by Tamar Myers
Agnes snickered. ‘To Magdalena, negligee is also a forbidden word.’
‘Well, you won’t find either of those “N” words in the Bible,’ I said. ‘And about the contents of that bag, Agnes, is that what you consider decent nightwear for the house of a gentleman? And for heaven’s sake, don’t you have a decent suitcase?’
Agnes stuck her tongue out at me – but just a quick flick, mind you. ‘Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. And as you well know, Miss-Holier-Than-Thou, there are a lot of words that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Are roller skates mentioned in the Bible? Or trampolines? Ha, so there!’
‘How would you even know?’ I said. ‘Have you read yours all the way through?’
Now Agnes snorted, which I found doubly irritating, as I lay claim to that equine sound. ‘Of course I don’t read it through from cover to cover every year like you do,’ she said. ‘I give myself permission to skip the boring books.’
‘Of the sixty-six books in the King James Bible, how many does that leave you?’ I asked.
‘I read the Gospels and the Book of Psalms,’ Agnes said.
‘So five books,’ I said.
‘Don’t judge me, Magdalena,’ Agnes snapped. ‘I’ll tell you another thing that you won’t find in the Bible, and that’s any mention of your so-called sturdy Christian underwear. Do you know if anyone even wore underwear back in those days? Huh? Do you? Maybe they all walked around, in biblical times, dressed commando-style.’
If my blood pressure got any higher, the bun atop my head would start to bob. ‘What does commando-style mean?’ I demanded of Toy.
‘It means without underpants,’ Toy said. ‘But hey ladies, let’s lighten up, shall we? I don’t even own a Bible,’ Toy said.
Surely he was joking. If so, neither Agnes nor I found it worthy of the smallest chuckle. If Toy’s comment was sincere, well then one, or both of us, had our work cut out for us. Biblical illiteracy is a serious problem in this country. How can we answer the questions of unbelievers, if we haven’t read the material that is being tested? And what about the dozens of inconsistencies in the scriptures for which there are no answers? We need to have our lists of questions drawn up, so that we can present them to the Almighty when we meet Him.
Neither Agnes nor I responded to Toy’s shocking admission. Agnes’s sacrilegious suggestion that our Lord might have wandered around the Holy Land clad only in a robe and tunic was what shut me up. If I opened my mouth to speak, there was no telling what words the Devil might force out between my withered, unpainted lips. Of course, I could only guess at Agnes’s motive for remaining mum on the ride to the PennDutch. I rather doubted that she was quite as concerned as I was with spiritual welfare. Although it was a long shot, I was hoping that she was feeling remorseful for causing me so much emotional distress. Then maybe after inwardly repenting of having intimated that Jesus wore neither briefs nor boxers, she would then make a pledge to the Lord to cease being a trollop, open the car window, and toss the bag of scandalous merchandise into a drainage ditch.
After all, I am a legally married woman. If I, perchance, should choose to retrieve that paper bag of silky, scarlet, see-through unmentionables in hopes of using them in Operation Restore the Rosen Marriage, then that is my business. A married woman could even don such shudder-inducing duds just to lollygag about in bed by herself, if she so chose, just as long as her thoughts never strayed to a man other than her husband. But since the Devil kept pushing Toy into my thoughts, I’d be wearing cotton flannel nightgowns to bed for the foreseeable future. Frankly I was relieved that Agnes hugged the paper bag the entire trip as if it contained the Crown Jewels, and she was the Queen’s lady-in-waiting.
Well, so what if it had been one of the worst days of my life? At least I was home! Home, sweet home, and where my heart lay. I knew that Little Jacob would hug me, maybe even smother me with kisses. That’s all a mother really needs, after all, isn’t it? Or, so I guess. Although a working marriage as well would be ideal. But beyond that, what can one really expect of marriage after the initial bloom of exciting has worn off, and there have been so many arguments, and angry words spoken that can never be taken back?
But the marriage could wait. I was equally at fault for that, me and my spiritual adultery. In the meantime, there was a five-year-old boy to hug and kiss. Before the car had hardly come to a stop, I jumped out and ran to the kitchen door. As it turns out, I ran from one problem straight into a host of problems, beyond anything that I ever have imagined. I walked into a living nightmare that made the beginning of the day seem like naptime at my son’s former preschool.
TWENTY-ONE
The first thing that I noticed was that everyone and their uncle seemed to be gathered around my kitchen table, which is reserved for immediate family. No heads turned my way, except for the youngest one, and since his was the one that mattered most, I wasn’t too disappointed.
‘Mama!’ he exclaimed, as he threw his arms around me, and hugged me tightly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I had to find out what was causing that bad smell. What’s going on here?’
‘The really short woman fell in a pit?’
‘Her name is Mrs Hancock, dear. But a pit, yes?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
Even though Little Jacob is already half my size, I hoisted him up to sit on my hip. He’s already too big for that, but next year he’ll be way too big. Then I staggered over to see what the fuss was about, and had to set him down.
‘What’s this I hear about a pit?’
The huddle of bodies that had been shielding Delphia Hancock from view broke apart. Gabe, Susannah and Cousin Miriam stepped to the right; Tiny Hancock, Dr Cheryl Rosen and her mother Ida Rosen moved slowly to the left. That left the obstreperous little Delphia sitting in my chair, on my special cushion, for crying out loud!
The second Delphia saw me, her eyes emitted a greenish glint. She pointed to a clean white bandage that had been expertly wound, just twice, around her lower leg.
‘I’m going to sue you,’ the tiny Texan said in her gravelly voice. She didn’t sound like she was in the least bit of pain. Instead, she sounded happy, as if she had found a new way to amuse herself.
‘Now Mother,’ her not-so-tiny husband, Tiny, said, ‘I’m sure that the trap was set by a prankster, and not this quaint, conscientious objector.’
I turned to Gabe. ‘Now it’s a trap, and not a pit? Have you been out there to inspect whatever it is?’
Gabe frowned. ‘Of course not. I’ve had to hold down the fort here. Besides, you know that our woods are full of poison ivy, and that I don’t go near them until after a hard frost.’
‘Then maybe you should describe what you mean a little better,’ I said to Tiny. ‘Here, draw on this.’ I thrust a small paper pad and pen at him. Just so you know, in my opinion every kitchen needs at least three pads of paper, in different colours, and a jar full of writing implements for jotting down to-do lists and various notes, to pin to a cork board, or fasten to the fridge with magnets.
What Tiny drew looked like nothing that I could identify for certain, but what did come to mind was a strip of Agnes’s back lawn in autumn when she neglects to rake the leaves from beneath her towering maple. That, and a dead cat I once saw that had rigor mortis. Well, it sort of looked like those two things if I had to say that it looked like something. I mean, it looked messy, and fluffy, with sharp things poking out of the fluff. Tiny used a black marker, whereas the maple by Agnes’s back porch has orange, yellow, and red litter.
‘Was there a dead cat in the trap?’ I asked.
The man named Tiny roared with laughter, whereas his truly tiny wife roared with indignation. It was clear that Delphia’s baritone voice startled Agnes, Cheryl, and Ida. Little Jacob watched their reaction with glee.
‘She’s twansgendoh,’ he said by way of explanation. Having just turned five, he’s still incapable of pronouncing ‘R’s, especially at the end of words, which means that he sounds deligh
tfully British in my book.
‘I am not transgender,’ growled Delphia.
‘Wait a minute,’ Cheryl, our family shrink said. ‘My nephew isn’t judging you. Are you, Little Jacob?’
Little Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t even know what it means. I just huhd Mama say it.’
‘I said that I was totally accepting of transgender women.’ I turned to my son. ‘“Transgender” is another word for “special”.’
Delphia snorted. ‘What are you? Some kind of bleeding heart liberal? I thought your kind were supposed to be conservative like scriptures command us to be.’
‘So was there a dead cat?’ Agnes said. Bless her heart for noticing the steam escaping from beneath my white organza prayer cap.
‘Dead cat?’ Delphia roared again. ‘It was a pit, with sharpened stakes in it. I could have fallen in and died. Or worse yet, broken a leg, and then suffered a cruel death while being eaten alive by wolves and vultures. Oh, I know that y’all are thinking that my big strong husband would have come to my defence, but he’s afraid of everything, even squirrels.’
‘Squirrels can have rabies,’ Tiny said. His face was bright red.
‘Yeah,’ his wife sneered, ‘but at one point, when we were in the woods, you were convinced that you saw a pair of giant magenta-coloured ducks. Was Big Foot leading them, or following them?’
Poor Little Jacob buried his head in my voluminous skirts. ‘Shame on you, Mrs Hamhocks,’ I said angrily, ‘for frightening this impressionable young child.’ I could have said a lot more, and perhaps I should have. For it had occurred to me that the Hancocks could not possibly be the duo in the magenta jumpsuits – Delphia was far too short and squat for that. And if the jumpsuit wearers had been responsible for the bodies in the dumpster, then the Hancocks could have been murdered right here in my very own woods.
‘It’s Hancock, you blithering fool!’ Delphia retorted.
Those who know me well may find it hard to believe that I did not intend to get her name wrong, I honestly didn’t. For one thing, she was such a wisp of a thing, there would have been no sense in referring to pig parts. For another, calling her a name other than her own only diverted attention from what she had done, which was to scare the daylights out of my son.
I chose to end our confrontation. ‘Mr Hancock, may I please speak with you alone? We can retire to the parlour for privacy.’
‘I won’t stand for this,’ Delphia said, stamping a miniscule foot on my tile floor. She may as well have been tapping a potato puff against a dinner plate.
I never thought I would say this but thank heavens for my sister-in-law. Cheryl proved herself to be both perceptive and mildly manipulative.
‘I’ll go with them, Mrs Hancock,’ she said. ‘I know from first-hand experience how wily your innkeeper can be—’
‘Yah,’ Ida interjected. ‘Like a coyote.’
‘Hush, Ma,’ Cheryl said. ‘This is important.’
‘Yah, und I’m not?’
Little Jacob tugged on one of my three-quarters length sleeves. ‘Mama, why are you like a coyote?’
‘Only that she’s smart like a coyote,’ Cheryl said, and winked at me. ‘Come with us, Mr Hancock. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you; I promise that.’
Tiny had every reason to be embarrassed, but he played gamely along. ‘Sure thing, ma’am. I can’t wait to talk to your great-grandmother again.’
‘Claptrap,’ Delphia snapped. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’
‘No, ma’am,’ Little Jacob said passionately. ‘Just ’cause you can’t see her don’t mean nothing. You can’t see Jesus, germs, and Santa Claus neither, and they’s all real!’
‘OK then,’ Cheryl said brightly, ‘off we go!’ She grabbed big Tiny’s arm and steered him around my massive kitchen island and through the dining room door. Later I remembered that the woman had taken ballroom dance lessons.
First, I made sure to close the parlour door tightly behind us. Then as Tiny lumbered to a seat, I managed to grab Cheryl by a designer sleeve with one of my prematurely liver-spotted hands.
‘Just so you know, dear, Mr Hancock both saw, and heard, my great-granny before I even said a word about her to him.’
As a psychiatrist, Cheryl has an irrational fear of anything that isn’t rational. She refuses to believe in ghosts, no matter how much evidence I can provide to support their existence.
‘Then maybe someone else in your household filled his head with that nonsense,’ she said.
‘That would have to be your much-loved nephew, Little Jacob,’ I whispered. ‘He’s the only other person in the family who can see her.’
Tiny cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, ladies. Why are we ignoring the lovely lady sitting in the rocking chair? Where I come from, turning your backs on an elderly person – especially a woman – is the height of impoliteness.’
‘Now that’s a proper gentleman,’ Granny said, ‘unlike that other fellow who’s always causing you so much heartache that you can barely eat. I mean look at you: you look like a single strand of unravelled string.’
‘That other fellow is my husband, Granny, and the father of your great-great-grandchild.’
‘Are you quite sure, child?’
‘Yes, I’m sure!’ My cheeks felt as hot as waffle irons so I turned to Tiny, despite being red-faced. ‘I’m not sure that you believed me when I first told you that this so-called “lovely lady” really is a ghost, but she is. And I can prove it.’
‘We prefer to be called Apparition-Americans now,’ Granny snapped.
Tiny laughed, and then he must have noticed the grim expression on Granny’s face because he bit his lip. ‘Prove it, how?’
‘Go over to the rocking chair and try to sit in her lap.’
Tiny was horrified. ‘No, ma’am! That wouldn’t be right.’
‘Why, I wouldn’t mind at all,’ Granny said. ‘Come on, sonny. Come on over here, and let this old granny give you a ride.’
It was Tiny now who turned red. ‘What in tarnation?’
‘Then watch me,’ I said. I hopped over to Granny’s rocker and plopped my bony patooty down on its hard, wooden surface.
Tiny gasped. ‘What in the world?’
‘You see,’ I said. ‘I’m sitting right inside that lovely old lady, as if she wasn’t even there. That’s because she’s not – well not physically, at any rate.’
‘How dare you,’ Granny rasped. ‘Then again, why am I not surprised? Magdalena, you were always a nuisance. You were forever ruining my fun at family gatherings when I was alive.’
‘Granny,’ I wailed, ‘you died and were supposed to have passed on when I was only three years old. How much of a nuisance could I have been to you? And besides that, your marriage vows were “to death do us part”, and you have yet to totally depart. Are you sure that you have the right to flirt with a man other than your fully departed former husband? Especially to ask one who is very much alive to sit in your lap?’
‘You big doo-doo head,’ Granny said angrily. ‘If I could, I’d wash your mouth out with soap. Shame on you for trying to confuse an old woman like me with facts.’
I popped back to my original seat. ‘OK folks, enough digression. I’ll get right down to what I wanted to speak to you about in private, Mr Hancock.’
‘It’s about time!’ Cheryl said. ‘But just so you know, Magdalena, I insist on looking at a list of your medications later.’
I shot her a look that could start a fire without the use of flint. Then I turned to Tiny with a warm, encouraging smile.
‘Mr Hancock, I want you to understand that I, for one, believe that you saw a pair of giant magenta-coloured ducks in my woods today.’
‘Boogers,’ Granny said.
‘Just ignore her,’ I said. ‘Dr Rosen, here, also believes you, and she’s a psychiatrist. Aren’t you, Dr Rosen?’
‘Yes, I am, but I didn’t see an actual pair of giant ducks; I saw Donald Duck and Daisy Duck.’
‘Yo
u head doctors are all quacks,’ Granny said.
‘What Dr Rosen means,’ I said, ‘is that she saw people wearing masks of those two comic book characters. They also happened to be wearing magenta jumpsuits.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Tiny said. ‘That’s it, exactly. I know that I should have clarified what I said before to my wife out in the woods, but she’s so – uh – what’s the word I’m looking for?’
‘Critical?’ I said. ‘Exasperating? Infuriating?’
‘Belittling?’ Cheryl said. ‘And emasculating?’
‘All that,’ Tiny said. ‘I know that it must look terrible, the way that she treats me, but you have to understand that everything that we own is in her name: our ranch, our private plane, even our vacation homes in Hawaii and Montana.’
‘Aw, you poor man,’ Granny said. ‘If you sit on my lap, I’ll comfort you.’
‘Miss Yoder,’ Tiny said, ‘can a ghost really be horny, or is this some kind of an elaborate practical joke after all. Because I ain’t in the mood right now.’
‘That does it,’ Cheryl said in a huff. ‘If it’s a practical joke, then you’re in on it, Mr Handcuffs – or whatever your name is. I was going to corroborate your testimony, because I too saw those horrible people dressed up like comic book characters. Except that I saw them in town, and apparently getting things ready to dump sewage into our streets today. But now that you and my sister-in-law are playing this game in which the two of you pretend to speak with one of Magdalena’s long dead ancestors, I’m out of here.’
‘Then you’re a big doo-doo head too,’ Granny said.
After the no-nonsense Dr Rosen slammed the parlour door behind her, I smiled reassuringly at Tiny Hancock. The poor man looked as if he’d awakened and found himself a character in a work of bizarre, psycho-sexual fiction.
‘Pay no attention to Granny,’ I said. ‘She’s been lonely ever since Great-grandpapa died, which was more than seventy years ago. As for her swearing, I’m afraid that’s all Little Jacob’s fault. He heard boys calling other boys “boogers” and “doo-doo head” at preschool. Then he thought it would be fun to teach those words to Granny, and she took to them like ticks to a Mexican hairless dog.’
