The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt

by Andrea Bobotis

  I had seen the truck before. Two men were sitting in the cabin, but my eyes couldn’t discern exactly who they were. Cigarette smoke rolled in waves from the open windows. What nasty habits people indulged. I didn’t like them sitting out in front of my house like that. Just as my mind was sifting through where I had seen the truck before, the stink of gasoline and cigarettes met my nose, and a pulse of fury flew through me. I was not about to have my home invaded like that! I stood from my seat, but the truck gunned its engine and shot down the road.

  I lowered back into my seat, temples throbbing, but the sudden movement had knocked a memory loose in my mind. I had seen Jolly drive that truck on occasion. One of the men in that truck was her son.

  Suddenly, Marcus’s Pontiac pulled up and parked in the same spot the truck had occupied moments before. Marcus had arrived from the opposite direction, not crossing paths with the truck as it sped away. Amaryllis burst from the Pontiac’s back seat with our York Herald in one hand and Peter Rabbit in the other. As Marcus sometimes did, he was going to let the child bring us our paper.

  Amaryllis struggled to shut the back door of the Pontiac as several of her blankets and stuffed animals tumbled out. A pillow had dropped out, too. She gathered the things in her already-full arms and pressed her small body against the load. Marcus had to get out of the driver’s seat to assist her. He was back in front of the steering wheel before I could acknowledge him.

  “You certainly have a lot of things in your car,” I called out to Amaryllis.

  I wondered if Marcus had the Bramlett sisters on his mind. I certainly had them on mine. Amaryllis skittered up the porch stairs, depositing my newspaper on the porch floor as she coasted past me and into the house.

  “What are you doing?” I managed to ask as she flew by. “Is your father leaving you here?”

  “Miss Rosemarie!” was all she said before the house swallowed her.

  I looked back out. There was no trace of the Pontiac, not even on the road ahead.

  “Amaryllis, should you not be in school?” I called out as I entered the house.

  I moved toward voices in the dining room but stopped just short of entering. I lingered outside the doorway. The child and Rosemarie were sitting on the floor in front of the highboy chest. The highboy’s top drawer had been upended and its contents spread over the rug: hollow matchboxes, pieces of grosgrain ribbon too short to be useful, a rusted miniature screwdriver, chipped marbles, jacks and a pair of dice, a small wooden shoe on which I had never before laid my eyes, and nameless bits of metal and plastic. Not to mention the keys. The number of keys was astonishing. Scattered everywhere, muted silver and bronze, resting like dumb coins at the bottom of a fountain.

  I looked from the items to my sister. I wondered how my seventy-three-year-old sister had gotten down on the floor with all those things. My next thought was that she would surely need someone to help her up when she was done, and I was not going to be that person.

  Rosemarie had been with us for several weeks, and during that time, she and Olva had taken my car whenever they felt like it. Rosemarie did whatever she wanted, of course, never asking for permission, but I was alarmed by how her behavior had temporarily corrupted Olva, who as a rule would ask at least a day in advance when she wanted to use my car.

  Whenever Rosemarie and Olva went on these excursions, they always returned singing little snatches of songs in unison and laughing the way children do, with a kind of reckless, unspooled delight, as if merriment were in unlimited supply. It was the same with my sister and Amaryllis. From the moment they were introduced, the two had hit it off like old friends, as if making up for a long and unfortunate separation. Their heads were always tipped together, their conversations speckled with laughter.

  Amaryllis looked with awe at the flotsam and jetsam on the floor. She plucked from the debris a short segment of silk ribbon in deep mauve. The child lifted the ribbon toward my sister.

  “Thank you, Amaryllis,” Rosemarie said, making too much fuss over the offering. “What a fine gift indeed.”

  My sister could add it to her collection. Since her arrival, Rosemarie had been on the receiving end of a startling number of gifts. Last week, I opened the front door to find a loaf of pumpkin bread sitting on my porch chair. It was not yet the season for pumpkin anything, but I suppose people now used that canned nonsense. I knew who had brought the bread (Trudy Lipscomb from our own Hillwood Presbyterian), because it was covered in red-tinted plastic wrap.

  In the intervening days, other gifts had arrived on our doorstep, all with notes bearing Rosemarie’s name. There was a clay pot of black-eyed Susan one morning. The following afternoon, I found a blue tea towel wrapped around some quince muffins. Even Wray Little’s wild strawberry jam showed up, which not many people were fortunate enough to taste. The offerings were small and sometimes not at all things you’d count as gifts: a paper bag full of river rocks, two jars of store-bought pickled beets, and the caboose of a toy train, broken in the spot where it would connect to the penultimate car.

  Judging from these gifts, Rosemarie had made use of her time so far in Bound, reconnecting with old acquaintances and making new ones. They probably got an earful about what my sister had been up to over the years. I had heard nothing from her. It was true I had not asked her, but why was I responsible for extracting the mystery of her life from her closed mouth? My life was on display, piece by piece, right here in the house. At the very least, she owed me some small parcel of knowledge about what kind of life she had been leading. Instead, she left me to glean what I could from the gifts people left her.

  Just this morning, I found a tiny cairn of acorns on the top porch step, and I was at a loss whether it was another gift for Rosemarie or if it was the work of an industrious squirrel. With a kick of my broom, I swept the acorns off the step, and they scattered like gravel sprayed from a tire.

  I was still standing at the doorway. Rosemarie’s back was to me.

  “Your hair looks lovely, Amaryllis,” my sister was saying.

  The child brought her small hand to the rows of neat braids lining her head. “My daddy did it,” she said proudly.

  “He’s very skilled,” Rosemarie said.

  “Where are you from?” Amaryllis suddenly asked my sister. “Where is your home?”

  Rosemarie didn’t speak right away, but the child didn’t hurry her for an answer.

  “I don’t have a home,” Rosemarie finally replied. Then she laughed right away as if to cover up what she had said. “What I mean is that I’ve moved around so much, it’s hard to say which place exactly is my home. That’s what I mean.”

  Amaryllis nodded. “My home moves around, too.”

  “Miss Judith.”

  It was Olva’s voice, and I jumped. She had entered the dining room from the opposite entrance.

  “Miss Judith, would you like to join us?”

  “Oh,” I said, walking in. “I just came in from outside.” I turned to Amaryllis. “Should you not be in school?”

  She peered at me and squeezed her bunny. “You already asked that. It’s summer!” she said with no small amount of fury, the kind children seem to generate upon the slightest provocation.

  “So it is.”

  “We are helping Marcus,” Olva explained. “He delivers the newspaper more efficiently when alone. And he has been doing a little repair work on the side, which he needs time to attend to.” She looked at Amaryllis. “Your father is a very accomplished mechanic, even though he wouldn’t describe himself that way.”

  The child sheepishly buried her face in Peter Rabbit’s belly. Without warning, she jumped up and ran past me to the back of the sofa in the adjacent room. On the sofa table, she spied the butterfly tray, an antique from the DeLour side, which was inlaid with actual butterfly wings. Her eyes widened.

  “Don’t touch that,” I said, moving toward her. “It
is fragile.”

  “I wasn’t touching it,” Amaryllis said.

  “You were thinking about it.”

  “I was not.” The child spun away from the tray and ran back to my sister.

  “Judith, you couldn’t be less hospitable if you tried,” Rosemarie said, her back still to me.

  “You have found the junk drawer,” I said. “Its contents are suitable for your attitude.”

  “Now, ladies,” Olva said.

  When we were children, Rosemarie spent all day outside. She would be dispatched to some far corner of our family’s land, sampling the honeysuckle, lying in stretches of wild violets, or imprinting her palms with bark patterns from the time she spent hanging from limbs. But since her return, she’s been wandering the house as though discovering it for the first time. I find her peeping in bureaus and investigating the contents of cupboards.

  Rosemarie leaned forward and ran her fingers through the contents on the floor as if caressing the skin of a pond. She picked up a random key and inspected it.

  “What does this unlock?” she asked Amaryllis.

  “The gate to Mr. McGregor’s garden!” Amaryllis laughed. She glanced over at me.

  “It unlocks nothing,” I said.

  “It must unlock something,” Rosemarie insisted.

  I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. The locked drawers around the house are so numerous that they long ago ceased to be mysterious to me.”

  Rosemarie handed the key to Amaryllis, who circled it through the air while making engine noises.

  Next, Rosemarie picked up a silver comb, no longer than a pinky finger.

  “Do you not recognize that, Rosemarie?” said Olva. “It is the comb for the doll you called Penny.”

  “Penny!”

  “The one with the cloth body and the porcelain face,” Olva continued, standing up and turning toward me. “Miss Judith, can I get you some coffee?”

  “No, Olva, you don’t have to do that,” Rosemarie interrupted.

  I looked straight at Olva. “I don’t care for any right now. Thank you anyway.”

  “Olva, you don’t have to wait on my sister,” Rosemarie said.

  Olva said nothing, and I cleared my throat. “If we could find that doll,” I pressed on, “I suspect she’d be worth something. We had such well-crafted dolls. Nothing like the cheap ones kids carry around nowadays. So many of the things from our youth would be valuable today. Olva, I was just thinking of that edition of the New York Times you had, the one the day after Black Tuesday. It would be considered a treasure now. I think I saw it last in a box in the cellar.”

  “Only you, Judith, would find a way to extract value from people’s suffering.” Rosemarie shook her head. “And my doll Penny would be worth something to me, but not in the way you mean. She was the first doll of mine that wasn’t passed down from you!” She tilted her head. “How do you know what kind of dolls children have? Other than Amaryllis, when are you spending time with any children?”

  “I see them running down the street occasionally, when I’m having my coffee on the porch.”

  “You certainly spend a lot of time on the porch.”

  “I can see everything I need to see from there!”

  “Lord, Judith, calm down. Don’t work yourself up,” Rosemarie replied.

  With as much commotion as she could muster, Olva reached into the pocket of her apron and retrieved her pair of round-rimmed glasses. She brought them to her face. “Now, let’s take a look!” she said loudly. She peered down to get a better view of the items on the floor.

  I pressed my hand to my chest, containing a chuckle, for Olva looked like an old lady when she wore those glasses. Rosemarie placed the doll’s comb gingerly on the floor, as if it belonged in that sacred spot, next to an empty bobbin and a queen of diamonds playing card.

  “My, my,” Olva said, her head stooping over the sea of items. “I suppose there is always a drawer full of things that have no use, but for some reason, you cannot bear to part with them.”

  “Should we clean it out?” I suggested. “Olva, you said you were up for a spring cleaning. I suppose we’re officially into summer now.”

  “Maybe that’s not the kind of spring cleaning she meant,” Rosemarie said. “Why must you be so practical?”

  “Someone’s got to be! Isn’t it unfortunate it always has to be me?” My legs tiring, I walked to the sofa and lowered myself onto it.

  “Now, ladies,” cautioned Olva again. She had crossed over toward the window, away from both of us.

  But Rosemarie would not let up. “Just because these things are odds and ends does not mean they are worthless. They have found a home together right here in this drawer.”

  “My drawer,” I reminded her. “And what’s in my drawer are my bits of rubbish.”

  Rosemarie leaned her body over the things like a mother bird, as if protecting them from my beakish words. “Is that why you’re writing that ridiculous inventory?” she asked. “You’ve always been possessive, Judith. It’s a poisonous trait.”

  I shot a look at Olva. Her back straightened, but she did not turn around. “I might have mentioned the inventory to your sister, Miss Judith.”

  “Olva, really,” Rosemarie said, making a face. “You needn’t say Miss.”

  We stood silent for a moment, Rosemarie and I looking at one another, Olva looking elsewhere.

  Rosemarie broke the silence. “Why would you want to write about the Tiffany lamp?” Her eyes swept the room. “Where is it, anyway? I haven’t seen it.” She shook her head. “What an awful history it has.”

  “You know nothing of its history!” I said, pointing my finger at her. “Even if you did, you can’t change the history of an object because you don’t fancy the story it tells. Then again, escaping history seems to have been your life’s work.”

  Rosemarie laughed bitterly. “Isn’t it convenient for you that you’re the one writing—”

  “Furthermore,” I went on, “just because I don’t find myself fawning over a bunch of debris in a drawer does not mean I lack feeling.” How the junk drawer had become a measure of my compassion was beyond me.

  I had more to say, but Amaryllis was raising her hand.

  “Are you waiting to be called upon?” I asked her. Children were peculiar creatures. “You needn’t raise your hand.”

  She lowered her arm and turned to Olva. “Are you the maid?”

  Such a question!

  “Oh, Amaryllis,” Rosemarie cried, her voice full. “Olva is not our maid.”

  The child shrugged. “My mama was a maid before she died. She worked over in York.”

  We fell into chastened silence.

  “Where is your family?” Amaryllis asked Olva.

  Rosemarie leaned over and placed her hand on Amaryllis’s arm. “Sweet child, that is why Olva wrote me. That is why she asked me to come home. To help her figure that out.”

  My breath hovered in my throat, and I heard my heartbeat in my ears. I looked at Olva, who still faced the window. I could hardly believe it. She had summoned my sister here. For the early years of my life, aided by Quincy’s insights, I had known all there was to know about the people of Bound. How my knowledge had narrowed! Now, I was ignorant of what was happening right under my own roof. My head began to buzz, a headache coming on. Rosemarie and Amaryllis returned to sifting through the items from the highboy drawer. I lifted myself from the sofa and climbed the stairs.

  There was a phone call I needed to make.

  * * *

  About an hour later, I made my way downstairs again, but the sound of voices made me pause in the hallway. Olva, Rosemarie, and Amaryllis had moved to the living room. The reflection from the Cheval mirror in the corner showed me that they were all three nestled together on the sofa. Olva held a thin red book in her hands. When she opened it, a pie
ce of a page flew into the air as if the book had been withholding a sneeze for a decade. The paper flew so suddenly away that Olva and Rosemarie began laughing, Rosemarie with her big gulping laughter and Olva with her compressed hiccups.

  “You two are crazy,” Amaryllis said, and she sounded so nearly like an adult that this made Olva and Rosemarie fall into another fit of laughter.

  Rosemarie, scooping a tear away from her cheek, said, “You do the honors, Olva.”

  Olva pressed her large round glasses to her nose, turned a page, and read, “‘This is a watchbird watching a picky eater.’”

  Now, I knew which book Olva was holding. It was a picture book called The Watchbirds. It’s not as old as some of our other first editions of children’s classics—along with Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, we have Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Kipling’s Just So Stories, and Kingsley’s The Water Babies—yet The Watchbirds is notable for its instructional value, as it tells the story of crow-like creatures that spy on children engaged in naughty behavior.

  “‘This is a watchbird watching a sneaky,’” Olva read.

  Amaryllis giggled. “Who’s sneaky?”

  “My brother was sneaky,” Rosemarie said. “But he watched out for me.”

  Olva was quiet.

  “I suppose the watchbird would have a hard time watching me,” my sister continued, “seeing as I’ve been gone for so long. This is a watchbird watching a ghost.”

  “You had your reasons for leaving,” Olva responded.

  “I suppose I did.”

  Everyone was always letting Rosemarie off the hook.

  “But who’s the watchbird?” Amaryllis whispered, her eyes wide. “The one collecting all the secrets.”

  “Now that’s a good question, child,” Olva said, chuckling. “Who is the watchbird itself?” Suddenly, Olva craned her head to peer in the hallway.

  I staggered back and fled to the kitchen, where I slipped in through its rear entrance.

  * * *