Nora Jane was hiding in the goldenrain tree waiting for her mother to go back in the house. “Nora Jane, come in here. I’m warning you, if you don’t come back in this house you will regret it. This time I’m not kidding.”
Nora Jane had been hiding in the laundry room drawing on her drawing pad when the phone began to ring. She knew it was the school. The sisters always called the minute they knew someone wasn’t there. As soon as Nora Jane heard the first ring she slipped out the back door and went up into the tree. The cat had followed.
“She’ll give up in a minute,” Nora Jane whispered to the cat. The cat was cradled in her arms. They were lying on the platform in the top of the tree. “She’s too hung over to look for me. She’ll go back to bed in a minute.” The cat wiggled out of her arms and took a position about a foot away. She raised a paw to her mouth and licked it clean.
“That’s it, you know,” Nora Jane continued. “It’s final. I’m never going to school on Wednesday as long as I live. I’m not going over to that damn old Home for the Incurables and read to those people. That old man was spitting on me. If God wants those old people to have some company, he can go himself. It’s not my fault they’re in there.” Nora Jane rolled over on her back and stretched out her legs until they touched the branch that held the platform. It was turning out okay. As soon as her mother went inside she’d go over to the park and find something to do. She might end up getting her fortune told, or meeting some interesting people, or taking her money and buying a snowball at the zoo. Except she had left her money inside. Not to mention her shoes. “That’s okay,” she told the cat. “She was so drunk last night she’ll sleep all day. If she doesn’t call Grandmother and get her worried. Well, she won’t call her. They hate each other. Maybe after she goes to sleep I’ll take the kitchen phone off the hook. Then the sisters won’t keep calling and getting her stirred up.”
Her mother slammed the back door and the yard was quiet. Nora Jane took off her top shirt and used it as a rag to clean the debris off the platform. It was an old uniform shirt with the Sacred Heart seal on the pocket. Underneath it she was wearing a white undershirt stained with red from the time her mother put all the clothes in the washer with a red sock. Nora Jane couldn’t think about that. It had ruined all her white uniform shirts and a pair of Chinese pajamas her grandmother had given her for Christmas.
“You won’t always live in that mess,” her grandmother had consoled her. “As soon as you’re old enough we’ll get a court order and you can live with me.”
Nora Jane thought about that a lot. The court was the portrait of her grandfather in his robes, but he was dead now. She didn’t see how he was going to come order Madelaine around.
“You need to clean up this house,” Lydia always said to Madelaine if she had to come inside to wait for Nora Jane. “This house is a disgrace. What happened to the maid I arranged for you?”
“Nora Jane leaves her clothes and things all over the floor,” Madelaine protested. “How can I clean up with all her stuff thrown all over the place?”
“Shame on you to blame this on the child,” Lydia had said to her one day. She had grabbed Nora Jane and taken her off for four days that time. Since that day Lydia and Madelaine were really at war.
“She’s trying to turn you against me so she can collect your father’s government check,” Madelaine told the child. “I know you like her, honey, but you don’t know how she is. She’s a bitch to everyone but you.”
“I didn’t put all this stuff on the floor,” Nora Jane answered. “Most of this stuff belongs to you.”
Nora Jane cleaned every twig and leaf and cobweb off the platform. Then she rolled back over on her stomach and let her head drop down to look at the earth beneath the tree. There were deep gulleys in the dirt and Nora Jane imagined they were the Mississippi River going down to the Gulf. If she came out here when it rained she could make little boats and see where they went. “I’m about to starve to death,” she told the cat. “I could go over to Grandmother’s house and get her to make some poached eggs, but she’d make me go to school. We’ll go back down in a minute. She couldn’t catch me anyway. She won’t run out in her nightgown.”
Some time went by. The sun moved higher in the sky and the patch of light that had been on the platform faded into darkness. A line of ants moved across a board and Nora Jane let them go. It might be unlucky to kill those ants. You couldn’t take a chance on things like that.
When the shaft of light was completely blocked by the canopy of leaves, Nora Jane climbed down out of the tree and walked into the house and found her shoes and a clean shirt and stopped in the kitchen to get a dollar out of her mother’s purse and then found two cold biscuits on a plate and a jar of honey and a spoon and went back out into the yard. She put the honey on the biscuits and ate them. Then she put on the shirt and shoes and walked out the front gate. The sun was high now. People had gone in off their porches. It must be ten o’clock. She had the day to herself. Anything could happen.
The first thing that happened was a lady in her yard on Henry Clay Avenue. A lady as old as her grandmother, standing on a stone porch watering her azaleas. She was as beautiful as a picture and her long thin fingers were covered with diamond rings. She looked like someone from another world. She didn’t look like anyone from New Orleans.
“Good morning,” the lady said. “Are you all out of school today?”
“I am,” Nora Jane said. “I’m going to the zoo.” She stopped by the side of the yard and examined the lady more closely. She was wearing a long white negligee and robe like a bride would wear. The rings were so big you could see them from the sidewalk. It was hard to tell if the lady was young or old but she had a beautiful smile and she didn’t look like someone who would yell at you. Besides, Nora Jane never told a lie to anyone but her mother. No matter what happened, she never lied about a thing she did.
“I didn’t know they had a zoo,” the lady answered. “I’m not from around here.”
“When did you come here?”
“Two days ago. I am from California. I married Doctor Monroe and moved here. I don’t know a thing about this place.” The lady started laughing. She put the hose down on the porch and stepped over the hedge and walked over nearer to Nora Jane. “Is that a uniform you’re wearing?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s the Academy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. My name is Nora Jane Whittington. I’m in the fifth grade. Are you doing okay? Since you moved here.”
“My name is Sally Ladner Monroe. I just got married and I’m sixty-two years old. Isn’t that outrageous? It’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard of, don’t you agree?”
“Where’s your husband?”
“He’s at the hospital.”
“Did you bring anyone with you?”
“Like who?”
“Any children you have or cats or anything?”
“I brought my dog. I’m afraid to let him out. I’m afraid he’ll run away.”
“He could run around the park. What kind is he?”
“A sheltie. He’s very nervous about being here. He isn’t used to being on a leash but I guess I’ll have to get him one so I can take him walking.”
“Bring him on out. Let’s look at him.” The woman began to laugh. She laughed a beautiful long laugh that made her look very young and funny.
“I’ll do it,” she said. She went back into the house and returned in a few minutes with the dog. She had put on a pair of white shorts and a white silk blouse and was carrying a pair of little sandals. She sat down on the steps and put on the sandals, and the small sheltie dog ran all over the yard in circles.
Nora Jane moved nearer to the steps. “He’s cute,” she said. “He’s a very attractive pet. I’m glad you brought him with you.”
“Why is that?”
“I would take something with me if I moved away from my home.”
“Why are you going to the zoo?”
“Because it’s Wednesday. I don’t go to school on Wednesdays anymore. They make us go to the Home for the Incurables and read to them. This old man was spitting on me. I won’t put up with that.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for that. There.” She had buckled the last buckle on the sandals. She stood up. “Shall we walk the dog for a while? Will you accompany me?”
“Sure. If you want me to.” They walked along together with the sheltie running in circles in front of and behind them. They walked along the tree-lined street and arrived at the park and began to walk the dog along the sidewalk of Exposition Boulevard.
“What’s it like in California?” Nora Jane asked. “Did you like it there?”
“I liked it until my husband died. Then it was very lonely and I met Doctor Monroe at a party and he asked me to marry him and so I did. I’ve only been here two days. But I told you that.”
“You won’t need to get a leash,” Nora Jane said. “Look at him. He’s doing fine. He isn’t running away. Well, there’s the turn to the zoo. I’m going up that way. You want to go that way with me?”
“I’d better be going back. I have to get dressed for a luncheon.” They stopped on the sidewalk. Nora Jane stood a few feet away, looking at the woman’s rings. One was a big square diamond with small diamonds on the side. The other was a band of diamonds, each one as large as her mother’s ring. There was a third ring, but the stone was turned into the palm of her hand.
“I’ll probably see you again,” Nora Jane added. “I hope you have a good time in New Orleans. I never moved anywhere. I don’t know what it would be like.”
“It’s very odd really. The furniture in the house isn’t mine. It’s not what I’m used to. There is a great deal of furniture in that house. I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of it.” She laughed delightedly at the thought and Nora Jane imagined her squeezing through the heavy rooms.
“Well, I hope it turns out all right. It was nice meeting you. I’ll probably be seeing you again.” Nora Jane was moving off in the direction of the curve at Magazine Street. The lady stood for a long time staring after her.
“That was an interesting adventure,” Nora Jane said to herself as she crossed Magazine and began to work her way back toward the zoo. She was moving toward the shell road between the levee and the back of the zoo. “I guess when you get old you have to do anything you can to have fun. At least she can go for a walk. Grandmother can’t even go for walks anymore. I don’t want to get old. It looks like a really horrible thing to do.”
She walked along Magazine on the river side, walking as straight as she could so no one would wonder why she wasn’t in school. Two ladies in tennis dresses pushing baby carriages walked by. Their heads were turned to each other. “So I said, Then it will never be my turn, will it?” the shorter lady was saying. “It has always been your turn and it always will be.” Nora Jane pretended not to hear. She stopped at a water fountain and got a drink of water. She turned onto the shell road and walked along it until she came to the back of the zebra cage. She could see the zebras’ heads sticking up above the fence and she spoke to them. “I’d be glad to turn you loose,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”
She turned and took a shortcut past the biggest live oak tree in New Orleans. It sat out in the middle of a clearing and the roots were wonderful natural benches. She stopped and patted the tree for luck and then she went on across the clearing and hurried down the street to the front of the zoo. It was deserted except for a man in uniform behind a ticket counter and two black men painting a fence. Nora Jane decided she didn’t want to go in after all. All I’d be doing is feeling sorry for the animals, she decided. I have better things to do than that. She walked by the ticket cage as though she were on an errand of great importance. The edge was wearing off her feeling of adventure.
I’d better go to Grandmother’s, she decided. If Momma calls and tells her I’m gone she might get worried. I don’t want her worrying about me. I’m all she has. The thought brightened up the day. The thought was full of light and seemed to make a space before Nora Jane as she walked. No matter what happened, her grandmother Lydia loved her with all her heart. I am her heart, Nora Jane said to herself. I am the dearest thing on earth to her. She wouldn’t know what to do without me. She began to walk faster until she was almost running. The heat had settled down upon the park and the joggers were slowing their paces but Nora Jane walked faster and faster. She moved past the golf club and past the curve to the flower clock and crossed Saint Charles Avenue and moved along in front of Tulane and Loyola and found Story Street and she was running now.
Her grandmother was in the living room writing letters. When she saw Nora Jane come up onto the porch her heart lifted and she forgot the terrible ache she had borne in her back all morning and went to the little girl and held her in her arms. “What happened?” she asked. “Has anything gone wrong?”
“She got drunk last night and I didn’t get any sleep. I need to eat something, Grandmother. What do you have to eat around here?”
Twenty minutes later they were seated at the dining room table. Nora Jane had a toasted pimiento cheese sandwich on a gold-banded plate. She had an ironed linen napkin on her lap. She had a plate of carrot and celery sticks and a tall glass of milk with ice. Her face and hands had been washed and her underwear removed and replaced with some her grandmother kept in a drawer.
“I met a lady this morning who has a dog from California,” Nora Jane said, when she had finished half the sandwich. “I want to get a dog, Grandmother. A dog would walk around with me when I go out to the park. It would bark if anything tried to get me. Do you think I can get one someday?”
“That’s what you want, a dog?”
“I’ve been wanting one for a long time. I guess she wouldn’t let me have it, would she?”
“You can have a dog. I will get you one. If she won’t let you have it, I’ll keep it here. I have a friend who raises short-haired fox terriers. I’ll call and see when he’s going to have some puppies.”
Lydia Whittington stood up. Nora Jane wanted something that was within her reach to give and she was going to give it. It soothed Lydia to think of getting Nora Jane a dog. It made her forget her dead husband and her dead son and her drunken daughter-in-law and her lost fortune and the plight of this child, who was her reason to live. My one and only reason to live, she thought. She went around the table and caressed the child’s dark curls and kissed her beautiful ivory cheek. “Finish eating that and drink the milk. I’m going to call Judge Bass.” She went into the kitchen and dialed the number of a retired federal judge who had been one of her admirers in her youth. “Joe,” she said. “I am in need of a puppy. When are you going to have a puppy for a little girl?”
By the time Nora Jane had finished eating it was settled. The judge had a litter that was two months old and he was coming in his car to pick up Nora Jane and her grandmother and take them to his house to see the puppies. “You better call my momma and tell her where I am,” Nora Jane suggested. “Before she calls the police like she did that other time.”
Lydia dialed the phone. She opened a box of vanilla wafers and put some on a plate while the phone rang ten, then twelve, then fourteen times. On the fifteenth ring Nora Jane’s mother answered it.
“She’s with me,” Lydia said. “I’ll send her home this afternoon for some clothes. She’s staying here for a while. If you argue with me, I’ll call the court. This time I mean it, Madelaine. She looks like an urchin. Her hair wasn’t even combed. Go back to bed. I’m hanging up.”
“Have a cookie,” she added, holding out the plate. “We’re going to pick out a dog. You need to have plenty of energy for that.”
“She combs my hair,” Nora Jane answered. “She always combs it every night.”
The phone was ringing. It was Madelaine calling back. “You are the worst bitch in New Orleans,” Madelaine said. “I’m the one who’s calling the police, Lydia. You’re turning her against me. I know what you’re up to, you know. You aren’t fooling me.”
“You’re drunk every night and everyone knows it. That house looks like a pigpen. Judge Bass is on his way over here right now to talk to me about it. Go back to bed, Madelaine. She’s staying here. I’ll have you committed if I have to. You can’t threaten me. Every derelict on Magazine Street will testify for us.”
“That’s my child, Lydia. Nora Jane belongs to me. You’re going to be sorry for this. You’ll regret this day.” Madelaine hung up the phone and went into the kitchen and opened a can of beer and took it with her to the bed. It was going to be one of those days when life was as black as the coffin in which her husband’s remains were lying in the ground not a half a mile away. She lay in the bed and cried into the pillow. After a while she fell asleep.
Nora Jane and Lydia were waiting on the porch swing when the judge’s chauffeured Lincoln pulled up to the curb. The driver opened the door and the judge got out and walked up onto the porch and spoke to Nora Jane and offered Lydia his arm. They proceeded across the porch and down the stairs and the driver held open the door and Lydia and the judge got into the backseat and Nora Jane sat up front with the driver. They drove down Saint Charles Avenue to the Garden District and the driver turned into a driveway on Philip Street behind a huge gray house with porches and towers and beautiful flower gardens in full bloom. It was very hot and the judge was sweating in his seersucker suit and Lydia was sweating in her pale blue and white striped dress and Nora Jane couldn’t believe her luck. All the other girls in the fifth grade were at the Home for the Incurables reading to the old people and she was at Judge Bass’s house getting ready to pick out her dog.
The puppies were in a pen by the shade garden. There were four of them. Brown-and-white fox terrier puppies, their faces looked up at her. They scrambled over each other to lick her hands and arms.
“Which one do you like?” the judge asked, when she had been with them ten minutes or more, sitting on the ground with the puppies all over her and climbing on her legs.
“I don’t know if I should take one away,” she said. She lifted her face to his. “Won’t it be lonely if I take it away from its brothers and sisters?”
“You could take two.” The judge laughed and looked at Lydia to see if she was going to kill him. “Which two do you like the most?”
“I have to decide. I want a boy and a girl. I want the one with the most black on his face and the one with brown paws.” She turned her face to the judge’s again. She gave him a smile so huge and terrible and beautiful that he would have given her his house, would have signed it over. “This one and this one.” She pulled two puppies into her arms. She moved their faces toward each other.
“That child will lead a charmed life,” Judge Bass told Lydia later, while the butler was helping Nora Jane settle the puppies in a kennel for transporting them to Lydia’s house. “You were almost that beautiful, Lydia, but not quite. But then, I didn’t know you when you were a child.”
“She is the dearest thing on earth to me. I may have to try to take her from Madelaine again. Will you help me?”
“There’s nothing I can do. The courts won’t take her from her mother unless she physically harms her. I’ll call around this afternoon, but it won’t do any good.”
“Never mind. She won’t desert Madelaine even though she wants to. She is beautiful, isn’t she? It will protect her, I suppose. She met Alston Monroe’s bride in the park this morning. They went for a walk.”
“She is very special, charismatic. I’ve only seen her once before, when you brought her by the office. How old was she then?”
“Five.”
“I’ve never forgotten the face. Will the pups be all right over there? I wouldn’t want them neglected.” He leaned forward. He was sitting on a chair. Lydia was on the settee.
“I’ll keep them at my house. I’ll keep her for a while. After one of her bad episodes, Madelaine lets me have her. I think last night was bad. The child didn’t get any sleep.”
Nora Jane folded the blanket and laid it on the bottom of the kennel. She arranged the edges flush up against the bars. “I don’t want them feeling any steel around them,” she said to the butler. “It will make them cold. They might think it’s a knife or something.”
“They won’t mind. Just to ride in the car awhile.”
“They might. You don’t know what dogs think. You have to read their minds.”
“If you say so.” He held the kennel door open while Nora Jane picked up the male puppy and laid him on the blanket. Then she picked up the female puppy and laid it beside its brother. Then she shut the kennel door and locked it. “This is only for a little while,” she said. “After that you will never have to be in a cage again. I promise you that.”
The butler picked up the kennel. The chauffeur appeared. They all walked back out onto Philip Street and loaded up the car. The puppies went in the trunk. Nora Jane was in the front seat. Lydia and the judge got in the back. “Hurry up,” Nora Jane told the chauffeur. “I don’t want them in the trunk for long.” They drove back down Saint Charles Avenue. They passed the Academy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, where the girls were filing out to catch the streetcar and their rides. Nora Jane barely glanced their way. She was worrying about the oxygen in the trunk. “Hurry,” she said to the driver. “They could suffocate back there. They could have nightmares the rest of their lives from riding in the trunk.”
“They’ll be okay” he said. “There’s plenty of air.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You aren’t in a cage back there.” She smiled her dazzling smile at him and he drove as fast as he dared all the way to Story Street. As soon as the car stopped, Nora Jane jumped out and ran around to the back of the car. “I’m coming,” she was calling. “Don’t worry, angels. Heart of my heart. I’m coming to get you out of there. You’re home now. You’re home with me.”
The chauffeur hurried out of his side and opened the trunk with the key and lifted the kennel from the trunk and carried it up onto Lydia’s front porch. Nora Jane sat down beside it. She opened the door. She put her arm into the cage, talking and stroking the puppies’ backs. “You are all right now. You are with me. Nothing can hurt you now. I’m going to take care of you. You are my darling, darlings, heart of my heart.”
“Is that what we say to each other?” the judge asked. He put his arm around Lydia’s waist and hugged her to his side. When he was twenty years old he had loved her enough to die for her. On the day she married he had gotten into his car and driven five hundred miles without stopping. Now they were as old as the hills and nothing had changed.
“Come in,” Lydia said. “Send the chauffeur home. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“You are my own little dogs,” Nora Jane was saying. “You will never have to do anything you don’t want to do. You can just run around with me and sleep when I’m in school.”
The puppies began to walk out of the cage. They shook their legs. They shook off the ride in the trunk. The sun was shining. The voice was sweet and soothing. There were good smells in the air. Mice and squirrels and roots and vines, shoes and tables and the undersides of swings. They began to tumble around the painted porch. There was nothing to be afraid of here.
Nora Jane’s mother came over about seven o’clock that night. She was dressed up and she was sober and she was contrite. “Come see my dogs,” Nora Jane said to her and took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen where the puppies were playing in a cardboard box. “They don’t have names yet. I just call them boy and girl. Do you like them? Do you think they’re cute?”
“Lydia, you didn’t do this to me?”
“She’s staying here until the school year is over. You are welcome here at any time as long as you are sober. That’s it. It’s final, Madelaine. Don’t talk about it anymore.”
“You want to stay here? You want to leave me alone in that terrible house?” Madelaine turned to Nora Jane. Tears were beginning to run down her face.
“You could clean it up if you hate it so much,” Nora Jane said.
“Don’t do this, Madelaine,” Lydia said. “It’s almost her bedtime. Don’t do this now.”
“I’ll come over there whenever I can,” Nora Jane said. “But I have to stay here and take care of them. They wouldn’t like it with the cat. So I have to stay here for a while.” Madelaine was backing up. She thought about grabbing Nora Jane and dragging her out the door. But the little girl turned her back to her and lay down on the floor beside the cardboard box.
“Goddamn you, Lydia,” she said. “You don’t care about anything but yourself. You think you can break into my house and steal my child. No wonder your son was such an egotist. He learned it from you, didn’t he?” She kept on yelling various insults, and Lydia followed her to the front porch.
“You are a mean old witch is what you are,” Madelaine said. “You can’t have her, Lydia. I’ll get a court order to keep you from ever seeing her again.”
“Calm down, Madelaine. Please don’t yell out here in the front yard.”
“I’ll yell all I goddamn well please. And I’m going to sue you for everything you own for this day’s work.” Madelaine got into the car and started the motor and drove off down the street. Nora Jane came out onto the porch holding the puppies in both arms. “She’ll just go find her friends and talk to them,” Nora Jane said. “She probably won’t be back tonight.”
“I hope not, sweetie.” Lydia sat down in the swing and the dogs began to tumble around the porch and Nora Jane tumbled with them. The first stars were showing in the sky beyond the porch. Even though there was still light, the moon and several stars were showing. Nora Jane rolled over on her back and laid her head upon her grandmother’s soft leather shoes. The puppies licked her face. It had been a long long day.
A long time later Lydia woke her up and took her into the house and bathed her and washed her hair and cut the ends of it and found her a toothbrush and cleaned her teeth and examined all the mosquito bites and bruises on her skin and cleaned behind her ears and put her into a long white cotton gown and tucked her into a beautiful four-poster bed with clean peach-colored sheets and big soft pillows. When Nora Jane was asleep, Lydia drew her own bath and prepared herself for bed. Twenty years, she was thinking. If I can live twenty years or even ten. Give me ten, God, and I will make her safe before I leave. Please give me twenty. Give me twenty or give me ten. I will take whatever you allow me to have. Lydia was crying then, thinking of the child alone in the world. Then she stopped her tears and gave herself a lecture on courage and climbed into her own clean high bed and went to sleep.