Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (23 page)

They went back to the house, and Mammaw got out her scrap basket, filled with the small pieces of cloth she had saved from sewing projects, declaring she needed a new rag rug for just inside the door.

“It’s hard to keep your mind on two things at once,” she said to the girls, “and if your hands are busy, you may not fret so much over what you can’t do one single thing about.” She poked around through the ten-inch strips, all cut the same length, and selected a blue one and a yellow print. There were strips from old curtains, too, and from chair covers and bedspreads.

“What I want you to do,” she said, “is tie the ends of these pieces together into three long strips, all the same length. Like this.” Her knobby fingers demonstrated. “Then, when the scraps are all used up, we’ll braid the three long strips together, pulled nice and tight, till we’ve got us one long cloth rope. After that I’ll coil it around and around itself and stitch it all together. Looks good, don’t you think? Got me some fine colors there.”

Ivy June couldn’t tell if Catherine wanted the job or not, but she was too polite, as always, to refuse. And somehow it did seem to help. Mammaw turned the radio on to a country music station, one of only two stations they could get here in the hollow, and as Catherine’s fingers sorted through the basket, looking for colors that looked nice together, she relaxed a little and even smiled once or twice.

“Catherine,” Papaw said when he came home and heard the news about her mother, “when someone’s in a worrying place, it’s a comfort to know the family is carrying on, same as before. Your ma’s right where she should be now, and you carrying on as she planned is what she needs to hear. The minute your daddy wants you someplace else, we’ll take you there. Is that something you can hold on to?”

“I … I guess,” said Catherine.

About five, Ezra came running up the hill to say that Miss Dixon was down at the house and wanted to tell Catherine some more about her mother. Catherine dropped her work and flew out the door, Ivy June following close behind. Breathless, they ran down the hill and up the steps to Ma’s house, where the teacher was sitting on the swing, Ma on a folding chair across from her, Danny on Ma’s lap. Howard, who stood at the side of the house, seemed ready to run at the slightest scowl from Ivy June.

Miss Dixon got up and hugged Catherine, then pulled her down on the swing beside her. “When I came back from shopping this morning, there was a message from your dad that he’d tried to reach me, and he left a number for me to call. I did—his cell phone, I think—and he said that your mother was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic and was resting comfortably. Your doctor in Lexington had recommended a heart specialist there and made the arrangements.”

“How bad is it?” Catherine asked.

“I don’t know the details, Catherine, but the surgery is scheduled for Monday morning. Your dad said he would call you at school as soon as it’s over. We’ll let you take the call in the office. He said to tell you that your mom knows how much you want to be there, but she feels much better knowing that you’re here with Ivy June. Peter and Claire are doing fine at your grandparents’.”

Catherine tipped back her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “I think that not knowing—not being there—is the worst of all.”

“That’s the truth,” said Mrs. Mosley. “I remember one evening I near worried myself to death when Russell was out in a snowstorm. He never did get back the whole night, and I imagined him froze somewhere out on the road. All the while a neighbor had taken him in, and he was warm and toasty as could be. But there was no way of me knowing that. I’d have a hundred times wished myself out in that snowstorm dealing with it than sitting here worrying about what
might
be.”

“Well, I promised your father that if he had any more messages for you, I’d drive up here just as soon as I could and deliver them,” Miss Dixon said to Catherine. “I just didn’t want you to worry all weekend.”

“Thank you,” Catherine said, and smiled a little when Danny slid off his mother’s lap and came over to hug Catherine’s legs in sympathy.

As the girls went back up the hill later, Catherine said, “Please don’t tell anyone at school about Mom, okay?”

“What’s so shameful about being sick?” Ivy June asked.

“I don’t want people asking about her when I don’t have any answers yet. I don’t want them treating me any different because of her.”

“All right,” Ivy June agreed.

There was chicken for dinner that evening, with noodles that Mammaw had made by hand. Ivy June fed Grandmommy at the table, mashing green beans into mush, and keeping a dish towel tucked in the neck of the old woman’s dress to catch the spills.

Mammaw dished up the applesauce and the green beans she had canned the summer before. She took a fresh pan of biscuits out of the oven and served the stewed tomatoes and okra, all the time telling about a squirrel that had got in the crawl space under the roof once, and the trouble Papaw had trying to get it out. Catherine listened, eating sparingly, but at least she ate.

Later, Catherine and Ivy June washed themselves at the kitchen sink and put on their pajamas in front of the woodstove. The rain that had begun around dinnertime came down heavier now, and the house creaked as the wind picked up. After they got into bed, Ivy June noticed that Catherine reached for her mother’s locket on the backless chair and, enclosing it tightly in one hand, put her head on the pillow.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

April 6

House is still as a morgue, except for Grandmommy’s whining. She’s all confused about who went to Cleveland and “where that new girl’s off to now.” If she says “last spring for somebody” one more time, I’ll scream. Catherine will, anyway.

We didn’t go to church with Papaw and Mammaw; Catherine didn’t want to, and Mammaw didn’t insist. So I went down to the house and told Jessie she didn’t have to sit with Grandmommy, I’d do it. Daddy’s out smoking again. Ma says he’s going to drive Jessie’s car to the man in Cutshin this afternoon, see if he thinks the truck is worth fixing up or does Daddy have to buy another one.

I came back to Mammaw’s to eat my breakfast. Catherine stayed in the bedroom doing her math problems. It’s so quiet you can hear the skitter of a squirrel on a limb near the outhouse.

When Mammaw got back from church, she made an A+ Sunday dinner. This time we had ham with the fried chicken, potatoes with giblet gravy, boiled eggs pickled in beet juice, and biscuits with rhubarb preserves.

Papaw folded his hands at the table and said, “We pray the Lord that he look down on Catherine’s mother in Cleveland, and that the doctors feel his presence in the operating room. We ask that she be blessed with health, so that she can be a testament to the Lord’s handiwork. Amen.”

That set Grandmommy off again, asking about Cleveland, but one bite of Mammaw’s biscuits, she got her mind on other things.

The weather turned cold, so we didn’t sit around on the porch like we did yesterday. After Catherine and I cleaned up the dishes, Mammaw let us have the table to do our project for social studies. Everybody in seventh grade was assigned a report about life in Kentucky. Some got environment for a topic, some got air quality, roads, natural resources, or about any other thing you could think of, but Catherine and I got festivals and celebrations
,
comparing the county where she lives with what we have around here.

I could see that her list was about five times longer than mine. I only had two festivals I could think of—the Daniel Boone Trailblazers Festival in the spring, and the Mountain Herb Festival in the fall. Catherine had the Bluegrass Classic Dog Show and the Champagne Run Horse Trials and the Clog Fest and I-don’t-know-what-all. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and I noticed she kept reaching up to finger the gold locket around her neck.

It helped some that Ma sent Howard to bring me and Catherine down for a taffy pull. That’s something Ma gets in her mind to do when somebody needs cheering up bad. Howard, of course, was all quiet and politeness, and Ezra and Danny’d already forgotten about Catherine’s mama, just wanting to get their hands on a piece of that cooled syrup, laughing and giggling as they pulled it back and forth until it started to turn white and lose its shine.

I liked my family tonight. Even Daddy turned away from the TV, laughing at us. Sometimes I get to wondering, if we were to have just enough of what we need, not any more—if Daddy’s truck could be repaired and Ma could get her teeth fixed and we could have us a new refrigerator and even a bathroom—would everybody be different? Or
would there be a whole new list of complaints? Some of each, I’d guess. The rich folks on TV have problems we never even heard of. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can make life a lot easier.

Ivy June Mosley

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

April 6

I wish I were anywhere but here. How could the doctor not have known about Mom’s heart problem? Or confused it with her pneumonia? Aren’t we supposed to have the best in Lexington? Hasn’t Dr. Wilson been with us forever?

All I get from Ivy June’s family is old-fashioned reassurance. “There’s always calm after a storm,” “Trust the Lord,” or “It’s going to be okay.” None of them know a single thing about what’s going to happen to Mom. But then, I guess nobody back home does either.

How can people live this way-shut off up here in the hills without a phone? They’ll spend their money
on a satellite dish but go without a telephone. Why don’t they form a protest and demand that the phone company put in a line? How can I stand not knowing what’s going on all the time over in Cleveland? That’s just the way we live,” Ivy June says. The phone company’ll get around to us by and by.” They just accept things. Well, I don’t!

And yet … at the taffy pull down at her mother’s place, I was thinking how lucky it is that our family has health insurance. Her mom needs her teeth fixed and her dad has some kind of asthma. The only things they have to depend on are Jessie’s paycheck and Mr. Mosley’s dad, and he’s sixty-four. If I were in that family, I think I’d be planning my escape as soon as possible. Go somewhere I could get through college and find a job. But there I am, judging again

One thing though. Even though I don’t want to talk with them about my mom, because none of them say the right thing-and I don’t even know what the right thing would be-I still want Ivy June near me.

I wonder how Claire and Peter are taking this, really. Wonder what Gramps has to say, and whether Rosemary says anything helpful at all. Tonight I’ll hold Mom’s locket and think good thoughts, and tomorrow Dad will call me at school. Meanwhile, at least I have Ivy June.

Catherine Combs

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE