All the next day I worried. I knew I needed to lay my hands on Aunt Eleanor again and try to heal her some more. But first I had to screw up my courage. I checked on Bunny at the base of the front porch stairs. He pointed his nostrils at me and twitched. His snout had a ring of muddy dust on it where he’d been eating peaches all day. His belly hung down low from pigging out. I sat beside him and whispered that I had to heal Aunt Eleanor of her cancer, and that I had never healed anything that big but I had to try. Talking to Bunny was a little like talking to Sister Eleanor and, come to think of it, like talking to God. Maybe they hear you, maybe they don’t. Either way, you have to carry on the whole conversation yourself.
If only that ranch could have been my home. I would take care of the house and work in the peach orchard. I would go to school somewhere close by and make new friends. If Sister Eleanor got sicker from her cancer, I could practice my healing on her. She would get well and thank me for it. She would want me to stay with her forever.
Finally the flock of mothers drove off with that day’s harvest. The sun was setting like a giant peach. Darkness eased into the orchard. The fruit, the leaves, the limbs faded in the shadows. I dragged my boots up the steps of the house and stood by the screen door.
Inside, Sister Eleanor sang her psalms. Holding my fate. When Sister Eleanor stopped singing I went inside and closed the screen door quietly behind me. “I’m back.”
I found her in the side room where she did her work. She sat upright in a hard chair digitizing records for the Library of Congress. She didn’t turn or talk or slow down her work. She had the gift of being single-minded.
I walked over and stood behind her shoulders, rubbing the palms of my healing hands together. When they were warmed up I slowly placed them on top of her head. The wimple was between my hands and her bald head, of course, but plain fabric couldn’t stop the miracle of healing.
Type type type, she continued, then paused. Type … type, stop.
“Girl, what in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But I don’t see how you can really do nothing. Nobody can. If I did absolutely nothing I’d be dead.” Then I stopped short wondering if she was afraid her cancer would kill her.
“Stop that babbling,” she said. “If there’s one thing I’ve been trying to teach you, it is only speak when you have something to say.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to—”
“Is somebody else in control of that mouth?”
She was right; my mouth was mine alone.
“Now I will ask you again, what in heaven’s name are you doing putting your hands on my head—”
“Healing?” I asked. Even though it was the answer, I felt safer saying it as a question.
Aunt Eleanor turned her head and looked at me like I had broken into her house. She stared me down until I squirmed.
Finally she asked, forming each word slowly, “Have you been snooping in my personal things?”
My mind tumbled down into itself.
“I’m sorry. I was sitting in the pantry when I saw you at the sink. I saw your bald head. Then I saw your cancer books.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me, directly?”
The thought had never crossed my mind.
“Don’t you feel safe yet, Ruby Clyde … Henderson?” And when she said my last name, I knew I was caught.
She stood up abruptly and I shrank away.
Was my life in Paradise over?
She reached out and took my shoulders firmly in her hands and waited. I couldn’t look away. Time passed and soon our breathing matched one another. Inhale, exhale, and again, slowly. I was so tired of holding on to life all by myself.
“It seems,” she finally said, “that we’ve both been keeping secrets.”
I felt it before I heard it. She would keep me.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Ruby Clyde, I grew up looking at your mother. You look exactly like Barbara did at twelve years old.”
Barbara? I wasn’t used to hearing Mother called “Barbara.” Mean Grandmother always called her “Babe.” The Catfish called her “Babe.” Everybody called her “Babe.” “Barbara” sounded so … grownup.
Eleanor kept on. “Even if your friend Angie hadn’t told Frank, I would have known the instant I laid eyes on you.”
I was too relieved to be cross with Angie for telling my secret. “And you didn’t hate me?” The shame of causing their strangeness flooded over me.
“How could I hate you, child, I only just met you.”
I was so wrong about everything. All that wasted time but I had nothing to fear. She didn’t blame me. She wouldn’t send me to an orphanage. Eleanor was family and Paradise Ranch was home to me and Bunny. I hung my head and whispered, “You must think I’m stupid.”
“Far from it, Ruby Clyde. Every day I have admired your courage and I have waited patiently for you to trust me. I couldn’t just tell you to trust me. You had to find it yourself.”
And the astonishing thing is that she was absolutely right. Trust had snuck up on me. For the first time in my life, I trusted an adult. It is weird to get something that you need so badly and didn’t even know was missing.
That spastic muscle let go—the one that had gripped my heart when I woke up at the Hot Springs campsite. I could breathe again. My lungs were like dusty closets suddenly open to the sun. Home. I was so relieved that I almost fainted. And for a brief moment, I forgot that Eleanor Rose had cancer.