Rush Home Road (15 page)

Fawn crossed her arms over her chest. “I hate Sharla's guts.”

Krystal lit a Kool and told Fawn evenly, “Too bad, Brat. You're going.”

Addy told Krystal the time and reminded her to send Fawn with her swimsuit. She walked away from the char-broiled woman and the sassy child and knew she'd just made a big mistake.

In bed that night, after Addy'd finished reading Sharla a favourite book from the Chatham library, she wondered should she tell Sharla now about Fawn coming or leave it till tomorrow. She decided to leave it. Sharla nestled against Addy's shoulder and put her hand on Addy's thigh. She yawned, “Mu-um…?”

“Yes, Honey?”

“Is it really my birthday tomorrow or just pretend?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Just pretend?”

“Why you think that?”

“Nedda says you're just a pretend Mum and not a real Mum.”

“Never mind what Nedda says, Honey. I don't think she's getting much good mothering herself, but don't repeat that and make her feel bad the way she done to you.”

“You do good mothering.”

Addy smiled and brushed her lips against Sharla's forehead. “I love you like you are my own little girl. Do you love me like I'm your own Mum?”

Sharla nodded.

“Well,” Addy continued, “that's good enough.”

“Collette's my
real
real Mum.”

“That's right.”

“But I want to live here with you.”

“We just have to see what happens, Honey. Ain't really in our hands.”

“Whose hands it in?”

“Well, the Lord's hands, I guess.”

“Does the Lord like us?”

Addy laughed. “Course he likes us.”

“Much as people who live in Chatham?”

“Yes, Sharla. He likes us all the same.”

“'Cept for when you do a bad thing though.”

“Even when you do a bad thing.”

“I wish we had red licorice for my birthday.”

“Did you go sneaking through my cupboards?”

“No.” Sharla looked away, guilty.

“Well, you might get your wish.”

Sharla grinned about the licorice, then paused before she asked, “Are you a real real Mum too?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you have your own little girl when you weren't old?”

Addy was still. “Yes I did, Sharla.”

Sharla looked surprised. “What's her name?”

“Well, I had two babies, Honey,” Addy whispered.

“What's their names?”

Addy couldn't remember the last time she spoke her
children's names to anyone living and wondered if she could, till she did. “I had a little girl called Beatrice, but we all called her Chick.”

Sharla giggled. “Chick. That's like chicken.”

“Mmm-hmm. That's short for Chicken and that's what we called her.”

“And what's the other baby?”

“Well, the other baby was—he was named after my brother, Leam.”

“Leam.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Chick and Leam.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Do you miss them?”

Addy nodded.

“Does Collette miss me?”

“She sure does.”

They were quiet for a moment and let the sounds of the crickets and the rustling trees and the lowing cows in the distance fill the room. Addy broke the silence. “Suppose I could sleep here with you on your bed tonight, Honey?”

Sharla breathed deeply and nodded, half asleep. “Mmm-hmm.”

 

Apple Snow

BY DECEMBER THE ICE
had not yet frozen solid on the river but rose to the surface in ragged chunks that tore at the fragile wooden boats and cost the bootleggers their fortunes. Addy could stroll down to the river's edge to watch the ice chunks float past and allow her heartstrings to be tugged by quiet thoughts of Chester and Leam. She wondered if Chester's body'd ever been found, or if it was just loose bones now, making broth out of the river. She tried to talk to Chester's ghost the way she did Leam's, but she was answered by silence when she called, “Chester? You there, Chester?”

Adelaide had found a home with Poppa and Riley on Chestnut Street, but Detroit City was not Rusholme and it would take some adjusting and educating to understand and accept the difference. It was Poppa whom Addy turned to when she had questions, for after that first morning when she woke to find Riley Rippey sitting by her bedside, she'd seen little of him and exchanged only a few words each day. He was polite, even pleasant, but Addy feared he'd changed his mind and didn't want her there after all.

A week or so after her arrival, Poppa took a grey wool coat from Verilynn's closet and, though it looked hardly worn, said, “Very got herself a fancy new coat this year so this old one is yours now and just big enough, I think, not to tell the world of your misfortune.”

Addy was sorry that Poppa said
misfortune.
“I won't hate this baby, Poppa. Even though I hate how it came to be.”

Poppa said, “Of course not, Adelaide. Forgive me.”

“I understand you feel ashamed of me. I feel ashamed of myself. But I don't, and I won't, feel ashamed of my baby.” She paused, making a circle on her stomach. She'd been worried about something and thought there was no right time to ask. “When this baby is born, Poppa, do you know any lady who can come and be with me?”

Poppa reckoned he could call on Emeline Fraser, reminding Addy she'd met her that first day she came to the house. Addy recalled the kind older woman and was relieved to learn she lived just around the corner.

Poppa helped Addy into Verilynn's coat, saying, “Let me take you outside now, Adelaide, and show you this place we call Black Bottom.” He wanted Addy to know he was not ashamed to walk with her down Chestnut Street and took her arm to prove it. They strolled through the neighbourhood, Poppa teaching her how to pronounce the hard French street names—
St. Antoine, St. Aubin, Beaubien, Joseph Campau—
and pointing out the fish market and the butcher and the grocer. Finally, when her soles were tender and aching, Poppa brought her to the chili parlour on Hastings Street.

Never having been to a chili parlour, and never having tasted chili, Addy was not sure she was pleased to make the stop. She was even less sure when Poppa said, “We'll be eating
in
today, thank you,” to the man behind the counter who'd started to pack their order in a brown paper bag. The man looked directly at Addy's big baby stomach and arched a brow before he took the crackers out of the bag and ladled the spicy chili into large china bowls. Sitting in the uncomfortable iron chairs, Poppa shrugged and told Addy, “Folks judge. If you can say you've never done so yourself, be righteous. If you can't, forgive them, Adelaide, and let's enjoy our chili and some pleasant conversation.”

A tall, thin young man, a friend of Riley's, stopped by the table and told Poppa excitedly that he'd left his job at the mine and was going to work on the assembly line at Henry Ford's Rouge plant. The young man looked Addy directly in the eye and said it was a pleasure to make her acquaintance, then surprised her by adding, “Riley told me about you. He said you were pretty and you are.”

It was cruel, Addy thought, for the thin man to mock her like that, and she wondered why Poppa didn't scold him. After he left, Addy said, “I didn't know there was a coal mine near Detroit.”

Poppa said, “Not a coal mine, Adelaide. That fellow was working for the Detroit Rock Salt Company. Don't you know about the salt mines? Right here.” He stomped on the floor with his boot. “A thousand feet below us, right under
the city, is the country's largest salt mine. I went down there once. Quite a sight. Bright and clean. Won't make you cough. Salt mining won't ever make a man sick.”

No matter how she tried, Addy could not picture the salt mine and could not believe it was there under the very earth they trod upon. She wondered out loud, “Everything's salt? The walls and floors and ceilings? Why don't it crumble? What if it gets wet?”

Poppa tried to explain about the hardness and density of the rock salt, but Addy'd been distracted by the end of her chili and crackers and the hope that she could have another bowl. She recited the street names Poppa'd taught her:
St. Antoine, St. Aubin, Beaubien, Joseph Campau, Fort, Woodward, Gratiot.

Poppa ordered a second bowl of chili even though Addy hadn't asked and wished silently that Riley could get work in the salt mines, or better still at the Ford Motor Company with his tall, thin friend. Riley worked in the warehouse at the
Detroit Free Press
, putting the big newspaper together, tying it in bundles to ready for the deliverymen. It was good work for a sickly, walleyed fellow and paid the bills on Chestnut Street well enough, but Poppa worried about Riley's future.

Poppa himself didn't work and had never been ashamed to accept charity in one form or another since long before he became a preacher. It was charity sending Verilynn to school in Cleveland. An old friend of Poppa's, “Rich Enos” was what Riley called him, insisted on paying
for Verilynn's education and would not be dissuaded. Rich Enos had offered to send Riley to school too, but Riley couldn't leave his father alone with his dying mother and had never understood what made Verilynn so different that she could.

Riley came home each night with inky fingers and the smell of newsprint burned into his black-smudged clothes. Addy thought to herself that just scrubbing such ink stains was enough to send a woman to her grave and wondered how exactly Poppa's wife, Rosalie, did die. She was concerned the same disease would be taking Poppa soon, for he never looked too well or rose too quickly from a chair.

A few days after their visit to the chili parlour, when Addy felt she had her strength back and wanted to be useful, Poppa'd agreed she could venture out on her own. “You go on to the grocery and get yourself some things for your pantry, why don't you, Adelaide?”

Addy had been thrilled with the way Poppa described the pantry as hers. And the way he called Verilynn's bedroom
your
room. And the way both he and Riley called her Adelaide and never Addy, because it made her feel different and not at all like the girl from Rusholme. Poppa reached into his trouser pockets and found several dollar bills, which he passed to her and said with a wink, “Won't hurt to get a piece of peppermint candy, Adelaide. I got a sweet tooth for it and I bet you do too.”

Addy hardly heard what he said though, because she was distracted by the strange look of the money and
thought it must not be real. Poppa laughed and said, “I forget you come from Canada, Child. Your dollars look like playing cards with your King and Queen faces on them, and all colours like you don't mean business, too.”

Addy read the name on the American dollar bill. “George Washington.”

Poppa said, “He was the president of these here United States a long time ago, Adelaide. Our president today is Calvin Coolidge. We admire our presidents here in America, some better than others, true, and we think they're important enough to put their face on a dollar.”

“Oh.”

“Can't say I ever did see a dollar with a picture of your Canadian president. Don't even know who your president is. Do you?”

Heat rose in Addy's face and she shook her head, ashamed. “I know the prime minister is William Lyon Mackenzie King but I never did know the name of our president. I never even knew there was a president to learn his name.”

Poppa said it was all right because Canadians were just naturally more ignorant than Americans. But, he reminded Addy, she should always be proud that Canada was not a nation of slavery while America had to have a shameful bloody war over it. So many things were different in America, and though Addy never said so to Poppa, she thought it was the Americans who were the ignorant ones. Poppa had warned her, when she went out on her errands, to be cautious,
to know where she could go but more importantly where she couldn't. In Rusholme, she could go anywhere.

She'd found comfort in the simple task of caring for Poppa and Riley. She mended their shirts and trousers, stitching buttons where they hung by a thread, and made all the good things to eat that she could remember Laisa teaching her those long hours together in the kitchen on Fowell Street. There was no venison to be found at the grocer, and Addy felt smug that such a big-city store would be so lacking in essentials. She used beef for her stew recipe instead and was relieved when Poppa pronounced it delicious. She made a nice light batter for her fish fry and because she wanted to mark her first week in her new home, she made a special dessert called apple snow. Poppa said he could eat apple snow every night of the week. With only five or six teeth left in his whole wide mouth, he preferred a dinner that didn't need much chewing.

Addy was dismayed there was never food to turn over for the next day, but proud how the men liked her cooking. It'd be some time though before she'd fix apple snow again. The memory of her mother and the day Laisa taught her how to make the sweet fluff brought a choke to Addy's throat as she cooked, cored, peeled, and mashed the tart apples and as she whipped the egg whites with sugar, then folded the mixture together to set. She could not have been more than five or six years old and it was November, the apples well off the trees but still fresh and crisp in the cool root cellar. Leam was recovering from illness and Laisa
thought to buy extra eggs for apple snow, hoping he'd have an appetite for it, knowing it would give him strength. Laisa had been happy that day and her voice softer than usual. “No, Addy. Like this, Child. You make sure you got all the peel off, every little bit, else it only look like snow with red apple skin bits.”

“Like this, Mama?”

“That's right. You're doing a fine job. We'll tell your Daddy how you made this all yourself and you should know this is his very favourite sweet dish.”

Addy glanced down the hallway to see that her brother's bedroom door was shut. “Mama?”

“Yes, Addy?”

“Leam gonna stay alive now?”

“Yes he is. His fever passed and his eyes bright and the Lord did hear my prayers and them of the whole congregation at church on Sunday.”

“He gonna play in the yard with me again?”

“Sure he is. You're his little sister. That's a special thing to be.”

“I don't have no sister.”

“Your Mama got sick having you, Little Girl. Heaven said no more children for that woman. She's blessed enough.” She'd guided Addy's small hand around the big bowl. “Like this, Daughter, faster, because you need to get air inside and that's what make it fluff up so nice and look like real snow.”

“Apples kinda brown though.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Like dirty snow.”

Laisa laughed at that and said, “I always thought that myself but don't say so to your Daddy. I don't think he's gonna like to eat something called dirty apple snow.”

Addy smiled at the silhouette of her mother in the kitchen window and pointed. “Look!”

It was the first snowfall of the season and as magical a thing as nature could produce. Though the snow meant hardship and struggle for Rusholme, it also meant the Christmas celebration and sledding and snowballs and watching the men drag massive ice chunks from the lake to the icehouse. Finally, it meant the anticipation of the glory of spring, for even the children knew that without winter's wither there would be no bud or blossom in which to rejoice.

Laisa and Addy had stood at the window and watched the snowflakes drift from Heaven and settle on the bare branches and on the ground, then melt away like they were never there at all. Laisa put her two working hands on little Addy's narrow shoulders and said, “I do feel a blessed woman today. I do have joy in my heart. May all our days be happy as this one and our family safe in God's embrace.”

Addy shook the memory away now, for it would be some time before she was ready to think of her mother in a soft way and not be angry any more. She also had enough to concern herself with and that was the challenge of getting the black ink stains out of Riley Rippey's shirt cuffs.

It was two weeks before Christmas and there was no snow in Detroit City, neither on the ground nor in the air. Poppa said just wait, and he was right. For one day the cold blue sky turned grey and nearly fell as low as the rooftops, then let go a storm of white like Addy knew winter to be. Poppa and a friend had driven off in a slow-moving auto to see people over to Port Huron, east of the city, before the sun even rose. He'd have reached his destination before the storm stopped him, but not be able to return that evening.