“A prowler?” said Mrs. Klevity nervously, after a brief pause for thought. “A criminal?”
Mrs. Klevity pointed her face at me. I doubt if she could see me from that distance. “Doors make no difference,” she said. “It might be when you least expect, so you have to expect all the time.”
“I’ll look,” I said humbly. She was older than Mom. She was nearly blind. She was one of God’s Also Unto Me’s.
“No,” she said. “I have to. I couldn’t be sure, else.”
So I waited until she grunted and groaned to her knees, then bent stiffly to lift the limp spread. Her fingers hesitated briefly, then flicked the spread up. Her breath came out flat and finished. Almost disappointed, it seemed to me.
She turned the bed down and I crept across the gray, wrinkled sheets and, turning my back to the room, I huddled one ear on the flat tobacco-smelling pillow and lay tense and uncomfortable in the dark, as her weight shaped and re-shaped the bed around me. There was a brief silence before I heard the soundless breathy shape of her words, “How long, O God, how long?”
I wondered through my automatic Bless Papa and Mama—and the automatic back-up because Papa had abdicated from my specific prayers—bless Mama and my brother and sisters—what it was that Mrs. Klevity was finding too long to bear.
After a restless waking, dozing sort of night that strange sleeping places held for me, I awoke to a thin, chilly morning and the sound of Mrs. Klevity moving around. She had set the table for breakfast, a formality we never had time for at home. I scrambled out of bed and into my clothes with only my skinny, goosefleshed back between Mrs. Klevity and me for modesty. I felt uncomfortable and unfinished because I hadn’t brought our comb over with me.
I would have preferred to run home to our usual breakfast of canned milk and shredded wheat, but instead I watched, fascinated, as Mrs. Klevity struggled with lighting the kerosene stove. She bent so close, peering at the burners with the match flaring in her hand that I was sure the frowzy brush of her hair would catch fire, but finally the burner caught instead and she turned her face toward me.
“One egg or two?” she asked.
“Eggs! Two!” Surprised wrung the exclamation from me. Her hand hesitated over the crumpled brown bag on the table. “No, no!” I corrected her thought hastily. “One. One is plenty.” And sat on the edge of a chair watching as she broke an egg into the sizzling frying pan.
“Hard or soft?” she asked.
“Hard,” I said casually, feeling very woman-of-the-world-ish, dining out—well, practically—and for breakfast, too! I watched Mrs. Klevity spoon the fat over the egg, her hair swinging stiffly forward when she peered. Once it even dabbled briefly in the fat, but she didn’t notice and, as it swung back, it made a little shiny curve on her cheek.
“Aren’t you afraid of the fire?” I asked as she turned away from the stove with the frying pan. “What if you caught on fire?”
“I did once.” She slid the egg out onto my plate. “See?” She brushed her hair back on the left side and I could see the mottled pucker of a large old scar. “It was before I got used to Here,” she said, making Here more than the house, it seemed to me.
“That’s awful,” I said, hesitating with my fork.
“Go ahead and eat,” she said. “Your egg will get cold.” She turned back to the stove and I hesitated a minute more. Meals at a table you were supposed to ask a blessing, but … I ducked my head quickly and had a mouthful of egg before my soundless amen was finished.
After breakfast I hurried back to our house, my lunch-money dime clutched securely, my stomach not quite sure it liked fried eggs so early in the morning. Mom was ready to leave, her shopping bag in one hand, Danna swinging from the other, singing one of her baby songs. She liked the day nursery.
“I won’t be back until late tonight,” Mom said. “There’s a quarter in the corner of the dresser drawer. You get supper for the kids and try to clean up this messy place. We don’t have to be pigs just because we live in a place like this.”
“Okay, Mom.” I struggled with a snarl in my hair, the pulling making my eyes water. “Where you working today?” I spoke over the clatter in the other room where the kids were getting ready for school.
She sighed, weary before the day began. “I have three places today, but the last is Mrs. Paddington.” Her face lightened. Mrs. Paddington sometimes paid a little extra or gave Mom discarded clothes or left-over food she didn’t want. She was nice.
“You get along all right with Mrs. Klevity?” asked Mom as she checked her shopping bag for her work shoes.
“Yeah,” I said. “But she’s funny. She looks under the bed before she goes to bed.”
Mom smiled. “I’ve heard of people like that, but it’s usually old maids they’re talking about.”
“But, Mom, nothing coulda got in. She locked the door after I got there.”
“People who look under beds don’t always think straight,” she said. “Besides, maybe she’d like to find something under there.”
“But she’s got a husband,” I cried after her as she herded Danna across the court.
“There are other things to look for besides husbands,” she called back.
“Anna wants a husband! Anna wants a husband.” Deet and LaNell were dancing around me, teasing me sing-song. Kathy smiled slowly behind them.
“Shut up,” I said. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Go on to school.”
“It’s too early,” said Deet, digging his bare toes in the dust of the front yard. “Teacher says we get there too early.”
“Then stay here and start cleaning house,” I said.
They left in a hurry. After they were gone, Deet’s feet reminded me I’d better wash my own feet before I went to school. So I got a washpan of water from the tap in the middle of the court and, sitting on the side of the bed, I eased my feet into the icy water. I scrubbed with the hard, gray, abrasive soap we used and wiped quickly on the tattered towel. I threw the water out the door and watched it run like dust-covered snakes across the hard-packed front yard.
I went back to put my shoes on and get my sweater. I looked at the bed. I got down on my stomach and peered under. Other things to look for. There was a familiar huddle of cardboard cartons we kept things in and the familiar dust fluffs and one green sock LaNell had lost last week, but nothing else.
I dusted my front off. I tied my lunch-money dime in the corner of a handkerchief and, putting my sweater on, left for school.
I peered out into the windy wet semi-twilight. “Do I have to?”
“You said you would,” said Mom. “Keep your promises. You should have gone before this. She’s probably been waiting for you.”
“I wanted to see what you brought from Mrs. Paddington’s.” LaNell and Kathy were playing in the corner with a lavender hug-me-tight and a hat with green grapes on it. Deet was rolling an orange on the floor, softening it, preliminary to poking a hole in it to suck the juice out.
“She cleaned a trunk out today,” said Mom. “Mostly old things that belonged to her mother, but these two coats are nice and heavy. They’ll be good covers tonight. It’s going to be cold. Someday when I get time, I’ll cut them up and make quilts.” She sighed. Time was what she never had enough of. “Better take a newspaper to hold over you head.”
“Oh, Mom!” I huddled into my sweater. “It isn’t raining now. I’d feel silly!”
“Well, then, scoot!” she said, her hand pressing my shoulder warmly, briefly.
I scooted, skimming quickly the flood of light from our doorway, and splishing through the shallow run-off stream that swept across the court. There was a sudden wild swirl of wind and a vindictive splatter of heavy, cold raindrops that swept me, exhilarated, the rest of the way to Mrs. Klevity’s house and under the shallow little roof that was just big enough to cover the back step. I knocked quickly, brushing my disordered hair back from my eyes. The door swung open and I was in the shadowy, warm kitchen, almost in Mrs. Klevity’s arms.