Where the Heart Is (12 page)

“Okay. But be here early. Say by nine o’clock.”

“Yeah. Nine o’clock.” And as suddenly as she had swooped in, she swooped out.

And later that night, after Novalee had napped, when the rooms were dark and the halls quiet, she tried to imagine what kind of place Momma Nell would get for them. She hoped for sunny rooms and winding staircases, for tall windows and broad yellow porches. But she had trouble picturing such places. The rooms in her head were dark, the light hazy and dim.

She tried hard to remember her magazine pictures . . . rooms papered in soft spring flowers, glass doors overlooking bright gardens, but the images looked blurred, the colors faded.

She covered her head with her pillow, hoping sleep would bring dreams of white cradles, wicker chests and glass music boxes that, spinning, catch the light.

Early the next morning, after a flurry of release forms and goodbyes, Novalee and the baby were wheeled downstairs by a teenage candy striper with bleached hair and braces. She waited with them for nearly an hour before she reclaimed the wheelchair and wandered away.

Novalee and Americus waited in the lobby until just before noon, and might have stayed there longer, but Novalee thought people were whispering about them, so she took the baby outside to wait on the sidewalk.

She knew then Momma Nell wasn’t coming; knew she and the money were gone. But Novalee had no place to go . . . and so she waited.

They were still there at straight up two o’clock when Sister Husband’s Toyota came ricocheting up the curbed drive and screeched to a stop. Like a shepherd coming for lost sheep, Sister rounded up Novalee and Americus, herded them into the covered wagon, then raced away, heading for safety . . . heading for home.

SAM WALTON WAS RIGHT. By the time Americus was a month old, folks were starting to lose interest in the baby born in Wal-Mart.

Just out of the hospital, Novalee continued to get mail, forwarded to Sister Husband’s. A widow in Dallas sent an invitation to her daughter’s wedding and a boy named Moe Dandy sent a bookmark made from a snake. A Sunday School class in Topeka sent twenty dollars and a Vietnamese family in Fayetteville sent ten. A ninety-year-old Quapaw Indian named Johnson Bearpaw mailed a sack of worn comics and a five-dollar-bill. Mostly though, Novalee got notes of encouragement and prayers for Americus, but even those tapered off quickly.

Now and then a reporter would phone from Tulsa or Oklahoma City and sometimes an out-of-state call came, someone wanting to know about the child named Americus Nation. Once, a man and his wife came to the door and told Sister Husband they had driven all the way from Midnight, Mississippi, to bring the word of God to Novalee, but Sister told them she already had it, then gave them a copy of Ecclesiastes and sent them on their way.

The locals were curious and stared as she walked down Main Street on her way to the library. Those who knew who she was pointed her out to those who didn’t. When they had family from out of town, they drove them down Sister’s street so they could take pictures of her trailer. The clerks in the IGA, where she bought baby talc and Vaseline, were polite and soft-spoken as they handed her change, but winked at each other over the top of her head and made Wal-Mart jokes when she walked out the door.

But she didn’t see them, never noticed. She was too busy falling in love with her baby . . . memorizing the soles of her feet and the pattern of thin curls at the back of her neck . . . tracing the curve of her lips while she nursed . . . learning the heft of her hips palmed in one hand . . . listening for her breath in the dark of the night.

Sister had set out to spoil them as soon as she got them moved in.

She would pick Americus up at her first whimper and dance her around the trailer to a music box that played “My Funny Valentine.” She cut stars from construction paper and hung them on strings above the crib, claiming babies got their sense of direction from stars.

When Novalee tried to help with the dishes or vacuum the floor, Sister would lead her to the front porch swing and make her sit down.

Whenever she went to town, she brought Novalee some special gift—a plastic barrette shaped like a butterfly, a tiny Bible no bigger than a match box, a sample lipstick from the Merle Norman store.

For the first few days at the trailer, Novalee had felt stiff, a bit shy.

She was careful not to use too much hot water and kept her door closed at night. Her speech was polite; she said “thank you,” “excuse Where the Heart Is

me,” and “please,” and always cleaned her plate at the table, even when Sister served her lima beans.

But what changed all that was when Novalee ran into the gas stove. She had just put Americus to sleep after the two o’clock feeding, then slipped down the hall and into the bathroom without making a sound. She eased the door shut behind her and left the light off so it wouldn’t shine into Sister’s bedroom. Barefooted, feeling her way in the dark, she misjudged the distance and crashed into the heavy old gas stove, cracking her shin against one of the sharp ridges that curved over the jets. The savage thwack of bone against iron splintered the silence just before Novalee bellowed in pain and fell to the floor.

Sister flew out of bed, ran into the bathroom, turned on the light.

“Oh darlin’, what happened?”

Novalee, cradling her leg, rocked back and forth in the middle of the floor. The skin along the bony ridge of her shin had been split open—peeled back, scraped to the bone.

“My word. Let’s get something on that. I know it must hurt like the dickens.”

Between clenched teeth Novalee hissed, “dickens,” while Sister rummaged in the medicine cabinet, talking to herself as she poked through jars and tubes. She found the bottle she was looking for on the top shelf. Kneeling, she took the injured leg firmly in one hand, uncorked the Merthiolate and upended it on Novalee’s ravaged flesh.

“Oh, shit!” Novalee screamed as she beat her fists on the floor.

“Shit!”

Suddenly, she froze, her face rigid as she realized what she had said. “Sister . . .” Her voice trailed off into silence.

Sister looked solemn as she eased Novalee’s leg to the floor.

“Darlin’.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Didn’t you forget to say please?”

Sister forced her face to frown, then covered her mouth, trying to hide the smile that played at her lips. She choked back the first hard release of air, swallowed the sound of a snicker, then exploded with laughter—laughter that robbed her of breath and made her eyes tear.

Novalee, her color rising, cracked an uncertain grin, holding it just for a moment, just until the first thin squeak slipped out . . . and then it was over. They laughed, they hooted, they squealed, their chests heaving as they gulped for air, until, minutes later, still gasping for breath, they struggled to their feet, then padded to the kitchen, made coffee and talked until dawn.

Novalee told Sister about Willy Jack and the Wal-Mart. She told her about Momma Nell, too, but not about the old stuff, she didn’t tell about that. She only talked about her coming to the hospital, running off with the money.

“Nearly six hundred dollars,” Novalee added.

“Now just imagine that,” Sister said. “Strangers who cared so much about you and that precious baby that they sent their money.

Don’t that beat all?”

“I should’ve known what she’d do.”

“But that don’t change the goodness of all those folks giving it to you, does it?”

“Sister, I been wanting to ask you. Why did you show up at the hospital when you did? I mean, how did you know?”

“Why, darlin’, the Lord has a way of telling us what we need to know.”

Novalee nodded her head like she understood, but she didn’t. She hadn’t understood much of anything that had happened to her. Like when Sister brought her and Americus to the trailer that first day.

Sister had told her if she would just trust the Lord, everything would Where the Heart Is

work out. Novalee had nodded her head then, too, even though she hadn’t really believed it.

But that afternoon, a Mexican family named Ortiz, from the trailer next door, brought over a handmade pine crib and some hot tamales wrapped in corn shucks. The father spoke no English, but smiled while the mother and the three daughters took turns holding Americus.

Dixie Mullins, from across the street, brought diapers and gowns, things her granddaughter had outgrown. Dixie had a beauty shop in the back room of her house, but she didn’t do much business. Sister said it was because she carried on conversations with her dead husband while she worked. Henry and Leona Warner, from three doors down, brought a watermelon, some receiving blankets and a sterilizer. They agreed the baby was beautiful, but they got into an argument about the color of her eyes. Henry said they were cornflower blue; Leona insisted they were azure. Sister explained, after they left, that they lived in a duplex—Henry on one side, Leona on the other.

By sundown, Novalee and Americus had everything they needed.

They were fed, settled and in bed in their new home. Maybe Sister was right, Novalee thought. Maybe everything would work out, but she couldn’t see how.

The little spare room at the back of the trailer barely held Novalee’s bed, the crib and the tall chest for their clothes, but Sister fixed it up with a new bedspread and curtains from Goodwill and some framed pictures she bought at a flea market east of town. Novalee worried about the money Sister spent on her and Americus. She figured the Welcome Wagon job didn’t pay much because most weeks when Sister went by City Hall to get the names of new people in town, there wouldn’t be more than two or three. Now and then, she worked at the IGA handing out samples of sausage or cheese or some new cracker, but those were long days that kept her on her feet for hours. She never complained, but she took pills for days afterward. “To improve my disposition,” she said. Novalee hoped when she went to work at Wal-Mart, she’d make enough so Sister could give up the IGA.

Forney came by each evening as soon as he closed the library. He always knocked three quick raps, then waited for Novalee to come to the door, no matter how many times she called, “Come in.”

Each time he came, he brought an alarm clock and two books, one of them for Novalee. He brought her books about convents. He brought books about cowboys. Books on gambling, whales and molecular biology. She read about the planets, jazz and Mexican architecture . . . about polar expeditions, bull-fighting and the Russian Revolution. Once he brought her a collection of essays about love which he handed to her inside a brown paper sack. She read a book about shepherds along the river Tweed in Scotland and one titled Rats, Lice and History, a chronicle of infectious diseases and how they altered the world. Novalee started all of them, finished most, skimmed some, gave up on a few, but she couldn’t keep up with Forney. The stack of books beside her bed stretched to the window.

The second book he brought was for Americus. He would prop her in her carrier on the kitchen table, then put his chair directly in front of her. After he cleaned his glasses and got a glass of water, he would set the alarm, then begin to read.

He read for thirty minutes exactly, a different author each night. He read Shakespeare, Plato, Freud, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and he read with deep concentration. From time to time he looked up at Americus to judge her reaction to something he had read.

She never dozed, never fussed, but stayed alert from the first word, her attention focused completely on Forney.

While he read, Sister and Novalee sat quietly across the room.

Occasionally, Sister would nod her head at something she felt Where the Heart Is

deserved a response, or now and then whisper “Amen” when she heard something she believed to be true. She became so involved when Forney read Romeo and Juliet, that she cried and held Novalee’s hand.

When the alarm went off, Forney would close the book, then repeat, from memory, three key passages from the reading, as if to suggest to Americus there might be a test.

After the readings, Forney manufactured lots of reasons why he had to hurry away, but he never did. He liked sitting on the porch with Sister, peeling peaches or shelling peas. He liked holding Americus at bedtime, liked the feel of her soft cotton gown, the smell of Novalee’s milk still on her breath. He liked watching Novalee as she smiled at something he said, lifting her hair from the back of her neck, bending to put Americus into his arms.

Mr. Sprock’s visits were not nearly as predictable as Forney’s.

Sometimes he came in the mornings, bringing fresh tomatoes or peppers from his garden. Sometimes he came in the evenings to sit on the porch and drink tea. He always had something interesting to show them—a rock shaped like a rabbit, a potato that looked like a man’s butt. He brought peacock feathers and foreign coins, arrowheads and old postcards. Once he brought a gold tooth in a bottle that he found floating at the lake.

Novalee didn’t know when or where Mr. Sprock and Sister found time to be alone, but sometimes, when Sister said grace, she asked the Lord’s forgiveness for fornicating again.

Mr. Sprock often brought Novalee seeds and young plants for her garden, which was beginning to burgeon with color. The morning glories, a foot tall and climbing, wound around a trellis Mr. Ortiz had made for her. All the geraniums and pansies she had received in the hospital were thriving in that corner of the yard, as well as white candytuft, scarlet rose mallow and purple coneflowers she had added since she got home.

In a lot behind the trailer, she had found some white rocks she used to circle the buckeye tree in the center of the yard. It hadn’t grown any that she could tell, but the trunk had lost its powdery film, a sign, she had read, that indicated returning health. The gardening book Forney had given to her for her birthday was already looking worn.

Just behind the trailer she started a small vegetable garden with potato eyes and onion sets, then lettuce seeds Dixie gave her. She added asparagus crowns for Sister, who claimed if they took root, they would grow for a lifetime.