The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt

by Andrea Bobotis

  “Find him,” Daddy Kratt said. “Finish it.”

  Windsor chair

  Wooden spinning wheel

  Mahogany secretary

  R. S. Prussia vase

  Pie safe—Grandmother DeLour’s

  Butler’s tray (silver plated)

  Amsterdam School copper mantel clock

  Hamilton drafting table

  Letter opener (cut glass)

  Tiffany lamp (diameter 16˝; 21¾˝ height)—broken fixed

  Victorian chaise longue

  Octagonal Jacobean parlor table

  Mahogany sewing cabinet

  Westclox alarm clock (Big Ben model)

  Hepplewhite side table

  Watchmaker’s workbench

  Edwardian neoclassical brass column candleholders (10˝ tall)

  Abner Cutler rolltop desk (54˝ × 21˝ × 50˝)—damaged

  Riding whip—Daddy Kratt’s

  New York Times (Wednesday, October 30, 1929)

  Peacock hat

  Edwardian coral cameo (1½˝ × 1˝)

  Highboy bureau

  Butterfly tray

  Cheval mirror

  Glass rabbit

  Persian Heriz rug

  Revolving mahogany bookstand

  Queen Anne chair (dusty rose)

  Rococo cherub figurines

  Noritake 175 Gold china

  Art deco oyster plates

  Silver cutlery

  Waterford crystal pitcher

  Crystal saltcellars

  Louis XV sofa (silver leaf details)

  Leather ledger book

  Purdey shotgun (barrel 29˝)

  Eleven

  The morning after our disastrous dinner, I awoke to Amaryllis’s voice. It sounded far away. I made my way down the stairs to find the front door open, heat rolling inside and sticking to everything. The child’s voice again, from the yard. I braced, wondering what might be happening. Amaryllis shot through the doorway. When she saw me, her eyes widened.

  I wanted to ask her where Olva was, but my throat felt parched, a dry highway from my mouth to my gullet. I wondered if Olva would ever forgive me for calling Jolly about Marcus.

  “She is awake!” Amaryllis yelled at the top of her lungs. Responses rang from beyond the door. Everyone was outside.

  As I stepped through the doorway onto the porch, in the shock of sunlight, I saw Rosemarie and Marcus affixing a giant bedsheet between two windows. The sheet, which they must have pilfered from the upstairs linen closet, covered part of the brick facade of the house.

  “What in the world?” I said, moving toward the sheet.

  “Do not take it down,” Rosemarie barked at me.

  “I don’t even know what it is!”

  “Now, ladies,” Olva said wearily. Her eyes avoided mine.

  When Marcus and Rosemarie finished with the sheet, they stepped back through the bushes to appraise their work. No look of satisfaction crossed their faces.

  I walked over to the sheet to examine it. No one said two words to me, but I felt the heat of Rosemarie’s disapproval on the back of my neck. The edges of the bedsheet were secured to the brick lips of adjacent windows by the weight of two sturdy rocks. I gingerly placed a foot in the flower bed, between two Indian hawthorn bushes, and reached up to lift one edge of the sheet. When I peeked on the other side, I let out a gasp. Spray-painted on the sandy yellow brick of the house was a phrase.

  Nigger lover.

  “Who did this?”

  “Who do you think?” Rosemarie said. “The Bramletts are a scourge.”

  I had to sit down. My head sloshed, and a flavor, like some bitter new herb, coated the inside of my mouth. I made my way to the porch, where I pressed my back into the porch chair, dumbstruck. This house was built in 1922! Sixty-seven years had passed with it standing as a monument to this town’s birth and growth. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Who would we contact about repairing the damage? Could it be repaired?

  Amaryllis was suddenly peering into my face. “Are you okay?” I squeezed my eyes shut. She leaned in closer and whispered, “What does it say under the sheet?”

  Before I had a chance to speak, I heard “Move inside!” from Olva, calling firmly and evenly. “Move inside now!” she directed.

  Marcus was at once beside me, ushering his daughter with words and lifting me from my chair. He escorted me inside, and we all gathered on the other side of the door.

  “What on earth?” I said to the rest of them, shaking my head.

  “A car passed by that I didn’t recognize,” Olva explained.

  “We can’t be afraid of everything,” Rosemarie said tetchily.

  “Should we not?” Olva said, her voice rising.

  “I’m going on my paper route today,” Marcus said, “and if you ladies would watch Amaryllis—”

  “You will not!” Olva reprimanded, her voice throaty and maternal. Amaryllis began crying.

  “I will not be paralyzed by this,” Marcus said.

  “You are hardly a man of action,” Olva replied, and then a pulse of regret moved across her face.

  “I’ve been caring for my child, haven’t I?” Marcus said. “Is that not action enough for you? Or not man enough?”

  “Marcus, I didn’t mean—” Here Olva paused. “It’s only that you must do whatever it takes as a father. You must never abandon your child.”

  “Well, which is it?” Marcus asked sharply. “Should I be a man of action and leave for my route? Or would that be abandoning my child?”

  “Marcus, forget that I said anything.” Olva looked tired and remorseful.

  Marcus’s face softened. He picked up Amaryllis, and into the curve of his neck she drew her head, relaxing it there as dough rests in a bowl. “Olva, why is it you never told us we were related to you? That Charlie was the link between us?”

  Her mouth flattened, a little grimace of pain. Olva then exhaled deeply, and I knew what that meant. She was trying to rid herself of whatever thought she was having. Rather than press her, Marcus nodded. He looked not the least bit perturbed in the way I might have been if searching for an answer but not finding it.

  It was agreed that Rosemarie would call the sheriff in York County while Marcus completed his paper route. Olva was occupying Amaryllis, and I busied myself with opening the rolltop desk and sliding out some long drawers I had not investigated recently. To my surprise, inside one of those drawers was an old and rather well-kept edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. My first impulse was that surely Amaryllis would damage the book with her curious hands. I closed the drawer, feeling the twin impulses of shame and stubbornness. What power things had over me!

  On the other side of the room, Olva was now questioning Amaryllis about what kind of breakfast she might like, and the child’s eyes seemed to narrow at me. I silently took my leave, walking through the dining room and kitchen and all the way out the back door.

  Stepping down the back porch stairs, I decided I would take the opportunity to take a slow walk on our acreage. I felt a whisper of unease about Rick returning, but I thought it more imperative to reclaim my property. Who was he to alarm the Kratt family? He was of no importance at all.

  As I walked, the morning light was too sharp for my eyes, and my breath collected in my lungs like pie weights, and I struggled to put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t know if my age or my guilt over hiding the book from Amaryllis was impeding me. I made it only to the old henhouse, where I was forced to rest on the eastern-facing wall, which had crumbled enough to provide a stout seat. A thicket of peach trees sat in maturity to my left. I took a deep breath but could not smell them. My gaze wandered toward the house.

  How in disrepair it looked! Not only did we need new gutters—one hung askance from the brick—but also several
clay tiles of the roof were broken. My eyes caught some movement in one of the windows. It was my room. I felt a stab of concern, but because I was too out of breath to address it, I remained in my improvised seat.

  I kept my eyes on my bedroom window. As I did, I remembered when my brother Quincy had once surprised me there. It was right after Daddy Kratt had given Quincy the Purdey shotgun, and I was sitting on my bed, reading. I heard Quincy’s boots meeting the hardwood floor downstairs. His footfalls stopped every few moments, and I wondered what things he might be pausing to look at. The highboy bureau or the butterfly tray? The rolltop desk? The elegant Cheval mirror in the hallway?

  I heard his steps again and judged he was standing in front of the study. A long mahogany table stretched beside its double doors, and on top of it sat a pair of blackamoor figures. They were an interesting pair, and I didn’t fault Quincy for stopping to have a closer look. One figure was male, the other female, and they held urns above their heads. They stood on ornate pedestals and were dressed regally in reds and golds. They were a glamorous couple, very exotic and charming, and they leaned in toward one another in a rather conspiratorial way but had innocent enough looks on their faces. They had come from one of Grandmother DeLour’s brothers-in-law, a world traveler who had picked them up in Venice. On several occasions, I found our maids looking at these figures with expressions I couldn’t place, and they would often forget to dust them, as if pretending they didn’t exist at all.

  “Sister.”

  “Oh!” I cried. Imagining the details of the two figures, I hadn’t noticed Quincy standing in my doorway. I had grown wary of him since he had taken ownership of Daddy Kratt’s shotgun. How awful it was to be fearful of your own kin.

  “Calm down,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

  “Come in,” I said, but he had already entered the room. I had not yet closed the book in my hands.

  He strolled over to my dressing table and was examining the items on it. I had lined up my combs (nice ivory-handled ones from the same great-uncle who traveled extensively), and Quincy trailed his fingers across them, disturbing their arrangement.

  Out of nervousness, I started reading again.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  I looked up, startled. He leaned in to retrieve the book, and I handed it over. He studied its green-and-gold binding and opened to its title page.

  “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.” He tilted his head as he read the subtitle. “Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

  He flipped through a few pages, and when one ripped easily under his fingers, he said, “This is an old book, isn’t it?” He looked up, eyes wider. “This is the book Daddy Kratt forced Olva to search for.”

  “Be careful with it,” I snapped. I felt his eyes on me as he turned more pages, a way to let me know he had tolerated my tone but would not forgive so quickly again.

  “Ha!” he said, looking down at one of the pages. “I found a misspelled word!” He leaned in to show me the page, his fingertip pressing under the word speceies.

  “It’s just a small typing mistake.”

  He laughed again, and I noticed his laughter was more a man’s now, as if an old engine were turning over.

  “I wish I could show that to Uncle Sally,” Quincy said wistfully. He shut the book and handed it back. “Will you read me a little?” he asked, his voice suddenly gentle as he sat on the edge of my bed.

  This move, its seeming intimacy, troubled me. I had lost my place, so I flipped through the pages frantically, not wanting to pick an unfamiliar passage.

  “Pick something!” he spat, tired of my vacillation.

  My eyes landed, and I started reading without knowing what I had chosen. “‘The laws governing inheritance are quite unknown,’” I began. I paused, but Quincy motioned for me to go on. “‘No one can say why the same peculiarity in different individuals of the same species, and in individuals of different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes not so.’”

  I stopped again, thinking he might give me a reprieve. He stared at me coldly, and I continued.

  “‘Why the child often reverts in certain characters to its grandfather or grandmother or other much more remote ancestor; why a peculiarity is often transmitted from one sex to both sexes, or to one sex alone, more commonly but not exclusively to the like sex. It is a fact of some little importance to us, that peculiarities appearing in the males of our domestic breeds are often transmitted either exclusively, or in a much greater degree, to males alone.’”

  I paused, closing my eyes.

  “Inheritance, huh?” he said. “I thought this book was about something else altogether. He’s right, though; inheritance usually favors the men. Sorry about that, Sister.”

  “Not inheritance in the way you’re thinking,” I said, unable to conceal my impatience. “He’s not talking about land or money. He’s talking about something deep within us, passed down generation to generation.”

  “I don’t know, Sister. Some are just unlucky, I think.” Quincy shrugged.

  I held the book in the air and shook it. “This is about the struggle to exist. How difficulty is sown into life from the beginning. It’s about survival. Some of us will make it, and others won’t, and you hope you possess the strength of character to be one of the select few.”

  Quincy tilted his head thoughtfully. Then he winked at me. “The strongest man is left standing, so to speak.”

  “I’m sure that’s how it seems to you.”

  “Now, Judith, don’t get peevish. Survival lies in whether you stay on your toes. Whether you take advantage of whatever opportunities are in front of you at the moment. You’d like to believe there’s some rhyme or reason to it, some order lent to the world that crowns a chosen few. But that’s not what I’ve seen. Doesn’t matter if you’re a deacon down at the church or a criminal up in the prison, nobody gets a special turn in this world.” Apparently struck by a fresh thought, he smiled. “Now there’s some comfort for you, Sister. I guess we’re all in this together.”

  “And those who have a shotgun are at a considerable advantage,” I said, thinking of Quincy’s plans for Charlie.

  “I suspect we’re more in agreement over the matter of survival than you’re willing to admit. We’re both opportunists, Judith.” He lifted himself off the bed. “Were you really born under such dire circumstances? Is your lot worse than the rest? God, Judith, you’re the firstborn of us. Queen of the hill.”

  “Better to be born last,” I said.

  Quincy’s face widened in wonder. He struggled to find words, then simply smiled. After a moment, he said, “It’s been a while since I was told something I didn’t already know.” He laughed softly. “You think Rosemarie is somehow better off than you.” He said it as if the idea were a rare, dazzling species of orchid that had chosen that instant to bloom in front of him. He shook his head lightly as if unleashing himself from its spell.

  I felt exposed, and anger pushed up within me. “You punish everyone around you because Daddy Kratt never pays you any attention.”

  He looked disappointed, as if he had tried to create a moment between us, which I had spoiled. He walked toward the door. Before he left, he drummed his fingers on the doorframe but did not look back.

  I noticed, long after he was gone, that I was still holding up the book, pointing it at the spot where he had been.

  A bird’s sharp and urgent call broke my reverie. I lifted myself from the edge of the henhouse wall and walked slowly back toward the house. Inside was quiet. I couldn’t imagine where the others were, so I climbed the stairs, taking a deep breath after each step, and retired to my bedroom. Something new was there on my bed. I panicked, thinking it was Origin of Species, put there by the ghost of my dead brother. Upon closer inspection, I found it was The Tale of Peter Rabbit.


  The child! She had taken the book from the rolltop desk but not kept it for herself. What great generosity sprang from her small body.

  Now I would give her something. I leaned over and wedged my hand under my mattress, reaching until I could not any longer, until I felt on my fingertips the warmth of another book. I had been hiding it there for more than sixty years.

  * * *

  That evening, the darkness through the window was uncompromising. Marcus had made it back safely from his paper route, but Rosemarie’s conversation with the sheriff in York had been fruitless. He had dismissed the graffiti as a prank, and she had hung up on him.

  Amaryllis and I were now alone upstairs, and the others were in the cellar, looking for some kind of paint to temporarily cover the epithet until a permanent solution could be found. Amaryllis’s curiosity about the message under the bedsheet had not waned, but she also appeared to intuit that we were desperate for her to remain ignorant on the matter. Because of this, her eyes held a new expression, a tart watchfulness, which aged her tender face.

  Throughout the day, she had buzzed to and fro, and the extent to which she had colonized the house with objects in a single afternoon was remarkable. Not just the few toys she had brought with her, but she gathered up items that intrigued her from every room, drawing them up into her tiny empire, which she displayed with fanatical rigor on the Jacobean refectory table in the dining room. My Victorian Dresden figurines, elegant ladies with prim details, she positioned facing one another in regiments, and when I made the mistake of adjusting one, Amaryllis swiftly corrected me.

  All day long, she had begged to run outside. In an effort to distract, I had sifted through drawers and closets for things that might entice her. She had already looked at sheaves of blueprints for the house—she pored over them, tracing her fingers along the fragile paper—and before dinner, she had sat in the Chippendale wing chair, the one with claw and ball feet, and examined in her lap the antique Hammond’s globe, which ordered the world in muted browns, golds, and blues. She had spun it slowly, her eyes tracking the contours of the continents.

  The child’s energy! We had done so much in one day, I wondered if I would have the wherewithal for tomorrow.