21
Discontent
Her last week of high school, Leone had babysitting duties every afternoon. Today she sat on the front step minding her sister while her mother taught a class. The boredom of having to babysit and the sting of a bad grade from Sister Isabel stirred discontent.
What is the truth, anyway? Leone reached into her school bag and pulled out the assignment that had earned her a U. Brandishing the papers in the air, she raised her voice. “Who are the nuns to tell me that my story about my grandmother, if not entirely accurate, isn’t mostly true?”
Roxie rolled her big brown eyes in anguish. Rump down, the pup cocked her head and thumped her tail on the paved walkway that led to the house, a dwelling indistinguishable from its neighbors but for peeling paint.
“You don’t care, do you; you just want this.” Leone stood up and pulled a treat from her pocket. Roxie’s tail thumped faster. Leone balanced the biscuit on the dog’s nose. Roxie went rigid.
“Wait.” She held up her hand. The dog trembled.
“Wait.” Roxie fixed her eyes on the end of her nose.
“Now.” Roxie flipped the biscuit into the air and snapped it between her jaws. Two crunches and she bounded off.
Wait. That’s all I seem to do. Wait to graduate. Wait to grow up. Wait to get out of here. Leone scowled at the offending letter grade. Sister Isabel had scribed the U so heavily into the top margin that Leone could feel the mark with her fingers from the backside of the paper.
“Some parts of my story are facts.” She shouted at the white tip of the black tail that disappeared around the side of the house.
Throwing her head back, she spread her arms wide and addressed the gray clouds passing overhead.
“The parts I don’t know, I made up.” The clouds ignored her. “So what? That’s what makes a good story.”
Something in the bushes snorted. Leone straightened up and glared at the rustling branches. Jane dragged herself out from under a scraggly rhododendron and came to stand in front of Leone.
“You are just like Roxie, always wanting attention.” Leone looked down at her sister. Sunlight bounced off the top of the little girl’s short straight bob, hair so white it made her head look like a waxing gibbous moon. The child looked up at her with sullen blue eyes and began to retreat.
“Oh come on, Jane, I didn’t mean it. Sit here by me and let me tell you a thing or two.” Leone sat back down on the cracked concrete porch step. Cold moisture seeped through the skirt of her school uniform and dampened her white cotton underpants. Jane took a few steps to stand in front of her, but she refused to sit.
“Old Sister Isabel called me a liar.” Leone held up the offending pages.
Jane stared at the red mark and mouthed a U. “That’s a U.”
Leone steamed. “We aren’t doing your letters, Jane. The old hag thinks I’m unsatisfactory because my truth doesn’t fit her virginal view of a world where women have two choices: serve God or serve men.”
Jane’s smile took on a knowing air. “What does virgin-al mean?” She cocked her head. Wisps of her white hair fanned out in the gathering breeze and were illuminated against a peek of sunlight just before the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud.
Leone glared at her. “That’s hardly the point. Listen to what I’m telling you. The truth is, the women in our family arrange evidence to support whatever story they choose to tell. And no one knows better than Grandmother that the evidence does not always support the truth of a matter.”
“You sound like some of the attorneys I used to work for.”
Leone froze. The voice came from inside the house, just behind the screen door. Grandmother must have left work early and snuck in the back door. Leone jumped to her feet, and Jane scooted away.
“I’m looking for my letter box, Leone, have you seen it?”
“No, Grandmother, but I’ll help you look.” Leone reached around to unstick her skirt from the backs of her legs. She tugged at the rotted elastic that barely held her underpants together. Might as well not wear any.
Once inside the house, Leone made a show of going room-to-room, opening drawers, and poking into corners. She managed to slip into her bedroom to retrieve the box.
“Grandmother, I found your letter box in that old trunk you keep in the closet. You must have missed it.” Leone placed the box in Nellie’s outstretched hands.
A knowing smile crept slowly across Nellie’s well-maintained face. “That’s my girl. I think I’ll just take this back to my room at the boarding house. Less temptation.” She looked directly into Leone’s eyes.
Leone reddened and lowered her gaze to the stitching on her stylish high-heeled shoes.
Nellie followed her gaze. “New?”
Leone swept her foot along the floor in a circular movement and brought it to rest lightly where her grandmother could get a good look. “For my graduation.”
“Pretty.” Nellie leaned back on her heels. “Now I must go. I have class tonight.
R
After dinner, after Jane fell into a sound sleep in the twin bed next to hers, Leone tugged the chain on the small dresser lamp and leaned into the mirror to examine her face. She had her mother’s smile, her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones and no-nonsense nose, and the same deep-set brown eyes as both, eyes that sparkled with intelligence in her grandmother but reflected some deep sadness in her mother.
I am your girl, Nellie. And I am not sticking around this joint to lead a boring life of work, child rearing, and husband pleasing.
Leone pulled a nightdress over her head and crawled into bed. She lay on her back and fit the thin coverlet up under her chin. Through the naked front bedroom window, the moon threw light on the ceiling. In the wind, a budding lilac tree scraped the stucco wall outside the room, its branches casting shadows above her head. Whoosh: they trembled and swayed. Stillness: they came to rest, unbent, unbroken. Leone, who said prayers by rote in school throughout the day, consulted no one but herself at night. I’m going to be a dancer and an actress. Or maybe I’ll be a writer.
She turned over on her side, tucked her arm under her head, and tried to remember all the places her grandmother had described in the stories she found in the letterbox. Good thing I read them before Grandmother caught me prying.
Has an artistic (so-called) ending of grim realism, someone had scribbled in red pen at the bottom of a story titled “The Miner’s Wife.” Leone kicked at her covers, flipped over on her back, and lay stiff. That detestable red pen! She forced herself to relax and smiled up at the ceiling. I rather liked the grim realism.
Good possibilities; however, we doubt the ability of this drab, sad-eyed woman to succeed as you describe, the red pen pronounced. Leone’s jaw tightened. Her head throbbed. Do teachers not read newspapers? The news was full of stories about people who rise above their circumstances.
Make her success more plausible. The red pen ran into the margin and stopped. Fiddlesticks! Leone’s heartbeat drummed in her ears. The less plausible, the more interesting. She sat up in bed and hugged her knees.
A few feet away, Jane snored in the soft, looping way of children. Muffled voices vibrated the thin wall that separated the bedroom from the front room. Felix must have returned from his monthly round of sales calls.
How could this drafty house feel so airless? Implausibility. Her new watchword. She would not rest until she had made headlines.
“Isn’t that the girl you gave a U?” the nuns would say to Sister Isabel.
“Leone Barry has written a novel of great promise,” critics would hail. “One day, she will be known to all the literary world.” One day, to be known. Her body warmed, and sleep soothed her brow with a soft hand. She fell back into her pillow.
Behind closed eyes, her mind would not release her body to slumber. Grandmother wrote with the detachment of a tourist traveling through strange events of life, or a reporter, which, of course, she was. As far as Leone knew, only she and the red pen wielder had read the stories. Why should it be different for me?
I’m starting out younger, and free as a bird. But hadn’t her mother started out with both those advantages? What if her mother had not succumbed to the attentions of a fellow dancer and returned to Spokane with her infant self? Well, I wouldn’t be here, would I? What if her father had not mysteriously died en route to join his family when his contract was up? At least that is what Mother told me. Very suspicious.
Enough what ifs. A ghost-like Indian woman walked a beach; a young wife lay dead in her honeymoon cabin--the strange-but-true stories that raised doubt in the minds of stodgy academics raised hairs on the back of Leone’s neck. Yielding to sleep, she entered the stories. The grave markers for the miner’s wife and the hunter’s bride morphed into books on a shelf. They bore eulogies that floated off the page, hung in the air, and dissipated like skywriting. Stories are a library of life the locusts cannot destroy.
Leone fought to open her tightly shuttered eyes. The last image she saw before Morpheus administered the final dose was the gravestone of the forgotten child on a lonely hillside.
To be forgotten. The god of sleep and dreams murmured. Isn’t that the harshest reality of all?
It will be different for me. I will not be forgotten.