A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

“Jumping over the moon?”

  “No, he was giving milk. Grandma took us to see a big ranch, and there was cows giving milk. Grandma says cows work hard to give milk, so I mustn’t spill mine on the table.”

  “I had a job on a ranch once. And believe me, I worked harder than any old cows.”

  “Grandma’s ranch?”

  “No. This one was far away.”

  The noise from the next room stopped abruptly. Juanita had disappeared into another part of the house, and Mrs. Rosario was kneeling alone in front of the little shrine, the head of Jesus cra­dled in her left hand. She prayed silently, but from the vindictive look on her face Fielding thought she must be invoking punish­ment, not forgiveness.

  “I want my daddy,” the boy said.

  “He’ll be back one of these days. Now how about Miss Muffett, would you like to hear about her troubles? ‘Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider and sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffett away.’ Are you afraid of spiders?”

  “No.”

  “Good boy. Spiders can be very useful.”

  Fielding’s collar was damp with sweat, and every few seconds his heart gave a quick extra beat, as if it were being chased around inside his chest cavity. He often worried about having a heart attack, but when he was at home, he simply took a couple of drinks and forgot about it. Here he couldn’t forget. It seemed, in fact, inevitable, a bang-up climax to the crazy afternoon of the broken crucifix and the shattered door, the grim praying woman and the terrified children, Juanita and Miss Muffett. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for our grand finale of the day we give you Stan­ley Fielding and his death-defying coronary.

  “Miss Muffett,” he said, listening to his heartbeat, “was a real little girl, did you know that?”

  “As real as me?”

  “That’s right, just as real as you. She lived, oh, about two or three hundred years ago. Well, one day her father wrote a verse about her, and now children all over the world like to hear about little Miss Muffett.”

  “I don’t.” The boy shook his head, and his thick black curly hair tickled Fielding’s throat.

  “You don’t, eh? What do you like to hear about? And not so loud; we mustn’t disturb Grandma.”

  “Talk about the ranch.”

  “What ranch?”

  “Where you worked.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Ladies and gentlemen, before our star performer does his death-defying act, he will entertain you with a few highlights from his life story. “Well, I had a mare called Winnie. She was a cutting horse. A cutting horse has got to be fast and smart, and that’s what she was. All I had to do was stay in the saddle, and Winnie could pick a cow from a herd as easy as you can pick an orange from a bowl of fruit.”

  “Grandma gave us an apple before you came. I hid mine. Want to know where?”

  “I don’t think you’d better confide in me. I’m not so good at keeping secrets.”

  “Do you tell?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I tell.”

  “I tell all the time. The apple is hid under the—”

  “Shhh.” Fielding patted his head. The boy, without speaking, had already told him what he’d come to find out. His black eyes and hair, his dark skin had spoken for him. One thing was clear now: a mistake had been made. But who had made it, and why? My God, I need a drink. If I had a drink, I could think. I could think with a drink. Think….

  “What’s your name?”

  “Foster,” Fielding said. He had used the name so often that it no longer seemed like lying. “Stan Foster.”

  “Do you know my daddy?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Where is he?”

  It was a good question, but an even better one was going around in Fielding’s mind. Not where, but who. Who’s your daddy, kid?

  The boy was clinging to his neck so tightly that Fielding couldn’t move his head even to look around the room. But he was suddenly aware of a peculiar odor which he’d been too excited to notice before. It took him a minute or two to identify it as burn­ing wax.

  Rising from the bed, he eased the child gently onto the floor. Then he turned and saw the picture of the curly-haired young man behind the flickering candle. His heart began to pound against his rib cage, and the noise of it seemed as loud as the noise Juanita had made banging on the door. Flashes of red struck his eyes, and his hands and legs felt numb and swollen to double size. This is it, he thought. Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. Here I go. . . .

  It was a trap.

  He saw it now very clearly. The whole thing was a trap; it had been written, rehearsed, staged. Every line, even the little boy’s, had been memorized. Every piece of business, including the shat­tering of the door, had been practiced over and over until it seemed real. And all of it had been leading up to this moment when he saw the picture.

  He raised his swollen hand and wiped away the sweat that was dripping into his eyes, obscuring his vision.

  They were in there now, in the other room, waiting to see what he would do, Mrs. Rosario pretending to pray, Juanita pretending to be getting ready to go out, the children pretending to be scared. They were in there listening, watching, waiting for him to give himself away, to make the wrong move. Even the little boy was a spy. Those innocent eyes looking up at him were not inno­cent at all, and the angelic mouth belonged to a demon.

  “He is with the angels by this time,” Mrs. Rosario had said. Fielding knew now whom she’d been talking about, and crazy laughter rose in his throat and stuck there until he began to choke. He loosened his tie to get more air but immediately tight­ened it again. He must not let the watchers see that the picture meant anything to him or that he was trying to find out about the little boy’s father.

  He was aware, in a vague way, that he wasn’t thinking straight, but he couldn’t clear his mind of the haze of suspicion that clouded it. In this haze, fact and fiction merged into paradox: a troubled girl became a master criminal, her mother a scheming witch, and the children were not children at all but adults whose bodies hadn’t grown up.

  “Hey, I’m ready,” Juanita said.

  Fielding whirled around so fast he lost his balance and had to steady himself by grabbing one of the bedposts.

  “It’s a brand-new dress. How do I look?”

  He couldn’t speak yet, but he managed to nod. The haze was beginning to lift, and he could see her quite clearly: a young woman, slim and pretty in a blue and white full-skirted dress, with a red sweater flung over her shoulders and red snakeskin shoes with heels like needles.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of this spookery.”

  He walked out of the bedroom, rubber-kneed, trembling with relief. There had been no plot, no trap. His mind had invented the whole business, molded it out of fear and guilt. Juanita, Mrs. Rosario, the children, they were all innocent. They didn’t even know his real name or why he had come here. The picture beside the bed was one of those ugly coincidences that happen sometimes.

  And yet….

  I need a drink. My God, get me to a drink.

  Mrs. Rosario crossed herself and turned from the little shrine. She still had made no acknowledgment of Fielding’s presence, not even a casual glance in his direction. She looked over his shoul­der, addressing Juanita. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “You will buy me a new crucifix.”

  Juanita moistened a forefinger on her tongue and smoothed her eyebrows. “I will, eh? Fancy me being so bighearted.”

  “You are not bighearted,” Mrs. Rosario said steadily. “But you’re sensible enough to realize this is my house. If I lock the door against you, you’ll be out on the street.”

  “You just tried the lock bit. See where it got you.”


  “If there’s any more of that, I’ll call the police. You’ll be arrested, and the children will be taken to Juvenile Hall.”

  Juanita had turned quite pale, but she grinned and shrugged her shoulders so expressively that her sweater fell off onto the floor. When Fielding bent over to pick it up, she snatched it out of his hand. “So? The kids will be just as good off there as they are in this nuthouse with you crawling around on your knees half the time.”

  Mrs. Rosario for the first time looked directly at Fielding. “Where are you taking my daughter?”

  “He’s not taking me anyplace,” Juanita said. “I’m taking him. I’m the one with the car.”

  “You leave that car in the garage. Joe says you’re too wild to drive. You’ll be killed. You can’t afford to be killed with so many sins on your soul you haven’t confessed.”

  “We had planned on going to a movie,” Fielding said to Mrs. Rosario. “But if you don’t approve—that is, I wouldn’t want to be the cause of any family friction.”

  “Then you’d better leave. My daughter is a married woman. Married women don’t go to movies with strangers, and gentle­men don’t ask them to. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Stan Foster, ma’am.”

  “What does that tell me? Nothing.”

  “Leave him alone,” Juanita said. “And keep your nose out of my business.”

  “This is my house; what goes on here is my business.”

  “O.K., take your damn house. Keep it. It’s only a lousy little shack anyway.”

  “It’s sheltered you and your children in times of trouble. You’d be out on the street if it wasn’t for—”

  “I like the street.”

  “Yes, sure, now that it’s warm and sunny you like it. Wait till the night comes, wait till it’s cold and maybe it starts to rain. You’ll come crying.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you, me coming crying. All right, start praying for rain, see if I come crying.” Juanita opened the front door and motioned to Fielding to go out ahead of her. “Just see if I come crying.”

  “Gypsy,” Mrs. Rosario said in a soft, furious whisper. “You’re no child of mine, gypsy. I found you in an open field. I took pity. There’s none of my blood in you, gypsy.”

  Juanita slammed the door. The Madonnas on the wall shivered but continued to smile.

  “I was born right here in St. Joseph’s hospital,” Juanita said. “It’s on the records. You didn’t believe that open field stuff, did you?”

  “Let’s go someplace and have a drink.”

  “Sure, but did you or didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Believe that gypsy stuff.”

  “No.” Fielding wanted to break into a run, to put as much dis­tance as possible between himself and the weird house with the decapitated crucifix.

  Juanita was tottering along beside him, crippled by her needle heels. “Hey, not so fast.”

  “I need a drink. My nerves are shot.”

  “She bugged you, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t use to be so spooky when I lived at home before. Sure, she was religious, but it wasn’t so bad until she started try­ing to get people into heaven. You saw the candle, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “The car’s just down here. I keep it in a separate garage so’s the kids don’t play around it and scratch the finish.”

  “We don’t need a car,” Fielding said. “I can’t afford to be killed with all the sins on my soul, either.”

  “She’s a crackpot.”

  “Yes. Only—”

  “You heard that open field stuff, didn’t you? That was all lies. It’s on the records, how I was born in St. Joseph’s hospital….”

  Mrs. Rosario stood in front of the broken door as if she were trying to hide from Pinata the mortal wound of her house.

  “Forgive me my curiosity,” Pinata said. “But the young man in the picture, was he Juanita’s father?”

  “The name of Juanita’s father has not been spoken in this house for twenty years. I would not waste good beeswax on his soul.” She crossed her arms on her chest. “I must remind you that you were invited into my house to discuss Mr. Foster. No one else. Just Mr. Foster.”

  “All right. Where did he go when he left here with your daughter?”

  “I don’t know. They spoke of going to the movies. But Juanita hardly ever goes to the movies. She’s afraid of being shut up in dark places.”

  “Well, what does she usually do when she gets off on a Satur­day afternoon?”

  “She shops or takes the children to the beach or maybe down to the wharf to fish. She likes being outdoors and talking and laughing with the fishermen that hang around the wharf. She can be a very happy girl sometimes.” She studied her hands as if she were reading the past in their lines and finding it as inscrutable as the future. “Sometimes you never saw a happier girl.”

  “What does she do when she’s miserable?”

  “I don’t follow her. I have the children to watch over.”

  “But you hear things?”

  “Friends maybe tell me when they see her acting—acting, well, not so good.”

  “Does she do much drinking? I’m asking the question because Foster has a decided weakness in that direction. If Juanita shares it, it will give me some idea of where to start looking for them.”

  “She drinks sometimes.”

  “At the Velada?”

  “No, never,” Mrs. Rosario said sharply. “Never at the Velada. Mrs. Brewster wouldn’t allow it, not even a glass of beer.”

  Strike the Velada, Pinata thought. That left some twenty-five or thirty places which could strictly be called taverns, and perhaps eighty or ninety restaurants in and around town which served liquor. A great many of these restaurants would be closed to Juanita because of her race, either obviously, with a quick brush- off at the door, or subtly, with small printed signs stating the proprietor’s right to refuse service to anyone. The taverns, how­ever, were mainly located in areas where discrimination would have meant bankruptcy. For this reason a tavern seemed the most logical place to look for Juanita. In spite of everything he’d been told about her aggressiveness, Pinata had a hunch that she was too timid to wander very far from the places where she felt wel­come and at home.

  “Mrs. Rosario,” Pinata said, “Juanita left town nearly four years ago to live in Los Angeles. Why?”

  “She got sick of being hounded by the police and the Probation Department and the people at the Clinic. Talk, talk, talk, that’s all they did, tell her what was wrong with her, what to do, what to wear, how to manage the children.”

  “They were all trying to help her, weren’t they?”

  “It’s a funny kind of help that hinders,” she said scornfully. “The last time she was arrested, she wasn’t doing any harm. It’s hard, when you’re young, always being followed by five children, never going anyplace alone. When she locked them in the apart­ment, it was for their own good, so they wouldn’t run away or get in an accident. But the neighbors complained when they cried, and the police said what if there was a fire or an earthquake. So they arrested her and put the children in Juvenile Hall. Do you call this helping? I don’t. If that’s the only kind of help I can get, I’d rather fend for myself. Which is what she chose to do when she got out. She left right away, that same night. The chil­dren were in bed asleep, and I asked Mrs. Lopez to keep an eye on them while I went to church. When I came back, she was gone.” She moved her head back and forth in remembered pain. “I didn’t think she would leave so sudden, her with no husband, no friends, and another baby due in less than a month.”

  “Did she leave a message for you?”

  “No.”

  “You di
dn’t know where she was going?”

  “No. I never heard from her or saw her again until two weeks ago. The Probation Department and someone from the Clinic came snooping around a few times. I told them just what I’m telling you now.”

  “I hear what you’re telling me,” Pinata said. “But is it the truth?”

  Mrs. Rosario blinked, and the ripe-olive eyes disappeared for a fraction of a second under lids that looked withered from lack of tears. “Four years with no news of her, and suddenly comes a knock on the front door, and there she is, with six children and a husband and a car. She talked a blue streak telling me how happy she was, and didn’t I think the baby was cute and the car beautiful and the husband handsome. But there was a look in her eye I didn’t like, that restless look of hers. When she’s like that, she hardly eats or sleeps, she just keeps on the go, day and night, one place to another, never getting tired.”

  One place to another, Pinata thought. Twenty-five taverns, eighty restaurants, sixty thousand people. I’d better start moving.

  “This man she’s with,” Mrs. Rosario said, “this Mr. Foster, he is a drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  “You find them and send Juanita home.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry I called her a gypsy. I lost control of my tongue. She’s no gypsy, my Juanita. I lost control—it’s so easy sometimes. Afterwards I’m filled with such shame and sadness. You find her for me, will you? Tell her I’m sorry?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Hurry up before this man gets her into trouble.”

  Pinata wasn’t sure who was going to get whom into trouble, but he knew they made a bad combination, Juanita and Fielding. He wrote his name and the phone numbers of his office and res­idence on a slip of paper and gave it to Mrs. Rosario.

  She held it at arm’s length to read it. “Pinata,” she said, nod­ding. “That’s a good Catholic name.”

  “Yes.”

  “If my daughter went to church more often, she wouldn’t suf­fer from this sickness.”

  “Perhaps not,” Pinata said, knowing how useless it would be to argue the point. “I’d appreciate your letting me know right away if either Juanita or Fielding shows up here again.”