Gertie's Choice (9 page)

The house was as John
described. It was not very large, but it was very clean and
everything in the kitchen looked almost new. Mrs. Davis had
prepared them a meal and set the table with flowers. Gertie was
grateful and actually hated to see Mrs. Davis leave when she
did.

Gertie started to do the
dishes after they had eaten and John asked her why she didn’t use
the dishwasher. Gertie’s response was “Oh, great, is she here?” She
covered her shame when John laughed. Gertie’s face felt warm and
she was afraid she had made her first mistake in this house after
only an hour.

John did finally notice
that he was the only one laughing and he put his arm around Gertie.
“I meant, we have a machine that washes the dishes for us. Do you
want me to show you how to use it?”

“Yes, please,”

John showed Gertie how to
load the dishwasher and how and where to put the soap in and
explained the different knobs on the machine. It would be the first
of many lessons that Gertie would learn over the course of time she
and John lived together. John was patient and kind and Gertie fell
more in love with him every day.

It was harder on Ophelia.
She and Donald did not get a long at all. He was not a mean child,
but he just did not seem to care about anything. Gertie would read
him stories and try to play games with him, but nothing she did
seemed to make him feel loved.

When it was late that first
night and both Donald and Ophelia were asleep, John asked Gertie if
she was ready to call it a day and retire to the bedroom. Again,
Gertie felt that panic come over her. As much as she loved John,
the only experience she had with being with a man had been being
abused by the Great Evil. She was afraid and did not know what to
do or say.

“I am not tired, you go
ahead and go to bed, John.” She said, looking at John and hoping he
would not take that the wrong way. In answer to the expression on
Gertie’s face, John put his arm around Gertie and said “I can sit
here with you awhile longer and we can talk.” He said, guessing
correctly that she was not ready to be with him in that
way.

“You need your sleep.” She
said. John kissed Gertie on the cheek and said “Don’t stay up too
long, the children will no doubt be up early tomorrow
morning.”

When John woke up the next
morning, Gertie was still on the couch, although she had fallen
asleep sometime during the night. John wondered if the love Gertie
had for Ophelia’s father would override her feelings for him much
longer. Gertie had never told him anything about Ophelia’s father,
other than the fact that he was deceased. He vowed to give her as
much time as she needed to feel comfortable with him, hoping that
one day she would change her mind and marry him and be able to
enjoy all aspects of married life.

Time went on and not much
changed. Mrs. Davis was very helpful and came over often. Her son
Ted would cut the grass and help out with other small chores the
days that John had to be back on the base.

Gertie missed Enchanted
and the people there. When she and Ophelia found themselves all
alone when Donald was sleeping or engrossed in some game he was
playing, Gertie would talk about Enchanted to Ophelia. She was
careful what she said because of all of the changes this little
girl had been through in her life. There was no way of knowing how
much Ophelia had taken on of her father. She knew not how much
being born so many years later than she should have been because of
the lightening tunnels that brought them to this new world might
have affected her. Although Ophelia looked like any other four year
old child, she was actually decades older than that.

Gertie did tell Ophelia
stories of her aunt Ophelia for whom she had been named. She told
her that her name sake lived far away with her husband William and
her grandmother. Ophelia did not like to hear those stories because
Gertie always looked so sad while telling them.

Gertie also worried about
herself, would her own beauty fade? Gertie had always done what she
wanted to do and there were many times that she questioned her
decision to give up Enchanted and her life there for living in this
little box of a house. She had no time to just be herself because
although John was gone a lot with his military job, the ever
present Donald was there and Gertie knew that he would report to
his father any unusual activities he would notice.

One day Donald and Ophelia
were playing and got into yet another argument. Donald had grabbed
a ribbon out of Ophelia’s hair and was running away with it to
tease her. Ophelia became quite upset and started to chase Donald
to get her ribbon back. Donald was running in a circle with Ophelia
closely behind him yelling for him to stop.

Suddenly, a big puff of
blue smoke appeared, stopping both children in their tracks. Donald
dropped the ribbon and ran into the house and under his bed.
Ophelia ran to her mother.

“Mom! There is blue fog
outside!”

Gertie looked out the
window at the now dissipating blue mist. “What were you doing when
you saw the blue?” She asked.

“Donald took my hair ribbon
and I was chasing him around trying to get it back.” She
said.

“Donald saw it too?” Gertie
asked her frightened daughter.

“Yes, it is probably all
his fault! Can’t we just go back home to Enchanted, mother? This
place scares me and Donald scares me too!”

Instead of the explanation
Ophelia was waiting for, or the answer to her question about going
back to Enchanted, Gertie just took Ophelia by the shoulders. “You
are not to run around in circles like that, young lady. You must
listen to me and never do that again, do you hear me?”

Ophelia looked at her
mother “That is it? No reason why I had blue smoke coming from me?
Donald never had blue smoke coming out of his butt and he farts all
the time! What is wrong with me?”

“There is nothing wrong
with you, Ophelia. We are just different than Donald and his
father. We have to be careful what we say and do. Your mortal body
is small, but you are wise way beyond what your size would
indicate.” Gertie said.

“I know that mother, but
why do we have to stay here? Why can’t we go back to Enchanted? Why
is everything different here? Why is Donald growing taller than I
am when he is so much younger? Can’t we just give Donald to Mrs.
Davis? She seems to love him and misses taking care of him since we
arrived and it’s not like we love him or anything!” Ophelia
cried.

“I do care about Donald,
and I love his father.” Gertie told her daughter. It was an
explanation that Ophelia was to hear repeated many times more over
the years.

When Donald and Ophelia
started school, Gertie had a lot more time to herself. She did not
involve herself too much with the school at first because she was
afraid of being different. She had already overheard some of the
other mothers talking about how young and beautiful she was.
Although that was a great compliment, it only drew more attention
to herself.

Gertie started to give
money to various charities in town and after a while she got
involved in the volunteer programs. Finally, Gertie felt like she
was being useful and filling her time away from John and the
children helping others made the days go by quicker.

They lived off of John’s
meager wages, but Gertie used her own wealth that John did not know
about, to help out the poor and elderly, as well as for the
disadvantaged children in the area. Although this brought peace to
her, it also made her very well known in their town. Gertie did her
best to give her help and her money without drawing attention to
herself, but a great beauty that also had a beautiful heart was not
to be overlooked.

John was proud of his
wife, as he always had been. His heart broke that although she had
finally agreed to sleep in the same bed as he, that there had been
no intimate relations between the two. For her mindset, Gertie
thought that the issue was settled and thought no more about it.
She liked when John held her until she fell asleep, but she was
content with that and never imagined that he longed for much
more.

John believed that it was
Gertie’s morals that kept them together, but not living as man and
wife. He also wondered if she still could not let Ophelia’s father
go in her heart and so he would asked Gertie every few months to
marry him. Gertie’s answer always remained the same. “I love you,
John, but no.”

Chapter 14

Time went on and although
both children were doing well in school, Ophelia soon became
restless and bored. She loved to hear her mother’s stories about
this wonderful place called Enchanted and it was all Ophelia could
think about. She wanted to go there and at night she even had
dreams that she was actually there. She had little bits and pieces
of actual memories, but she had had so many changes and
environments in her lifetime, that it was all very confusing to
her.

There was a little girl in
Ophelia’s class named Adela Johnson who seemed to be everywhere
that Ophelia was. She had done everything she could do to become
friends with Ophelia. Adela lived two blocks from Ophelia’s house
and it seemed to Ophelia that Adela had camped out on her porch
more days than not after school.

Gertie was glad that
Ophelia had found a friend, but noticed that Adela seemed to follow
Donald around more than Ophelia. This was good news to Gertie. She
knew that Ophelia would be just fine, but that Donald needed to
have more friends and socialize more. Donald was a rather awkward
child. She felt sorry for him that he had lost his mother at his
birth and that his father was away so much, so Gertie did try and
spend as much time with him as she could without angering
Ophelia.

Fact was, everything
seemed to anger Ophelia. She was rude to her mother, indifferent to
John, and downright mean to Donald. Donald could be mean as well,
but he was no match for Ophelia.

One morning as Donald
stood by the refrigerator drinking orange juice, Ophelia was
sitting at the table watching him. There was a big box of cereal on
top of the refrigerator and suddenly it fell, right onto Donald’s
head. Ophelia laughed and Donald started to yell. Gertie came into
the kitchen and asked what was going on. Ophelia said “I don’t
know, I have been sitting here the entire time, I never got up. Not
my fault he bumped the refrigerator and it fell on his
head.”

Donald had to admit that
Ophelia had not stood up, but that did not stop him from giving her
a mean look anyway. Gertie looked at her daughter and instantly
knew what had happened, but she said nothing in case she was
mistaken.

After one particularly
long and combative day, Gertie laid in her bed. She was missing
John who was away at the base, and missing her old life in
Enchanted. She found herself with tears in her eyes, which was a
new experience for her. Dots of a watery blue color fell on her
pillow. In her own bedroom, Ophelia was also having a bad
night.

Gertie had mentioned how
the beautiful red ring that she wore could take them back to
Enchanted. That day when Gertie had taken off the ring and placed
it into a velvet box, Ophelia saw her chance and took
it.

Now, sitting on her bed,
Ophelia held the ring and chanted “Oh magical ring, please take us
back to Enchanted! It is O.K. if John comes with us, but oh great
ring please leave Donald here.” She was beyond disappointed when
nothing happened. Discouraged, she returned the ring to its velvet
box before her mother could notice that it was gone.

Ophelia had noticed that,
like the cereal box, she could make other things happen by just
thinking about them and pointing. Ophelia vowed to make it her
life’s ambition to go to Enchanted to live. Her mother had not
spoken of Enchanted in a while. Ophelia knew that she had been hard
on her mother and not very respectful to her, but she could not
seem to help herself.

Ophelia fell asleep that
night with her own blue watery drops on her pillow.

The next morning was
Saturday and the family was having breakfast when Donald stood up
and went onto the front porch. They then heard a loud yowl and when
Donald came back into the kitchen, he was holding a large white cat
– by the tail. “Look what I found!”

Gertie immediately jumped
up and took the cat, telling Donald that he was never to hold an
animal by the tail.

Ophelia looked down and
squealed “Look! He has a friend!” There next to the kitchen table
leg was indeed another feline. This one was smaller, but had an
unusually large backside. The cat that was in her arms looked up
into Gertie’s face and Gertie’s breath caught in her
throat.

“Do they have a collar on?
Any identification at all?” John asked, trying to be helpful. “I
don’t remember seeing them before in the neighborhood, maybe Mrs.
Davis would recognize them.”

“Can we keep them?” Ophelia
asked.

Gertie had a strange,
faraway look in her eyes. “All of you listen to me, finish eating
your breakfast and then Ophelia and Donald, you two help your
father clean off the table and load the dishwasher. Leave these two
cats to me.”