The House on Malcolm Street (13 page)

“You needn’t wash if you want to continue working apples,” I told her. “Just show me what you use and I can take care of the washing. We could get two jobs done at once that way.”

Despite my preference for working alone this morning, Marigold was not about to let me have my way. “The work goes quicker when it’s shared,” she said. “I won’t be able to dig the carrots later, but I can still get my hands in my own laundry, and I won’t have it any other way. Not just yet, at least.”

So she started drawing water from the sink, and I went upstairs to gather any dirty clothes I could find. Walking into Mr. Walsh’s room was a little strange, even with him gone to work. There was nothing about it even remotely similar to the room Eliza and I had been given. This was a man’s room, through and through. There were no flowery curtains or pretty pictures on the walls. Even the bedspread was a plain brown, trimmed in blue.

The room was not tidy, with clothes and even part of the bedding strewn about the floor. I felt like stripping all of the bedding and carrying it down with me along with the clothes, but I wasn’t sure if we’d have time or room on the clothesline for all of that today.

I gathered up the filthy clothes, wondering briefly about the man who occupied this room, who’d at first been altogether too friendly, and now rather like a closed door. There was nothing at all in here to give me any indication of the sort of person he might be, no personal effects except one small picture, laid flat on the dresser. A woman, quite young and rather attractive. She wore a button hat and a tiny, almost mischievous smile. It would have been nice to know a little something about her.

I carried my load down carefully, glad to be here to help Marigold with such a chore. We filled the barrel of her wringer washer and then a couple of tubs for rinse water and worked side by side. It was difficult to keep Eliza back, she loved the wringer so much, but I didn’t want her hand getting pinched. We’d never had one of these, and she’d never even seen one before.

“Fancy,” she called it, and I had to agree, compared to washing by hand, which I’d been used to doing.

“Does make things faster,” Marigold agreed. “That’s important when you get to be my age. But I expect it’d help a young wife with a big family get to the other needs of her day a lot quicker too.”

“How old are you?” Eliza asked before I could stop her.

“Sixty-two,” Marigold answered without hesitation. “But sometimes I feel older. I’m not as spry as my mother was at this age.”

I knew that Marigold’s mother had had fourteen children. Marigold was the second oldest. And Azalea, John’s mother, had been thirteenth. There’d been six girls and eight boys in a span of twenty-two years. John’s grandmother must have been an amazing woman.

I put clothes through the ringer from the first rinse into the second, and then again from the second rinse into a laundry basket to take and hang the clothes outside. Marigold handled rubbing any special stains, putting everything to churning in the wash and then ringer-pressing it into the first rinse tub. Josiah’s work clothes were the absolute worst, and she threw those back into the washing tub three times.

I asked about the bedding, but she decided on another day for that simply because, just as I’d thought, there wouldn’t be room enough on the line for it all with the other clothes. The water in the washtub was too dirty after the work clothes to do a good job at anything else thrown in now anyway. So we went ahead and drained it.

With that chore behind us, we moved with a will into the canning and the digging. I was disappointed to find no more than two pecks or so of fresh carrots, but Marigold was pleased as she could be, and so was Eliza. We cleaned carrots on the spot and each had one for a snack. Marigold thought they’d all keep all right and we wouldn’t need to can any of these. She separated a mess of carrots to cook, and a bundle for the icebox, and sent the rest downstairs with me to a bin in the basement.

Meanwhile, Marigold kept the canner boiling with our second batch of applesauce, and, not sure what else to do, I kept sorting through the apples and cutting more. We started apple butter and made a canner load of pie filling, and then I showed Marigold how my mother had made cinnamon apple tarts. I felt good about the whole day.

The following day was almost like it. We canned more apples, kept up with what little the garden held, and got a start at cleaning the house. I gathered more turnip greens and even wild greens enough to can a mess. Occasional interruptions by a train whistle had become predictable and not too terribly difficult to put from my mind. And despite Eliza’s initial enthusiasm to explore the town, I kept myself busy with everything around me, hesitant to venture into the wider unknown.

But after Friday’s biscuit making, the flour supply was low, and though we’d been making do with what was around, the time had come when groceries would have to be ordered. Josiah had given Marigold grocery money from his paycheck before he left with the biscuit bundle and a bucket of apples for the Kurchers, but he wouldn’t be able to pick up the groceries himself because he wouldn’t be back before the grocer closed. Marigold said she could use the neighbor’s phone and have her items delivered, but she preferred if I would take the order to the store myself.

“You’ll have to go right by the school on your way,” she said. “And you can register Eliza Rose for classes starting next week. The time has come. I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Of course she was right. I couldn’t continue to ignore that detail, as much as I might like to. Eliza had scarcely left my sight since we’d lost Johnny James, and part of me preferred to keep it that way. But she was a big girl and ought to be in school. I was confident there would not be a problem with her starting late.

She walked with me that overcast day, excited to be finally exploring but a little apprehensive just the same.

“I wish you were a teacher, Mommy. Then you could go to school too.”

“Oh, they prefer unmarried women to be their teachers,” I said without thinking, and we both fell silent.

We’d brought along Marigold’s wheelbarrow to manage the groceries on the way home and parked it carefully beside a pair of bicycles in the schoolyard when we went in.

The teacher I spoke with was very polite and offered to take Eliza immediately to her class, but I told her we felt it best to wait until Monday. She showed Eliza around the building anyway and let her peek at her classroom from the doorway so she would know a little of what to expect. The children were all reciting their alphabet letters, which Eliza already knew, so she felt at least a little at ease. The teacher stepped out for a moment to introduce herself, shaking Eliza’s hand kindly. She also offered to let Eliza stay for the rest of the day. But Eliza shook her head determinedly, and since I’d already told her differently, I didn’t make her stay.

I’d been glad to find the school such a short walk from the boardinghouse. It would be easy to take her there in the morning and meet her again in the afternoon. And the grocery store was not much farther. I let Eliza sit in the wheelbarrow on the way there. The clouds were passing for the most part, and I was enjoying the breaking sun. The store where Marigold sent us was a big cheery place with rows and rows of most any food I could imagine. I couldn’t quite remember the last time I’d shopped at a grocer for any real order of supplies. For our last few weeks in St. Louis, we’d been unable to afford more than an item or two at a time, if anything at all.

Marigold had a generous list, and it made me feel rich to relate it all to the helpful man behind the counter. Flour, oil, bacon, and potatoes. Corn meal, sugar, sweet peas, tea, and much more. She’d even said I should get us each an orange as a special treat, which of course made me think of the orange on the train.

“God has taken very good care of us,” Eliza suddenly said, as if she’d shared the same thought. “He’s given us Aunt Marigold, and Mr. Josiah, and plenty of food to eat. I never see’d so many apples in all my life, plus the other stuff. It’s blessings just like I prayed for.”

I nodded to her, willing to share in her gratitude if only from a distance.

“Mommy, did you ever think we’d be so blessed?”

“I – I hoped for the best.”

“Ill’nois is happy for us, just like you said.”

Things
had
been going rather smoothly, with Marigold at least. But Josiah seemed to be doing his best to ignore or avoid us. Obviously he was not pleased to have us around, and I wondered how much longer the friction of those feelings could continue without coming to some sort of a head.

The grocer offered to walk our wheelbarrow home for us, but I told him I’d manage just fine. Eliza would have liked to sit in it again. She seemed to be getting a little tired, but there was no room for her now. I almost forgot that Marigold said I should check the mail while I was out. Hers was always delivered to the post office, and she usually had Josiah go and check it once a week, but since I was out and about anyway, I might as well find the post office for myself and even give them my name, in case any mail ever came for me.

As it turned out, they hadn’t gotten my name quite soon enough but had graciously held on to a letter anyway. From my old friend and neighbor Anna in St. Louis. She’d placed only my name, the word “Boardinghouse,” and the name of the town on the envelope, but it had gotten here just the same.

I had no idea what to expect from her letter because I really hadn’t thought she’d ever write. And maybe she wouldn’t have on her own. Her words were short and to the point:

Dear Leah,

Your father called looking for you. He is ill and wishes to speak to you. I wasn’t sure from the way you talked whether you’d want me to tell him where you are. So please let me know because I told him I might be able to find your new address and he said he would call me again. If you have access to a telephone, could you call and give the information yourself? I would prefer that. I hope that everything is going well for you in your new home.

Sincerely,
Anna

I could not remember my father ever looking for me before. I thought of Mother’s sudden illness, and my heart pounded, yet at the same time a bitter resolve tried to raise its ugly head. He’d never cared to have much to do with me before. Why now?

Of course I couldn’t call, because even if I used the telephone of a neighbor or businessman here, I had no idea what number to use. The last I’d known, Father had no telephone at home. But why should I try to reestablish communication? I didn’t need his thunderous assaults jabbing at my ears, pounding on my heart. So many times I’d left his presence emotionally in pain. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to hear his voice again.

And yet he was my father. And I was the only child he had left in this world. If he was really ill, if this might really be serious, maybe he only wanted me to know, or maybe he had something else that he wanted to say.

My eyes filled with tears, hoping he’d choose to do more than relay, by word or impression as he’d done so many times before, just how grievous a disappointment I was to him. I’d known almost for as long as I could remember that it had been my older brother James that Father had really loved and had hopes for. Despite all my tomboy efforts, I could never be more than a poor replacement.

“Did you get a sad letter?” Eliza asked, waiting quietly beside the wheelbarrow on the post office walk.

“No, honey,” I tried to assure us both. “Not terribly sad. Your grandfather is not feeling well, but there’s nothing to indicate that it’s serious.”

“We should pray for him,” she said immediately. “And tell Aunt Marigold to. She’ll pray. I know she will.”

The suggestion jarred me, and I was tempted to tell her to keep the letter a secret. Of course Marigold would pray. But she might also think that I should go to my father’s side, and I did not want that, not for me or for my daughter. Eliza would not really understand. She’d seldom been with her grandfather, and then only when sheltered by her father’s special watch care as well as my own. She had no idea how ugly he could be.

Still I could not refuse the prayers. If it came up, I would simply have to tell Marigold that my father did not want my presence and I did not want his. Strange as that might seem, it had been the truth for most of my lifetime, and I could not really picture it changing now.

I expected Eliza to ask Marigold to pray for her grandfather immediately, but she didn’t. While we put away groceries and ate a quick lunch, the subject of the letter never came up. But I knew I could not just ignore it. I would have to at least reply to Anna, and like it or not, writing to my father directly would probably be the right thing to do.

I borrowed paper and sat down. First I wrote to Anna, telling her that things were going well for us and that I appreciated her letter and would contact my father myself. Then I began the far more difficult letter. Simple as it should have been, nothing seemed to suit me, and I ended up restarting the letter three times. Finally I decided that if I couldn’t find any words I could feel secure sending my father right now, then maybe I didn’t really need to say much of anything at all. So I wrote only that we had moved and supplied the new address. Marigold had no telephone number, so I told him that too. That was enough. I could not even express my endearment at the end but instead signed it only, “Your daughter, Leah.”

He hadn’t come when John died, nor Johnny James. He had barely tolerated my presence at my own mother’s funeral. I did not know why he would be seeking me now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But at least I’d done what might be considered a daughter’s duty, and let him know where to find us.

It was pouring down rain by the time the letters were written, and I was very glad to have finished our errands in the morning. Mailing the letters could wait till tomorrow. There were more pears and apples to cut and can, and that was the perfect job for a rainy afternoon.

“Grandpa doesn’t feel good,” Eliza finally told Marigold as we were filling jars once again.

I hadn’t disclosed the content of my letter and she hadn’t asked, but now she looked at me with considerable concern. “Oh, I hope it’s nothing serious.”