IGMS Issue 11 (11 page)

She had breasts, like a grown woman's, poking up under a smart tweed jacket. A pair of brown pumps on her feet -- the kind I was supposedly too young to wear, and stockings instead of anklets. Mother had called her a poor little orphaned refugee.

But the girl who arrived on the 4:15 from Mobile looked like no such thing.

Karin stood erect as a soldier on the deserted platform, her bags in a neat stack beside her. Reverend Harden, who'd fetched her up from Argentina, sat on a bench in the shade sound asleep.

The train had come early that spring day in 1950.

Mother rushed toward her, arms wide, smiling like Christmas.

Karin threw out her hand to be shaken. Mother swooped her arms down, grasped the little hand in the pink kid glove, and stroked it like a baseball. I was pushing Daddy in the wheelchair, so by the time we got close Mother was already telling Karin how happy we all were to have her with us, saying each word like she was picking it off a tree.

"You do not have to speak slowly Mrs. Milgrim. I am fluent in four languages. My English is quite good I have been told."

Mother's smile froze. Karin's English was good, but her accent was sharp as cat's teeth.

The people of LaGrange pronounced her "a lovely girl.
And so well mannered
!" It probably helped that she rarely spoke. I often heard her talking though -- in the garden, behind the tool shed, late at night whispering in her bed -- practicing words, trying to sound like us. In time, the accent faded. The bite in her tone of voice, however, was as permanent as those big bosoms that had no business on a thirteen-year-old child.

I was dazzled by her. She called me Elena instead of Ellie. She'd lived all over Europe -- and in New York City for a while before her parents took her to Argentina where they lived in a big house with six servants, including a seamstress who made her dozens of beautiful dresses. Karin said that she needed a large wardrobe because of the many social engagements girls of her class attended.

"Is that how refugees live in Argentina?" I asked.

"Refugees! We were most certainly not refugees. My family was not forced to leave Germany. We left our home because it had become a place that was no longer Germany. It was . . . ruined."

Karin was smart. But in spite of her private schooling, tutors, and all her travels, that girl was pig ignorant when it came to church. And during those first months, Reverend Harden exhibited us at every church in four counties, parading us around like prize livestock.

Daddy came with us a time or two, but he hated being wheeled down front and introduced as a hero, so he quit. He hadn't objected when Mother decided to take in a war orphan; didn't care one way or the other. After he came home from the war, Daddy had got to where he could take or leave most anything -- except being pitied. He liked Karin as much as he liked anyone.

Mother, on the other hand, sparkled in church, relished every minute. Not because of the attention, or the praise for being such a splendid example of Christian charity. No, Mama had the true spirit deep in her heart. Being kind and charitable came naturally to her. Trying to truly love Karin was hard.

After church, Karin always had questions. She saved them up until we were alone and then fired them off one after another -- why don't you use real wine? why not simply call it communion? how do you know you are forgiven? are there not some things that can never be forgiven? why do you sing so many songs about blood? She was relentless.

"Hells bells, Karin! Didn't your parents teach you anything about Jesus? Didn't you ever go to Sunday school?" I asked once when I'd had enough.

"Of course. In Germany, when I was little my grandmother took me to church. I was very young. But it was different . . ."

"Different?"

"I mean . . . I do not remember my grandmother very well, or going to such a place. I only know that she took me," she said, so ending the conversation.

Karin preferred to ask the questions.

Between all the preaching she heard, and my rudimentary instruction, Karin became a pretty good imitation of a Baptist.

And then she saw her first baptizing. She was amazed to discover there was a pool under the choir stand. Her eyes widened as she watched the folks in white robes march in and, one by one, step into the pool, speak the words, and let Reverend Harden lay them back under the water. Later, Karin had but one question for me.

"If their sins are washed away in the water, where do the sins go?"

I had no answer. I wasn't sure I even understood the question. But that night, and for some time to come, we went round and round about it. I said that sins weren't like tea stains. They don't actually get washed away by the water. I tried to explain it every way I knew how.

"But the evil from the sins -- the evil must go into the water."

"I don't know one thing about evil," I said between yawns.

Karin was still talking when I drifted off to sleep. "It is not fair," she was saying. "It's not right . . ."

From that day on, Karin became a student of sin the way old Otto Higgins studied his birds -- by watching. She was particularly interested in the difference between folks' Sunday manners and the way they acted the rest of the time. She had a little notebook where she kept track of those she referred to as her "sinners." Occasionally she asked me to spell a name or explain how this one was kin to that one, or tell her everything I knew about someone.

To be fair, Karin's obsession and her constant scribbling in those notebooks probably kept her mind from moldering. School bored her, though she never missed a day and made straight A's. The other girls thought her snooty, and the boys felt -- and acted -- like morons whenever she was around. Either she didn't notice, or didn't care that she received no invitations to weenie roasts or birthday parties. But I noticed, and it peeved me no end that Mother made me stay home for Karin's sake. Mother and Karin were not good company for each other. They usually passed their time together in silence.

Late one summer night, I caught her slipping out our bedroom window.

"I must check on my sinners," she said. "I cannot get a complete understanding unless I observe them at night when they think no one is watching."

I told her that was rude. And also that she was nuts. She climbed back inside and sat at the foot of my bed. While she explained that she was doing "science," and not aimless snooping, I realized that she had perfected her spying to such a high degree that she could watch and hear the nocturnal doings inside almost any house in town. She knew every bent or missing Venetian blind slat, every torn curtain, and which windows were routinely left open at night.

I told myself I was only going along to keep her out of trouble. But it was the prospect of adventure -- and
danger
-- that attracted me. On most of those mosquito ridden nights, we didn't see a thing out of the ordinary and heard only occasional snatches of dull conversations or silly arguments about money, the carpet, the kids, what so-and-so should have said or done. None of which was worth getting all bit up over. For me, these outings turned out to be about as fascinating as shelling a mess of peas. So after a while, I quit tagging along.

There were, however, two "cases" that interested me. The first concerned Reverend Harden's nephew, Calvin, who'd chased after -- and bedded -- most of the young war widows in the vicinity. Even more impressive was that he'd somehow managed to keep these goings-on secret. There wasn't a breath of gossip about him or the widows. Those poor girls didn't even know about each other. Pretty amazing, I thought.

The second case involved Summer Marshburn -- universally considered "the prettiest, sweetest girl at LaGrange High." It was worth a few bug bites to catch her stealing money from her grandmother's dresser drawer.

One steamy August afternoon, Karin asked Mother to excuse me from my chores so that we could go hiking. Mother offered to pack us a basket.

"That is very kind, Mrs. Milgrim," Karin said with customary formality. "But I have already prepared a basket for us."

We followed the road out of town, and then she turned off onto a cow path that, as far as I knew, led nowhere. "There is something you will want to see," she said as she hurried me along.

"About Calvin Harden?"

"No. It's the Mexican pickers."

I stopped walking. "Mexican pickers? Who cares about what they do!"

"No, no. You don't understand. Come, we must be swift. The pickers at the Marshburn farm are leav--"

"So," I said. "Summer Marshburn's stealing money from Mexicans now."

"Please, we must go quickly."

We trotted down Rose Dairy Road until we reached Lila's Woods where we wove through the trees like Maypole dancers. Karin knew exactly how to get up to the Marshburn place without being seen, and where to hide when we got there. Not far from a cluster of concrete shacks where Mr. Marshburn housed his migrant help, we hunkered down in the ruins of an ancient log cabin that sat under a dense thicket.

The Mexican women, some with babies strapped to their backs and children clutching their skirts, were climbing into the back of the first in a line of four rickety pickup trucks. From where we were, we could see and hear very well.

"The field is picked," Karin whispered. "This group has picked all the peaches at the Roberson's and Harden's. They've picked at McCall's and Foust. These Mexicans should collect $3,860. But watch . . ."

Marshburn handed the foreman an envelope. The foreman counted the money then started shouting in Spanish. Marshburn drummed his fingers on the pistol stuck in his belt, but the foreman kept right on shouting.

"Aw hell. Take your money and get gone," Marshburn said. Mr. Roberson was standing beside him with a rifle slung across his back. The workers were slowly and quietly climbing into the back of the trucks. Mr. Foust leaned on the hood of the lead truck, pealing a peach. That truck was already filled with most of the women and children and Foust's big knife glinted in the sunlight.

One of the Mexicans dashed toward the truck's cab, but Foust swatted him away with the back of his hand.

"Don't," he said. His face had the ugliest expression I'd ever seen on a human being.

"You boys never take into account how much it costs to feed you people," Marshburn said. "Your women and young'uns there are the one's ate up your money. So you all best just take this here and go on now. The peaches in Browther County are waiting."

The foreman clenched his jaw, tears welled up in the thick folds under his dark eyes, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. But he didn't move. Foust grunted and handed the peach he'd been pealing up to one of the children whose arms were dangling between the side slats.

The foreman started to walk away, then suddenly turned around. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and waved it at Marshburn. He started shouting again, but this time five or six Mexicans had gathered only a few paces behind him, cautiously backing him up.

Karin began to tremble. I threw my arms around her but she wouldn't stop.

"The Mexican has hesitated and now he threatens . . . They know he will make trouble," she said in a voice that shook like a beehive. "They are going to do something."

"Like what?"

"Something bad . . . I think. Very bad." Her trembling ceased as suddenly as it had started.

Karin's abrupt calm frightened me. I couldn't catch my breath. "Why'd you bring me here when you knew there was going to be trouble! When you knew --"

"I did not know. Not surely," she said. Her voice was now flat, her face expressionless. Her eyes were not focused on any one person or object but seemed rather to be taking in the whole of the scene before us.

"I have only begun to study evil, you see," she continued listlessly. "Big evil is easy to detect, and all people like to point fingers at each other. But there are also small evils -- secret and terrible, dreadful private acts that will never be discovered. So there can be no retribution, no punishment, no justice. No . . . salvation."