Authors: Diane Munier
Darnay Road (18 page)
Darnay
Road 34
“Intuition
is like…well if you’re a girl…you just figure something out. You think you
know…because you do,” I say.
Granma
is doing her chuckle she does when she eavesdrops. She doesn’t usually say
anything, but she listens.
Easy
can ask some way harder questions than my granma. I have just started reading
The
Secret of the Old Clock
by Carolyn Keene to him and first page has Nancy
saying how her dad needs her intuition and Easy wants to know what that is. He’s
heard of it before of course, but he never got around to figuring it out I
guess.
I
could give him some examples—like how my intuition tells me he is good, and
maybe in some trouble, and often hungry, and alone, and worried even if he says
he’s not. But I don’t say any of that so maybe I am learning how to hold back
my words just a little bit.
So
I tell him to sit on my chair and I sit on the top porch step cause I can still
be dry with the overhang and I say, “Want me to read you some?” and he says to
go ahead.
So
the whole time I’m reading he’s just watching me and Granma is reading her
magazine rolled up so we can’t see the cover.
I
wish my braids weren’t pinned up so I could hold one, but I’m holding Little
Bit anyway until she goes to Easy and he ends up holding her and scratching her
all over. She loves him so much and stretches out and gets her real dopey eyes
like when Granma has had too much out of the glass and sings about Kansas City.
Little Bit is just happy.
But
Easy likes Nancy Drew. I finish chapter one and I look at him and raise my
brows and he nods like I should go on.
Me
and Abigail May love when Ned Nickerson shows up. That’s Nancy’s boyfriend. I
think it’s probably really great to have a boyfriend like Ned and someday maybe
I’ll have one, that’s what I always think, but it could be Easy cause that’s
what happens with Moondoggie, Gidget doesn’t know he’ll love her like he does
in the end and she’s so, so happy, but with Ned he helps Nancy solve mysteries
and me and Easy already did that, solved two, about the confessional where
Father sits and also the top floor of my school. I don’t think it’s haunted at
all. I don’t think Abigail May saw Sister Mary Sponza. It was probably just a
pigeon. Or a penguin. That makes me smile.
Well
the rain lets up and Easy says he best go, and Granma is sound asleep and I say
we should change out that bandage so he follows me back inside and he sits in
the kitchen and I go in the bathroom and get the supplies and he says he can do
it. He peels off the bandage and it is gooey and red and I put the Bactine on
his scrape and he hisses like a flat tire.
“I’m
sorry Easy,” I say because it takes all my courage to be a nurse like this.
And
he does the strangest thing, he touches the braids pinned on top of my head.
I
just hold still and stare at him. He’s looking at my hair, not my eyes so it’s
not even hard to keep looking at him.
Then
he does look at me. He pulls back the hand that’s not holding Little Bit but
touching my hair so lightly.
I
just smile at him cause he looks so serious and life is just a bowl of
cherries, Granma says, but I never know what that means.
He
takes over then and I hold Little Bit while he wraps his leg with a new
bandage.
“Easy?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s…how’s
your Mom?”
“Well
what’s the matter with her?” I ask.
He
shakes his head. “She don’t go to the doctor.”
“Does
she want to? Cause my Granma….”
“Georgia…just
leave her alone, okay? If you get your Granma coming over and even Miss May,
then I can’t be your friend.”
Well
that about hurts my feelings so badly I lift enough to sit on my heels just to
get away from him.
“I…don’t
want to be mean like that. But she don’t want to be bothered and I…take care of
her, so you won’t leave me a choice.” This is the most he’s said about almost
anything.
“So
I can’t even meet her or you won’t even be my friend?” I say, knowing he won’t
want to say all that again and I don’t want him to. But I’d like to meet her at
least.
He
fiddles with his bandage and looks at me.
“Maybe
I could ask my Granma to send her a plate….”
“No.”
He shakes his head a little. “She won’t eat it.”
“Then
you could.”
“No.”
“I
want to help you.”
“Why?
I don’t need that.”
“What
does she eat then? She don’t like meatloaf or something?”
“She
don’t eat much. Just a couple things. We’re fine.”
“Well…what
about Cap? He ever coming home or….” Or is he like Abigail May, just gone into
a tunnel of nothing never to return again.
“He’ll
come back for school probably. I don’t know.”
“He
with your relatives?”
“Yeah.”
“So
you’re from there? Shoehorn?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s
the funniest name ever.”
“Yeah,”
he says and he looks away and pokes his tongue into his cheek and makes a bump
like he’s sucking on a jawbreaker or a gumball.
“You
ever eat Sputnik gum?”
“What?”
he laughs a little.
“Sputnik
gum! Don’t you remember it? A big blue ball of gum that looked like Sputnik.”
“No,”
he laughs.
“Well
you missed out then. They don’t sell it anymore. Abigail May wouldn’t eat it
cause she said each piece had a little dog inside.”
“Why’d
she say that?” he laughs.
“Sputnik
Two had a dog inside. We don’t know if he lived. The Russians are so mean. I’ll
bet that dog was so, so lonely. If they come over here I’m hiding Little Bit.
I’ll never let her go into space.”
He
smiles at me but he shakes his head. “The Russians ain’t ever getting into
America,” he says.
“What
about Castro?” I say. We had all those days during the beginning of last school
year when our teachers listened to the radio and we waited to see if Castro was
going to bomb America. I was never so scared in my life, but President Kennedy
didn’t let it happen and Granma said that he was a gift from God.
“United
States whips everybody,” he says. “We never lose a war.”
“Well
I know we’re the strongest in the whole world. I’m so happy to be an American.
I wouldn’t want to be from any other country ever.” I’m just so happy that he
seems so sure.
“Me
neither. Soon as I can I’m going to join the army.”
“Like
John Wayne?” I say.
“Pretty
much.”
I
whistle. “You’ll have to do what they say,” I tell him.
“I
will. They don’t scare me.”
He’s
already brave, I know that. I have to think a whole new way now. Moondoggie is
nothing like a soldier. I don’t even think Moondoggie ever held a gun.
But
Steve McQueen has. All I can think of is
The Magnificent Seven
. Easy
would make the magnificent eight. I know that’s cowboys, but he’s that brave.
“You
want to see our bomb shelter?” I ask him.
He
does want to see that. So we go out the backdoor and he follows me around to
the cellar and I feel a little strange showing him something Abigail May and I
have always guarded so carefully. But Easy won’t tell. So I ask him to lift the
cellar door cause that’s always the hardest part, and he lifts it and I lead us
down the stairs and into the cellar. I tell him to close the door and it’s dark
at first before I find the cord and pull the light. It’s not bright, but you
can see everything. All of Granma’s jars on the shelves because she doesn’t can
anymore, she says that why God created Moe’s.
“Those
are our supplies,” I say pointing at the blankets where me and Abigail May,
well now just me sit, and our box with the flashlights and the food.
He
is smiling and he looks at me. “This is a cellar.”
“Yeah
but Abigail May thinks we could make it in here cause it’s solid and at least
it’s underground.”
He
keeps looking at me.
“Well
you could come too, if anything happens.”
He
keeps looking.
“Georgia,”
he says, then nothing else.
“I
know you said they can’t get here.”
“You
won’t ever need a bomb shelter,” he says. “No one is going to hurt America. Not
ever. If Russians came I would keep you safe.”
“You…would?”
“Yeah.”
“What
about Granma?”
“Americans
will fight. We’ll always fight and we’ll win,” he says. “I do it now. I’m not
taking anything anymore.”
It
takes me a minute. I hear what he’s saying. “You’re not?”
“No.”
We’re
looking at each other. “I didn’t know…did your dad hurt you sometimes?”
He
looks behind him at the door, then back at me. “It doesn’t matter now,” he
says. “You can’t tell. Don’t say that to your Granma.”
“I
told you…I wouldn’t.”
“If
you have to….”
“I
won’t.”
He
thinks he has to go then and I hear the Mr. Softie truck but I don’t even care.
“He
hurt you?”
“You
can’t tell.”
“I
wouldn’t. Those marks on you…?”
He
bows his head and he’s pinching top of his nose and I can’t see his eyes. But I
walk over to him and I pat his arm. “Easy,” I say.
He
looks at me, and he’s so sad in his eyes. He can’t even cry.
I
take his hand then. “I’ll always be your friend, Easy.”
He
puts his arms around me then and I’m holding Little Bit, and I have one arm
around Easy and I pat his back. I already know I love him. I hope he knows it
too.
Darnay
Road 35
I
finally get a letter from Abigail May. She got my fat letter and wrote me this
one. She starts out saying she does write all the time like she said but she
just doesn’t mail one every day. Mr. Figley says writing everyday takes too
many five cent stamps and money doesn’t grow on trees.
Well hogwash on that.
Old Prunley is Mr. Scrooge.
Anyway,
Abigail asked Ricky if he wanted to do
The Parent Trap
backwards. In
that movie, one of the best ever, Hayley Mills plays twins and the twins join
forces to get their divorced parents back together. Maybe I love, love that
movie because I am the only other kid I’ve ever known who had parents that
divorced. My mother and dad divorced when I was a baby even though Catholics
are to never ever divorce. And Dad brought me to Granma the way the stork
brings babies to parents all over this land. I was nearly two years old and
Granma said that stork never worked so hard. By the time he got to Missouri he
was exhausted.
I
know she doesn’t mean Stanley. Or maybe she does. I love that part about the
stork though.
Granma
says she asked that stork, “Why is this kid so old? I wanted a nice fresh baby.
A boy. What the heck am I going to do with a little girl?”
And
the stork said, “Lady, just take this kid and don’t ask questions.”
So
she did.
Sometimes
I need to hear that story. I lay my head on her lap and she runs her hand over
my hair and she says that part about the stork and her not knowing what to do
with a little girl and it makes me laugh because she knows everything there is
to do with a little girl—with me. And if she doesn’t know, well I help her.
“Is
that why you always get the headache?” I ask.
“Yes,”
she says. “Bottles and bottles of Bufferin to raise this small girl.”
It
makes me so happy when she says that. See I’m not really a headache all the
time just some of the time. She’s just saying that because I’m not giving her a
headache. See?
“Tell
me about Renee,” I ask, and Granma says how my mother appeared in lady’s
magazines.
I
have a picture but it’s like a drawing of a woman with short dark hair who
looks like Elizabeth Taylor, only so elegant she’s like black-haired Barbie in
one of her gowns. She’s so beautiful I try to imagine I grew in her tummy, but
I can’t imagine that I ever knew her.
She’s
just a drawing.
I
asked Granma if my mother ever wanted me and Granma says Renee, that’s her
name, was young and frivolous and she couldn’t take care of a baby and be a
famous model. She had to go to Europe to work and so Dad divorced her. Then she
got sick there and died.
It
used to make me very sad, but now I’m just sad sometimes. I only remember one
thing and it’s a shadowy living room in what I now know was Chicago and I’m
sitting on the couch and I won’t go to bed and Renee is standing in the dark in
a beautiful flowing white nightgown telling me I can sit in the dark if I want
to but her and Stanley are going to bed. I guess I’m on my high horse even
though I’m very small.
But
she isn’t angry, she’s just going along. That is all I remember.
Anyway
when Gloria Sue went to Florida for good we shared that too, both our parents
leaving us to go to work in a faraway city. Only Abigail May stayed with her
aunt and I stayed with Granma, of course.
Abigail
May wants Ricky to help her get Gloria Sue and Mr. Prunley also known as Mr.
Figley apart so she can come back to the real home she loves. She said she is
very very homesick and her mother has no time for her as she always works or
goes to the country club to play cards with Prunley or to go dancing or to play
bingo.
Ricky
told Abigail May to suck an egg. He doesn’t like living in an apartment and he
hates Figley and Figley can’t tell him what to do, but he loves the beach and
he’s learning how to surf so he stays out all day and Abigail is alone at the
apartment.
Well
that is just terrible. Ricky says Abigail May needs to keep her pointy little
nose out of Gloria Sue’s troubles.
Abigail
May says Prunley says Gloria Sue doesn’t need to spend so much money on her and
Ricky. He says Ricky, who just turned twelve like Easy, is plenty old enough to
earn some of his keep.
Ricky
mowed lawns here but that was just for extra money. I heard Aunt May tell my
Granma that Mr. Prunley is going to realize it was way cheaper to just send
money to Aunt May and let her do the rest. She said he’s in for a rude
awakening. I never know what that means exactly except for a big lesson. But
the rude part, I’m not sure.
Anyway
Prunley wants Ricky to be a box-boy at the grocery but Ricky says he ain’t
doing it, or anything that old fart wants.
I
don’t know what costs so much when it comes to raising a kid. We can’t drive or
anything. My dad always sends money to Granma for me. I wonder if he wants to
send that money. I mean, maybe he wishes I’d never been born or something. That
would be terrible. For me. Maybe for Granma but if she didn’t know me she
wouldn’t be sad. Man my head could explode with all these ideas sometimes.
Anyway,
Abigail May does not want to go to school in Tampa. Prunley says they have to
go to public cause Catholic is too expensive and too far away and there’s no
bus. So Abigail May has been crying everyday about going to public cause they
don’t give as good an education and no religion class and the publickers know
one another and she won’t know anyone.
Can
I?
I
finish reading Easy
The Secret of the Old Clock
. He says he likes it,
but he’s laughing too.
I
say, “Easy what is so funny?”
And
he says, “Nothing. You just…you’re a good reader.”
Well
I feel about so, so proud.
Later
Granma says, “I believe that boy would sit just as rapt if you read him the
phonebook.”
“You
mean he’s faking?” I say cause he does listen very well.
“Oh
no. He’s not faking,” she says.
Granma
and her ideas. Sometimes she doesn’t make sense to anyone but herself.
But
Granma does walk me down to Miss Little’s with a plate of cookies the next day.
She says she doesn’t want to get it started, and I say what and she says Miss
Little coming to our house and being crazy.
Easy
told us over supper, another supper which was fried chicken, what we have every
Thursday, and my Granma makes the best, also mashed potatoes and gravy, but
Easy told how Miss Little behaved when he finished her yard. He says she came
outside holding a kitten, one of mine though we do not say it in front of
Granma cause she said the whole subject gives her the headache. Easy said Miss
Little walked all over the yard just talking to herself. She thinks her husband
cleared it out, he says, and now she’s worried the bad people can see her.
So
I say to my Granma, “Did you ever see Miss Little be regular? Like before her
husband got killed in the war?”
And
Granma says Miss Little was never anything but peculiar but everyone just loved
John and he seemed to help Miss Little look more normal.
Easy
says Miss Little has something broken inside, in her brain maybe. But I think
it’s her heart and when I tell Easy he says wherever it is, it’s not her fault.
So
I get to thinking about it, how Easy has worked so hard for Miss Little and
what a great American he is trying to be. Granma tells me not to get on one of
my campaigns. But I don’t think I ever get on a campaign. I’m not running for
president, I’m just a kid.
“Granma
just think about it. If Darnay Road was a farm like in
The Little House on
the Prairie Books
, we’d all be on the same farm!” I say. I mean, you think
of all the houses around here on the same one hundred and sixty acres and you
get what I’m saying.
“The
funny farm maybe,” Granma says. “Here we are close enough we have to give one
another some space. I say Miss Little has a right to be anyway she wants long
as she’s not hurting anyone. You learn this when you are older. You learn to
look the other way and let others be.”
So
next day we take the cookies, well my Granma is holding them and all the way
fussing about how she better not miss
The Edge of Night
and I’m walking
too fast cause she has bunions which sounds like onions in her shoes, but I
don’t say that either cause she also has corns and I say onions and corn in her
shoes and she never thinks that is funny.
We
get to Miss Little’s and it is all creepy and shut up tight and Easy has
cleaned the yard and now all the bald patches show, but at least there’s no
trash around. We go on the porch and Granma steps right up and knocks with her
free hand that’s wearing the cotton glove and holding the other glove as the
other hand is holding the plate, an old one she doesn’t expect to ever see
again, she told me, and I think she might be right.
Well
Miss Little doesn’t answer.
“Oh
Miss Little,” I say. I sing it kind of. That’s how we call one another around
here. But she don’t open either. My Granma is trying to get me to look at her
so we can go, but I ‘look the other way,’ cause maybe Miss Little is trying to
find her housecoat or something not that being in her slip usually stops her.
“This
is why we hire priests,” Granma says mostly to herself and she knocks again.
“…never does work out when I go against my own intuition,” she is saying, and I
keep looking the other way.
The
door cracks a little. Miss Little is looking out, first at me, then her eyes,
well eye gets bigger when she sees Granma.
“Viola?”
she says.
Granma
clears her throat. “Well for heaven sakes Lavinia I didn’t know if you’d
remember me or not.”
The
door widens some and you can feel the heat come out, and the smell, ooo-eee.
“I
remember,” Miss Little says. “You brought John’s lunchbox that time.”
Granma
laughs. “Well he did leave it sitting on the side of that truck and it fell
right in the street in front of my house. Don’t imagine he had much to eat that
day come noon.”
Now
you could blow me down with a feather and pick me up with a shovel. Granma
knows Miss Lavinia Little more than I realized.
“Well
I ain’t fixed for company,” Miss Little says.
It
smells so sour around here. Worse than Easy’s house that day.
“Well
this here is my grand-daughter Georgia Christine.” Then Granma seems to
remember the cookies and shoves them toward Miss Little. “We brought you these.
Don’t care about the plate, so….”
Miss
Little doesn’t even look at the cookies. She’s looking at me. “She comes
around,” she says not friendly but more like she’s suspicious of me.
“Well,”
Granma says, “she’s up and down here.”
“She
looks in my windows sometimes,” Miss Little says gathering a dirty housecoat
under her chin…hairs.
I
am open-mouthed looking at Granma. I didn’t look in Miss Little’s window on
purpose, not up close. But I did see my kittens in there so pardon me.
