The Misadventures of Maude March (3 page)

I blinked. I hadn't even thought of it. For that moment that I stood in Aunt Ruthie's room, it was almost as if nothing had changed for us. Yes, I was cutting patches out of our dresses because we were leaving, but there was still a part of my mind that believed I had to put Aunt Ruthie's scissors back where I'd found them. As if she might come looking for them again.

I dropped the scissors into my carpetbag and said, “If you like, we can say our good-byes together.”

“This is the only house we've ever lived in,” Maude said as we stood in Aunt Ruthie's room. “We were both born in that bed.”

I didn't remember that. I only remembered that Aunt Ruthie barely disturbed it when she slept there. Even when she threw the covers off herself in the morning, the greater part of the bed remained made up. Maude tried again, saying, “Momma used to read to you in that bed. With the curtains open and the sunshine falling on your heads.”

That memory wasn't mine. I had tried time and again to remember our momma and daddy, but my mind always drew a blank. Maude's words called to something held deep inside me, but it didn't seem to have a thing to do with this bed.

What I noticed now, Maude had taken the quilt and woolen blanket from Aunt Ruthie's bed and stacked them with ours, ready to go. Wherever we ended up, we would not be going to sleep under somebody's old, thin blankets.

We went all around the house, with Maude touching things in each room. This was the great difference between
Maude and me. She had sentimental values. I didn't have them much. I had this in common with Aunt Ruthie.

“You could take some of this stuff,” I said. “Not something as big as the rocking chair, maybe, but that china cat on the hearth.” Or the fancy candleholder that looked like a frog on a lily pad. I had always admired that.

She shook her head. “It won't mean anything once we take it away,” she said.

“It would still be ours,” I said. “It won't be ours for long if we leave it here.”

We went back to Aunt Ruthie's room and Maude took the Bible. “This belonged to Momma,” she said. “And there's something else.”

She opened the secretary at which Aunt Ruthie wrote out her bills. She pushed some papers out of the way, pulled out a packet of letters, and set them aside so that she could feel around at the upper back corner. She yanked a panel out, exposing a secret compartment. I saw then it had a little cloth tab for a kind of handle. I had never known it was there.

I glanced at the letters. I couldn't picture Aunt Ruthie being much of a letter writer, but it appeared that someone had taken time to write to her. But then Maude pulled out a thin stack of bills, and I watched as she counted them.

She finished, saying, “Twenty-four dollars, that's all. Too bad Aunt Ruthie did pay the bank. If she hadn't, we'd have more of a bankroll to see us through.”

“To see us through what?”

“I don't know yet,” Maude said. “We're going to have to live somewhere if no one takes us in. This won't carry us for long.”

“Mrs. Golightly would probably take us in,” I said.

My thought was, she probably needed us as much as we needed her. Maude shot me a look that said she thought Mrs. Golightly was not suitable even as a last resort. I shot her a look back that said beggars can't be choosers.

Maude said, “Mrs. Golightly is too old. One bad winter cold will see her out. We would soon be back in the same boat.”

To this I had no reply.

“There's the egg money,” I said, and headed for the kitchen. The egg money was kept in a cracked sugar bowl. That came to something under three dollars.

“This and the two dollars I had saved up, that's all we have in the world,” Maude said in a flat voice.

“We have each other,” I said, but it sounded a little weak, even to me. I wished I was a saver, but I wasn't, and that was a fact. I spent all my money on dimers.

“This is the only house we've ever lived in,” Maude said again. “It's going to seem strange to call any other house our home.”

“People do it, though,” I said as we left through the back door. “They leave one place behind and make their home in another all the time. They like it fine.”

“People do it,” Maude said. “I'm not sure it's fine.”

I didn't argue with her. But I couldn't help the way I felt. A little sad that Aunt Ruthie couldn't come along, but I was excited too. Like a new life was starting for us. Like we were embarking on an adventure.

S
EEING OUR MINISTER TURNED OUT TO BE A GOOD
suggestion. It was not a suggestion that Aunt Ruthie would have made, or followed up on either. Aunt Ruthie often said that in hard times family helped family. What she meant was, don't even ask anybody else.

However, we were fresh out of family.

It was not even a suggestion Maude wanted to follow, which surprised me some. “He already dumped us on Mrs. Golightly's doorstep. Where do you think he's going to set us down now?”

I didn't argue. Maude could take a notion, and once taken, her notions tended to be unshakable. Reverend Peasley had slid in her eyes, and he might just as well have tried to climb a glass hill. But he made a better showing the second time around.

“Miss Maude, and Sallie, dear, I am shocked to my marrow,” Reverend Peasley said as we finished telling him about the man from the bank.

I liked Reverend Peasley somewhat, considering I hardly ever saw him except on Sundays. He looked fatherly to me,
and he was, in fact, a father several times over. Most times, although not as we sat there telling him our story, he was a smiling sort of man.

I liked smiles, and I liked to think that someday my life would have more of his smiling sort of people in it.

“You will simply have to stay here with Mrs. Peasley and myself until we get your business affairs settled,” he added, and won my heart entirely.

Maude broke down and cried pitiful tears. She had cried before, of course, but she had not been so broken in spirit until that man from the bank got finished with us.

Mrs. Peasley and I patted Maude's hands and soothed her and made her lie down with a cold cloth on her forehead. But all the time, in the back of my mind, I heard the reverend's voice saying, “—until we get your business affairs settled.”

Something deep inside me stood up and cheered at the notion of myself having business affairs. That they were a complete mess bothered me not at all. I had come to this house a homeless waif, and I was not here for half an hour before I was a woman of means. More or less.

The next afternoon, after Aunt Ruthie's funeral, we sat in the Peasleys' parlor and allowed the church ladies to make us feel better with such remarks as, “I am saddened to hear that your Aunt Ruthie was in such dire straits. I never suspected for a moment.”

And, “I suppose you girls could hire out. You know everything there is to know about running a house. Lord knows, I could use a hand. Of course, I couldn't afford to pay you. I have too many mouths to feed as it is.”

“Did you hear that the man who shot off that gun and
killed your Aunt Ruthie claims it was an accident?” And then to the gathering at large, “He's not a local. Name of Joe Harden.”

At that, my heart rose into my throat. Joe Harden! I pinched Maude at the back of her arm, hard. She yelped and jumped up off the settee like it was a hot stovetop.

“Now, Maude, I never meant to upset you,” one of the church ladies said. “I just thought you should know the name of the terrible man—” Maude ran from the room, brushing past Mrs. Peasley, who had been coming and going with little cakes and fresh pots of tea. The lid on the teapot rattled and a spoon fell to the floor, but Maude did not turn back to pick it up. “—who shot your poor aunt down like a rabid dog.”

“I reckon we're feeling much better now,” I said, and stood up, inviting the ladies to do the same. We'd buried our aunt that morning, and it had saddened me more than I had believed it would. These women were not Aunt Ruthie's friends in life. Aunt Ruthie didn't have a good word to say for most people; she'd just as soon shut the door in their faces as say hello to visitors. This had often troubled me, but not just at that moment.

“Maude and I can't thank you ladies enough for spending the day with us.” They rose somewhat uncertainly, but I only let my chin jut out as I walked to the door and opened it.

“Aunt Ruthie would have thanked you,” I said, and it was probably true. She would have thanked them to leave. We had done our duty by the church ladies and if they did nothing else for us, they dropped that word about Joe Harden.

I had a man to see. I was nearly happy as I shut the door.

I
STOOD AT THE BACK OF THE JAIL AND SHOUTED OUT HIS
name. “Mr. Joe Harden!”

A face appeared in one barred window. The most I could make out was, it was a bearded face, and hairless on top, like maybe he'd gotten himself scalped in one of those frontier fights.

After he'd taken his time to look me over too, he said, “Who wants him?”

I held up a dime novel. “Are you this Joe Harden?”

“What if I am?”

I put my arm down. What if he was? He was still the man who shot and killed Aunt Ruthie. I couldn't be here to shake his hand. “Are they going to hang you?”

He went away from the window but came back again after only a moment. “If this doesn't just turn a man's stomach, I don't know what will,” he said. “Shouldn't a girl your age be at home playing with her dolls?”

This struck me to the quick. “I don't have a doll.”

I had not had a doll since I was eight years old, when one day a dog grabbed it and ran off. Aunt Ruthie wiped my
tears and said matter-of-factly, “You're too old for such things anyway.”

“Well, don't you have anything better to do than hope for hangings?”

I said, “You shot my aunt. She was my only kin, but for my sister, Maude.”

For a moment I thought he would leave the window again. He said, “I'm sorry, girlie, I truly am.”

I stood there, not knowing quite what I wanted from him. I didn't know what I expected, but not this fellow with whiskers.

He said, “If I could undo it, I would.”

“You can't, I know that,” I said, and walked away. I was sorry I'd come.

T
HE REVEREND HAD BROUGHT AUNT RUTHIE'S EGG
layers and her little brown cow over to his own place. This was necessary, since we couldn't very well expect these animals to take care of themselves.

He also cleared Aunt Ruthie's pantry on Maude's say-so. On a laundry day, he took the older children with him and brought a wagonload of canned goods and flour and sugar, in addition to hams and part of a side of beef. There was an atmosphere of quiet good cheer about the family as we all helped to fill Mrs. Peasley's pantry to overflowing.

Maude acted as if she'd never seen these things before, as if her hands had never tightened the caps on these jars or helped to salt the ham. She made several trips between the wagon and the pantry without a word said to anyone, causing Reverend Peasley to comment, “Good worker.”

If there was one thing the Peasleys could be said to need, it was another pair of hands. What with five children, all younger than me, I guess it would be fair to say Reverend Peasley and his wife were overworked at the get-go.