Mary Connealy (54 page)

Libby hovered near the burning barrel, turning her hands back and forth to warm both sides.

“I can earn money, too.” Nolan slumped beside Libby, his face lined with the defiant expression all street kids had, acting as if they didn’t care about anything. “If all three of us work, we’ll earn enough to be comfortable.”

Nolan had never worked in the mill. He’d been on the street from his earliest memory. It was hard to explain to him the difference between Grace’s schoolteacher job and work at the carpet mill. He’d never seen what it was like. The bitter cold in winter, the vicious heat in summer, and the roaring, deafening noise. Hannah still cringed when she thought of dodging the huge, dangerous machines, the cruel foremen wielding rods to whip slackers, always yelling and pushing them to hurry, work faster, work harder.

Hannah could see the determination on his thin, pale face. Nolan, ten years old, looked as though he was starving. No matter how Hannah tried, she could never fill the growing boy’s belly. She knew Trevor went hungry, too. And heaven knew she did.

Libby backed away from the bit of warmth from the barrel and looked at Hannah with big, sad eyes capable of breaking Hannah’s heart. The doctor had treatments for Libby’s leg, but he didn’t know what to do about her silence. He didn’t think she’d had an injury to her voice. Instead, he thought Libby had seen something awful.

The doctor said that sometimes when people experienced something so dreadful their mind couldn’t deal with it, they reacted in this way. He said that the words were locked inside her, and until she could face what had happened and speak of it, she would remain silent. There was nothing he could do. He warned Hannah that her little sister might never speak again.

Turning her freckled nose away from the meager heat, Libby limped to Nolan’s side. Nolan pulled the little girl, hardly more than a toddler, into his lap and hugged her close.

Hannah shook her head. “Grace will hate it. She’s sacrificing everything for us. Going to work instead of school is the thing she would hate the most.”

“It’ll be different for us,” Trevor insisted. “We’ll keep all the money we earn. You said Parrish always took every penny. I can’t make twenty dollars a month like Grace, but I can make something.”

“You’ll be lucky to make a dime a day, Trevor. And you’ll work seven days a week.”

Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s ten cents a day more than we have now. Ten cents would buy us a little meat.”

Nolan carefully lowered his eyes to look at Libby, but Hannah saw them light up at the thought of meat to add to their bread.

“With what Grace sends, we can save up and go find her. The five of us and Grace can make a home together.”

Hannah smiled even though her heart was heavy. Grace didn’t know what a change had overtaken the family. Hannah hadn’t told her about how hard she’d worked finding families for the little girls. Sneaking around, peeking in windows at night, Hannah had inspected each family to the extent she was able to make sure the girls would be safe.

Grace hated the whole idea of adoption because of Parrish. But Hannah knew there were good people in the world, and she’d set out to place the little children in homes. The only trouble was, as quickly as she found a home for one child, she found another on the street who needed her.

Grace had never stayed in one place long enough for it to make sense to write a letter. Now she seemed settled in Mosqueros, and Hannah had spent a few precious pennies to write and tell Grace that everything was okay, but she’d given no details. If Grace had heard Hannah was putting the little sisters up for adoption, she’d have quit her job and come rushing back to Chicago, trying as always to mother all of them.

For that same reason, Hannah didn’t tell her about the new children. Grace would only worry.

Once Grace settled in Mosqueros and looked to stay there, she’d write for them to come. She’d send eighteen dollars a few more times, and no doctor would make a claim on the money. They’d always been an all-girl family, but Grace loved all children. She’d be happy to see the boys, too.

“I’m going to pound the next boy who comes slamming through that door.” Grace piled flour on the table and used the family fork to mix up the first batch of biscuits in her life. There hadn’t been much time to develop womanly skills when she worked twelve hours a day in a carpet mill.

The steaks blazed away happily. She went to them and turned them, doing her best not to catch herself on fire.

Back to the biscuits. “He put…” She tried to imitate the amount of flour Daniel had thrown into the bowl. His hands were bigger, so she threw in a couple of extra fistfuls.

“Then there was milk…” Grace looked at the bucket on the stove. Water. They’d finished the milk for breakfast. Daniel knew that. She shrugged. “If I’d needed milk, he would have said something.” She poured water into the flour.

She looked around. He’d added something else.

The steaks waved flames at her. She awkwardly shifted them away from the fire, except the fire seemed to follow the meat.

She spotted the jar on the floor next to the flour canister. She unscrewed the lid. She jerked her head back and almost dropped the jar. “Ewww.”

Switching over to mouth-breathing, she held the jar as far away from her nose as she could. It wasn’t far enough. She set the jar down on the table with the dull thunk of glass on wood and backed across the room. She stared at the foul mixture of rotten…goo.

She looked around the cave. “He must have used something from another jar.” There were no other jars. She closed her eyes and tried to picture Daniel’s quick, efficient movements. She opened her eyes again and stared at the strange bubbly concoction. “He used that.”

She tried to sneak up on it. It seemed to be staring at her. She lifted the jar, breathing through clenched teeth, and poured—she didn’t remember how much. But it was so awful, the less the better. She quickly clapped the lid back on the jar and returned it to its dark corner where it could fester in peace.

The steaks, looking far less bloody than they had this morning, thank goodness, shot fire most of the way to the ceiling. She took a moment to be grateful that her home was made of dirt and rock—nothing flammable.

She decided it was time to stack the steaks the way Daniel had.

She stirred the biscuits. The dough was too thick. She added water. It was too thin. She added flour. The dough stubbornly refused to settle on the right consistency. By the time she hit a thickness she could live with, she had a huge supply of biscuit dough and the table was coated with a sticky layer of it. Daniel had left the table as clean as when he started. The dough smelled like that nasty jar of stuff. She didn’t remember the biscuits smelling bad when she’d eaten them.

Daniel had picked up the dough in his hands, but it was a bit too runny for Grace to make that work. Instead, she picked up a small handful and turned to drop it on the stove before it oozed out between her fingers. The blobs of dough ran together slowly—not as if the dough was really liquid, but more as if it was just being uncooperative—until they formed one big biscuit instead of a dozen small ones. She watched it, not sure what she’d do when it was time to turn it. She armed herself with the fork and waited.

At first the dough threatened to run down the side of the stove, but Grace was quick and kept scooping. The dough eventually hardened and stayed put next to the steak mountain.

After what seemed like forever, she lifted the corner of the monster biscuit. It was dark brown on the bottom. Very dark brown. She poked at it and struggled to flip it, and it broke apart.

She was inspired. “You know, why does it have to be whole anyway? I actually
want
it to break. She sawed little biscuit-sized sections loose and flipped them. The first ones fought her, but by the time she was done, she was getting to be handy at it. There were crumbs everywhere, and the biscuits had gone from brown to black about halfway through, but they were all flipped and cooking along nicely.

She saw that the bottom steak was on fire again. Her forking arm was exhausted, the stack of steaks was teetering a little, and no room was left on the stovetop, so she decided she’d eat the bottom one herself if it was overcooked.

The door slammed open.

As if a dam had burst, a flood of males rushed in. All six of them filled the room. The triplets and Ike made straight for the table. Grace shut the door, almost catching the cat’s tail, and waited for them to thank her for making them dinner.

Daniel fished the potatoes out of the stove’s belly and barked, “Abe, fetch the steaks from your ma.”

Grace decided she wasn’t going to put up with his abuse of the children. That was the first change she was going to make around here. “Before we eat, I want to—”

“What’d you do to the biscuits?” Daniel backed away from the stove.

Abe grimaced at all her hard work. With a grunt of disdain, he started grabbing steaks and pitching them to his brothers. Grace backed out of the line of fire.

“You made a mess of the table, too.” Daniel grabbed a rag and swiped at the layer of clinging dough until it was gone.

“Ick, what is this?” Abe finished with the steaks and, with a look of disgust, began tossing biscuits across the room.

The boys howled as they caught the biscuits.

“Are they safe?” Mark bit into one and said, “Bleck.” He took another bite.

“They’ll likely break my teeth.” Ike gnawed away, risking his teeth with abandon.

John gagged as he alternated a very black steak with his burned potato, which was mealy and white inside. He choked—loudly—swallowing his hardened biscuit.

Luke waded through the food, occasionally crashing his shoulder into John or Mark on either side of him. Grace found herself holding up the back wall again.

“Where’d you learn to cook a mess like this?” Daniel complained around a mouthful of food. He said to Ike, who was gulping milk with an air of desperation, “Hurry with that milk. I’m choking on this.”

She might have answered, except the other boys were talking and choking, too—far more than was called for in Grace’s opinion, even if the biscuits and steak were a little…tough.

“No eggs, Pa.” Abe kept handing out biscuits. When the stovetop was cleared, except for a thousand crumbs that he scraped onto the floor, he cracked a dozen eggs onto the cast-iron top. “I’m cooking ’em hard. I don’t think these biscuits’ll break apart for a sandwich.”

The cat dashed over to the scattering of crumbs then, after a few cautious sniffs, turned up its nose and went to sit by the door.

“Cat’s lucky,” Mark said.

“Why’zat?” Ike turned to look at his pet.

“’Cause he can gnaw on a live rat ’stead of having to eat this.”

All six of them nodded together, looking with blatant envy at the cat.

“Burn ’em good,” Daniel said, gulping down a cup of milk and handing the cup on to Mark on his right. “It’ll go with the rest of the meal.”

The boys howled with laughter. Abe threw a hardened little circle of egg. They were coated with burned biscuit crumbs that had stuck to the stove, but at least the cast-iron stove top was clean now. Abe set an egg beside a black biscuit for Grace and snagged the last one for himself. Sitting down on Daniel’s left, beside Ike, he began eating.

Luke, in the middle across from the twins, dropped out of sight, and his big brothers almost tipped over backward on their bench.

“Luke, leggo my boot.” Abe made a concerted effort to kick Luke in the head, from what Grace could see going on under the table.

All five children laughed.

“Knock it off,” Daniel roared. “Finish eating. We’ve got a long afternoon of work.”

The boys ignored him. He didn’t seem to mind. The chaos went on for about fifteen minutes. They insulted her and ignored her as she cowered in the same place she’d stood at breakfast. Her heart crumbled worse than the biscuits as she listened to them mock her hard work.

They all got up and left, taking the bucket with them.

Daniel said, as he left the room, “Next time use more sourdough and less milk. And for Pete’s sake, don’t burn them steaks up like that. The triplets still have their baby teeth. They’ll break ’em off. I’ll be back to cut the supper steaks later in the afternoon.”

Somewhat amazed, Grace realized that Daniel, who’d enjoyed getting her fired as a teacher, wasn’t going to fire her from cooking. She wanted to let him go. If she would just keep silent for another minute, he would. “Daniel, wait!”

He had the door almost closed. She saw him freeze. She could almost feel his longing to ignore her.

But she couldn’t let him. Some things were just necessary.

He came back into the room. Standing in the doorway, letting the snow swirl in, he asked, “What?”

“Last night, when you…uh…led me outside.” She fell silent, waiting for him to get it.

He didn’t.

“I don’t know where we went. I mean, it was dark, and I just trailed behind you to find…the…”

“It’s an outhouse, Grace. Is the word too crude for you to say?” Daniel seemed very tired for some reason. She didn’t know how he could be. He was making the boys do all the work.