A Tiny Piece of Sky (6 page)

WHILE MOTHER WAS CLEANING
up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen, Frankie sat quietly under the dining room table examining her newest scab. It was small, and certainly not her best, but it had already formed a nice, dark crust on her knee and was ripe for the picking. She played with the loop of the drawstring on her tiny blue silk bag, the one with an embroidered star on the front that Daddy had brought back from a business trip to Texas. Carefully, she shook out its contents and admired the seven scabs in her collection, lying like thin wafers in her palm. Frankie's very best, the one for which she was most proud, came off of her elbow more than a year and a half ago, soon after she'd gotten the idea to start a collection.

She and Joan had hooked up Dixie to the cart one morning and taken her out on Antietam Street to stretch her legs. About halfway up the block, they had gotten Dixie into a steady trot when Mr. Canard, as he fumbled the key to the door of his shoe repair shop, dropped a box of cast iron cobbler form molds. They made a terrible clang when they spilled out onto the brick sidewalk, causing the girls to jump and Dixie to take off at full gallop. Joan lost her grip of the reins as Dixie tore down the street. The girls held tight to each other as their spooked pony ran wild. Joan was in tears, begging
Dixie between sobs to stop, and bribing her with promises of carrots and lumps of sugar. However, it seemed as though Dixie had other things on her mind. What are carrots and sugar lumps compared to freedom?

On they sped over the cobblestone streets. On and on. This pony did not tire easily. In her younger years, before she came to live with the Baums, Dixie was a rodeo pony whose job was to warm up the crowd by doing “
one-of-a-kind,
amazi
ng
tricks
you'll
nev
er
see
anywhere
else
.” She was billed as “The Pony With the Human Brain,” not because she could wave good-bye with her hoof, say her prayers, and count to ten. She could do all of those things, but so could most of the other horses in the rodeo. There were even some potbellied pigs in the show that had those tricks in their repertoire. Yes, that's right, I said
pigs
. But Dixie, she was a horse of a different color, you could say.

Rodeo Stan, who owned the traveling rodeo, would bring Dixie into the center of the arena before the main performance—barrel racing and brahma bull riding—and ask the crowd to shout out numbers. “Any number between one and fifty!” he'd say. “Don't be shy! Let's hear 'em!” Then, after he had two numbers from the audience, he'd ask them if they wanted Dixie to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. “Divide!” the crowd would often yell, because division was the hardest, and those rodeo-goers, well, they loved a challenge. Then, Rodeo Stan would tell Dixie, loud enough so everyone could hear, “All right, Dixie girl, let's see if you can handle this one. How many times does two go into eight?”

After a few seconds, Dixie would nod her head enthusiastically. “I think she's got it!” Rodeo Stan would say, cheering her on. “Oh
boy, oh boy, she does think she knows this one! What do you say, folks?” Then, after fervent applause, Dixie would tap her hoof on the ground four times, giving, of course, the correct answer. “She did it! Amazing! Incredible! The Pony With the Human Brain has done it once again, ladies and gentlemen. Let's hear it for her! And tell your friends, because you won't see her anywhere else but here, at Rodeo Stan's Wild Rodeo!” Dixie would then bow and wave, and perhaps add a spinning waltz or two, if it pleased her, sending the audience into a complete frenzy.

The point is, Dixie was a performer. She could work five shows a day, sometimes six. Even years later, after she had left show business and settled down to a quiet retirement, she still—every once in a while—yearned for applause. And this ride around town with Joan and Frankie? Well, she saw it as her chance to take center stage once again.

Certainly, there was no question she was gaining a significant audience in the streets. Shop owners rushed out of their stores and gaped helplessly as the trio raced by. The few cars on the road swerved to miss them, and some pulled over to watch. One tried to block the road in an effort to stop Dixie, but that human-brained equine easily maneuvered around the car by cutting over to the sidewalk.

She had no plans to stop anytime soon. None. In fact, the farther she ran, the more people lined up to watch her, and it seemed to Frankie that their wild ride would never end, or end badly, she wasn't sure which. At this rate, they would be in Virginia by suppertime. Dixie rounded the next street corner with such speed that the cart tilted up on one wheel, and Frankie thought for sure the cart
would upset and she and Joan would spill out on somebody's doorstep. The worst part being that there would be no keeping something like that from Mother.

So, when Dixie hit a straightaway on East Avenue, Frankie wriggled out of Joan's grip and made a grab for the reins. She missed and nearly slipped off her seat, and she would have—would've fallen on her head and been run over by the cart—if Joan hadn't grabbed her by the dress sleeve in time. “Close one,” said Frankie. “Now hold on and don't let go.” She stretched her arm and reached for the reins once more while Joan anchored her to the cart. Frankie hooked the reins with her fingertips, even as Dixie flicked her tail in Frankie's face, and she managed to grab enough of them to slow Dixie a little. Once Frankie had a better grip, she yelled for Joan to pull her back to the seat. Joan did, but she pulled on Frankie at the same time that Dixie, having felt the pull on her bridle, came to the conclusion that her fun was over. And as Dixie abruptly halted, right in front of Barnard's Pharmacy, Frankie flew out of the cart and landed on her backside in the street, scraping the skin clear off her elbow.

The scab that formed a week or two later was in the shape of a Hercules beetle, and it was the pride of Frankie's collection.

Anyway, back under the dining room table, Frankie had just gotten her fingernail under the edge of her newest scab, which was quite small by comparison, when Mother called for her. “Where has that child gone now?”

Frankie remained hidden and still. If you didn't know Mother, you'd have thought she had a special talent for knowing when any of the girls were up to something they shouldn't be. But the truth was, she always thought they were up to something, because often
enough she was up to many somethings when she was their age. The worry switch in her brain, or her heart, wherever it was housed, was permanently set to the
on
position.

“Katie,” said Mother, “have you seen Frances?”

“No, ma'am,” said Katie from the kitchen. “But I just come in from the side porch. You the first person I seen.” She took out a handkerchief from the pocketbook slung over her forearm and wiped the sweat from her neck. “Hot as all get-out today.” Katie Resden was employed by Mother as a housekeeper, and had been for a few years' time. She came every Thursday to help with the laundry and the ironing and the other household chores, while Mother helped Daddy with his business affairs and tended to her social obligations in town.

“Don't I know it,” said Mother, pulling at the waist of her cotton dress to give her skin a chance to breathe.

“Headed to your Eagles meetin', Mrs. Baum?” asked Katie. “Ain't you supposed to be gone already?”

“Not today, Katie,” said Mother. Then she said under her breath, “And thank the good Lord for that.”

Mildred Baum was a member of the Women's Club of Hagerstown and the Ladies' Auxiliary, as well as the Lioness Club and Eagle Club. She didn't particularly enjoy the obligatory monthly meetings and social events sponsored by these women's organizations, although she believed in their causes for the most part. Mildred only joined them at the request of Hermann. “When you're a part of a community, it's important to act as part of the community,” he had told her.

Although Mildred liked many of the women in these clubs,
some—like Ann Margaret Price, wife of Sullen Waterford Price, Esquire, and mother to those Price boys—she could do without. But still, she would do anything for Hermann. Even if it meant luncheons with well-to-do women with a penchant for gossip.

“Miss Elizabeth done gone to her riding lessons?” said Katie.

“Hermann dropped her off on the way to the restaurant,” said Mother. “Hal is going to give us a ride in his taxi as soon as I find Frances.”

“I'll check the basement,” offered Katie. “That wee pet. Sometime I catch her down there doing I don't know what.”

Frankie watched Katie's thick dark legs pass by the table toward the front door of their apartment. She had a generous figure with a slow, swinging gait that was as much side-to-side as it was forward motion. When the door closed behind her, Mother jetted past the table and down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Frances Marie!” she hollered. “Your uncle will be here in five minutes to take us to the restaurant, so you'd better produce yourself right now or I'll get out the cake turner!”

Mother was known on occasion to chase the girls—well, Joan and Frankie, never Elizabeth—around the apartment with a metal cake turner, something that resembled a spatula. Although she promised to use it on their behinds for doing something they shouldn't have, Mother never made good on those promises, much to the relief of Joan and Frankie—not to mention their behinds.

Frankie eased her scab collection back into the bag and cinched the drawstring. She didn't want to go to the restaurant to help. She wanted to swim with Ava and Martha, or do nothing at all, except for maybe lie in front of the fan in the living room and listen to her
radio programs or hang upside down on the jungle gym out back and stare up at the gray sky. It was much too hot to do anything else, especially when she didn't have a choice in the matter. She tucked the bag into her dress pocket and started picking again at her knee. She straightened her leg so she could loosen one side, and as she did, her foot knocked into the chair leg closest to her, sending the chair back a few inches.

Mother's footsteps stopped. “Rats!” Frankie said under her breath. She grabbed hold of the chair legs, quickly returning the chair to its original spot. A few moments later, Mother stood at the table just a couple of feet from Frankie. Katie returned then, too, out of breath. “She ain't downstairs,” she said. “Maybe she run off somewhere.”

“I don't think so,” said Mother.

Frankie held her breath. But it made no difference, because the next thing she knew, Mother yanked at the top of the chair. Frankie grabbed for the chair legs and held on tight. Although petite, Mother was deceptively strong—all those years washing dishes—and she lifted the chair off the floor, dragging Frankie out partway from under the table. “I don't have time for these games, Frances,” said Mother.

“I want to stay here,” said Frankie, getting to her feet and knocking her head on the table on the way up.

“Not by yourself, you're not.”

Frankie rubbed the top of her head. “But I won't be by myself. Katie's here.” She sidled up next to Katie and looked at her with pleading eyes.

“No indeed,” said Katie, shaking her head and reaching into
her dress pocket for a lemon drop. She unwrapped the candy and popped it into her mouth. “There's a lot of work to be done round here. Last time I was supposed to watch you and Miss Joan, you snuck out on that horse. Got yourself in a bad way. No, ma'am. Now I got to do my work.” She crinkled the candy wrapper between her fingers and then ambled down the hall, leaving Frankie to face Mother alone.

Mother bent over and looked at the empty space under the table. “What were you doing under there?”

“Nothing.”

“Frances Marie, what have I told you about picking at yourself?”

Frankie glanced at her leg and sighed.

“That leg of yours is going to turn green and they will have to cut it off. Then you'll know something.”

“Will not,” said Frankie. But the truth was, she wasn't so sure.

“Oh no? Just last week Mrs. Vanner told me that her cousin's little boy had a hangnail on his finger that he wouldn't let alone, and his finger swelled up the size of a banana. Marshall, his name was, I think.” Mother raised her eyebrows. “Do you know him?”

Frankie shook her head. And then for a second she swore she almost saw the corner of Mother's mouth turn up into a smile. “Oh, well then, it was an awful thing. Worse than a snakebite, Mrs. Vanner said, you know, the pain. That boy's screams were heard all the way on Mulberry. Which is a long way from Cannon Avenue.”

“Cannon Avenue?”

Mother nodded. “That's where the poor boy lives. The agony he must've been in. Just think on it. His mother told him over and over to quit picking at the thing, but that boy just couldn't let it be. You
know how boys are. He was a nose-picker, too, no doubt about it.” Mother took a step closer to Frankie and leaned down so she could look at her straight on, the space between the tips of their noses only wide enough to pass a dime. This was Mother's technique, to get as close to you as possible so that the words coming out of her mouth, along with every single ounce of their meaning, wouldn't have far to travel and couldn't hop on a breeze and take a detour. She did not trust regular talking distance when it came to matters as serious as amputation. “An infection came next,” said Mother. “They had to bus a doctor in from Pennsylvania to work on it. A specialist.”

“For hangnails?” asked Frankie.

“That's right,” said Mother, with conviction. “A hangnail specialist. Doctors here never saw anything like it.”

Frankie swallowed.

Mother straightened her back and took off her glasses. She polished the lenses with the hem of her skirt, then held them up to the light and, once satisfied, slid them back on. “A couple of days later,” she continued, “his whole finger turned a lovely shade of green. They tried to save it, but . . .”