Mrs. Miller’s sleeves were rolled up, and her hands and arms were covered with flour. There was a dusting of flour on her cheeks. I could smell bread baking. She tossed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead so she wouldn’t have to touch her hair with her floury hands.
“Where is Eleanor?” Carlie asked.
Though there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house, Mrs. Miller looked around before she answered, “Eleanor’s upstairs in her room.” In a worried voice she said, “Tell me what Eleanor did.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“How come your dad fired her from her job?”
“My father didn’t fire her.”
“He fired Aunt Maude,” Carlie said.
She looked from me to Carlie and back. “You’d better sit down and explain to me what happened.”
I told her how Aunt Maude was jealous of Eleanor and was always after her and how Eleanor had saved Carlie from drowning and how after he sent Aunt Maude away, Papa said it wouldn’t be proper for Eleanor to work for us. “But that wasn’t because he didn’t want her to,” I said. “It was what the busybodies would say.”
“I tried to tell my husband it was something like that,” Mrs. Miller said, “but he wouldn’t listen. Eleanor was looking so unhappy that he insisted she must have done something very wrong to get let out of her job, something like stealing or being bad to you little ones. He says the asylum has made her crazy, and he won’t let her go back. He’s after her all the time to tell what she did, but she just keeps quiet. Once he shook her so hard, I was afraid she would fly apart, but she won’t say a word, only stays in her room. He’s worn her down. She’s right back to being like she was. I pleaded with him to let her go back to the asylum to see the doctors, but he refuses.”
“She can come back with us,” Carlie said.
“She’d never be able to walk that far. She’s weak and wasting away. Everything’s two sizes too large for her.”
Tom had come in the room and was standing there, listening. “I can hitch up the wagon and take her,” he said. “We got to do something, Ma, or she’ll just curl up and disappear.”
“Your dad would have the hide off you,” Mrs. Miller said.
“I don’t care. I’m as big as he is, and I told him if he knocks me around anymore, I’ll take off. He knows I mean it and he needs me.”
As Mrs. Miller stood there trying to make up her mind, Carlie started for the stairway, with me right behind her. We had no trouble finding Eleanor’s room. The door was open, and Eleanor was sitting on the floor in a corner. At least I thought it was Eleanor. It didn’t look like her. Instead of being pinned into a neat bun, this woman’s blond hair straggled down to her shoulders in tangles and wisps. Her dress hung on her like an empty pillowcase, and the buttons were mismatched with the buttonholes. She wore no shoes, and strangest of all, her hands, which had always been red from work, were white as if they were dead.
Carlie and I ran over to her and tried to put our arms around her, but she didn’t seem to recognize us and cowered even farther into her corner. Tom and Mrs. Miller stood at the door. There were tears running down Mrs. Miller’s face, streaking the fine powder of flour. Tom went over and picked Eleanor up as if she were a bag of dry leaves. We hurried downstairs. Tom left his sister on a chair and ran out to hitch the horses to the wagon. Mrs. Miller put shoes and stockings on Eleanor and tried to do something with her hair. Then she hurried to the window to watch for Mr. Miller.
Tom carried Eleanor out to the wagon. Carlie and I climbed in on either side of her. Mrs. Miller stood by, fretting. “I hope I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know what Mr. Miller will say.” To me she said, “You tell your daddy to take good care of my Eleanor.”
We were all so busy with Eleanor, none of us noticed Mr. Miller striding up and snatching the horses’ reins. “Where do you think you’re going? What are you two doing on my farm? I thought you got rid of my girl.”
“No, sir,” I said. “She saved my sister’s life. We want her back.”
“Well, you can’t have her. She’s not some stray cat you let out and take in when you please. Anyhow, the way she is, she’s no good to anyone. Tom, you put that wagon back.”
Mr. Miller was a fierce sight. His face was red, and his mouth twisted into an ugly shape. Carlie scooted closer to me, and I felt Eleanor trembling. I grabbed on to one of her hands and held it tight.
Tom looked at his dad. “Better let go of the reins,” he said.
Mr. Miller reached up and tried to yank Tom off the wagon, but Tom wouldn’t be yanked. He just held on. His dad said, “I’m going to beat the hide off you.”
Tom wasn’t riled or angry, just icy cold. “You’ve given me the last beating I’m going to get. You lay a finger on me, and I take off. Any job I find will be better than this one. Let’s see if you can handle this farm by yourself.”
“I don’t think you should talk to your pa like that, Tom,” Mrs. Miller said.
“It’s the only talk he understands,” Tom said. His dad had let go of the reins, and now Tom got the horses started up. I was afraid his father would lunge at him, but Mr. Miller just stood there looking as if he’d like to slam his fist down on the whole lot of us. The wagon moved slowly at first and then faster as Tom urged the horses on. I was sure Mr. Miller would come after us, but when I looked around, he was still standing there, his arms at his sides, his fists doubled up.
We were quiet in the wagon, as if we had used up all our strength and now all we had to do was just keep going. I hoped Eleanor would brighten up once we got away from the farm, but she didn’t. When we finally reached the asylum, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Tom said, “You’d better go and get your papa.”
I couldn’t move, afraid of what Papa would say. I was worrying about what we had done. What if the asylum wouldn’t take Eleanor back? I knew there was a proper way to get people in, but I didn’t know what it was.
“You wait here,” I told Tom, “and keep Carlie with you.” With a last look at Eleanor I marched into the asylum and up the stairway to where the Thurstons lived.
Mrs. Thurston was arranging some flowers in a vase. She said, “Why, Verna, what a nice surprise. Did you come to pay me a call?”
“No, ma’am. I brought Eleanor Miller. She’s outside in the Millers’ wagon.”
Mrs. Thurston put down the flowers. “You’d better tell me about it, Verna.”
As I told the story, Mrs. Thurston looked more and more worried. “It’s not proper to bring the child back here if it’s against her father’s wishes.”
“But her mother wants her to be here,” I said. “Just come and see her for yourself.”
Mrs. Thurston looked doubtful, but she followed me down the stairway. As soon as she saw Eleanor, Mrs. Thurston sent for Dr. Thurston. Minutes later Dr. Thurston was leading Eleanor inside.
Mrs. Thurston said, “Tom, you’d better stay and have a talk with Dr. Thurston.” She turned to us. “Girls, you go on home. I’ll explain everything to your father.”
Carlie and I were too nervous to eat the egg salad sandwiches that Mrs. Luth fixed for us. We sat on the porch steps all afternoon, watching for Papa. “Will Eleanor get better?” Carlie asked.
“She got better before,” I said, but I wasn’t sure how many chances you got.
We had sweaters on, but the clouds had slid over the sun, and I had goose bumps on my arms. Our lawn was losing its green, and the maples along the road were showing red leaves. I sat there with Carlie, thinking of all the different kinds of scoldings we might get from Papa. We had been absent from school. We had gone to Eleanor’s farm without permission. We had helped Tom bring Eleanor here after her father said she couldn’t come. I had walked right into the Thurstons’ apartment and bothered Mrs. Thurston. The waiting got worse and worse. Half of me wanted Papa to be late, and half of me wanted Papa to come so we could get the scolding over with.
It was nearly suppertime when
we saw Papa walking home from the asylum. Usually we ran to meet him, but now we sat still, watching to see what Papa’s hat would look like. Most of the time he wore his hat a little pushed back from his forehead, but when he was really angry, he put it on square like he had slammed it down on his forehead. I saw it was slammed down.
Papa stood looking at us. Carlie never could stand a silence. She said, “Hello, Papa.”
Papa sat down between us on the steps and took my hand and Carlie’s hand in his. “Are you angry, Papa?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “very angry.”
I waited for what would come next.
“I am angry at myself for being such a poor doctor and, worse, a poor friend. You two are better psychiatrists than I am. Certainly you have been better friends to Eleanor. I cannot say it was right to spirit her away from her home, but before he went back, I had a long talk with Tom, who told me Eleanor’s mother wishes it. There is no question that Eleanor should be here, where she can have the help she needs. I should have gone to see Eleanor myself, but I believed we had caused her unhappiness, and I imagined she needed a vacation from us. I had not taken her father into account. After Aunt Maude’s harsh ways, her father’s cruel scoldings were too much for her.”
“Can Eleanor come back and take care of us?” Carlie asked.
Papa said, “Eleanor is not well enough.”
“Can we see Eleanor?” Carlie asked.
“When she is more herself,” Papa said.
“When will that be?”
“Not for a while, Carlie.”
Papa had spared me, but I knew that I had been lucky, for I had taken a very big chance. I told myself that I should just be patient and wait until Papa told me when I could see Eleanor, but I knew I would not be patient. I was sure I could help her, sure I knew her better than anyone else. Hadn’t I been the one to rescue her?
TWELVE
It was Louis who told me where I would find Eleanor. “In the afternoon, if the weather’s decent, they take her out to the little locked garden and let her sit for an hour so she can have a bit of fresh air. She’s all alone and looks so sadlike. I guess she’d be happy to see a friend.”
The next afternoon when I got home from school, I went to find Eleanor. Carlie was busy furnishing a crate box for her clothespin dolls: scraps of cloth for curtains, acorn caps for dishes, and bits of twig for furniture. She hardly looked up when I said I was going out for a while.
I came to the locked garden along a narrow path that twisted among birches and maples. The October trees were polka-dotted with red and yellow. The last of the milkweed seeds were floating on their tiny umbrellas. The only bird sound was the raspy call of a blue jay. The whole outdoors looked like a room that had just got a good cleaning with everything put away.
Eleanor was huddled on a bench in a far corner of the garden, humming to herself. Even with Eleanor there, the garden looked deserted. The roses had finished their blooming, and the fountain had been shut off against the first freeze. She had gathered branches to make a kind of shelter, so you had to look twice among the twigs and dried leaves to see her. In spite of her heavy sweater she looked thin. Her pale hair had escaped its knot and lay in tendrils about her shoulders. She had a wary look, like some small animal that had made a hiding place for itself.
She was so strange and so different from my Eleanor that I didn’t know what to say to her. She was like a seedling you start inside too early, which makes it all leggy and pale and when you plant it outdoors it just wilts. I gathered some of the brightly colored maple leaves that had fallen and held them out to her. I was crying. After a minute she left her shelter and came over to me. She reached through the iron railing and took the leaves with one hand; with the other she wiped the tears from my cheeks. I grasped her hand, and she didn’t pull away.
“Eleanor, Carlie and I made the sugar cookies you taught us how to bake,” I began. But Eleanor said nothing. I tried again. “When the leaves came down, I found the robin’s nest in the maple tree. You know, near where we found the pretty blue egg.”
Eleanor wouldn’t say so much as a word. When I was little, if something was bothering me, my mama used to tell me a story to cheer me. Climbing into the world of the story, I would forget all about what had made me unhappy. So Carlie wouldn’t be suspicious, I had taken my notebook with me when I left as if I were going off to write stories. Now I opened it. “I’ll read to you,” I said. Eleanor nodded.
I read the story of the girl in the forest of small trees.
“It’s your turn now,” I said. “You tell me a story.”
Eleanor was quiet for a long time, and I was afraid she wouldn’t say anything. Finally, in a voice so soft I could hardly hear her, she said, “My story is just the opposite of yours. It’s about a girl in a forest where the trees and the animals and all the other people are large, but she is very small, like an ant or a tiny beetle. She is fine as long as she stays quiet and no one sees her, but she knows if she makes a movement or a sound, someone will notice her and make trouble for her.”
Eleanor wouldn’t say anything more. When I saw the attendant coming to unlock the gate and take Eleanor back to the asylum, I slipped away.
I asked Papa how Eleanor was that evening. In a worried voice he said, “I’m afraid she hasn’t spoken a word to anyone.”
I wanted to say, “She talked to me,” but I thought of the small girl hiding in the large forest. Maybe Eleanor was hiding; maybe she didn’t want to see anyone but me. The truth was that I was pleased that I was the only one to whom Eleanor talked. I liked having a secret with Eleanor.
Each afternoon, in fine weather, Eleanor was allowed in the locked garden for an hour. If I hurried home from school, I would be in time to visit her. At first Carlie was suspicious, but about the same time, John surprised her with a rabbit from his farm, and Papa said she might keep it. She named it Surprise. After that Carlie was as anxious as I was to get home. Leaving her telling Surprise what had happened that day in school, I hurried to the garden.
I always brought something for Eleanor: a deserted goldfinch nest woven cleverly out of a twist of fibers, the transparent skin a snake had shed, a branch of witch hazel with its spidery yellow blossoms, the last of the fall flowers, reminding Eleanor how once we had looked for these things together. Eleanor examined each gift closely, smiling as she took it in her hands, but she told no more stories. She was silent except for the singing. She would not sing if she saw me, but if I was very quiet as I approached the locked garden, I would hear her. She sang quietly, songs and hymns and tunes I had never heard. The singing there in the deserted garden was strange, like a summer songbird singing from a winter tree. It was as if Eleanor believed words had become too dangerous to use, as if they were all sharp and saw-edged and hard, and only words softened by music were safe.
At first Eleanor would stop singing as soon as she saw me. If I asked her to go on, she shook her head. But after a few visits she kept on with the singing even after she saw me coming.
I wanted Eleanor to be my secret, so I hadn’t said anything to Papa about my visits until one evening at the supper table when Carlie asked, “When are we going to see Eleanor?”
Papa wasn’t Eleanor’s doctor. When we had asked why, Papa explained to us, “A patient feels more comfortable talking to someone she doesn’t know well.” Now Papa told Carlie, “From what her doctor says, I’m afraid it will be a while. She still isn’t talking.” Papa sounded very sad. “She is in the ward for very sick people.”
I couldn’t bear to think of Eleanor shut up in the ward where there weren’t any pretty things, no flowers or white tablecloths, just people like her friend Lucy. Papa had to know that Eleanor wasn’t as sick as he thought. I blurted out, “Eleanor is singing.”
Papa looked at me in surprise. “What do you mean, ‘singing’?” he asked.
“When the weather is good, Eleanor is in the locked garden. I see her there nearly every day. She doesn’t say words
but sings them, lots of them.”
Carlie was furious. “I hate you, Verna. You sneaked off to see Eleanor and never took me.”
“Eleanor is shy,” I said. “People make her nervous.”
“I’m not people,” Carlie said. “I’m Caroline.”
It was true that Eleanor was shy, but it was also true that I had been unfair to keep her for myself. I knew she would have welcomed Carlie.
Papa looked puzzled. “I’ll have to discuss this with Dr. Thurston. Let’s hope it’s a good sign.”
Carlie would not wait. After school the next afternoon she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. When I set off for the locked garden, Carlie was with me hugging Surprise. While I had been taken aback and even a little frightened when I first saw Eleanor, Carlie ran right to her, pushing the startled rabbit through the iron railing. “Here. You can hold Surprise.”
Eleanor took the squirming rabbit, and petting it, she sang until it settled down in her lap. Carlie giggled. “It’s just a rabbit,” she said. “It’s not a baby.” But Eleanor kept on with her lullabies.
That night Papa said, “I told Eleanor’s doctor about her singing, Verna. He said that was very important. It gave him an idea.”
“What idea?” I asked, but Papa wouldn’t say. Still, I felt proud that my telling about the singing might help Eleanor.
Overnight October went backward from fall to summer. It was so warm, we didn’t need sweaters. Little by little Eleanor began to talk with us, just a word or two at the beginning, then more words. One afternoon, when Carlie and I were at the locked garden chattering on to Eleanor about school, Carlie said, “Last week when it was cold, Miss Long fired up the stove, and Albert brought in red pepper and put it on the hot stove, and it made everyone sneeze.”
Eleanor actually laughed, and we laughed with her, until we all were laughing together. By the end of October you could hardly stop Eleanor from talking. It was as if she had been filling up with words until they overflowed and poured out of her.