One Saturday afternoon in late September, when Nana and Grandpa went down to Lorrimer’s to do the trading, I stayed home to help Aunty Rose finish hemming a dress to wear that night.
We worked in the sunroom, me sitting cross-legged on the floor, a yardstick in my right hand and the strawberry-shaped pincushion on my knee, and Aunty Rose standing in front of me.
“I wish I had a daddy to get me store-bought dresses,” Aunty Rose said, lifting her hair off her neck. “It would be a whole lot easier.”
“Put your arms down,” I said. “It hikes up the hem.”
Aunty Rose dropped her arms and I measured up fourteen inches from the floor and slipped in a straight pin.
“Turn,” I said.
Aunty Rose moved slightly and I measured and pinned again.
Through the open sunroom windows, I could hear wind moving through the trees, and the leaves made a dry sound. The sky glowed with the clear blue stillness of September.
The grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs struck twice.
I’d fallen back into my familiar, easy rhythms, but it was a little like walking with a rock in my favorite shoe.
“Are you ever going to tell me what makes the bad blood between Daddy and Grandpa?” I asked, tugging on Aunty Rose’s hem to say she should turn again.
When she didn’t answer, I looked up from my pinning, but she didn’t meet my eyes.
“I hate living this way,” I said, sliding in another pin. “It’s like having my life split right down the middle.”
Aunty Rose ignored me. “Do you suppose your daddy will buy you more dresses?” she asked.
“Well, he’s not hardly going to make them for me. He can fix stuff, but he can’t sew that I know of.”
“You know what I mean,” Aunty Rose said, turning a little. “Mom and I can keep making you clothes. And you’re getting pretty good yourself.”
I could sew simple things like plain skirts with elastic waistbands, but I could never make a collar or put in a zipper.
“But that’s not the point.” I steered Aunty Rose back to the subject. “I’m old enough to know why Daddy and Grandpa don’t like each other. I’ve been clear to Oklahoma and back. Crossed the biggest river in the United States. Twice,” I said, pinning again. “And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to ask Grandpa.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Aunty Rose said.
“Well, I know it has something to do with my little brother,” I told her, looking to see how she’d take the news that I knew about Baby Clark.
Aunty Rose’s mouth dropped so wide, I could almost see China.
I kept measuring and pinning, letting her get used to the idea.
“How did you find out?” she finally asked.
“Daddy told me way back in the summer. One night when we were down at the cemetery.”
“What did he tell you, exactly?”
“He said he didn’t have any idea why Grandpa buried the baby over by himself, but that it shamed Mama. Shamed us all.”
Then for good measure, I added, “Daddy said I should ask Grandpa why.” I let that rest for a beat. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”
In the silence, I could hear the hens cackling over at the henhouse and somebody’s tractor running in the distance.
“If I show you something, will you promise never, ever to tell?” Aunty Rose said.
My fingers stopped in the middle of pushing a pin through the fabric.
“Yes!”
“Then hurry and finish pinning,” she said. “We have to do it before Mom and Dad get home.”
“Do what?” I said, going as fast as I could, my hands shaking.
“You’ll see,” Aunty Rose replied.
When I scooted back and said, “Done,” Aunty Rose slid off the new dress and pulled on her everyday skirt and sweater.
“We’ve got to hurry,” she said, struggling with the button on her skirt.
“Hurry and what?” I flexed my hands, my palms damp with sweat.
“You’ll see,” she said again.
I don’t know what I thought Aunty Rose was going to show me, but I was surprised when she led me into Nana and Grandpa’s bedroom.
The window was up a crack to let in the breeze. The afternoon sun fell across Nana’s folded yellow quilt lying on the cedar chest.
The house made settling noises in the silence, and we looked at each other, knowing it was wrong to snoop in other people’s possessions. My ears strained for the sound of the car in the driveway.
Aunty Rose squatted in front of Grandpa’s side of the double-sided oak bureau and opened the bottom drawer.
My face prickled as Grandpa’s papers and other private things lay naked before us.
I sat down on the floor beside Aunty Rose as she fingered through gray business envelopes tied together with string, a packet of letters, a small brown box on which somebody had penciled Accounts, 1940–1945. She moved aside a worn leather spectacle case, a pair of binoculars, and the box Grandpa’s watch from Montgomery Ward had come in. I saw a fat manila envelope with the cards and pictures I’d made for Grandpa over the years sticking out one end.
From near the bottom of the drawer, Aunty Rose picked up a small square of folded paper and held it out to me.
“What is it?” I said, moving my hands back.
“A letter from your daddy.”
It was the tiniest letter I’d ever seen, about three by three, written on strange, slick paper.
“Why is it so small?” I said, feeling it between my thumb and finger.
“They did that during the war. It’s called V mail. They shrunk up the servicemen’s letters to save on cargo space.”
I stared at the sheet of paper as she unfolded it.
“It’s from your daddy to your mama,” Aunty Rose said. “The last letter she got from him. You don’t have to read every bit of it. The part that caused all the trouble is right here.”
Aunty Rose had had a lot of experience with this letter. I took it from her and read the part where she pointed, straining to make out the tiny words:
… got a letter from Kyle Rogers today. He told me some things that made me real mad. He told me you’d been stepping out on me and that maybe the baby isn’t mine. Now, I don’t believe him, and reckon he did it just to get even over that deal with the car last summer, but his letter still got me thinking. I don’t want it to come between us, so I want you just to answer me yes or no. Have you done me wrong? And if the answer is no, I’ll never give another thought to it, I promise you that.
Aunty Rose was watching my face.
“Do you know what your daddy is talking about?” she asked, her own face red.
I nodded. I felt dirty prying into Grandpa’s things and reading words not intended for me, but my heart was racing to understand the mystery that had torn my family apart.
“I guess I always knew it had something to do with the baby,” I whispered, my mouth dry.
“Well, when Treva got that letter, she went storming outside,” Aunty Rose said. “Sleet was falling, and that’s when the accident happened. And I guess she was going…” Aunty Rose made a question with her hands. “I don’t know where she was going. Maybe just to show the letter to Mom, who was over at the henhouse, gathering eggs. But Treva’s feet must have hit the icy steps and shot out from under her. I heard her fall. When I got there, she was unconscious.…”
My last memory of Mama bobbed to the surface for the first time in years. I saw her wind-chilled rosy face as she helped me into the car. She’d driven me down to the Clarks’ that November morning to make cookies with Grandmother Clark and Aunt Belle. The wind had been biting, and we’d bundled up and worn our matching rabbit-skin muffs to keep our hands warm. Mama’s hands had been startlingly warm against my cold cheeks when she kissed me good-bye.
Aunty Rose’s face came back into focus. “—screamed and screamed,” she was saying. “And I thought neither Mom nor Dad would ever come. But finally Dad came running from across the road, where he’d been watering the sheep. And he picked your mama up and carried her inside. I knew Dad would make it all right. He’d bring Treva back.”
I nodded. “I know,” I whispered, my tongue barely able to form the words. “I thought I could bring her back too.” Tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped on my arm as I gripped the tiny letter. “I never told anybody, but I knew if I wished hard enough, she would come back to me.”
Aunty Rose took a deep breath and I shrugged, not able to tell her how crushed I’d been when my wishing power hadn’t been strong enough.
After a while, I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes with my shirttail.
“Tell me the rest,” I urged, my voice hoarse.
“Well, Mom and I stayed with Treva, and Dad went tearing down to Uncle Retus’s for some of them to go get Doc Simmons. The doctor didn’t turn up here until almost seven. Treva was still unconscious, all that time lying on the couch in the sunroom where Dad had put her down. Dad sat beside her, in a chair, staring at her, his face like stone. I was crying because I didn’t want Treva to die, and Mom kept rubbing her hands.”
I wiped tears off the letter, then I folded it and handed it back to Aunty Rose.
“When the doctor got here, he said Treva had to go to the hospital in Huxley, so Uncle Retus went to Leghorn’s funeral home in Mills and had them bring the hearse, and that’s what they took your mama to the hospital in. Mom and Dad and I followed in the car. Dad told Uncle Retus to go down to the Clarks’ and tell them Treva was in a bad way, but to keep the news from you.”
I remembered not having anything to sleep in that night and asking why Mama hadn’t come back for me. Grandmother Clark had stilled my worries with stories of sledding on the hill in the morning if the sleet turned to snow, and I’d gone to bed wearing one of Aunt Belle’s slips. In the night, I’d woken up, feeling something was being taken out of my body. It was as if God had reached into my middle and lifted out something I’d never even realized was there. The next morning, I’d wanted to tell Grandmother Clark about the feeling, but I didn’t know how to explain it.
“So was my little brother born then?” I asked. “Did he die that night?”
Aunty Rose drew in her breath. She nodded.
“Why didn’t I know about the baby?” I asked.
“Well, you were practically a baby yourself,” Aunty Rose said. “You’d have found out soon enough if everything had gone the way it was supposed to.”
Aunty Rose slumped, her face in her hands, worn out from the story.
The little piece of V mail lay on the floor between us. I stared at it—the accidental trigger to Mama’s and the baby’s deaths. But why couldn’t it have gone up in flames or blown away in the winter wind before Grandpa saw it?
“When did Grandpa find the letter?” I said. If he’d never seen it, at least he wouldn’t have hated my daddy so.
“The day after Treva died, Dad was just sitting in the sunroom, staring at the empty couch. He read the letter then, and it was like somebody had set off a bomb inside him. He tore into your mama and daddy’s bedroom and started throwing Harold’s stuff out. He took their wedding photograph off the wall and ripped out the picture and threw it in the stove.”
I stared at Aunty Rose, knowing how scared she must have felt seeing Grandpa act that way.
“He started burning your daddy’s clothes. Then he got the gun. Mom shoved me out the door and said to run to Uncle Retus’s and stay there until she came for me.”
I put my hand on Aunty Rose’s arm. “Stop,” I said, tears running down my face again. I didn’t want to think of Grandpa like that.
Aunty Rose swallowed. “I know,” she said, choking back her tears. “It was awful. But you were our sunshine. Our only hope. You helped fill the empty place in Dad’s heart. That’s why he wouldn’t let Harold come anywhere near you. He buried the baby off by itself out of spite, and I know he feels sorry about that.”
“Sorry enough to make up with Daddy?” I asked, knowing the answer.
Aunty Rose shook her head. “What’s done is done,” she said. “What’s said is said. It would take a miracle to make peace between them after all this time.”
I nodded.
We sat there for a while, cross-legged on the floor. I felt as drained as if I’d run up a mountainside.
Finally we put the things back in Grandpa’s drawer, trying to make ourselves look innocent.