Angel Sister (7 page)

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Me? An angel? Far from it. Just ask anybody,” Kate said with a laugh as she squatted down in front of the steps.

The little girl pulled her faded red dress down over her knees as though she wanted to hide as much of her small body as she could from Kate. Little bare feet crusted with dirt stuck out below her dress. The child pushed her dark curly hair back from her face and dropped her chin down on her knees to wait for whatever Kate was going to say next. Tear streaks ran down her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying now.

Kate had never seen the child before. “Are you lost, sweetie?”

“No.” The child mashed her mouth together, and tears filled her dark chocolate-brown eyes and overflowed to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them away as she stared up at Kate with a mixture of fear and hope. “You have to be an angel. Please.”

“Why do I have to be an angel?” Kate moved over to sit down beside the child. She started to put her arm around her, but then stopped. She didn’t want to frighten the little girl.

“Because my mommy said that if I sat here and didn’t cry, an angel would come take care of me and love me and bring me something to eat. I tried really hard. Just like I promised Mommy.” The little girl looked down at her feet. After a few seconds she went on in a tiny, sad voice. “But I couldn’t keep all the tears in. They just came out.”

“Where is your mommy?” Kate asked softly.

“She left. With Daddy. She had to.” The little girl pulled her dress down farther over her knees until the hem touched the top of her feet. She curled her toes under as if to hide them too.

“Why did she have to?”

“Because of the baby in her tummy. Daddy, he’s gonna find work and then they’re coming back for me. But Daddy said this looked like a good place. He said it had gardens and apple trees and two churches. Most places only have one. They kept Kenton because he’s sick. Nobody wants a sick boy. I told them I might be sick too, but they said the angel wouldn’t care. That she’d make me feel better. They’re coming back for me. Mommy promised.”

The little girl looked up at Kate as if she needed Kate to say it was true, so Kate did. “Then they will as soon as they can.”

The little girl let out a long breath and scooted closer to Kate. “Can I touch you or will my hand go right through you? You know, like a ghost. I’ve never seen an angel before.”

“You can touch me. I’m not a real angel. Those you might not be able to touch.” Kate put her arm around the child and drew her close to her side. Her shoulders felt very bony under her dress. “My name’s Kate. What’s your name?”

“Lorena Birdsong. Mommy told me to say my name every morning when I get up and every night when I go to bed, and that wherever she is she’ll be saying it too. My name. Lorena Birdsong.” The little girl looked up at Kate. Her lips trembled a little, and she blinked her eyes very fast before she went on. “Names are very important, you know. Mommy told me never to forget that.”

“Your mommy is right.” Kate squeezed her shoulders a little.

The girl shifted a little to the side and pulled a piece of paper out from under her leg. “She wrote it down for me so that when I start school, I’ll spell it right.” She ran her finger over the writing on the paper before she held it out for Kate to see. “That and the day I was born.”

“Lorena Birdsong. June 1, 1931,” Kate read. “That’s a very pretty name.”

“Thank you.” Lorena lovingly folded the paper and held it over her heart for a moment before stuffing it under her leg again.

“Do people call you Lori for short?” Kate said.

“Nobody but my brother, Kenton. He does sometime.” She looked very sad again. “I didn’t get to tell him goodbye. He’s been coughing so bad that he was really tired and he went to sleep. Mommy tried to wake him up, but he was too sleepy. She said she’d tell him for me. He’s six.”

“And you’re five.”

“This many.” Lorena held up one hand with her fingers spread apart. “I had a birthday.”

“I know. It was on your piece of paper.”

“We were in the car. We don’t have a house.”

Kate thought of the people she’d seen going through Rosey Corner in the last few months. Mostly men alone on foot, but some families in cars. Her father said the men were trying to find work, but there wasn’t any work to find in Rosey Corner. So they passed on through. He said they were going to the cities where at least they’d be able to find a soup kitchen.

Any time one of the men knocked on their door, Kate’s mother would fix a plate of food for Kate or Tori to carry out to him in the front yard. The men always looked so hungry even after they brought the empty plate back up to the door.

“Are you hungry?” Kate asked Lorena.

Lorena licked her lips and nodded her head. “And thirsty. Do angels carry food in their wings?” She tried to peer around behind Kate.

“I’m not an angel, sweetie. No wings for sure.” Kate looked at the jar of jam she was holding and wished for a spoon. Still, the jam would taste better with a biscuit and some milk. “But I know where we can get something for you to eat. Come on.”

Kate picked Lorena up. She was all skin and bones and didn’t weigh as much as a sack of flour.

“I can walk,” Lorena said.

“I know, but you’re tired and not very heavy.” Kate looked up and across the fields. She could see Grandfather Reece in the distance walking toward the church. She slipped around the side of the church quickly before he noticed them there on the steps. She put the jar of jam right inside the back door. Then she almost ran to the fence and set Lorena down on the other side before she climbed over herself.

She didn’t want her grandfather to see them. He’d want to pray over Lorena and ask a hundred questions. Lorena didn’t need questions. She needed food and a bath and somebody to keep hugging her.

Kate picked Lorena back up. This time the little girl didn’t protest. Instead she giggled and said, “I like being carried.” Lorena laid her head down on Kate’s shoulder. “You smell like an angel.”

“Oh really? And what does an angel smell like?”

“You,” Lorena murmured. The little girl’s body relaxed against Kate as if she were falling asleep.

Kate didn’t say anything as she hurried across the field to her house. She was too busy trying to think of what she would say to her mother. She’d brought home strays before. A cat that still lived in the barn and had kittens regular as clockwork, poor Bullet who’d gotten run over, a frog and a lizard, but never a stray little girl. And never a stray she so wanted to keep.

Kate might not really be an angel, but she could be a big sister. Somehow she’d have to convince her mother that they needed another sister. Four wasn’t that much more than three. A little thing like Lorena surely wouldn’t cause much trouble. And how could anybody turn away a little girl who needed a big sister?

Kate stopped on the back porch to pour some water in the wash pan and wash Lorena’s face.

“Is this your house?” Lorena asked. She didn’t try to duck away from the washrag.

“It is. I’m going to take you in to meet my mother.”

“Is she an angel too?”

“She’s a lot closer to one than I am. That’s for sure.” Kate laughed as she dried off Lorena’s face and then kissed her nose.

Lorena put her arms around Kate’s neck. “Can this be my house too? Just till Mommy comes back.”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” Kate started to comb Lorena’s hair, but the little girl jerked away.

“Ouch! That hurt.” Lorena wrapped her arms over her head to keep her hair away from the comb.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve got rats’ nests in there.”

“I’m afraid of rats.” Lorena’s bottom lip trembled and she held her arms tighter against her head. “They eat your toes if you don’t keep wiggling them. Kenton told me.”

“Your toes are safe here.” Kate put down the comb. “We’ll comb that hair later. I’ll get you a mirror you can look into and you can help comb, okay?”

Lorena slowly dropped her arms away from her hair. “Do you promise? About the toes?”

“I promise.” Kate squatted in front of the little girl and looked her right in the eyes. “No rats in this house. Your toes are safe.” She smiled before she reached down and tickled Lorena’s toes.

Lorena giggled and backed up. Then her eyes got very round again as she stared at Kate. “Please promise I can stay here.”

Kate hesitated. She wanted more than anything to promise, but she couldn’t be sure what her mother and father would say. Finally she hugged Lorena and said, “I want to promise that, but I can’t. I can promise that somebody will take care of you.”

“I don’t want to go to an orphans’ home. Kenton says those places have lots of rats.”

“No orphans’ homes.” Kate wouldn’t let them send her to an orphans’ home. She didn’t know how, but she wouldn’t. “Come on. Let’s go show you to Mama and get you something to eat. Do you like bacon and biscuits and raspberry jam?”

“You have all that food?”

“And honey too.”

“I knew you were an angel,” Lorena murmured against Kate’s neck.

______

On Sunday afternoon, they gathered at the Rosey Corner Baptist Church to decide what to do with the child. Most everybody seemed to think that since the little girl had been left on the Baptist Church steps, that gave the church not only the right but also the duty to determine what became of her. A bad feeling had been growing inside Nadine ever since her father started talking about having a meeting to decide the child’s fate. She had no confidence a decision by committee would be best for Lorena. Or for Kate.

Nadine looked over at Kate, who was sitting on the other side of Lorena. The two of them had the child safely sandwiched between them on the front pew, but how much longer was Nadine going to keep that true? She wanted to. From the moment she had seen Kate guiding the child through the back door into the kitchen, she had wanted to. There had been something so wounded and lost about the child, and yet at the same time the little girl had looked up at Kate and then at Nadine with total trust as Kate began talking about this new little sister she had found.

Kate’s eyes had beseeched Nadine over the top of the little girl’s head as she pushed out her words so fast they were almost tripping over her tongue. “This is Lorena, Mama. I found her on the church steps. She’s really sweet, and she needs somebody to take care of her. Do you think maybe the Lord planned on you sending me over there to the church this morning with the raspberry jam for Grandfather Reece?” She rushed on before Nadine could answer. “You know, so I’d find her. He plans out ways to take care of us, doesn’t he? I mean, he loves all his children and he tells us to take care of our brothers and sisters, right? And according to the way the Bible talks about brothers and sisters, Lorena is our little sister.”

Nadine had looked at the little girl and back at Kate’s pleading eyes and wanted to say yes, yes, yes. The Lord was good, and he did love them and expect them to care for one another. She wanted it to happen just the way Kate wanted, but things didn’t always happen because Nadine wanted them to. Else Essie wouldn’t be dancing only in her memory. Instead her baby sister would be grown, with children who called Nadine aunt. Victor wouldn’t need alcohol to get him through the week, and people would still have more need for horseshoes than rubber tires. Aunt Hattie’s boy, Bo, would be hitting homeruns somewhere instead of being in a grave in France, and Nadine’s father would smile at her and rejoice in the beauty of his granddaughters. So many things she might like to make happen for the better.

Troubles came at some time or other to everybody who drew breath. The Bible was plain about that. A time to laugh and a time to weep. This was surely a time for weeping in America. People without enough food to eat. People so desperate that they would leave a beloved child on the steps of a church in hopes strangers would feed and care for her. Praise the Lord she and Victor were able to feed their girls. In that she was blessed.

They could feed this girl too. Kate was right. One more small mouth to feed and one more body to clothe wouldn’t be that much trouble.

Nadine hadn’t promised that day or in the days since. It never did to make promises she wasn’t sure she could keep. Even to herself. She’d broken too many of those promises already. Aunt Hattie told Nadine she was too hard on herself. That the only one who was ever able to keep every promise he made was the good Lord, and some of those promises cost him agony.

But it was surely better not to promise the moon when a person had no way of pulling it down out of the sky. So instead Nadine had said, “We’ll take care of her today.”

“But what about tomorrow?” Kate wanted to know.

“We’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes,” she said before holding her arms out toward the child.

The little girl must have seen the welcome in those arms, because she didn’t hesitate as she moved across the floor and let Nadine embrace her. She was so thin that Nadine’s heart hurt for her.

The child relaxed against Nadine and let out a long contented sigh. “Mommy was right.”

“About what, sweetheart?”

“About the angel coming to help me. But she didn’t know about the angel mommy,” the child said.

“What angel mommy?”

“You.”

Kate explained about the angels while Lorena ate biscuits and bacon and applesauce.

When the child couldn’t stuff in another bite, she touched a biscuit on her plate. “I wish I could give this to Kenton.”

“Kenton?” Nadine asked.

“Her brother,” Kate said. “Lorena said he was sick.”

Lorena looked sad. “But he likes biscuits. It might make him feel better.”

“Do you think he’s still in Rosey Corner? That your mother and father might still be here?” Nadine asked. “We could take them some food.”

Lorena shook her head as big tears gathered in her eyes. “Mommy got in the car and shut the door. She leaned way out the window and looked at me all the way down the road, but Daddy didn’t stop. He kept going till I couldn’t see them no more.”

“I see,” Nadine said. And she did see. Too much. “She was looking back at you because she loves you so much.”

“I wish she hadn’t gone,” Lorena said in a very small voice.

They heated water and let Lorena bathe in the round metal tub out on the back porch. She liked that. She splashed in the water and played with soap bubbles and didn’t complain when she had to stand still while Nadine checked her hair for lice and her little body for any sores that might need treating. All she found were a few mosquito bites Lorena had scratched raw. But Nadine had to blink back tears at the sight of the child’s little ribs outlined so starkly beneath her skin.

When Victoria came home from playing with Sally Jane across the road, the child was napping on her bed while Nadine and Kate searched through Victoria’s old clothes for a dress that wouldn’t completely swallow Lorena. Victoria wasn’t the least bit bothered by the prospect of her place as baby in the family being usurped. Instead she put her favorite rag doll beside Lorena and sat down on the floor by the bed to wait for the child to open her eyes.

By the time Victor had come home late that afternoon, Lorena was the same as adopted into their family. That was three days ago. Three days of the little girl sitting at their table eating their food and running around their yard and sleeping in the girls’ bedroom. Finding a place in their hearts as they held back tomorrow.

Now tomorrow had come, and Nadine’s dismay was almost overpowering as her father stepped behind the pulpit to call the meeting to order. It wasn’t simply the look on his face and the way he kept sliding his eyes over Nadine without really looking at her. He knew what she wanted. She had cornered him that morning before worship services in his usual place in the back of the church reading the Scripture and told him straight out that she and Victor were willing and able to give Lorena a home until her parents came back for her.

Her father had breathed a heavy sigh and placed his finger on the Bible page to hold his place before he looked up at Nadine. “You know her parents will never come back for her, Nadine. They tossed her aside as easily as we might get rid of a stray cat.”

“They were desperate. They didn’t have any way to feed her,” Nadine argued.

Up in the front of the church, the men’s and women’s Sunday school classes were being taught on opposite sides of the pulpit. Because of the heat, the children’s classes were being held outside under the shade tree.

Her father raised his eyebrows and peered at her over his reading glasses. “They had a way to get gasoline. Don’t you think food should have come before gasoline for their automobile?”

He didn’t expect her to answer him, but she did. “We can’t know their reasons or motives.”

“That is true, but we can know and examine our own motives. The Lord surely placed this child here for a reason, and we must do what is best for the child without consideration of our own selfish desires. Now leave me so that I may receive the holy message the Lord would have me deliver to my people today.” He looked back down at his Bible in dismissal.

Nadine stared at the thinning gray hair on top of his head and dared to speak again. “Doesn’t the Lord promise to give us the desires of our heart?”

He pulled in a breath and let it out slowly as if having to work to control his temper. When he did finally speak, his words sounded calm enough, but his eyes showed anger with her refusal to bend to his will. “Psalm 37:4. Nadine, you know it is sinful to pick and choose this or that portion of Scripture to justify one’s faulty thinking. The first of that verse says to delight thyself also in the Lord. You must first do that, and then you will be standing in the will of the Lord and not be desiring in your heart things that are not of the Lord.”

She refused to back down even in the face of the storm gathering in his eyes. “How could wanting to care for a homeless child not be of the Lord?”

“Enough.” His voice boomed out so loudly that the people in the Sunday school classes looked around at them. He stuck his fingers and thumb up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes to compose himself before he went on. “It will be decided what the Lord’s will is for the child at the meeting this afternoon. But it would be well for you to remember, Nadine, that the Lord has already blessed you with three daughters.”

So it was with much trepidation that she brought Lorena back to the church that afternoon. Nadine’s heart sank as she saw the people gathering in the church. Her father and his wife, Carla. Carla’s sister, Ella Baxter, and her husband, Joseph. Each time Ella looked over at Lorena, Nadine wanted to scoot a bit closer to the child.

She had never liked Ella. The woman was too much like Carla even though she was closer to Nadine’s age. Neither of the two sisters had children, but they were always quick with advice on how children should be raised. Especially Nadine’s children. They both liked Evangeline, but Kate was a constant topic of harping complaint. She should be more ladylike. She should listen to her elders. She was too quick with a disrespectful remark. She was too restless in church. She spent entirely too much time talking to that bohemian Graham Lindell. If Nadine took up for Kate and praised her free spirit, then Carla would insist Nadine’s father pray over Kate in an attempt to tame that spirit.

Nadine had always countered her father’s prayers with fervent prayers of her own. Prayers that her father would see Kate’s loving heart and joyful attitude instead of worrying about her occasional lapse of obedience and ladylike manners. Those prayers had yet to be answered, but more importantly her father’s prayers had done nothing to change Kate, except perhaps to prove to her that she could sit absolutely still for ten or more minutes without suffering permanent injury.

Kate was sitting perfectly still now. She had her eyes half closed and Nadine could see the prayers rising out of her. Prayers Nadine feared would not be answered as they wished. If only they could have somehow hidden Lorena from the eyes of the other people in Rosey Corner. But nothing stayed hidden in Rosey Corner for long, and by the end of the first day, everyone in the community knew a child had been dropped on the Rosey Corner Baptist Church’s steps like an unwanted puppy.

Her father began speaking. “Brothers and Sisters, we are gathered here together this day in order to make a godly decision in regard to the little sister who was left at our church with the hoped-for assurance that the good people in this very church would act with compassion. I thank all of you for the Christian concern and love that brought you back this afternoon. Let us ask the Lord’s guidance and his blessings upon our actions.” Nadine’s father clutched the sides of the pulpit and bowed his head to pray. His voice boomed out so loud as he addressed the Lord that Lorena was startled. She stared up at him with large eyes.

Kate leaned over and kissed the child’s head, and Nadine squeezed her hand. She thought about just picking the little girl up and carrying her out of the church. It was not going to turn out well. She’d known that as soon as she’d seen her father’s face that morning. It was a feeling that had gotten surer when Father Merritt had shown up and stalked down the aisle to sit ramrod straight on the opposite side of the church from them, looking neither right nor left or making any pretense of bowing his head for the prayer.

Preston Merritt had not stepped foot in this church building for years. For that matter Victor, who sat beside Nadine, had rarely come inside any church since he’d come back from the war, but when Gertie or Aunt Hattie did shame him into attending, he went to the Christian Church on the other side of the road. That was the Merritts’ church. Preston Merritt had been on every pulpit committee that church had formed for the last thirty years. And of course, Nadine’s father had stood in this church’s pulpit even longer.

Now the two men—her father and Victor’s—had come together under the same roof with what Nadine feared was a rare unity of purpose. She stared up at her father as he kept praying. He was beginning to show his age. He had always been a stocky man, but lately he had gained some extra weight that made him get out of breath with any sort of exertion. Even while he was preaching, he sometimes had to stop and hold on to the pulpit while he gathered his wind. The skin on his neck lapped over his shirt collar. Today he had surrendered to the heat enough to leave off his suit jacket, but his tie was pulled tight up against his stiff collar, the same as always. His gray hair was carefully combed to hide the balding spot on top of his head and held in place with a liberal application of pomade. But his voice sounded strong and sure as he addressed the Lord.

She let her eyes wander past Victor over to Father Merritt. He was staring straight ahead, his face stony and his eyes wide open like Nadine’s as her father’s prayer went on and on. He was older than her father, but didn’t look it. Victor said stones didn’t age, that they stayed hard forever. Father Merritt’s body did show a few signs of age—the loss of his hair and the deep frown wrinkles between his eyes. Still, he often claimed to be as strong at sixty-nine as he had been at thirty, and nobody in Rosey Corner challenged the truth of that whether or not they believed it.