The Great Gilly Hopkins (14 page)

If you mean “never” Trotter, say so. Is that it? Will I never see the three of you again? Are you going to stand by and let them rip me out and fold me up and fly me away? Leave me a string, Trotter, a thread, at least. Dammit. She'd tie her own.

“I'll write you, W.E. The mailman will bring you a letter with your name on it. Just for you.”

“Me?” he said.

“Nobody else.” She looked belligerently at Trotter, but Trotter was so busy making the meat platter and the salad bowl switch places that the expression was wasted.

After supper Gilly did her homework, knowing it was useless, that Miss Harris would never see the neat figures, row on row, that proved that Gilly Hopkins had met and mastered the metric system. When she finished, she thought briefly of calling Agnes, but what should she say? “Good-bye” when she'd never really said “hello”? Poor Agnes, what would become of her? Would she stomp herself angrily through the floor, or would someone's kiss turn her magically into a princess? Alas, Agnes, the world is woefully short on frog smoochers.

No, she wouldn't call, but maybe, someday, she'd write.

William Ernest walked Mr. Randolph home and returned carrying
The Oxford Book of English Verse
for Gilly—a farewell present from Mr. Randolph.

“Gilly, honey, do you know what kind of present that is?”

Gilly could guess.

“Like he tore a piece off hisself and gave it to you.”

Gilly ran a finger over the wrinkled brown leather, which could almost have been a piece of Mr. Randolph, but the observation seemed too raw, so she kept it to herself.

She waited for Trotter to puff up the stairs to take W.E. to bed before she began to look for the poem:

She didn't understand it any more than she had the first time. If birth was a sleep and a forgetting, what was death? But she didn't really care. It was the sounds she loved—the sounds that turned and fell in kaleidoscopic wonder.

“And not in utter nakedness.” Who would have thought those five words could fall into such a pattern of light? And her favorite “But trailing clouds of glory do we come.” Was it all the
l
's that did it or the mental picture that streaked cometlike across the unfocused lens of her mind?

“From God, who is our home.” Again the lens was unfocused. Was that God with the huge lap smelling of baby powder? Or was that home?

She awoke in the night, trying to remember the dream that had awakened her. It was a sad one, or why did her heart feel like a lump of poorly mashed potatoes? It was something about Courtney. Courtney coming to get her, and then, having seen her, turning away sorrowing: “Never, never, never.” But the voice was Trotter's.

She began to cry softly into her pillow, not knowing why or for whom. Maybe for all the craziness she had tried so hard to manage and was never quite able to.

And then Trotter was beside her, making the bedsprings screech at the burden of her body. She leaned over, her hair, loose from its daytime knot, falling across Gilly's own hair.

“You OK, baby?”

Gilly turned to face her, this mountain smelling of Johnson's baby powder and perspiration. In the dark, she could hardly make out the lines on Trotter's face.

“Yeah,” she sniffed. “OK.”

Trotter took the hem of the striped pajama top and gently wiped Gilly's eyes and nose. “I ain't supposed to let on how I feel. I ain't got no blood claim on you, and the Lord in Heaven knows I want you to have a good life with your own people. But”—her huge bass voice broke up into little squeaky pieces—“but it's killing me to see you go.” The whole mammoth body began to shake with giant sobs.

Gilly sat up and put her arms as far as they could go around Trotter. “I'm not going to go,” she cried. “They can't make me!”

Trotter quieted at once. “No, baby. You got to go. Lord forgive me for making it harder for you.”

“I'll come back and see you all the time.”

Trotter stuck her big warm hand underneath Gilly's pajama top and began to rub her back, the way Gilly had often seen her rub W.E.'s. “No, Gilly, baby. It don't work that way. Like I tried to tell you at supper. Once the tugboat takes you out to the ocean liner, you got to get all the way on board. Can't straddle both decks.”

“I could,” said Gilly.

The big hand paused in its healing journey around and up and down her back, then began again as Trotter said softly, “Don't make it harder for us, baby.”

Perhaps Gilly should have protested further, but instead she gave herself over to the rhythmic stroking under whose comfort she wished she could curl up her whole body like a tiny sightless kitten and forget about the rest of the whole stinking world.

She could almost forget, lying there in the silence, letting the soothing warmth of the big hand erase all the aching. At last, overcome with drowsiness, she slid down into the bed.

Trotter pulled the covers up around Gilly's chin and patted them and her.

“You make me proud, hear?”

“OK,” she murmured and was asleep.

T
he ride in Mrs. Hopkins's ten-year-old Buick station wagon to Jackson, Virginia, took just over an hour. To Gilly it seemed like a hundred years. Every other time she'd moved, she'd been able to think of the destination as a brief stop along the way, but this one was the end of the road. Always before she had known she could stand anything, because someday soon Courtney would come and take her home. But now she had to face the fact that Courtney had not come. She had sent someone else in her place. Perhaps Courtney would never come. Perhaps Courtney did not want to come.

The heaviness dragged her down. What was she doing here in this old car with this strange woman who surely didn't want her, who had only taken her out of some stupid idea of duty, when she could be home with Trotter and William Ernest and Mr. Randolph who really wanted her? Who—could she dare the word, even to herself?—who loved her.

And she loved them. Oh, hell. She'd spent all her life—at least all of it since the Dixons went to Florida and left her behind—making sure she didn't care about anyone but Courtney. She had known that it never pays to attach yourself to something that is likely to blow away. But in Thompson Park, she'd lost her head. She loved those stupid people.

“Would you like to turn on the radio?”

“No, that's all right.”

“I'm not familiar with the latest music, but I don't really mind, as long as it's not too loud.”

Can't you just leave me alone?

There were several miles of silence before the woman tried again: “Miss Ellis seems like a nice person.”

Gilly shrugged. “She's OK, I guess.”

“She—uh—seems to think I got a rather wrong impression of that foster home she'd put you in.”

Something dark and hot began to bubble up inside of Gilly. “They were all sick last week,” she said.

“I see.”

How in the hell could you see?

“Miss Ellis tried to tell me that you had really liked it there—despite everything. From your letter—”

That damn letter. “I lie a lot,” Gilly said tightly.

“Oh.” A quick side glance and then back to the windshield. The woman was so short she was almost peering through the top of the steering wheel. Gilly saw her small hands tighten on the wheel as she said, “I'd hoped you'd be glad to come with me. I'm sorry.”

If you're sorry, turn this old crate around and take me back. But, of course, the woman didn't.

The house was on the edge of the village. It was a little larger, a little older, and considerably cleaner than Trotter's. No horses for W.E. Oh, well, she hadn't really expected any.

“I thought you might like to have Courtney's room. What do you think?”

“Anything is all right.” But when she got to the door of Courtney's room, she hung back. Everything was pink with a four-poster canopied bed complete with stuffed animals and dolls. She couldn't make herself go in.

“It's all right, my dear. It's a big house. You may choose.”

The room which she found most to her liking had a bunk bed with brown corduroy spreads and models of airplanes hanging on delicate wires from the ceiling. In a metal-wire wastebasket was a basketball and a football and a baseball mitt still cradling a stained and scruffed-up ball. The grandmother explained quietly without her having to ask that it was the room of Chadwell, Courtney's older brother, a pilot who had one day crashed into the steaming jungles of Vietnam. Nonetheless, his room seemed less haunted than his sister's.

“Would you like me to help you unpack?”

Inside her head, she was screaming, “I don't need any help!” but for Trotter's sake, she said only, “No, I can do it.”

They ate lunch in the dining room with real monogrammed silver off silver-rimmed china set on lace mats.

The woman caught Gilly eying the layout. “I hope you don't mind my celebrating a little.” She seemed to be apologizing. “I usually eat in the kitchen since I've been alone.”

The word “alone” twanged in Gilly's head. She knew what it meant to be alone. But only since Thompson Park did she understand a little what it meant to have people and then lose them. She looked at the person who was smiling shyly at her, who had lost husband, son, daughter. That was alone.

As lunch progressed, the woman began almost to chatter, as though she were overcoming her shyness, or forcing herself to. “I feel very silly saying to you, Tell me all about yourself, but I wish you would. I want to get to know you.”

That's not how you get to know people. Don't you know? You can't talk it out, you got to live into their lives, bad and good. You'll know me soon enough. What I want you to know.

“Miss Ellis says you're very bright.”

“I guess so.”

“Do you want to see about school right away? Or would you rather settle in here first?”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter.”

“I'm afraid you'll get bored just sitting around with me all day. I want you to make friends your own age. I'm sure there are some nice girls your age somewhere around.”

I have never in my life been friends with a “nice girl.”

“What kinds of things do you enjoy doing?”

Please shut up. I can't stand your trying so hard. “I don't know. Anything.”

“If you like to read, I still have Chadwell and Courtney's books. There may even be a bicycle in the shed. Do you suppose it's any good after all these years? Would you like a bicycle? I'm sure we could find the money for a bicycle if you'd like one.”

Stop hovering over me. I'll smother.

They did the dishes. Gilly wiped silently while her grandmother nervously put-putted on and on. It didn't seem necessary to answer her questions. She went right on whether or not Gilly bothered to reply. What had happened to the quiet little lady in the car? It was as though someone had turned on a long-unused faucet. The problem was how in the world to get it shut off again. Gilly had to try. She yawned elaborately and stretched.

“Are you tired, dear?”

Gilly nodded. “I guess I haven't caught up on my sleep. I had to be up a lot last week with everyone sick and all.”

“Oh, my dear. How thoughtless of me! Here I go on and on…”

“No. It's all right. I think I'll just go up and lie down, though, if you don't mind.”

“What a good idea. I often lie down a little in the afternoon myself.”

In the quiet of Chadwell's room, Gilly lay back and gazed out the window at the blue expanse of sky. If she lifted up on her elbow she could see the rolling fields beyond the margin of the tiny town, and beyond the hills, the mountains dark and strong. She felt herself loosening. Had Chadwell been homesick for this sight as he dropped his bombs into the jungle? Why would anyone leave such peace for war? Maybe he had to go. Maybe they didn't give him any choice. But Courtney had had a choice. Why had she left? You don't just leave your mother because she talks too much. Why should she leave and not look back a single time—until now?

She must care about me, at least a little. She wrote her mother to come and get me because she was worried about me. Doesn't that prove she cares? Gilly got up and took Courtney's picture out from underneath her T-shirts. How silly. She was in Courtney's house now. Courtney didn't have to hide in a drawer any longer. She propped the picture up against the bureau lamp. Maybe her grandmother would let her buy a frame for it. She sat down on the bed and looked back at Courtney on the bureau. Beautiful, smiling Courtney of the perfect teeth and lovely hair.

But something was wrong. The face didn't fit in this room any more than it had fit in all the others. Oh, Courtney, why did you go away and leave her? Why did you go away and leave me? She jumped up and slid the picture face-down under the T-shirts again.