Before she was a finley, p.5
Before She Was a Finley, page 5
Aunt Gladys patted the table, motioning for her to bring the chicken and potatoes to her. “And get me a knife,” she said. “Oh, and the cow needs milkin’.”
Grace looked over at Uncle Henry who didn’t budge before she headed out to the cowshed.
Sometime later, with fresh milk on the table, and some in a small bowl on the floor for Snowball, they were eating fried chicken and roasted potatoes. Aunt Gladys picked at her food and kept sighing. Grace’s gut told her it wasn’t a good idea to bother her aunt, but she just had to know when her birthday was. While Uncle Henry began licking his plate clean, she asked.
Aunt Gladys pushed herself away from the table. Grace thought she saw tears in her eyes. “Pity that I don’t remember. Evelyn would’ve.”
“Who’s Evelyn?”
“That was your mother’s name,” Aunt Gladys said.
Evelyn? Grace couldn’t wait to tell Helen she had a piece to the puzzle.
“Gladys, stop that sputtering,” Uncle Henry said. “No use crying. What’s done is done.”
Aunt Gladys pulled on the sleeve of her dress and wiped her face. “I s’pose.”
“Don’t cry, Aunt Gladys,” Grace said. “There’s got to be a way to find out.”
Her aunt looked over at her in a daze. “Find out what?”
“When my birthday is.”
Aunt Gladys pushed herself away from the table. “I need to get more rest. Grace, you clean up and get to bed.” She walked over to the bag under the sink, pulled out more rags and lumbered back to her room.
CHAPTER 5
Eventually, Aunt Gladys was back to being herself. At least that’s how she appeared to Grace. The only difference now was how she and Uncle Henry would constantly bicker. Grace no longer heard him in her aunt’s bedroom again, but she did catch how her aunt pushed him away when he’d sidle up behind her, trying to hug her. She’d tell him to get away and he’d get all nasty and say, “What’s a man to do!”
“Go take care of yourself!” she’d yell back at him.
Meanwhile, Grace looked forward to leaving their squabbling behind and going to school. She was now in third grade. Her favorite subject was geography. She gaped in amazement at how big the world was. It was hard to imagine there was much beyond the distance from her shanty to school. She now had a new teacher by the name of Mrs. Tregette and she talked a lot about what was happening in Germany and Poland while mentioning some of the young men from the area who went off to fight in the war.
Claire, who was seated across from Grace, shot her hand up so that Mrs. Tregette would call on her, which she did.
Claire said, “My brother is in the army. Mom’s sick with worry because he hasn’t sent a letter in weeks.”
Mrs. Tregette hesitated before saying, “I’m sure your brother is safe. It takes a long time to get mail in these parts.” She then pointed to another place on the map and said, “This is Pearl Harbor. Almost two years ago it was attacked by the Japs and President Roosevelt said it was a day that will live in infamy. And does anyone know what this schoolhouse used to be?”
Grace recalled her aunt telling her and shot her hand up, causing Mrs. Tregette to look surprised. Grace rarely offered an answer; only when she was called upon.
“What do you think, Grace?”
“A place where soldiers stayed?” she asked, suddenly realizing her aunt could have been wrong since she seemed to be wrong about a lot of things—like saying Uncle Henry would be moving out soon, but “soon” never came. But Mrs. Tregette smiled and said that Grace was almost right. “It was a training center for the soldiers.”
When it was time to learn about all forty-eight states, Grace became particularly interested in Oklahoma because she’d overheard Jack say that was where Gene Autry grew up. He paid no attention to her and the only way she figured she could get him to look her way was by playing guitar. Every once in a while, she’d mention to her aunt that she wanted one, but her response was always the same.
“What do you know about guitars?”
Her aunt was right. She knew little about guitars or music, other than when Mrs. Tregette would give the class some songs to sing to help instill in them an appreciation for how to carry a tune. Still, Grace would continue to beg, hoping to wear her aunt down while trying to figure out other ways to get Jack’s attention.
Every morning when the bus pulled up to the school, she’d hurry off, checking to see if Jack was hanging around outside until the bell rang. Some days he was there, others not. It all depended on the help his parents needed on the farm she’d overheard him tell his friends. The days that he did show up, he smelled of hay and sweat. She didn’t mind this aroma, and tried getting as close to him as possible to breathe him in. However, she didn’t let anyone know how she felt about him. Not even Helen.
Several times Helen had invited Grace to her home, but there was no way to get back and forth from Helen’s home to her place, so she had to turn down her invitations. When Helen suggested maybe she could get a ride from her mom to Grace’s place, Grace said her aunt wouldn’t like that. When Helen pressed her, asking why, she had to make up a lie and say that her aunt was always under the weather and didn’t like having people over. In reality, Grace wasn’t sure if her aunt would like Helen coming over or not, but they were poor as dirt and Grace didn’t want anyone else to know. She supposed that was foolish since anyone could tell by the way her aunt dressed her that she wasn’t too well off. Then again, nobody was too well off where she was from, but there was poor and then there was poor. They were poor. So poor the idea of getting a guitar was nothing more than a silly notion.
* * *
“But you must’ve eventually got one.”
Grace turned, realizing she’d been talking the whole time to that nosy young girl, Adele. The very idea stunned her. It seemed ever since that girl appeared, Grace’s memories were stirred and couldn’t be settled. It was as though she was watching a movie and the character, Grace, was on the screen, someone distant from Grace the old woman in a nursing home. Had she really been talking aloud?
“I mean,” Adele continued, “you said earlier that you played at bars. So …”
Grace looked around. They were sitting outside. She looked up to see that the sky was filled with dark clouds. She didn’t recall when she’d left her room but was grateful that she had. Now she could have a smoke. Her hand shaking, she took out a match and tried several times before the cigarette was lit.
Tapping her pen on her notebook, Adele said, “Winters must’ve been tough for you.”
“Not as tough as summers,” Grace replied.
“Really? Why?”
“That’s when there was no school. I wouldn’t see Helen, Jack, or anybody for those months we were off. It felt like forever. Besides, my aunt made sure I helped as much as I could with the gardening, canning, and taking care of the livestock.”
“I’m guessing your uncle was still around,” Adele said. She looked through her notes, adding, “And the war was over when you were about twelve or thirteen.” Just then a raindrop hit her arm.
“We’d better get inside,” Adele said.
Grace hurriedly finished her cigarette and then let Adele push her wheelchair into the solarium. She muttered, “Funny but I don’t recall too much about what was going on outside my little world. I guess people were celebrating the war’s end, but for me …”
“For you, what?” Adele said.
“I’m tired,” Grace said. “I need to take a nap.”
Adele blurted, “But I have so many more questions!”
“They’ll have to wait,” Grace said, starting to wheel herself down the hall, her slipper falling off her left foot.
“I’ll get it,” Adele said, bending down.
Grace protested while Adele began to put the slipper back on her foot, a foot missing a few toes, but not before she saw the shock on the young girl’s face.
Sounding as though she were gagging, Adele sputtered, “What happened?”
“Just give it to me!” Grace snapped, reaching for the slipper, before hurriedly rolling away.
Grace entered her room, passing Mary who was in her bed, snoring. With some effort, Grace climbed into her bed and pulled the covers over herself. She hoped to sleep but her thoughts ran rampant.
* * *
By the time she was twelve, Grace was in sixth grade and once again had a new teacher. Meanwhile, her Uncle Henry wasn’t too helpful around the place, and it appeared he had no intention of leaving. Any hope she had, which she’d kept to herself, of him going off to war was now over since Hitler had been defeated. So Grace and her aunt ran things while he’d sit in that damn rocker and watch as they butchered chickens and hogs, cleaned the cowshed and planted and weeded the vegetable garden. But he was always the first one at the supper table, a fork in his hand.
Around that time, she began to notice that he was eyeing her more than her aunt. By then, her breasts were filling out and she, too, had to take rags from the bag each month due to the blood that spilled out of her privates. During the school year, when it was that time of the month, she’d just stay home for a couple of days till the flow stopped. She had to justify her absence to Mrs. Smith, her sixth-grade teacher, and after she told her the first time why she couldn’t go to school—she must’ve turned several shades of red—Mrs. Smith never called her absence into question again. She seemed to know. In fact, she seemed to know all the girls’ times of the month, and no one got into trouble because of it. The boys often complained that it wasn’t fair and once they found out why the girls weren’t in class, they would tease them something awful when they returned.
Grace didn’t like thinking about those times and eventually drifted off to sleep.
* * *
“So, how did you eventually learn to play the guitar?”
Grace looked up from her bed to see Adele sitting in the chair next to it. She saw from the window that the sun was shining. It must’ve been a new day. Then again, each day flowed into the next.
“I mean, it sounds like you didn’t really have any access to music.”
“Came across a Victrola,” Grace replied.
“A vic …?”
“Victrola.”
“What’s that?”
Grace looked at Adele and sniffed. “It played seventy-eights.”
Adele looked confused.
“Records.”
“But you didn’t have electricity.”
Grace sputtered, “Didn’t need any. You just cranked it up.”
“Oh,” Adele replied, scratching on her notepad, muttering, “Research Victrola. So, did your aunt buy it for you finally?”
“Nope. It belonged to my mama.”
Adele jerked her head up, her mouth dropped open. “So, how did you get the Victrola?” She waited for a reply while Grace gazed out the window.
* * *
One day she and Helen were playing outside during recess, when Helen asked if she had ever been back to her place, the place where she was born. Grace shook her head.
“Mom said she tried to be neighborly with your mom,” Helen said. “My mom said your mom was no more than a kid herself when she was gonna have you. Your father did odd jobs to get by.”
It startled Grace to hear Helen refer to her mother and father who were no more than strangers to her, making her more curious about where she’d once lived. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said.
“Oh, you wouldn’t. Dad said he found you on the kitchen floor with a full diaper next to your mama. You were holding her hair. It was bloody.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad heard the gunshots, but just figured it was a hunter. But when he was out in the field, he heard howling. That was you. He said he was worried because it didn’t sound like a regular baby cry. He found your mother on the floor in the kitchen and your dad out back. It was awful. He says he still has nightmares from what he saw. That poor little baby sobbing broke his heart.” Helen paused before saying, “Sorry. I keep forgetting that baby was you.”
Grace tried to absorb what she was being told, starting to believe Helen’s story and not her aunt’s. “I wonder what it looks like,” Grace said.
“What?”
“The house. And I wonder who lives there now.”
“Nobody lives there. It’s all overgrown. Daddy said he can’t imagine anyone wanting anything to do with it.”
“I’d really like to see it,” Grace said, “but my aunt would never take me there. She doesn’t even like talking about my mother.”
“I have an idea,” Helen said.
* * *
That night, Grace told her aunt that Helen had invited her for a sleepover later that week. In a rush, before her aunt could say no, she added, “And it would be on a school night so you wouldn’t have to get me there or anything.”
“How would I do such a thing, anyway?” Aunt Gladys said.
“I don’t know,” Grace muttered.
Uncle Henry shouted, “What you got to do that for? Don’t you see enough of your friends in school?”
When she thought her aunt might agree with him, Grace sputtered, “But we have a big spelling test coming up and it helps to have someone to study with.”
After a long sigh, barely heard above Uncle Henry’s protests, Aunt Gladys said, “I suppose, but don’t make a habit of it.”
All Grace could think about was the farmhouse where her mama was killed. During recess, she and Helen made plans for how they would get to it. Grace never thought Thursday would come.
Finally, when Thursday morning did come, Helen climbed onto the bus and ran down the aisle to where Grace was sitting. As she came closer, her friend gave her an odd look. “Where’s your overnight bag?” Helen asked.
It hadn’t occurred to Grace to bring an overnight bag with some spare clothes or pajamas. She sat there red-faced, certain she had messed things up, until Helen said, “That’s okay. You can borrow a pair of my pajamas. You’ll just have to wear the same clothes to school tomorrow.”
Neither she nor Helen said as much, but Grace often wore the same clothes throughout the week since she didn’t have much from which to choose. Her mind, though, was far from what she’d be wearing. All she kept thinking about was the house, and even got scolded a couple of times by Mrs. Smith when she wasn’t paying attention. Finally, afternoon came, and class was dismissed.
As the bus rumbled along, Helen had Grace sit near the window, ready to point out where the infamous house was located. “You can’t see it from the road,” Helen said, “but it’s right across from our field, over there.”
Grace couldn’t see a thing beyond the trees and overgrowth, frustrated that the bus driver was going too fast. Finally, the bus came to a stop.
“Come on!” Helen said.
Instead of watching Helen get off the bus along with her brother, Edwin, as she normally did, Grace jumped up from the seat and followed her. Edwin kept looking at Grace with a scowl but then took off like a shot up the long driveway toward the house, which rested on a hill.
“It’s over there,” Helen said, pointing across the field. Most of the snow had melted but there were still patches of it here and there. “But don’t say anything about it in front of my mother. She probably wouldn’t let us go if she knew.”
There were milk and cookies waiting for them once they walked through the door. Grace was surprised to see that the kitchen alone was the size of her entire shanty. It was bright and cheerful, the aroma welcoming. Helen’s mother used a soft, kind tone when she spoke to Grace. When Helen mentioned how Grace hadn’t brought any pajamas, her mother clicked her tongue and muttered that her aunt should know better than to send her overnight without being prepared. But then she added, “No worries. You can borrow something from Helen.”
Helen had twin brothers who were too young to go to school. They studied Grace the whole time while they all sat around the table having an afternoon snack, and she didn’t know what to say to them. All she could think about was heading across the field to see where she had once lived as a baby.
After she took a final gulp of milk, Helen asked her mother if they could go out to the barn. “I want Grace to meet Molly.”
“Okay, but don’t get too close to her,” her mother said.
They ran out the front door with Edwin following behind. “Eddie!” Helen said, “Leave us alone.”
“Edwin,” Helen’s mother called, “you get back here and do your homework.”
“Come on,” Helen said to Grace, as she broke into a run toward the barn.
“Who’s Molly?” Grace called, quickly following Helen.
“Our workhorse. We’re not gonna really see her. Just follow me.”
They ran behind the barn and cut across some fields, eventually wading through slush, tall grass, and then a small stand of trees. Their overboots squished as they pushed forward. Grace noticed a cabin in the distance. “That it?” she called, hoping it wasn’t, since it didn’t look nearly as big as Helen’s farmhouse.
“Yup,” Helen said, coming to a stop, but Grace kept going, wading through the brush and bramble. The grass and weeds were so tall that they almost went past her shoulders.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go any further,” Helen said. “Daddy says he thinks it’s haunted.”
Grace looked back at Helen. “Really? Like maybe my parents’ spirits still live there?”
Helen stared at her wide-eyed. “Maybe we should go back. Mom might be getting—”
Grace paid her little attention. She hadn’t lied to her aunt just to turn around now. She pushed back some more brambles until she got a better view. The house, if one could call it that, had a front open porch that slanted and a screen door that was tilted, hanging from its hinges. She pushed further and trudged through more grass, walking up two rickety steps onto the porch. Some slats were missing so she had to be careful where she stepped.
