’t know the grain of the wood.”

  “Honestly,” Omie sighs. “The world to your granddaddy is an oak tree and a buzz saw.”

  “And Jim Perritt’s the same,” Opie counters. “And Rena’s is rinse water and a coconut cake.”

  “That shows what you know about women’s work,” Omie tells him. “You’re like a child trying to sound the Mississippi with his school ruler.”

  She winks at me.

  I’ve thought about that ever since I got in bed. Omie means it to seal the secrets that we share, woman secrets. But I’m not sure we share them. I think I might choose the ruler and the river. I think I’d like to let myself down into something too big to measure. Cake pans and wash kettles are just too small for me.

  15

  Waking up in Memphis is not at all like waking up in Goose Rock. The sun doesn’t have to strain to get over mountains; the air is rich and flat. It’s not just the wide paved streets but the river—everything feels light and free, like the day you peel off your winter underwear.

  Opie has left for the mill by the time I get downstairs, but there are eggs and biscuits in the warming oven.

  “I’ll have another cup of coffee while you eat,” Omie says. “Would you like some?”

  “I’d like to try. Mama doesn’t allow me coffee at home.”

  “Don’t that beat all!” Omie says, smiling. “Rena was drinking coffee when she was half your size. You can tell her I said that.”

  As I watch Omie pour the dark drink into a flowered cup, I realize it’s not age that keeps me from getting coffee at home, it’s money. Surely Omie knows that. She sets the cup by my plate.

  “Today,” she declares, “Opie brings home our Christmas tree. He’s had his eye on it all fall and just dug it up last week.”

  “Dug it up?”

  “Oh yes. You’d think a man who makes a living cutting trees wouldn’t blink at chopping down one more for Christmas. Not Opie. He’ll drag this fellow home, tend it like a babe, and then take it back to the woods.”

  “You couldn’t do that at home,” I say, thinking out loud. “The ground would be frozen.”

  “That rarely happens here. Anyway, Opie says this one’s big enough for all our decorations, so this morning you and I need to get them out.”

  After breakfast she carries in two big boxes.

  “Opie got these down from the attic before he left.”

  Mama says we’re never sure of staying anywhere long enough to put things in the attic. Our tree tinsel is all in Mama and Daddy’s chifforobe.

  Omie’s decorations are wrapped in tissue: red candleholders, a string of silver beads. There are a few wooden ornaments—a dog, a piano, and red and green glass balls. Finally, at the bottom of the second box, the star—peeling silver with a bent green outline.

  “I know it’s shabby,” Omie says, slipping her finger into the sprin
g which holds the star to the treetop. “but William got it for me, that first Christmas after the war. He was our oldest child, you know, Opie’s and mine. He was your mother’s half-brother, but he might as well have been her son the way she doted on him. And when he came home from France without a scratch—we could hardly breathe, we were that happy. Met him at Union Station, same as you. All those uniforms, some boys wounded, crippled, and ours straight and whole as the finest tree. We cried then, I’m telling you, even Opie, and Rena had her arm through William’s all the way home.”

  Omie looks at me, but it’s not me she’s seeing. Maybe not anybody.

  “Well, we’d heard, of course, of the flu epidemic. And I worried some. But I guess I figured William was charmed. He looked the part: deep blue eyes, hair dark as poplar honey. And even when he took sick, he joked and carried on.

  “‘Send me the prettiest nurses! And send Rena! She’s better than a flower cart.’

  “Two weeks in bed, the fever broke and he began eating. Before you knew it he was up walking around. Got me this star from Ostriker’s Jewelry, went with Opie to the mill.”

  “Did he get the flu again?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t that.”

  She slips the star off and lays it on the table.

  “By Christmas week, William was his old self. Going to dances, helping bring home the tree. But the flu had done something to his heart. New Year’s Day it stopped while he was shaving. A boy who survived the battlefields. Who would believe it?”

  "I' m sorry, I say.

  Omie shakes her head.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “But you remember.”

  “Oh, honey, I remember when the midwife put him in my arms.”

  “Like Willie.”

  “We never called him Willie.”

  I mean our Willie—like Daddy handing him to me.

  “How old is that baby?”

  “Almost three months.”

  “William was twenty-one. And Rena—the way it took her, well I thought we might lose her too. That’s what happened to the star.”

  “What?”

  “We didn’t put Christmas away until after the funeral, and Rena and I were right in this room taking down the tree. I slipped this from the top branch and it sent the needles raining. ‘William’s star,’ I said as I handed it down.

  “Your mother tried to tear it apart and, when that didn’t work, she threw it across the room.”

  Mama?

  “‘I never want to see another Christmas,’ she said, over and over. When I went to fetch the star, she called it stupid, ugly. ‘Why should it last and William be gone?’

  “No answer to that, of course, but I’m glad to have it.”

  She holds up the battered star.

  “William knew quality. And this was his gift. I’ll bet Rena wouldn’t scorn it now.”

  Opie brings the tree—a soft-needled pine—and after lunch we set it up on the little sun porch. Clip on the candleholders, drape the beads, and set the star. When I reach for a glass ball, Omie says, “I used to save that part for Laura.”

  “You mean for her tree?”

  “No, to put on ours. She never has one of her own.”

  “Why not?” I blurt out.

  “It’s Cress partly. He says plants and animals belong outside. And he and Laura move so much it would be hard to keep up with one more box.

  “But Laura loves a tree. And loved these ornaments from the time she was a baby. And some painted eggshells I had—that child was a fool for color. She wanted to know what hen laid the gloried eggs—that’s what she called them—and when I explained they were painted that way, she was insulted. ‘God should have done that Himself,’ she announced. Did you ever hear of such a child?”

  “She sounds like a combination of Anna and Helen.”

  “I wish she could see them then. It might soften her toward a child. Laura needs… but what am I doing, running on like this? We need to clear these boxes away before I start dinner. Tomorrow we’ll see Laura. You can tell me if she’s like your sisters then.”

  As we pack up the boxes, it’s not Aunt Laura I’m thinking of. It’s Mama and William. She must still love him to give Willie his name. And I wonder: When I threw the gravy boat, did it make her think of the star?

  16

  Today we’re going to see Aunt Laura, to meet her for lunch at the Peabody Hotel. I wear my best dress—gray wool with a lace collar. At home it looks passable, but here—I don’t know—I feel country. I think it’s more my face than the dress.

  “Your face is fine,” Mama always says when she catches me frowning in the mirror. “Just don’t go and wrinkle it up.”

  That’s easy for her to say; Mama’s face is doll-sweet. Mine is long and strong like a lantern, and I have dark hair thick enough to put out the light. I look in the mirror and think it’s got to be a mask: I live here and I know I don’t look like that.

  But Omie looks exactly like herself, all rose, powdered and brushed, somewhere between flesh and china. I’ll like being an old lady if I look like that.

  “Let’s go,” she says, “or we’ll be late for waiting.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Laura never gets anywhere on time. Your grandfather says not a soul will come to her funeral.”

  “Her funeral?”

  “Says they’ll be afraid she won’t show up.”

  Omie laughs, but I don’t think it’s funny. Just yesterday she told me about William who did die.

  My coat feels thick against such mild weather. We walk two blocks to the Water Maple streetcar stop.

  “You used to call these ‘road trains,’” Omie says as we step up into the green and gold car. “Asked your daddy why they didn’t haul coal.”

  I wish she wouldn’t announce that I’m out of place. People are already staring.

  We find a slatted bench and sit down just as the trolley lurches. Clack-clack-screech. David would love this, a train running through the middle of the road, dividing the traffic. But you’d have to blindfold Ben to get him on it. He’d see it as an insult to horses.

  As we rattle along I look at street names, store names: Washington, Adams, Broadnax. We pass Court Square, the Orpheum Theater, words Mama says the way Daddy names trees.

  We get off at Union. The Peabody’s just around the corner. Omie walks as though someone had rolled out a carpet. I hurry beside her, hair flopping.

  Then we arrive. A black man opens the door for us, and we step onto red carpet springy as moss. The walls are white marble. In the center of the lobby is the fountain, its famous ducks paddling.

  “Those ducks live on the roof, you know.”

  “Mama told me.”

  “Every morning they come down on the elevator, walk across the carpet, and climb in. It gets the Peabody a lot of visitors.”

  “I guess so. I’d come here to see it.”

  “Really? I think it’s disgraceful, making ducks go to work.”

  You never know what Omie is going to say.

  “Let’s find a seat. Only a statue could wait for Laura standing up.”

  So we sit. On a green velvet loveseat. I look at my fingernails. I am not going to gawk. I’ll look around a little at a time. There’s a gold chandelier like a lily above us, and sconces on the wall like …

  “Good heavens, she’s here!” Omie declares, lifting her shoulders, pulling back her chin.

  Aunt Laura comes through the beveled doors like a movie star looking for a camera. I’ve never seen such clothes: a white flapper dress, a snug purple hat, a rope of pearls long enough to jump. The strange thing is she looks like Mama, except for being tall. Mama with money, no children, and enough sleep.

  “Laura,” Omie begins, standing up and looking stern, “you remember Mandy.”

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Laura cries, taking my hand in both of hers. “What a grown-up girl you’re becoming!”

  Putting her hands on my shoulders, she turns me around.

>   “You’re going to be tall, that’s a fact,” she says, as though reading it in my backbone. “You’ll have to stand straight, Mandy, and carry your height like it’s the most valuable thing in the world.”

  I try to adjust.

  “There,” she says, “that’s better. You need some other clothes, though. That color is…”

  “Laura!” Omie hisses. “Let the child be!”

  If you argue over me, I want to say, this is not going to be much fun. But I just follow them into the dining room.

  The menu makes me wish for Mr. Aden. Shrimp Creole? Coquille St. Jacques? Steak au poivre? There’s fried chicken, too, but I don’t want that. I didn’t come here to eat something I could fix myself.

  Aunt Laura sees me hesitate.

  “Have you ever had scallops, Mandy?”

  The only scallops I know you cut out of paper or cloth.

  “What are they?”

  “A kind of seafood. You should try them—the Coquille. They’re mild and delicious.”

  So that’s what I order, saying “I’ll have the Co-key-ya,” trying not to feel like a fool. And when the food comes, it’s wonderful, little rubbery nubs in a white sauce, served in a real scallop shell! It’s hard to believe. Me, Mandy Perritt, eating such food in a dining room bigger than my house. And Aunt Laura complaining because there are no grown-up drinks. And Omie suggesting baked Alaska for dessert.

  Now that is something to tell the boys about. It’s better than ducks in the lobby. Ice cream on fire. Its inside a dome made of egg whites and sugar, and they put some special drink on it and set it ablaze.

  When the waiter brings it to our table, it looks big as a volcano. I’m glad to find it’s for all of us. Omie and I eat most of it, though. Aunt Laura says she has to think of her clothes.

  “What do you mean?” We all have great big napkins, and I wouldn’t think she’d be messy anyway.

  “She means,” Omie answers, “that she’s afraid she might take on flesh. As if she weren’t too skinny to begin with. What a man wants with a woman who looks like a coat hanger, I don’t know.”

  “Yes,” Aunt Laura flashes, “and you don’t know what I want with Cress either.”