Faith’s cuteness worked against her character. “Too many people tell her how darling she is,” Jean said to Forrest that night. “They’re always talking about her pink cheeks and red curls. Tell your mother not to do it any more. And I bet strangers are always chucking her under her chin. Just because she’s cute she thinks she’s treading the path of the elite. The world exists to please her, and she thinks she’s princess of it all.”
When Faith got feisty, force didn’t work on her. At least not Jean’s version of force, which probably seemed all too forceless to that scamp. Jean was in a quandary. She tried gentle talks in the evening at Faith’s tucking-in time. Jean’s fingers ran through her curls. “You have to be beautiful on the inside. It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside, or how many people say you’re cute, you’ve got to be good on the inside, too. What if you had a big present that was wrapped up in the most gorgeous, shiny silver paper and a huge pink bow and you could hardly stand it, it was so pretty, and you opened it up and there was nothing in the box? Wouldn’t be worth much, would it?”
The analogy had no effect. The next several days Faith was still show-offy to Judy and self-righteous to Billy. She had tiptoed away when Jean was talking to her, and she was bossy toward Forrie, ordering him to clean up his room. When Jean asked her about her own room, a notorious arena of catastrophe, Faith said, “Just you come in and see.” Jean did. She knew it was a horrid mess—she’d just tripped over some clothes on the floor an hour earlier—but when she got there now, she couldn’t find much out of place. Stashed somewhere. Infuriating. “See? Clean. I told you so.” It was a snotty taunt.
“Faith!”
“Besides, when I grow up, I’ll be a beautiful movie star, or somebody important like Annie Oakley, and I won’t have to clean my room. I’ll have servants. Like you did.”
The next day Jean discovered mounds of Faith’s clothes around the laundry basket. She couldn’t tell what was clean or dirty. She slumped down on a stool in a heap. If only I could take a break, she thought, not a break from family, but just a break from not seeing. Proving her capacities hourly sapped her energy. She wondered if Forrest ever thought that. No, probably not. She sighed. And Dody had pleaded with her to write to some stranger because he needed encouragement?
Well, she supposed there were times he did. Two days earlier she was sure he did. It was that thing with Forrie and the new horse. He always tried so hard to do for the children what other fathers did for theirs. And the latest was riding horses.
Forrest just bought Honeybunch, a Welsh pony with black and white spots and a black roached mane, apparently quite a beauty. The weekend before, after Forrest had installed Forrie on Honeybunch, she broke into a run. Forrie pulled at the reins with all his puny might, but the bit had no effect. Out of control, Honeybunch ran under some pepper trees along the fence. Forrie’s bare foot ripped on the top strand of barbed wire, causing a bloody gash.
It nearly crushed Forrest. Away from the children, he stalked back and forth in the bedroom, seething at his own carelessness in not asking Forrie what he had on his feet. Abruptly, he walked out into the living room. “You kids are going to have proper riding boots, and Jean, too, no matter what the cost,” he had said, “and you’re going to wear them.”
As soon as Forrie’s foot had healed, Mother Holly drove the whole family to Buster Brown’s Shoe Store in Escondido, the larger town on the other side of the mountains. “Wow! We’re going to have real cowboy boots. Yippee!” Faith squealed out the window going around a curve. “I’m going to be a real cowgirl, like Annie Oakley. I don’t have to pretend anymore. I have a real horse, and Judy doesn’t. Now I’m going to have real cowboy boots, and Judy doesn’t have those, either. And I can ride better than she can, too.” Jean only saw Faith riding farther down the path of conceit. Her impudence had to be put to an end.
Buster Brown’s had an X-ray machine.
“Wow! That’s spooky, looking right at the insides of our feet!” Faith said.
“Aw, it’s just modern, that’s all,” Forrie retorted.
“Have you ever seen it before?” Faith challenged.
“Nope.”
It was easy for Jean and Mother Holly to slip off to another store. They came back with a huge bag.
“What’s that?” Faith and Forrie chorused.
“Nothing. Just something for Mother Holly.”
The next morning Jean woke Faith before the others. She laid on Faith’s bed what she knew was the most gorgeous package Faith’s five-year-old eyes had ever seen. Jean imagined her sleepy child squinting against the brightness of the silver paper. Faith sucked in her breath.
“Ohhh, it’s bee-utiful. What is it, Mommy? Is it cowgirl clothes?”
Jean said nothing.
“I’m afraid to touch it. The paper’s so shiny I can see myself.”
Jean just waited.
“Can I open it?”
“Yes.”
With all the sweet anguish of childish anticipation, her plump hands reached out to unwrap the marvel and lift the lid. Jean heard an intake of breath and then stunned silence. Empty.
Without a word Jean walked out into the hall. Another day lay ahead.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Faith, I don’t want you to go to the cemetery.”
“Why not?”
Jean wasn’t actually sure why not. “It’s not a nice place for little girls to play.”
“But I like it. It’s spooky.”
“It’s still not a play place. Just don’t go.”
“Okay.” Her voice fell on the last syllable. Faith was six now, old enough to have a bored-and-exasperated-with-Mom tone. She used it often. Jean knew Faith would go there anyway. And, what’s more, she would hear about it later, just as if she hadn’t told her not to go. That was one thing about Faith. She shared everything.
Actually, Jean loved it when any of the children chose to offer her some of their child world. From bits of conversation and her own constant encouragements to describe things, she could piece together what the children did when they weren’t in the house. Sometimes she could even imagine what was going on in their heads.
Right now she knew Faith had figured out what all those cars were doing at the cemetery on the other side of the Nelson’s pasture. She also knew Faith was impatient for them to leave so she could inspect the new grave. Even though they had Honeybunch now, Faith still rode the headstones at Nuevo Cemetery, pretending they were horses. Faith wasn’t so old that imagination had been supplanted by cool reality.
Over the last year, Faith had described the place many times. Wild purple everlasting grew in the cemetery, even on the graves. Some of the stones were rounded, some pointy, some block-like. The rounded ones at the oldest part of the cemetery made the best horses, just tall enough so that straddling them kept their feet off the ground. Faith and Judy picked switches from the brush in the pasture to use as whips. They named their play horses after the names on the headstones—Angela and Sam and Bella. Some of the stones had a lot of writing. One had only one word, Esteban, and the single year, 1917. Once Faith had told her, “There’s a headstone that looks just like the front of a church in the National Geographic at Lady Mother’s. But that’s not my favorite.” Jean didn’t want to encourage her by asking which one was. Faith told her anyway, and told it again at dinner that night. It was a short, narrow grave and the headstone had an oval picture of a little boy’s face. “He’s so sad-looking and lonely,” Faith said.
“Probably the MacIntosh boy,” Forrest said. “Drowned in Mataguay Pond.”
“I’m never going to ride that one,” she said. “Judy and I put a bow right under the picture.”
“A bow? Where did you get a bow?”
“From off some flowers at a grave.”
“Faith!”
“But that grave had a lot of stuff already and this one didn’t have any. That old man who takes care of the graves, he let us.”
Faith sl
ipped away. When Jean called her, no one answered. She had to be more stern with Faith, but the constant effort wore her down. And who could she tell that to? Not Forrest. How would that help him?
Icy. If only Icy—Icy didn’t have a grave. Not a marker anywhere on the earth to show she’d been here. Did it matter? To her husband, wherever he was. And probably to her mother. Not to Jean. Markers didn’t mean much. The only important marks people leave are in each other. Invisible.
An hour later Faith came back, trying to whistle. She shoved a bouquet of flowers in Jean’s hand.
“Faith, you shouldn’t do this.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I didn’t take them all from one place.”
“Faith!”
“Guess what? One of the old men there asked us if we wanted to help dig. I bet Forrie’s never done that.”
“And you won’t either, Faith.”
“Too late. We already did.”
Jean was perplexed. It seemed as though she was always saying no. No, don’t do this. No, you can’t do that. She was afraid if she always scolded, the children wouldn’t share their private world with her. Their heads teemed with adventure, fancies comprehensible only to them, and Jean wanted to feel their wonder, too. She loved the secrets they shared and their close, personal events—a quarrel with a playmate, a lost truck, a master plan for a new fort, the nagging guilt of a chore undone, the anticipation of a loose tooth. In these she might see some marks, however transparent, of her life, her thinking, on theirs.
“Pop, how does the tooth fairy know when to come?” Faith asked one night at dinner. To her, it must have been a mystifying consideration.
“Just knows,” Forrest answered.
“How?”
“He has a big book and keeps records.”
“Of all girls and boys in the whole world?”
“Well, no. There’s more than one tooth fairy, so that each one takes care of a place.”
Faith stirred her soup, clanking her spoon against the side of the bowl, thinking. “Like senators?”
“Yeah. Like senators.”
Jean wasn’t so sure Forrest should tell her such tales, but it was fun to listen. Faith must have mulled that over for hours because after dinner she asked, “How do they know where to go?”
“Who?”
“You know. The tooth fairies.” Her voice had the impatience of one who couldn’t understand why someone else didn’t know what she was thinking.
“They have maps.” His storytelling thrived on the children’s curiosity. He did it as much for his own entertainment as for hers.
“Of streets and houses?”
“Of streets and houses. And even insides of houses, to know where the children’s bedrooms are.”
“Who lets them in?”
“Nobody. They just find a way in, a little place or something. Come here, Faithy, let’s have a look at that tooth.”
Faith shuffled over and stood between his knees while he wiggled the tooth gingerly. “Looks like it’ll be ready in a few days.”
“In a few days?” Her voice was a high squeak. She struggled free and raced down the hall to her room.
Jean didn’t understand why she ran off, but then there were a lot of things about that child she didn’t understand.
Several nights later she heard a strange noise down the hall. Every time she walked toward it, it stopped. Late the next afternoon she heard it again, a sound in the wall or on the floor, like mice scuttling or scratching against something. She stood still to listen. It was near Faith’s room.
“Faith, is that you?”
No answer. The noise stopped. Jean went back to the kitchen, but after a while she heard it again. Quietly, she walked down the hall. The noise continued. She came into Faith’s room and the noise kept on. It was down by the floor on the other side of Faith’s bed. After a moment it stopped. Jean went toward it and stumbled over a child on the floor.
“Faith, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You must be doing something.” Jean crouched down, felt for Faith’s shoulders, then reached out to her hands. “What’s this?”
“Popsicle stick.”
“What for?”
“I’m making a hole in the wall so the tooth fairy can come in. Pop said it needs a little hole or something.”
Jean couldn’t help but laugh. Sitting there on the floor with Faith, she explored the wall. Down by the floor there was a hole in the adobe about the width of her finger.
“Don’t tell Pop,” Faith pleaded. “He’ll get mad. Please don’t tell Pop.”
No, he wouldn’t get mad. He’d think it was cute and would imagine Faith’s curly head down close to the floor as she earnestly worked that Popsicle stick around in the hole until it was worn down to the nub. But here was a chance to establish some good will. “Okay, I won’t. How will you ever get it through?”
“I’ve been making one outside, too.”
Jean stifled a laugh, gave her a quick hug and left her alone to her task. The next day when the children were at school, Jean went outside and felt along the wall between the bushes under Faith’s bedroom window. Yes, there was a little hole there, too. Forrest’s adobes were twelve inches thick, though, and the tooth fairy assigned to Ramona made his call long before the two holes met.
“How’d he get in?” Faith asked at breakfast the next morning, breathless.
“Just found a secret way, I guess,” Jean said.
“I still don’t understand,” she said wistfully.
It was a precious moment. Jean wished she could prolong it. “Understanding some mysteries will just have to wait, maybe until second grade,” she said.
Forrie wasn’t one to share quite so openly, but Jean still learned about him through a variety of sources. He had his problems, too, and in the third grade a major one was school. Specifically, handwriting, and, at times, self-control. One day Jean got a phone call she didn’t expect. It was Mrs. Kelly, Forrie’s teacher, notorious among Ramona children for her motto, “Self-discipline secures success; dishonesty determines defeat.” They constantly imitated her prissy voice. When Jean met her once at PTA, she discovered the children’s impersonation was remarkably accurate. And here was this same voice on the phone, testy and high-pitched.
“I simply had to speak to you, Mrs. Holly.”
Jean could just imagine what that stereotype of a stern old schoolmarm looked like. She probably wore faded cotton print dresses that fit poorly and buttoned up the front. “Why? Did something happen?”
“Your son, Mrs. Holly, did something no child has done in the 27 years I’ve been teaching at Ramona Elementary. I simply cannot believe it. You know, of course, how difficult it is to read his handwriting.”
“No, I wasn’t aware—”
“Yesterday afternoon I kept him after school to practice. For a time he was alone in the room, and your son, Mrs. Holly, relieved himself in my thermos.”
The conversation was brief. What could Jean say? She stammered out an apology and a promise to reprimand and tried to get off the phone quickly. Then she slumped down in a chair, numb. She tried to imagine Forrie doing that. Surely it couldn’t have been vindictiveness. It was kind of funny, she had to admit. Maybe Forrie had to practice with one of those boring handwriting books with solid blue lines equally divided by a dotted line. The fat letters always looked so impossibly neat. Jean remembered seeing them herself. She had hunkered down over them, too, her round glasses perched on her nose, trying to imitate the masters. “Make your e’s look just like these, round and wide,” Mrs. Kelly probably said.
Fat chance, lady, Forrie probably thought. It was his latest expression. He was getting pretty independent, maybe even a little mouthy.
The door slammed closed. “Who’s that?”
“Me,” Forrie said.
It would have to be now. She sat Forrie down in the bedroom with the door closed. “What did you do after school yesterday?”
“Played i
n the fort with Chuckie.”
“No. Before you came home.”
He groaned and his voice fell. “That old Mrs. Kellybelly made me stay after school.”
“What for?”
“Handwriting.”
“Tell me about it.”
Forrie didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “She made me do one page over and over again. It was boring. It was “E’s.” You know, “b-e,” “c-e,” “d-e,” “f-e.”
She could tell Forrie was trying to deflect the conversation from the critical point. “It doesn’t matter what the letters were.”
“Yes, it does, Mom.”
“I had a call from Mrs. Kelly this afternoon.” The words must have exploded in Forrie’s mind. He didn’t say anything. Apparently, he didn’t even move. A mockingbird outside filled in the silence. “I’m not angry, Forrie. Just tell me what happened.”
“I had to pee, Mom. I couldn’t help it. She didn’t even let me go outside after school was over, and she told me not to leave the room and to keep practicing until she came back.” He paused a moment and then began talking faster and faster. “I looked for a plant first, honest I did. But there wasn’t any. And her wastebasket was that wire kind. I was scared to leave. ‘Don’t leave the room, Forrest Holly,’ she said in a real screechy voice. She stayed away a long time. I bet she was peeing, wherever teachers go to pee. I tried to keep writing that dumb stuff, and then I got to the p’s and had to write ‘p-e.’ I couldn’t help it, Mom. It was the only thing. I looked out the window first and no one was there and I didn’t hear her clumpy feet, so I—I just did it.” Forrie sounded as though he was about to burst into tears.
Despite herself, Jean began to laugh and grabbed him in her arms and nuzzled him by his neck. “It’s okay.”
“I thought maybe she’d just pour it out and not notice. I stayed until the z’s and she came back and let me go. Are you going to tell Pop?”
“Of course I am.”
Forrest laughed that night when she told him. “He was probably dancing on the walls, terrorized by that biddy. It might have even taught him to pray,” he said, and laughed some more.