Farthest House (8 page)

Luessy’s lips moved so slowly into a smile that they seemed to drift back from her teeth. “I knew it was time for you.”

The heavy clouds, the snow, and the winter hour meant there were no shadows moving on the walls or on the floor. Willow marveled; Mémé never wore a watch or checked a clock. Shadows and their motion told her the time, and she could read their minute hands.

Wanting to keep her drawings a secret until later, because secrets were a full thing she liked to hold in her belly, Willow carried them to Luessy’s desk. She stopped at seeing the top cleared of everything but a few loose pages of poems: Mémé’s favorites, which the two of them had read so many times they’d fallen free of their book binding. “Where are your stories?”

“I’ve written them,” Luessy breathed. “Someone else must find the rest.”

Willow couldn’t take her eyes from the desktop. Mémé did the majority of her writing upstairs in the large attic room, the room Tory called the “Never-used ballroom, where no one has ever danced.” But every flat and stable surface in Farthest House normally had books and notebooks and scattered typed pages with pencil marks like mazes, sentences circled and arrows going here and there. And no matter how thick the clutter, Mable knew not to touch it.

Feeling unsettled again, Willow shoved the pages of poetry to the far edge of the desk, giving herself room to spread out her pictures. She turned back, “I don’t want your stories to be done.”

“Come.” Luessy waited for her thin granddaughter, with her long dark hair and serious eyes, to reach the bed. How to say what she must? “Tory thinks I’m dying. I’m not. This isn’t death.”

Willow believed her; Mémé never lied. If what was happening wasn’t death, then Mémé wasn’t going away, wasn’t going to leave the way Jeannie had. Mémé would get up in the morning, and they’d go to the attic. While Willow painted, Mémé would write. Mémé had always been old. She leaned over her cane the first day Willow came to Farthest House. Just the week before, they put on coats and hats and gloves and walked through the garden looking at the clumps of roses Jonah cut back and bundled in burlap. While they walked, the cat-head cane swung and pointed just like always. This time to the sky, “Ducks, geese. Willow, look how they fly.”

Luessy turned her head toward the door, the movement putting strain on her face. “Is my son here?”

“You mean, Papa?” She didn’t like the mournful-sounding
my son
. “It’s snowing too hard.”

With her eyes on her granddaughter, Luessy opened an arthritic hand, and Willow put her right hand into the bowl of cold skin. Mémé’s hands were moons: moon-shaped, moon-thin, even moon-colored. Willow had seen them glow.

“But you came,” Luessy said. “You weren’t afraid to come.”

“Papa wasn’t afraid. He has a stakeout.” Sliding her hand free of Mémé’s, Willow hurried back out the door, across the hall, and pulled a four-inch strip of velvet ribbon from her bag. “I brought you blue,” she yelled over her shoulder. By the time she reached Mémé’s bed again, she’d explained, “Not dark blue, it’s light blue.”

“Oh, sky blue,” Luessy said. She closed her eyes as if the color sated her. “Blue.”

For four years they’d shared their dreams, their secrets, even their spoons and pockets. Willow crawled across the mattress, not considering herself near enough until she reached Mémé’s shoulder. Poking her thin legs under the heavy blankets, she squeezed in beside Mémé, her toes pushing under Friar. She felt the warmth from both bodies, but as she wiggled deeper, she felt Mémé’s bones. They poked through flesh no thicker than her flannel gown.

Luessy’s fingers opened to clutch the blue, but not before the velvet sheen caught shine from the candlelight. Willow smiled at how Mémé clutched two things: color and light. She watched her grandmother’s bent hand slide up her body, not lifting but dragging with the ribbon to rest over her heart.

Willow’s first piece of velvet ribbon had come on a birthday gift from Luessy, a wide, flat tin of watercolors with Disney characters painted on the lid. Luessy cut that ribbon in half, tied a length around her wrist and tied a length around Willow’s. They wore the matching bracelets to frays before snipping them into long threads and placing them around the railing on the small attic porch. Throughout that day they watched as sparrows and robins came and took the color for their nests. After that, Willow asked Julian, and he drove her to a fabric store and let her pick out several lengths of ribbon in bright colors. These, she cut into four-inch pieces and brought one each time she visited.

“You should have heard her earlier,” Luessy said, her voice sounding hoarse, “insisting I change my mind.”

Though Willow didn’t know what they argued over, she knew Mémé’s disagreement had been with Tory. She liked when the two argued because that meant she was still Mémé’s favorite. “Tory is mean.”

“It’s my body going, not my mind,” Luessy said. She closed her eyes, rested, and took a breath. “I know what I’m doing.”

Willow rested too, close to Mémé’s warmth and with the pleasant feel of Friar’s weight on her feet.

“I see you,” Luessy said. “You’re beautiful.”

Willow stiffened. She was in the fourth grade now, no one seemed to remember that, and too big for pretending. She no longer believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. “You aren’t even looking at me.”

“The eyes are the poorest. See the world with your heart.” She rested. “If you love anything, there’s a beauty in you.”

A small knock sounded at the door, and without waiting for an answer, Mable entered. Nearly thirty years younger than Luessy, her short silver hair lay flat as a doily on her head. She still wore only long caftans, just as she had in my day, this one a deep red, with a gold and fringed shawl around her shoulders. She smiled at Willow, not mentioning the trail of winter wear cluttering the stairs, and leaned down to Luessy. “How is your stomach? Would you try and eat something? Just a bit of broth and toast?”

Luessy struggled with her fatigue, wanting only sleep and Willow beside her. “Bring some for Willow.” She looked into Mable’s eyes and the pain there, “Don’t be afraid.”

Mable laid a hand over Luessy’s, the fringe on her shawl swinging down and brushing the bed. “Can I call Dr. Mahoney again?”

At the word
doctor
, Willow felt her heart jump.

Luessy tried to smile, but lacked the energy. “No.” She rested. “He came this morning. Give me Mother Moses.”

Mable’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked before forcing herself to turn away to the upholstered chair. Mother Moses was draped over the back. Holding the crocheted spread against her body, she slapped her thigh several times trying to coax Friar onto the floor. “Here boy.” Then she scolded, “You’re a stubborn fellow. Get off that bed.”

Willow watched Friar. She knew he didn’t want to leave Mémé and that he was trained to stay off Mother Moses. The sight of the crocheting meant time on the floor. She crawled out from beneath the blankets, grabbed his collar, and coaxed him down. “Stay,” she said, but felt sorry for him. She and Friar were Mémé’s
right-now world
. Mother Moses meant something else. She kissed Friar’s cold nose and helped Mable unfold and unfold Mother Moses across the bed.

“Time to go outside,” Mable said stepping to the doorway. Friar followed her.

Luessy’s hand lay limp on the cream-colored traceries: birds, flowers, and butterflies. Only one tired finger slid half an inch to the left, and then back. “Not cotton string….”

Willow had heard the pronouncement so many times she finished the words, “ … but the bone and muscle of a strong spirit.”

11

Luessy concentrated on Willow, fighting for a few more hours with her granddaughter. “Tell the story of Mother Moses.”

“Do I have to tell the whole story?”

“If you don’t know your stories,” Luessy managed, her breath halting and heavy, “you don’t know who you are or who you can be.” She needed another breath, but the drawn-in air seemed hardly able to do more than fill her mouth. “Your stories tell you,” a breath, “where you are, and how far you’ve come.” Another breath. “They’re your blood.”

Despite Luessy’s insistence, Willow almost dared to start in the middle, but Mémé could never be that tired. “You were at your after-school job in a store, and a bad woman came in.”

“1902. Not
bad
,” another necessary rest and breath, “afraid.”

“But being afraid made her mean. She was going west in a wagon with her husband. She had four kids. All the kids were hungry, and she wanted to trade the blanket for food. That’s the only thing she had, but your boss said, ‘No.’ He said the string wasn’t worth any of his beans or flour, but you loved the blanket so much, you said ‘yes.’ You traded your pay and bought her some food.”

Luessy’s heavy eyelids fluttered closed. “Why did we disagree?”

“You kept asking her the name of the woman who made it, and she kept saying, ‘A slave’.”

With so much energy in the room, I felt cleaved into segments: There was the heartbreak of Tory and her actions—but that puts me ahead of the story—the excitement of those gathered over Luessy’s imminent return, Luessy’s grief at leaving Willow, and my concern for Willow. Who would be her confidant now?

Luessy stirred, “Go on.”

Willow stared at the brass light fixture over the bed, her eyes going around the scrolls, as she tried to remember everything. “The woman didn’t think a slave’s name mattered. She thought people like you, who cared about a slave’s name, caused the war and made her daddy lose everything he ever worked for.” She puffed out her cheeks, letting the air ease out with a sigh. “Mostly, people rode the train to California, but this family was in an old wagon, because the husband wanted to save all his money to buy land. He was letting the children starve because he could get more of those. One kid,” Willow remembered, “already died.”

Sixty years hadn’t erased the memory of looking into the eyes of those starving children, and Luessy’s sudden emotion fed her a spate of energy. “The wife played the chattel, because the man had a dream.” She breathed and rested. “Her dream was for her children to live, but she handed that over.” Luessy labored for breath but would not stop. “Black women, red women too, were chained and herded with whips and guns. White women follow their captors.”

“They are,” Willow parroted from the countless times she’d heard the story, “the slaves even Northerners aren’t too proud to own.”

“The name?”

Willow stroked the knobby but soft string, her fingers following the outline of a butterfly, certain she felt it stirring. “You named it Mother Moses.” Mother Moses wasn’t just a bedcover, Willow knew. Mother Moses breathed as much as did the angels in the room. She even mended herself when necessary.

Turning to look at Mémé, Willow was amazed to see her grandmother had fallen asleep in the space between two sentences, her eyes skating under lids as thin as the cloudy tissue paper she used to wrap her good sweaters. With Mémé asleep, Willow didn’t need to tell the rest of the story, and she snuggled closer, closing her own eyes, putting her head on Mémé’s shoulder and catching the scent of her neck. Not perfume, but something sweet and yeasty as Mable’s rising bread dough.

I’d heard the story of Mother Moses more times than Willow. It was a tale Luessy conjured up just as she did with her mysteries. She based it on the facts found in history and what she knew of the human heart. According to Luessy, the slave was old when she crocheted the blanket because mastery requires years of patience and practice. The woman had also spent her life as a house slave. Field laborers, especially the women, rarely lived beyond the age of forty and had no access even to something as simple and cheap as string. Field slaves had bloody, calloused, and ruined hands, and they dropped at night from exhaustion. As a house slave, the artist may have been burdened with a physical defect, possibly from an injury, a bone that hadn’t been set by a doctor, possibly the result of a beating, something that likely kept her in constant pain and made the grueling work of picking cotton or plowing and planting fields impossible.

Or worse. As a young woman the slave might have caught her owner’s eye, or the eye of her owner’s son, and whoever it was, he wanted her kept close for his convenience. Sweet smelling, not with tobacco juice or red clay ground deep in her heels, rooted in the creases of her skin, sun-cooked into her hair. The artist would have crocheted at night, after she completed her other work, when the house slept, and even
he
had gone back to his wife’s bed. She’d have worked by candlelight, squinting close to the flame, learning how to shape and tie during endless hours of trial and error.

Having that one art must also have helped her carry the weight of her life. For years, butterflies, birds, and flowers must have sculpted themselves in her mind as she scrubbed floors, trimmed wicks, and lay under him. Only then, was Mother Moses born, coming to life in the woman’s aged hands.

The slave had not done the work for her own pallet or to keep a loved one warm. As a slave, she couldn’t own property—even something fashioned with her own hands. She hoped the spread would be beautiful enough to be taken up by whites, off the plantation, and out of the South. There was a world she ached to see, which is why she bled her spirit into the string, a magic only crones possess. The butterflies and birds and things that grew were her wings.

There was more to the whole affair that Luessy hadn’t shared with Willow. Only weeks before Luessy bought the spread, I told her the truth about her mother’s death, not childbirth as I let her believe growing up, but Sabine taking her own life in order to get her infant to America. “She escaped in you,” I promised Luessy, “and her escape is greater with every book you write.”

When Luessy examined the crocheting that first afternoon, she looked at the wide-eyed children waiting in the wagon, she thought with reverence of how the artist’s work had ended up in her hands, and she thought of her mother’s need to escape.

In those first years with Mother Moses, Luessy often asked me why her mother didn’t send word, why she hadn’t asked for help. Luessy well knew Thomas and I would have sailed instantly for France, if only we’d known she was in such grave trouble. The hard truth is, Thomas was innocent, but I was not. Failure to acknowledge another’s pain is not the same as not knowing about it. Denial is not innocence. As for Sabine, did she assume I disowned her and wouldn’t heed her pleas? Or did she feel such darkness that she lost all visions of a future self and all hope of escape? Afraid to tell her story, sure she was the only one and deserving of her fate, she believed I’d be a better mother for her child.

Luessy slept, but Willow scooted off the bed to the small bookcase where she pulled out one of her favorite books, the paintings of Frida Kahlo. Mémé loved them, too, and in Kahlo’s work, Willow found both the bright colors and the mystery she loved. Kahlo’s intense and often macabre pictures felt a match to the picture Willow saw in my lap years earlier—Sabine and the blood from her fingers alive and moving. Kahlo’s work would also make Sister Dominic Agnes frown and get a red face. But the best thing about the pictures was that despite how doctors tried, Kahlo couldn’t be fixed. Willow couldn’t name all Kahlo’s needing-to-be-fixed places; there were too many. Kahlo wasn’t hiding her unfixed places, and she made pictures of bones and skin cut open and blood. One painting showed her in a brace because her back was broken. She wasn’t crying, even though her body had nails in it. She looked straight ahead. Had Kahlo, Willow wondered, escaped like Mother Moses, changing into pictures and color?

Mable opened the door again, Friar bounding past her before she could nudge the light switch with her elbow. She carried a large silver tray with two small plates, one with a sandwich and cookies, and the other with a slice of toast. The tray also held two cups of tea, and Willow smiled. Hers would be sweetened with honey and cream. Hers was the cup with the purple pansies. At the beginning of her visits to Farthest House, when she’d been only six, Mémé let her select a china cup from the collection in the kitchen hutch. They were Spode, thin as breath on cold mornings, and she chose purple. Luessy chose roses. Being served tea in her special cup, as she was every weekend, made Willow feel loved and fitted at Farthest House.

Blowing out all but one candle, Mable nudged the smoking pillars back and set the tray on the nightstand. Although Luessy stirred at the noise and the bed trembling as Willow crawled back in beside her, she gave only a small shake of her head at the toast and tea.

“I’m going to stay the night,” Mable said. “You may need me.”

Luessy eyes were closed, “I have Willow.”

“Let me stay.”

Around the bed the air stirred. “Go,” Luessy whispered. “Have Jonah drive you.”

Did Mable feel ordered by some fate larger than herself? She’d talked the situation over with Tory, and what was there left to do? Call Dr. Mahoney, who’d come every day that week? He told them to relax, give Luessy—who refused to leave Farthest House—a few more days before they physically removed her to a hospital. Now, with the heavy snow falling, even if the man could be persuaded to come for a second time that day, he very likely would not make it up the hill, and someone would have to rescue him.

“You sleep right there,” Mable said to Willow. “If she needs help, get Tory.”

Willow wasn’t sure why she might need Tory. “Mémé’s just sick.” She wasn’t dying. Tomorrow, even though her stories were done, they’d step through the little door in the wall, like Alice through a too-small door, and they’d climb the white steps and spend the day in the attic.

Mable fussed, stalling, handing Willow her food, and finally whispering close to Luessy. “I’ll talk to Tory. She may want me to stay.”

When Mable could be heard going down the stairs, Friar stepped to the nightstand and with a tongue deft and quick as fingers, picked off each section of Luessy’s toast, swallowing before Willow could think to try and stop him. He looked at the food Willow held and then stared a minute at Luessy and whined, but he resisted the urge to jump onto the spread. He circled in place and plopped back to the floor beside the bed.

After some time, Luessy’s voice floated, “I’m up here. Out here.”

Willow finished her food, even sticking two fingers into her cup and scooping up the last dregs of cookie she soaked until the bottom edge melted into her tea. “Do you want to see my pictures?”

“Show me,” and as Willow rushed to the desk, “draw every day.”

“I do.”

“Laziness and fear,” Luessy struggled to be heard, “especially fear, they wait to steal talent.”

“I’m not scared.” She was scared though. People didn’t like her pictures. With the paper rustling, she snuggled back against Luessy. “I drew two.”

They were of old and barefoot women, their clothes ragged at the sleeves and hems, and their faces etched with lines. They didn’t match the pictures Willow saw in her mind, but she liked them, especially how she’d crossed and re-crossed their face wrinkles so that the lines made tiny stars and how she shaded in dark backgrounds, smudging the shadows with an eraser and a finger she sucked to keep wet.

“You paint stories.”

Remembering the warm Sunday afternoon when Mémé took her to the Josyln Art Museum in Omaha, Willow smiled. She’d been surprised that people could have their pictures hung in such a big place and other people paid money to see them. “Will my pictures hang in a museum?”

“Life is what you do. Tomorrow obeys only you.”

In her excitement, Willow kicked free of the covers and scrambled off the bed. “I’ll hang them up.” Glancing back at Mémé, she hesitated. The sight of her grandmother, looking stiff and frail in her white gown, a stranger too skinny, her hair a long tail of unbraided cloud matted to her pillow, was frightening. Fighting an inclination to run back, she decided the best thing was to hang the work because the pictures made Mémé happy.

The height of the drawings already on the wall matched the height of Willow’s reach, and she worked on her whole display, changing the positions of several pieces, getting fresh pieces of tape, lining the drawings up this way, and then that, according to her favorites.