He hung his head. The finger went back in.
“Look, William Ernest”—she bent over close to his ear and whispered hoarsely into it—“I’m going to teach you how to fight. No charge or anything. Then when some big punk comes up to you and tries to start something, you can just let them have it.”
His finger dropped from his mouth as he stared at her, unbelieving.
“You hear how I fought six boys one day—all by myself?”
He nodded solemnly.
“Before I get through with you, you’re going to do the same thing. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” She landed six imaginary punches sending six imaginary bullies flying.
“Pow,” he echoed softly, tentatively doubling up his fist and giving a feeble swing.
“First thing, when somebody yells at you, don’t throw your hands up”—she imitated him—“and act like you think they’re going to kill you.”
“Pow?” He swung his little fist in a kind of question mark.
“Naw, not first thing. See, they may not be even meaning to hit you. First thing is, you take a deep breath—” She filled her diaphragm and waited while he tried to imitate her, his ribs poking through his shirt. “Then you yell like this: Get the hell outa my way!”
Before the sentence was out, Trotter was filling the doorway like the wrath of God Almighty.
“OK, OK,” Gilly said. “Leave out the hell part. The main thing—”
“What are you kids doing? I thought I was paying you to help William Ernest with his reading?”
“Naw. This is on my own time. No charge.”
Trotter looked anxiously at W.E. He was standing on tiptoe, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut in his red face, sucking in a huge breath.
“Get the hell out my way!” He turned to Gilly, smiling. “Was that good, Gilly?”
“Better leave the hell part out in front of Trotter. But that was pretty good for a start. Really not bad.”
“Gilly,” said Trotter.
“Look, Trotter. He’s got to learn to take care of himself, and I’m the best damn—the best teacher around.”
Trotter just went on standing in the doorway as though she couldn’t think what to do next, when the little guy marched over to her, put his fists up in front of her huge bosom, took in a breath, and said squeakily, “Get out my way.”
Tears started in the woman’s eyes. She threw her arms around W.E. and bear-hugged him.
“I was just practicing, Trotter. I didn’t mean you.”
“I know, William Ernest, honey,” she said. “I know.”
“He’s got to learn to take care of himself in the world, Trotter.”
The big woman wiped her face with her apron and sniffed. “Don’t I know that, baby?” She patted the boy and straightened up. “How ’bout you finishing this lesson outside? I don’t b’lieve it’s something I want to listen to.”
“C’mon, Gilly.” William Ernest slid around Trotter and started for the back door. “Pow! Pow!” they could hear him exploding softly down the hall.
“I’m not going to teach him to pick on people,” Gilly said, “just how to take care of himself. He can’t come hiding behind your skirt every time someone looks at him cross-eyed.”
“I s’pose not.”
“Even real mothers can’t watch out for kids the rest of their lives, and you’re just his foster mother.”
“So they keep telling me.”
Gilly hadn’t meant to be cruel, but she needed to make Trotter understand. “If he knows how to read and how to stick up for himself, he’ll be OK.”
“You got it all figured out, ain’t you Gilly, honey?” She relaxed into a smile. “Well, I ain’t stopping your boxing lessons. I just don’t care to watch.”
Boxing lessons? The woman was a throwback to another century. Gilly started to pass her at the door, but as she brushed by the big body, Trotter grabbed her and planted a wet kiss on her forehead. One hand went up automatically to wipe the spot, but a look at Trotter’s face, and Gilly stopped her arm midway.
“Don’t know what got into me,” Trotter mumbled, trying to turn it into a joke. “I know you don’t allow no kissing. Sometimes I just haul off and go crazy.”
“At Sunday school Miss Applegate calls it demon possession.”
“Does she now? Demon possession, is it?” She began to laugh so hard, Gilly could feel the boards vibrating under her feet. “Demon possession—Mercy, girl, I’d have to catch me a jet to keep one step ahead of you. Well—you better get going before the devil grabs me one more time.”
She waved her hand to land a mock spank on Gilly’s bottom, but by the time it swept the air, Gilly’s bottom along with the rest of her was well down the hall.
THE VISITOR
The week before Thanksgiving, Mr. Randolph came down with the flu. It wasn’t a bad case as flu goes, but he was an old man, and any kind of sickness, as Trotter said, was harder on the old. So with many rest stops for Trotter to recapture her wind, she and Gilly brought the rollaway cot down from the attic and set it up in the dining room, turning the never-used room into a sickroom for Mr. Randolph.
There had been a great discussion as to whether big lawyer son should be notified. Mr. Randolph was sure that if his son knew he was sick, he would be snatched away to Virginia never to return again. Trotter recognized this appalling possibility, but maintained that there was some moral obligation to inform next of kin when one took to one’s bed.
“Suppose he just shows up one day and finds you sick—then he won’t trust you no more. He’s sure to take you away then.”
But Mr. Randolph thought it worth the risk, and they had compromised by having Mr. Randolph move in, so Trotter could keep a close eye on him.
“Now what happens if you die on me?”
“I promise not to die in your house. You have my solemn oath.”
“Gilly, if he looks peaky, we carry him next door as fast as we can go. I ain’t gonna be sued by no big Virginia lawyer.”
Mr. Randolph raised up off the rollaway. “If I die on you, you can sue me, Mrs. Trotter. You can take me for every cent I have.” He lay back, giggling and gasping.
“Humph, every cent. You won’t even have no social security if you’re dead. Better not die, that’s all I got to say.”
“I promise not to die, but with these two beautiful ladies nursing me, I may decide to remain ill for a long, long time.”
“Well, that’s a chance I got to take, beautiful as I am. But if you ain’t well a week from today, you’re gonna miss out on the turkey and stuffings.”
So Mr. Randolph swore a solemn oath to be well by Thanksgiving. As it turned out, he was a little better, but by then both Trotter and William Ernest were down with the bug.
Trotter fought going to bed, but her fever was high, and she was too dizzy to stand up. Despite her protests, Gilly stayed home from school Tuesday and Wednesday to nurse the three of them, and Thanksgiving Day found her exhausted from going up and down stairs and from bedside to bedside.
It occurred to her that if she could get sick, too, no one would blame her for collapsing but, of course, she didn’t catch anything, except irritability from not sleeping properly and worrying. She called Mr. Randolph’s doctor, Trotter’s doctor, and the pediatrician, but no one gave her any help. The patients were to stay in bed and take aspirin for the fever.
Gilly chopped an aspirin in half with the butcher knife for William Ernest. One piece flew out of sight under the stove and the other piece, which she got down the boy’s throat with no little difficulty, came up again promptly, along with the bowl of soup she’d coaxed down earlier. She was afraid to try any more aspirin.
Trotter told her to wipe his face and arms and legs with a cold cloth, which seemed to help the fever a little, but the child was still miserable, and clean as she might, the smell of old vomit hung in the room.
The whole house was a mess, in fact. Even rooms like the living room and kitchen, which nobody but she went into, be
gan to look as though they had been bombed. She was simply too whipped to pick up after herself.
By Thursday she couldn’t have cared less about Thanksgiving. The turkey Trotter had bought was relentlessly defrosting on the refrigerator shelf, but there was nothing else to remind her as she sat at the kitchen table dressed in jeans and a shrunken T-shirt, chewing her late breakfast of bologna sandwich that the rest of the nation would soon be feasting and celebrating.
The doorbell rang. She jumped at the sound. Her first fear was that lawyer son had not believed Mr. Randolph’s excuses for not coming to Virginia for Thanksgiving and had come to get him. Then, with annoyance, she realized that it was probably Agnes Stokes, sneaking around to find out why Gilly had skipped school for two days.
But when she opened the door, it was to a small, plump woman whose gray hair peaked out from under a close-fitting black felt hat. She wore black gloves and a black-and-tweed overcoat, which was a little too long to be fashionable, and carried a slightly worn black alligator bag over one arm. The woman, who was an inch or so shorter than she was, looked up into Gilly’s face with a sort of peculiar expression, whether frightened or hungry, Gilly couldn’t have said. At any rate, it made her shift uncomfortably and push at her bangs until she remembered two of Trotter’s trusty sentences for emergency use and offered both of them.
“We’re not buying anything today, thank you, and we’re faithful members of the Baptist Church.” She hurried to close the door.
“No, wait, please,” the lady said. “Galadriel—Hopkins?”
Gilly yanked the door back open. “Who are you?” she blurted out, as awkwardly as William Ernest might have.
“I’m”—It was the woman’s turn to look uncomfortable. “I’m—I suppose I’m your grandmother.”
Somehow Gilly would have been less surprised if the woman had said fairy godmother.
“May I come in?”
Dumbly Gilly stepped back and let her.
The sound of snoring poured forth from the dining room. Gilly willed the woman not to look, not to stare at the funny little brown face poked up above the faded quilt, the mouth gaped and trembling with each noisy breath.
But, of course, the woman looked, jerked her head slightly at the sight, and then turned quickly back to Gilly.
“Gilly, honey, who is it?” Damn! Trotter must have heard the bell.
“OK, Trotter, I got it,” Gilly yelled, as she tugged at her shrunken T-shirt (the last half-clean one) and tried to make it cover her navel. “Want to sit down?” she asked the visitor.
“Yes. Please.”
Gilly led the way into the living room and backed up to the couch, sticking a hand out toward the brown chair.
Plunk. They both sat down in unison like string puppets, the lady right on the edge of the chair so that her short feet could touch the floor.
“So—” The woman was bobbing her little black hat. Did anyone in the world wear hats these days? “So—”
Gilly was trying to take it in. This—this little old lady in the old-fashioned hat and coat—was Courtney’s mother? In all Gilly’s fantasies, Courtney had never had a mother. She had always been—existing from before time—like a goddess in perpetual perfection.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You are Galadriel?” Her voice was Southern but smooth, like silk to Trotter’s burlap.
Gilly nodded.
“My daughter—” The woman fumbled in her purse and brought out a letter. “My daughter left home many—” She snapped the purse shut and raised her eyes to meet Gilly’s puzzled ones. “—many years ago. I—my husband and I never…I’m sorry…”
Helplessly Gilly watched the little woman stumbling for words, trying to tell a painful story and not knowing how.
“My husband—” She tried to smile. “Your grandfather died—nearly twelve years ago.”
Perhaps she should say something, thought Gilly. “Jeez, that’s too bad.”
“Yes. Yes, it was.” The woman was pushing hard against the words to keep from crying. Gilly knew the trick. Oh, boy, how well she knew that one. “We—I tried to contact Courtney, your mother, at the time, of course. But—I was not able to. In fact—” The pitch of her voice went up. She stopped trying to talk and took a handkerchief from her purse, barely touching each nostril before putting it away.
Go ahead and blow, honey. It’ll make you feel better. Trotter would have said it, but Gilly couldn’t quite get it out.
“As a matter of fact—” The woman had recovered herself enough to continue. “As a matter of fact, this letter—this letter is the first direct word we’ve—I’ve had from my daughter in thirteen years.”
“You’re kidding,” said Gilly. She felt sorry even though the woman’s pain didn’t seem to have anything to do with her.
“I didn’t even know she’d had a ba—Wouldn’t you think she’d want her own mother to know she’d had a baby?”
This was obviously the point where she, Gilly, was supposed to come into the story, but it still seemed far too remote, like something that had happened once to a friend of a friend. She tried to nod in a sympathetic manner.
“Gilly. I called you and called you.” William Ernest stood clutching the doorway for support, his face still flushed with fever. He was dressed in his long grayish-white underwear. At the sight of a stranger, he stopped dead.
The woman looked at him once hard; then as she had done with Mr. Randolph, she looked quickly away.
“I’m sorry, W.E.,” Gilly said. “I didn’t hear you call me. What’s the matter?” As soon as she asked, she knew. His long johns were wet all down the front. Gilly jumped up. “’Scuse me, I’ll be right back.” She hustled the boy back to his room, as fast as you could hustle a boy who was still weak from fever and lack of food. It was hard to be patient with him on the stairs. “You shouldn’t have come downstairs, William Ernest. You’re sick.”
“I wet,” he said sadly. “I couldn’t help it.”
She sighed. “I know. When you’re sick, you just can’t help it.” She got him the last clean underwear, which was short and wouldn’t be as warm, and changed his sheets. She took a dry blanket off her own bed. He climbed in and turned his back to her at once, his strength exhausted.
“Gilly, honey,” Trotter called drowsily as Gilly passed her door. “You got company down there?”
“Just playing the TV.” Gilly smoothed her hair and tugged again at her shirt as she went down the stairs. She knew she looked a wreck. She must have shocked the poor old lady right out of her socks.
The woman gave a weak smile and nodded when Gilly came in. “You poor little thing,” she said.
Gilly looked behind to see if W.E. had followed her down.
“Bless your heart.” There was no one else around.
“Me?”
“Courtney didn’t exaggerate. I’m just so glad you wrote her, my dear. How could they have put you in such a place?”
“Me?” What was the woman talking about? What place?
“I know I shouldn’t have burst in upon you like this, but I felt I had to see for myself before I talked with your caseworker. Will you forgive me, my dear, for—”
There was a heavy thump, thump, thumping on the stairs. Both of them sat stark still and listened as it drew inexorably nearer.
“Ohhh!” The little lady gasped.
Swaying in the doorway was a huge barefoot apparition in striped men’s pajamas, gray hair cascading over its shoulders, a wild look in its eyes.
“I forgot!” It was moaning as it swayed. “I forgot!” It grabbed frantically at the woodwork. “I forgot.”
Gilly sprang to her feet. “What did you forget, dammit?”
“The turkey”—Trotter was almost sobbing now—“Fifteen dollars and thirty-eight cents, and I let it go to rot.” She gave no sign that she noticed the visitor.
“Nothing’s gone to rot. I would have smelled it, wouldn’t I?”—Gilly couldn’t help sneaking a sideways glance at the little woman, wh
o looked almost as frightened as W.E. did when he spied a new word in his reading book—“Go back to bed, Trotter. I’ll put it right in the oven.”
The huge woman made an effort to obey, but nearly fell down just trying to turn around. “I better set a minute,” she panted. “My head’s light.”
Gilly grabbed the back of the striped pajamas with both hands and half dragged, half supported the faltering frame toward the couch. But she knew—just as one knows when piling on one final block that the tower will fall—she knew they couldn’t make it.
“Oh, mercy!” Trotter gave a little cry as she came crashing down, pinning Gilly to the rug beneath her. The woman lay there, flapping on her back like a giant overturned tortoise. “Well, I done it now.” She gave a short hysterical giggle. “Squished you juicy.”
“What? What is it?” The third night-clothed actor had made his entrance.
“You awright, ain’t you, Gilly, honey?” asked Trotter, and without waiting for an answer, “S’awright, Mr. Randolph.”
“But someone fell. I heard someone fall.”
“Yeah, I fell awright.” Trotter was rocking her huge trunk in a vain effort to get to her feet. “But it’s OK, ain’t it, Gilly, honey?”
“Just roll, Trotter,” said a muffled voice. “Roll over and you’ll be off me.”
“What’s that? What’s that?” Mr. Randolph squeaked.
“It’s poor little Gilly.” Trotter grunted and with a supreme ahhhhhhh rolled off onto the floor.
“Miss Gilly?” he was asking anxiously.
“I’m OK, Mr. Randolph.” Gilly got up, dusted herself off, then took him by the hand. “Let’s get you back into bed.”
By the time she returned from the dining room, Trotter had somehow hoisted herself into a sitting position on the couch, and dizzily clutching the cushions with both hands, had found herself face to face with a white-faced stranger.
“You said wasn’t no one here,” she accused Gilly.
The visitor, for her part, was teetering on the absolute brink of the brown chair in what Gilly took to be a state of total shock. But the small lady proved capable of speech. “I think I’d better go,” she said, standing up. “I don’t seem to have come at a very good time.”