by Karen Hesse
“Have you always had trouble with your stomach?” I ask.
Celia shrugs, her way of letting me know she doesn’t like the subject. She hates admitting weakness of any sort. This I’ve learned quickly in our short time together.
Today we sit on the step of the schoolhouse and munch small, tart berries.
“There’s this place in Brattleboro,” I tell her. “A corn-field at the top of a trail. Through the winter, even in spring and early summer, before the corn gets too high, you can stand in the middle of it and see for miles and miles.”
Celia squints at me, her pale eyes studying me intently. “I like the way you say things, Radley.”
I shrug, offer her some sassafras to go with the berries. She accepts with a nod.
“Not far from here there’s a path up into the woods,” I tell her. “It’s steep once you get in there. Not as bad as those last few days before we got here. But steep enough to keep your heart pounding. Sometimes the mist clings to the trees in there and I feel like I’m walking in the clouds. It’s pretty amazing. Definitely worth the effort. You’d like it, I think. You should come along sometime.”
Celia wraps her arms around Jerry Lee and rests her chin on the dog’s furry back. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
“Did you tell anyone you were leaving,” I ask Celia one night as we wait for sleep. “Any of your family, friends?”
“No one,” Celia says. “Maybe a few people are wondering where I am. But not many. When I was younger my cousins and I would go to my grandmother’s house a couple times a year. Most times we kids would go out on the street and leave the adults in the house to drink and fight. It was fun having all those cousins around. Then my grandmother died and everybody sort of lost touch. With you, Radley, it feels kind of like when the cousins came.”
“Well, we’ve certainly left the house so the adults can fight.”
“Pretty big house to walk away from, the whole United States,” Celia says.
“Pretty big fight, too,” I say. And I wonder for the thousandth time where my parents are.
I’m at the brook, washing dirt off and picking worms out of vegetables left for us by Our Lady of the Barn. I don’t know why I bother. The worms won’t hurt us.
Back at the schoolhouse I look at the meal we’ve put together on the rough table. Celia has fashioned a little centerpiece from bits of things she’s found. This primitive little place of ours is such a sharp contrast to my parents’ elegant home.
I think about the differences between Haiti and the house on Channing Street, and this schoolhouse in the woods of southern Quebec. I’ve been a different Radley in all three places. I’m not certain which is the real Radley.
“I never knew how much people judged you by your appearance or where you lived until all this started,” I say.
“You’re kidding, right?” Celia says. “Even you can’t be that innocent, Radley.”
“I know. It’s just that as far as I could tell, my parents never judged anyone. And they really rode me when I did it.”
“Okay.” Celia shrugs. “Maybe there are a few people in the world who don’t judge you by what they see on the outside, but only a few.”
The broccoli barely hits her stomach when Celia tears out the door. I know she’s throwing it up. I save half of mine. Maybe she’ll be able to hold something down a little later.
After she returns, I’m frightened by how pale she is, how frail she is.
“Celia, do you think we should turn ourselves in? Maybe you should see a doctor…”
“You’re crazy, Radley.”
“If you’re hungry later … I couldn’t finish…”
Celia is silent. Her temper usually flares when she thinks I’ve intentionally done something kind for her. I can see irritation written on her face. But rather than fight with me, she storms out and sits on the step with Jerry Lee.
Stomping away like that, it’s just what I used to do to my mother all the time. I wish I could apologize to my parents right now.
By my calculations it’s early July. The sun is fierce. The air drips with humidity. A mist of hungry insects swarm, pinning us inside the schoolhouse, which is oppressively hot and stuffy. Even inside we’re not free of bugs. But there are certainly fewer inside than out.
Whenever the day is close like this the wild animal stench we first encountered when we opened the place returns, rising out of the wood.
We stretch out on the splintery floor and gaze at the ceiling with its stained and busted tiles. I miss my parents so much. I wonder what’s going on in the States now. In our little schoolhouse at the edge of civilization we are so isolated from the rest of the world. In some ways I’m grateful for the peace of it. In some ways it fills me with despair to be so cut off.
“Do you ever want to just give up, Celia?” My voice is barely above a whisper.
“You mean turn ourselves in?”
“No,” I say. “I mean really give up. You know … off yourself.”
I turn toward her and see a shadow pass over her face.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Celia asks.
“No. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Do you?”
Celia gives a quick shake no and is quiet for awhile.
Finally, she turns to face me. “I could never kill myself, Rad. I like fried onions too much.”
I feel something shift inside me and suddenly I’m lighter. I don’t know how she does it.
“Celia, we don’t have fried onions. You couldn’t keep them down even if we did.”
Celia smiles. It’s a strange smile. “Possibly the only thing I could keep down.”
I promise myself a trip to Sutton later, after dark. I vow to check every Dumpster and trash bin until I find what Celia’s longing for.
To pass the time, I tell Celia about the cowgirl dress from my grandmother. I describe it in all its hideous detail.
“But, Celia, I swear I’d wear it every day if only I could have my old life back again.”
Celia snorts. “A cowgirl dress? Really? You’d wear it every day?”
“Yup.”
“Forget the police, Radley. You’d better be watching out for the fashion guards.”
The two of us in our worn farm clothes and our chopped hair, stuck inside a rotting, mildewed schoolhouse, begin to laugh. Celia holds her stomach and rolls on the floor with glee. I hear a sound coming from her I’ve never heard before. I’m not certain Jerry Lee has heard it either. He butts her over and over again with his head.
When we finally grow still, the silence is unnerving.
“Tell me where you really were when all this started,” Celia says.
And I tell her about Haiti. I tell her how I had no idea what I was getting into when I went there. How there wasn’t enough food, or water. I tell her how the orphanage was an old, abandoned schoolhouse. “But nothing like this one. The kids couldn’t even go outside the gate.”
I fall silent, thinking about Celia not venturing more than a few feet from the schoolhouse door. I wonder if she’s thinking the same.
“I wish I could build them a new orphanage in a safe neighborhood where they could grow their own food, have clean water.
“They sleep on these flimsy cots, Ceil.
“Each night I would go from child to child for their bedtime hugs. I don’t know if anyone hugged them before I came. I don’t know if anyone hugs them now that I’ve gone.
“Celia, there were so many children, there was so much need. There was this little boy, Jean-Claude. He was maybe four. He would tell me he had a stomachache when really he was just hungry. I’d rub his back to comfort him the way my mother rubbed mine when I was small.
“Jean-Claude had lived on the streets for months. No one knows what he endured before he came to the orphanage. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t talk about it.”
Just like you, Ceil, I think. But I don’t say that out loud.
I gath
er a handful of daisies on my way back to the schoolhouse with the soggy onion rings I’ve found for Celia.
My mother loves daisies. When I was small and we were living from paycheck to paycheck, Mom made do with less food so she could buy daisies at the grocery store. It never occurred to my mother that she could go out and pick wild daisies. That she could have them for free.
She would often leave a jar of them on the nightstand beside my bed. I hated daisies. I hated the way they smelled, particularly after they started to slime.
Now I gather daisies. I pick a handful with their white-slip petals and their tawny eyes and place them in a bottle I’ve found by the side of the road. I bring them to the schoolhouse and set them on the floor by our bed.
Celia eats only a bite of the onion rings, then pushes the rest away. Moments later she’s outside heaving her guts up.
“I guess I was wrong,” Celia says. “About being able to hold down fried onions.”
“Don’t tell her,” I whisper to Jerry Lee, “but I hate when she’s wrong.”
Celia comes over, kneels, wraps her arms around Jerry Lee’s chest, lays her head gently on his back, and sighs. “I hate it, too.”
Celia loves movies, particularly action and animation. I love movies, too, mostly fantasy and comedy and love stories. We alternate telling movie plots to each other.
Occasionally we hit on a movie we have in common. Or an entire series … like the Harry Potters.
It is then, particularly, we see how in some ways we are so alike.
Our Lady of the Barn leaves a copy of the Montreal Gazette for us. My French is pretty good but I’m still glad to have an English-language newspaper.
I fold it carefully and carry it home along with the fresh vegetables she’s left. I handle the newspaper like a holy relic. Not only does it tell us the date (July 12) and the weather forecast, but it connects us to the outside world.
I read aloud to Celia while she stares out the window. A half-dozen letters to the editor debate the subject of civil rights under emergency law. Eyewitness reports describe overcrowded U.S. prisons and outbreaks of disease. The paper says American television transmission is mostly down, newspaper publication spotty, and access to the Internet completely unreliable; it’s hard to say how rampant the looting, violence, and general criminal activity truly is. All the news from the States is anecdotal.
In the classifieds, people advertise safe houses and I ask Celia what she thinks.
“I think about that sleazebag who tried to pick us up in Vermont. I think we’d be crazy to risk it.”
I wonder how many others there are, people like us trying to survive, relying on the kindness of strangers. I wonder how many have trusted the wrong people.
I pray my parents haven’t trusted the wrong people.
How I wish to see her, our benefactress.
At dusk, lingering in the woods a safe distance from the barn, I wait. Finally, well after dark, I catch sight of her. By the light of the moon an ancient woman with a stooped back shuffles through the unkempt garden. I listen as she talks to the weeds, to the plants, to the clods of dirt. I watch her move from the garden to the barn, from the barn to the house. She never switches on a light.
After she disappears into her home, I enter the garden where the gate hangs on one hinge. Weeds grasp my ankles. Something sharp slices my skin. How did the old woman move through here so smoothly?
Back in the barn I find a dimpled rump of cauliflower waiting for me.
I place Our Lady’s offering in my rusted bucket and scratch a note into the wood with my pocket knife. “Thanks.”
Celia and I divide the head exactly in half. I tell her everything I have seen and each bite of spicy white cauliflower tastes like a miracle.
“You could pull weeds for her,” Celia suggests.
I nod. “You could, too.”
“No,” Celia says firmly.
“No?”
“No.”
Something in her tone makes the hair lift on my neck.
“Why? Why don’t you ever leave this room?”
But Celia has nothing more to say.
It’s midday. I’ve managed to get Celia back to the brook behind the schoolhouse by telling her I refuse to wash her underwear. If she wants clean knickers she’ll have to scrub them herself.
How did she have the courage to travel all the way from Windsor, when now she’s afraid to go five yards from the schoolhouse?
We hand wash our clothes in a circle of sunlight. The sliver of soap from Our Lady of the Barn is nearly gone. I hope soon she remembers to leave more.
“I like it here,” Celia says.
“Here? By the brook?”
“No,” Celia says. “Here. This life. Canada.”
I shake my head. “Celia, you never leave the schoolhouse. You can’t go more than twelve hours without throwing your guts up. But you like it here?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you like it here?”
“I feel so free here.”
“Free?”
“Yeah. I don’t have any history here. No one judges me. And you feed me. I feel like someone’s taking care of me for the first time in my life. I have no responsibilities. It feels good.”
“You’re responsible for Jerry Lee,” I say.
“That’s never felt like a job. Besides, Jerry Lee can take care of himself.” Celia smiles fondly down at the dog, who gazes back at her just as fondly. “In my whole life, he’s the only one I’ve ever been able to count on. Until you.”
I don’t say anything. I just keep rinsing out my bra. I have only the one and I’m careful with it. What can I say anyway? You shouldn’t count on me? I’m doing a crap job of taking care of you? You vomit up everything I ever bring to you?
And then, out of the blue, she says, “You know what I really miss, though?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer.
“I really miss tuna sandwiches.”
I burst out laughing. She can hardly keep water down, nearly everything she puts in her stomach comes back up again, and yet the thing she likes to talk about most is food, either fried or swimming in mayonnaise or butter.
My fingers fumble and my clean, wet bra lands in a patch of brown pine needles. First I try picking the needles off, but there are too many. I slap the bra back into the water to rinse again.
“I miss tuna fish sandwiches, too,” I say.
My mind goes leaping to my parents’ kitchen and my mother draining a can of tuna over the sink and Romulus rubbing against her leg, crazy with wanting.
“I like it with those crispy fried onions on top,” Celia says. “You know the kind that come in a can? You know which ones I mean?”
I nod. Why am I not surprised?
Our situation feels less perilous with each week we’re here. The Canadians don’t seem to have the will to hunt us down, to send us back. I start venturing out in daylight. I’m familiar enough with the area, I know where the dogs are, where the people are. I feel safe walking these roads. When a truck putters past, the driver waves. I wave back. In a strange way I feel accepted.
It is much better out in the open. Staying inside that schoolhouse during the hottest part of the day drives me insane. I don’t know how Celia bears it.
One day four ducks follow me from a pond on my way back to the schoolhouse. One comes all the way to the edge of the woods before noisily returning to its comrades.
I begin thinking about eggs. How long has it been since I’ve eaten an egg?
In the latest Montreal Gazette it says that typhoid, dysentery, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia, polio, and nearly every other ailment known to mankind—diseases once conquered—have broken out in the overcrowded prisons back home. People have died. It’s unclear how many. All the money we donated as a family at Christmastime over the years to CARE and Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF, we never imagined a need like this in our own country. Who could have?
; It feels as if I’ve just fallen asleep when a fierce storm crashes down on us. Thunderstorms terrify me. When I was little I’d go rigid under the blankets on wild nights until my mother came, her feet so cold as she slid in beside me, the rest of her so warm. Romulus would follow her and the three of us would cling to each other as the storm raged outside.
Celia stands at the open door in a white shirt and bare legs, facing into the wind, into the fury. Seeing her ghostly figure outlined by spasms of lightning, I say nothing. I am filled with terror. I am filled with awe.
An occasional rumble of thunder still rolls over our roof, but mostly the storm is snapping its teeth a safe distance from here. The air around our schoolhouse has cooled. It smells sweet.
Celia slips back under the blanket. Her feet are freezing. So is the rest of her. She plucks Jethro’s bear from where it teeters on the edge of the bed and holds it close.
I don’t know what makes me do it. I open my arms to her the way my mother would have done. And Celia does not turn away.
“I could have stuck it out in Windsor,” she says, shivering. “I didn’t have any complaints with the APPs.”
Celia sighs. She doesn’t often sigh. “I dropped out of school when I was sixteen. Did I tell you that?”
I shake my head no.
“People think they know you. What you said the other day about people judging you, it’s so true.
“In Windsor there was this guy. He ate at the diner where I worked. Always asked for me. I had a few regulars. Most of them I liked well enough. But this guy was a pain, always sending things back because they weren’t right. And a lousy tipper. A real asshole.
“One night, after I locked up the restaurant, he was waiting for me outside. It was late, no one else around. He grabbed me and dragged me down the bank. I thought I was strong. I wasn’t strong enough.”
A long, ragged breath escapes from Celia.
“He…”
She swallows and tries again.
