Raining On Heaven

by Amanda Foote

  -Heaven

  I put the note in an envelope and walked down the yard to put it in the mailbox. I had just closed the lid and turned up the flag when I noticed the little girl across the street. Marlene’s neighborhood block was much like any other, but its eight houses were somewhat bigger than average and the yards somewhat wider. This little girl sat right at the edge of her yard though, right on the curb, staring down the street. She happened to glance over and see me staring, and she smiled and waved. I waved back tentatively. She waved me over. I hesitated a moment, then made my way across the street.

  The little girl was not more than eleven, and she had waist-length, straight, orange sherbet-colored hair that cascaded down around her face, and big, thick bangs that hung just above her sapphire eyes. Light freckles dusted every visible surface of her pale skin. She had her elbows propped up on her knees and her chin in her hands. She appeared a little forlorn.

  “Hi,” she said when I had gotten close. “I’m Rosebud.”

  “Hi Rosebud,” I replied, sitting down next to her on the curb.

  She paused to check the time on the Spiderman watch upon her left wrist and glanced down the street once more. “I know you just moved in across the street a little while ago. I’ve been watching you. I like to watch people.”

  Feeling only slightly creeped out, I said, “Oh, yeah? What do I do?”

  She leaned back, knees still propped up, and lay out across the prickly grass, her hair spilling like fire out around her. She rested her hands on her stomach, fingers laced. I followed suit. “Well,” she said. “You read. A lot. I mean, a lot a lot. And not magazines either, I’m talking big thick books that probably talk about really smart things. You have a new one every few days, so you must read really fast. And you’re always coming and going with that guy and girl - are they related, by the way? - and you’re always laughing and having fun when you’re with them but as soon as they’re gone, you get really sad and your whole body kind of sags. You’re like that most of the time, actually. The only time you don’t look sad is when you’re with them.”

  “Uh huh,” I managed, slightly astounded.

  She continued. “And sometimes at night I can see in your window before you close the blinds, and there’s all these boxes in your room. You don’t ever open them or put anything away, they all just sit there. I’ve only seen you open three boxes, and one of them was clothes, and the other two were books. I think the reason you don’t want to open them is because they are the reason you moved here and you didn’t really want to move here at all.” She smiled sheepishly, the smile of a little girl who has just been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. I should have been creeped out by her spying, but being that she was so young it was more funny than creepy. And if I’m honest, enlightening.

  I turned my head toward her. “You’re pretty smart, kid.”

  “I try,” she grinned.

  “How old are you?” I asked, adjusting one arm and placing it under my head.

  “Ten. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  There was a break in the conversation and in the silence I’d begun to count the freckles on her face. I had reached fifty-two when she finally said, “You know, there is one thing I don’t know about you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your name!”

  “Oh!” I laughed. “It’s Heaven.”

  “Like, Heaven in the clouds, Heaven?”

  “Yep, like that.”

  “That’s a weird name.”

  “Yeah, it really is. So, Rosebud, am I the only person you watch?”

  “Oh no, you’re not that special,” she said, quick as a whip, “I watch everyone.”

  “Will you tell me about them?”

  She gave me a huge grin and sat up straight, pointing to the house three doors down from mine. “The old lady that lives there has fourteen cats. I counted each and every single one. I don’t know all of their names, but I know that there is a Rufus, a Jingles, a Junebug, a Whiskers, and a Putt Putt. The lady next to her has three kids, and far as I can tell, she’s not married. I don’t know their names because when she shouts for them all she ever says is ‘KIDS! COME INSIDE!’ They never listen and usually she has to come out and get them.” As she said this, three little children, all under about seven, ran out the front door. There were two boys and a girl. The boys ripped a Barbie doll out of the girl’s hand and she ran inside screaming. “Then next to them is this old man, and he lives alone too. He likes to read the Sunday paper with his breakfast and he has a cat named Scurry. I think he and the old lady should get together, but I don’t think they’ve ever even met. Then there’s your house.” The sun was setting behind Rosebud’s house and it was casting this soft orange glow on Marlene’s house. Maybe I was biased, but I thought Marlene’s house was the prettiest of the neighborhood. It was two stories, with beautiful woodwork trimming and a slanted gray roof that perfectly complemented the baby blue walls. Of course, Marlene made good money writing her bestsellers so she had the means to keep her house in good shape, while clearly others on the street had less means or maybe cared less and didn’t bother.

  She continued. “Then next to you is a man with a big grey dog. I mean REALLY. BIG. He seems pretty nice though, he comes out and plays with his dog in the front yard sometimes. I think he and the lady with the three kids should meet. I see them look at each other sometimes when he’s out playing with his dog and she’s out watching her kids play, but they never say hi. Which I think is crazy. I mean, it’s just a word. It’s not hard to say. Hi, hi, hi. I don’t understand what holds everyone back from saying hello.”

  “People are silly,” I offered.

  A post office truck passed by us on the street slowly. She glanced at her Spiderman watch once more, and something about the time seemed to upset her because she groaned and flew back down to her spot on the grass, where her fire hair fell in tangles into the grass. “You’ve got that right.”

  I recalled that when I spotted her, she’d been staring down the road, not at her neighbors. So I asked her, “So are you waiting for something?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”

  “When I came out, you weren’t people watching. You were... road watching.” It occurs to me every day that I’m not as clever as I like to think I am.

  “Oh. Yeah, I’m waiting for a package. From my dad. It was my birthday last week. He said he was sending me something in the mail.”

  I heard the screen door to Rosebud’s house shut and turned around to see a middle-aged woman standing on the porch. She had a baby on one hip and macaroni in her hair, the same color as Rosebud’s, but very curly. “Rosebud,” she said, surprising me with her calm and commanding voice. “Who’s your friend?”

  Rosebud stood up with a graceless twirl and motioned me up too. “This is Heaven. She just moved in across the street.”

  “Three weeks ago, actually,” I said, “but basically, yeah. Maybe you know my aunt Marlene?”

  The woman smiled warmly. “Oh yes, Marlene. She’s lovely. Where’d you move from, Heaven?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  She nodded. “Must be quite a difference,” she pondered, lost in thought for a moment. “Well, have you and Marlene eaten dinner yet?”

  “We haven’t, no.”

  She smiled again. “Excellent. Maybe you’d like to join us? We’re having-”

  “Macaroni,” Rosebud interrupted. “I know because there’s some in your hair.”

  She laughed. “Yes. I know it’s not a gourmet meal, but it’s what the girls love.” The baby on her hip was playing with a toy sailboat, and she had the same curly orange hair as her mother. She giggled when her mother laughed. “It should be ready any minute, if you want to go get your aunt.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, and she went back inside. Rosebud joined me as I walked across the street.

  “You know, I like to read too,” she said suddenly.


  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you could lend me some books sometime,” she said.

  I smiled. “Definitely.”

  Rosebud wasn’t wrong about the state of my bedroom. One wall of the room, the one opposite the window, was almost completely hidden by boxes. Rosebud followed me into the house and up to my room, and plopped herself down on my bed. “It looks different from the inside,” she said, glancing around. I grabbed a brush from my adjoined bathroom and ran it half-hazardously through my hair as I crossed the hallway and knocked on Marlene’s door. No answer.

  “She must be writing,” I said, and left Rosebud, who had begun to peruse my bookshelf, in my bedroom. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, behind the garage, and into the den. Marlene likes her seclusion. I came to the doorway and found it open, where usually it was closed. Marlene was hard at work... playing solitaire. “Blocked?” I laughed.

  She glanced up sheepishly from the screen. “A little, yeah.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “That’s the problem... I still don’t know.”

  “I can see how that might be difficult to write about,” I mused.

  She smiled. “So what’s up?”

  “I’m assuming you know the family of gingers across the street?”

  She grinned at my word choice. “In fact, I do. Denise and her girls. Why?”

  “They’ve invited us to macaroni,” I said, coming over to turn the screen off of her computer. “Come on. Human interaction might do us both some good.”

  We collected Rosebud, who had seven of my books in her arms, and made our way across the street. Rosebud walked right in and we followed suit. “Hi Denise,” Marlene greeted Rosebud’s mother.

  Denise smiled in response and asked Marlene, “Red wine, right?”

  To which Marlene laughed and answered, “Yes please.”

  Rosebud ran off down a hallway and when she reemerged the books were gone. “I promise to take good care of them and bring them all back when I’m done,” she said to me, then took my hand and led me to the dinner table, where Denise had set five places, four with chairs and one with a high chair for the baby, whose name I learned was Iris, and that she was almost two. Rosebud requested I sit next to her, so we sat and Marlene did too as Denise scooped macaroni and green beans onto our plates, then poured herself and Marlene two big glasses of wine.

  I stole a minute to take in my surroundings. Their house was small but charming, painted with bright colors and decorated with brighter ones. The dining table and office desk shared a room, which Denise later explained was because there were only three bedrooms and this way the girls could each have their own. The desk was littered with papers of all shapes and sizes, and I could also see a basket of yarn and a transparent plastic cabinet of craft supplies nearby. Above the desk was a giant world map, with 37 pins in it, each placed strategically above some place in the world. Eight of them were green, the rest were red. All of the green ones were placed randomly in the United States. One of them was pinned to Oklahoma.

  “So, Heaven,” Denise says from her seat next to Marlene, wine glass tipped lazily in her hand. She had a total of five stains on her light purple tank top, and the solo piece of macaroni was still taking up residence in her wildly curly hair. “Have you thought about college?”

  “Yes,” I answered, after swallowing my bite of green beans. They needed salt. “I’m probably going to go here in Oklahoma instead of moving back to L.A. I’d rather be where family is. If I get accepted, anyway.”

  “I’m certain she will,” Marlene adds, “but she seems less sure.”

  “I don’t have a lot to go on. I’m not sure what the benchmark is for Oklahoma universities. I’m an average student and I don’t have any redeeming talents.”

  Marlene shook her head. “Now that’s just not true,” she said, but she didn’t elaborate.

  “So it’s just the two of you, huh?” Denise asked. “That must be pretty nice.”

  Marlene grinned. “It is nice, but it won’t be just the two of us for long. Heaven has a sister, Cadence. She’ll be coming to live with us very soon. Then it will be just the three of us for the summer.” She smiled again and downed the last few swallows in her glass.

  “That’s sweet,” Denise responded, taking a small sip of her wine.

  Chapter Four.

  As it turns out, Marlene was wrong. Not even a week later, Marlene and I were having dinner in her yellow-painted dining room when we saw headlights flash on the window and heard a car pull into the driveway. Marlene got up and peeked through the blinds. “I think it’s Cadence,” she said.

  We both went outside. It was definitely her. She had pulled up in a barely running, rusted station wagon that looked like it had been to hell and back more than once. She turned the engine off and emerged from the car looking tired and pale. Honestly she didn’t look much different than she had looked at the reading of the will. “Hi!” she exclaimed, much more energetically than her appearance agreed with. “I’m sorry it’s so late-” (it wasn’t, it was only 7:32) “-we would have gotten a hotel room but I didn’t know where to find one and they’re usually not clean enough for me to stay in, according to the doctor.”

  Marlene and I had both caught it and glanced at each other when she said it, but it was Marlene who asked, “We? Who’s we?”

  “Oh.” Cadence glanced toward the backseat sheepishly. “I’m so sorry to spring it on you. I wasn’t sure if I’d still be welcome.” She gently opened the back door to reveal a tiny sleeping child in a car seat. “This is my daughter, Bliss.”

  Bliss had the same gently curly honey hair as her mother, and she was drooling onto the knitted blanket tucked in around her as she slept.

  Marlene didn’t hesitate. “Of course you’re still welcome, Cadence. Of course.”

  Cadence breathed a deep sigh of relief, as if she had truly believed we would have turned her away because of her child. “Thank God,” she said, smiling.

  We moved toward the car and started pulling boxes from it and setting them on the porch, leaving Bliss for last so as not to wake her. Cadence pulled out her purse and some blankets and bags from the trunk, but even those seemed to put such strain on her that it looked like she might fall over, so Marlene and I grabbed them as well and put them with the boxes. There were a total of two small boxes, three medium boxes, and four bags that we placed inside the foyer.

  “Thank you,” she breathed heavily, and took a seat on the porch swing. She turned to me and said, “I’m so sorry to be such a burden, but would you mind getting Bliss out too? I’m just not sure I have the strength in me tonight to pick her up.”

  “Yeah,” I said, walking to the car and gently unbuckling the car seat. Bliss was stirring in her dreams but even as I lifted her up and rested her on my shoulder, she remained asleep. Marlene retrieved a playpen from the trunk at the request of Cadence, and a diaper bag from the front seat. We all went inside. Marlene set up the playpen in the den, where we had transformed Marlene’s office into a somewhat livable bedroom for Cadence. Cadence gingerly arranged her blankets in the bottom of the pen and they both backed away quietly as I rested Bliss there as gently as possible. She didn’t even stir. I stared at her precious sleeping face for a moment, unsure yet of how I felt about this unexpected turn of events, but now that I look back I’m pretty sure I already loved that little girl. But I haven’t reached that part yet.

  As Bliss slept and Cadence rested for a moment on the couch in the living room, Marlene and I brought everything else inside. When we had finished, we returned to find that Cadence had dozed off, and not knowing if we should touch her, I laid a blanket over her and we left her as she was.

  I woke the next morning to the smell of bacon. I climbed down the stairs to find Marlene at the stove and Cadence biting hungrily into a piece of bacon, while Bliss sat on the table in front of her, covered in some kind of lumpy oatmeal-like substance. They were all still in their pajamas. It was 9:57.


  When I came in and sat down next to Cadence, she looked at her bacon a little guiltily. “Technically I’m supposed to be eating really healthy. But I think I should be able to enjoy the time I have left, shouldn’t I?” she asked rather shamefully.

  I smiled at her and her bright brown eyes, ever so similar to mine, smiled right back. “No judgement here,” I said, grabbing one of her five pieces for myself and chomping down on it.

  Bliss exploded with a jumbled mess of baby jargon and giggles, and patted her mother’s face with her oatmeal-coated hands, leaving a glob of stickiness on Cadence’s cheeks. “Yes, baby,” Cadence cooed, smiling at her daughter with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen anyone give another person. Bliss’ dark green eyes were still caked with sleep boogers and her hair was a tangled mess of dark curls, but her eyes were shining happily. She had no idea what was really going on, just that she was alive and her mom was alive and they were together and for her, that’s all that mattered.

  I had half expected her to have the same chocolate brown eyes as us, but when I realized she didn’t, I wondered who her father was. “How old is she?” I asked Cadence.

  “She’s almost one.”

  Marlene placed a plate of eggs and three slices of bacon in front of me, then sat down across the table with her own plate. “Morning,” she said cheerily.

  “Morning,” I replied. I turned back to Cadence. “Do you mind me asking who her father is?”

  Cadence sighed lightly. “I don’t mind. But I have to be perfectly honest… I don’t truly know. I think I know who it is, but I got pregnant with her at a time when I was really messed up. I can’t be certain because I couldn’t get any of them to take a blood test.”

  I was a little surprised. I mean, she had mentioned being on the streets and going to Juvenile Detention in her letter, but maybe her time away from home was more serious than she let on. “Oh,” was all I said.

  She glanced at me. “I left that life behind though, Heaven. Our… I mean, your father helped me see what I was doing wrong. He got me off the streets and made sure my baby was well taken care of. I owe them my life. Literally.”