Miss Jane (10 page)

In any case, I will be in touch about the potential visit/examination. Please continue to send any news of developments, but I will try to make this examination happen as soon as possible. The
girl is such a delight, truly, that I hate to think ahead and imagine her living a long life of isolation and shame, which is sure to come on her if there is nothing to be done about her condition once she is older.

My best to Mary Kate, when you see her. Tell her the one she should have married wishes you all well. I do so miss Lett. Her family keeps fresh flowers at her grave in town. She is in their plot, as you know. As for me, burn and scatter the ashes in my woods if I go first. It's in the will.

Yrs,

Ed

PRETENDING TO BEGRUDGE
it but seeming to enjoy it once they'd get started, Grace sometimes helped Jane with her reading in the evenings, bringing home books from the school library, and corrected her handwriting efforts. The teachers had let her borrow the books, knowing she had a little sister at home who wanted to learn. There was the Bible in the house, of course, but it was incomprehensible. No one read from it, much less aloud. The pictures of paintings inside it were interesting. More helpful was the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with its pictures of the items described there for sale. There was always a new one in the house, and an older one in the outhouse. Sometimes she would take the newer catalog to her father in the evenings and ask him to read her the description of something in there for sale. It was all a kind of schooling, anyway.

When Dr. Thompson learned that she wanted for reading material, he began bringing books when he visited.

“I don't know why I didn't think to, before,” he said. “Lett was
a reader. I am, too, of course, but she read novels, made-up ­stories. I like some of them but it's the rare one I like a lot. I thought I'd bring some by, you see which ones you like, we'll start to get an idea of which ones I ought to give you.”

“You don't have to give them to me for good.”

He shrugged, said, “I don't care much about hanging on to books after I've read them. Most of them, anyway. Better to give them away to others who might want to read.”

“Well. Thank you.” Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on his bristly cheek. The doctor stood there a long moment, something like a look of amused wonder on his face. Then he smiled to himself, got into his car, and drove off.

Inside, Jane looked at the books he'd given her. One had her own name in the title,
Jane Eyre
. It seemed a little bit dense, but would be interesting to her later on. Another was
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
. It was an old battered copy and about boys, so she thought it might have been his own book and he was just tired of reading it. She set it aside, too. The third one was old, also, but not so worn. It was a slim little book with a faded red cover and the title on the spine:
A Simple Heart
, by Gustave Flaubert, an odd name. She set to reading it that night, and couldn't stop. She finished by candlelight. She was in tears over poor Félicité's sad but beautiful life, her broken heart and her loneliness, her love for her mistress's children, and fascinated by the way she began to lose her mind, and filled with wonder at the spirit of her beloved parrot hovering over her at her death.

She lay awake late into the night, the candle finally guttering out in its holder, and in the dim light left in the room from a bit of moon she passed into sleep without even feeling it coming, and dreamed heavily, and though she couldn't remember anything
particular when she woke the next morning, she remembered that the dreams had been kind of heartbreaking, and thought that she may have wept in her sleep. The odd thing was that she didn't feel sad in their aftermath. She felt something like a lightened joy. She felt the damp of her tears on the pillow, and turned it over so that her mother would not see.

SHE BEGAN TO HELP
her mother out in the kitchen, preparing meals. She wasn't allowed to cook anything yet but she was shown things, so that she would gradually learn that and be able to take over from Grace—and maybe even her mother—after Grace left home. No one knew when that would be, although when she was angry Grace was threatening to leave any minute. She made no secret of her desire to get off the farm.

As her mother and Grace began early preparations for supper, Jane helped shell peas and butterbeans, rinsing them and leaving them in water for their mother to boil all morning with salt pork while Jane sucked her thumb, which was sore from prying apart the butterbeans' tough pods. If there was to be a chicken fried, her mother would walk calmly among the nervous yard birds, casual as if just strolling through, and then would snatch one by the head and give it a quick twirl to snap its neck. Then she would dip it in scalding water, pluck and gut it, chop off its feathered head and hard yellow feet.

Jane took the bucket in which her mother had tossed the head, feet, and guts down to the hog pen and tossed them straight onto the bare earth there, where after a momentary silence for comprehension the hogs, sows, and shoats set upon it, bawling, brawling, squealing from lust and the pain of swift and intense battle. Yet another, if negative, reason to dislike the eating of their meat.

Back at the house her mother had carried the plucked and headless hen back to the porch and pumped a little water to wash it, then carried it inside, cut it to frying pieces, dipped it in egg and milk, dredged it in flour, and dropped it piece by piece into the broad pan of hot lard on the stove, and set it piece by browned piece aside to drain on a sheet of newspaper on the counter.

Jane would be set to peeling potatoes to boil and mash for the meal, or washing greens in a small tub on the back porch. Looking out over the yard, she would recall the remarkably casual, vivid slaughter, each arcing flop of the hen's unceremonious exit from this world, each rise and quick chopping blow of the little hatchet through its neck into the oak stump, and somehow feel apart or invisible, a strange presence locked in her own consciousness, like no one else's in the world, apart from all others, her fingers tightening in recollection of this or that casually violent action, and it sent a current into her spine up into the base of her neck, the tingling of it coming out her eyes in invisible little needles of light indistinguishable from the light of the gathering day.

Grace in the Wilderness

A
nyone could tell something was up with Grace, these days. It was her last year of school. She seemed distracted, more than usual, and even more silent. Jane spied on her when she wasn't aware of it. She was distracted and strange, like one of the chickens when it got what her mother called “broody” and wouldn't leave the roost or just wandered about if her mother shut it out of the pen and henhouse, like it didn't know what to do with itself and was ornery.

Finally Jane said, “Grace, you have a secret,” and Grace surprised her by seeming to snap out of it: “Yes, I do, and that's the reason it's none of your business.”

That didn't stop Jane from pestering her, whispering when they were alone, “Tell me.”

“I'm working on my ticket out of here, that's all I'll say.”

Several times, she'd been late coming home from school, and when their father and mother questioned her about it, she tried to ignore them. But one afternoon she came down their drive toward the house, a bit of a spring in her step, and found them waiting on her. Jane was spying from inside the screen door. Her parents, like two still and silent buzzards on a limb, watched Grace approach.

“Where you been, then?” her father said, his voice and eyes level.

“With friends,” she said.

“Which?”

“Just some of the dumb girls at school, is all.”

He looked at her long and steady and said, “Better be the truth, girl.” Then he said, “I want you here right after school's out, every day, to help your mother and your little sister with chores around the house. Like you're supposed to.” He got up and walked over toward the hog pen. Her mother sat in her chair and continued to give her the glare.

“I don't care if you don't believe me,” Grace said to her.

“That is one thing I know for sure,” her mother said before rising and going on inside. She saw Jane squatting there, in her spying position, and pulled up briefly, gave her a look, and went on.

At supper there was silence. Jane watched Grace furtively, and watched for any telling looks between her mother and father, or between one of them and Grace, till her mother told her to eat her supper and stop dawdling. In the quiet after that, a sound seemed to arise in a small but regular way with Grace's movements, like occasional hard grains of rice dropped into an empty gourd. No one said anything. But when their father finished eating, ahead of the others, he stood up without a word, walked around the table, took out his pocketknife, and opened it. He lifted the thread from Grace's neck, to which she had attached the rattlesnake rattle, held the rattle in his palm for a moment, then cut the thread and removed the rattle from it and took it into the other room. When Jane peered around through the doorway she saw him throw both thread and rattle into the coals there, and then stoke them with a small handful of kindling on top of which, after a moment, he placed a solid chunk of dry oak. And then he went out.

That Friday, Grace came home from school on time, helped
her mother put on pots of greens and peas to slow-boil, scrubbed the kitchen floor, then quickly cleaned up after throwing out the scouring water at the edge of the yard. Jane followed her at a safe distance, pretending to work but mostly watching. Something was up. Grace put some lotion on her hands, arms, neck, and face, and, after wandering with Jane awhile to let the scent of it dissipate, told her mother she had forgotten her homework at school and needed to go back so she could do it over the weekend.

Her mother stopped cutting slices from the ham she'd taken from the smokehouse and looked at her, the carving knife in her hand.

“I'll take Jane with me,” Grace said. “The walk will help her sleep tonight.”

“She sleeps fine,” their mother said. Then after a moment she nodded and said, “Don't dawdle. We'll eat in a couple of hours.”

They walked slowly, as Jane tended to dawdle. Grace grew impatient enough to grab her by the hand and pull her along faster.

“Why're you in such a durn hurry?” Jane said.

Grace looked at her, then stopped. She leaned down to put her face at Jane's level. The seriousness in her look made Jane back away.

“What?” she said.

“We're not going to the school,” Grace said.

“But you said we were.”

“And if Mama or Papa asks you if that's where we went, you just nod and say, ‘Yes, sir' or ‘Yes, ma'am,' and nothing else, you hear me?”

Jane looked at her, not comprehending.

“Why?” she said.

“Because I said so,” Grace said. “This is real important.”

She went over to the side of the road, reached behind a tree there, and came out with her school satchel.

“So, see? We went to school and I got my homework.” Jane looked at the satchel, then at her sister.

“See?”

Jane nodded. They went on. A little farther, they cut off onto a trail. When Jane lagged behind, distracted, Grace caught her up again. When they reached a little clearing, Grace took her by the hand and guided her to a spot about thirty feet away just behind a thick dewberry bush.

“You stay here at the edge of this where you can see through but not be seen. Don't make a sound and stay real still, okay? Whatever you see going on with me and this boy, you just watch and be quiet.”

“What boy?”

“Never mind that. Don't get scared, I know what I'm doing and you don't have to be afraid. I just need you to watch it so you can say you've seen it if I ask you. I won't have to, though, all right?”

Jane just looked at her from where she sat on her rump. She put her arms around her knees and looked off into the woods, then back at her sister.

“Okay, but why?” she said.

“Just hush and do what I say. And you listen here.” She knelt down and got her face close to Jane's. “You don't say a word about this to anybody unless I tell you to. Do you understand me, Jane?”

Jane was a little scared—it was really more of a thrill than a scare—but nodded.

“Don't be scared. It's like I said.”

“What are you going to do with the boy?”

“You'll see. I'll explain it to you later. Now, can you do this?”

Jane nodded.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded again. Grace's eyes looked positively wild. It was thrilling.

Grace looked long and quietly at her, then ruffed her hair with a hand and said again, in a whisper, “Be
real
still and
real
quiet. I'll come get you when it's time to go.”