THEO
ANTICIPATION HUNG in the air in every move, every ring of the telephone, every door opening and closing, every new car that rolled into town. We hadn’t seen or heard anything about Toreck, the truck, or Genghis Hansel in several days. Where were they?
Tula hadn’t been sleeping well, so Imogene devised a plan. Solomon and Tula spent an hour in Christina’s room chanting, burning white sage to clear negative energy, and blessing the room as Tula’s now. Imogene, Bud, Pearl, Mrs. B, and I waited downstairs, playing gin rummy and listening to the evening news on the radio. The odor of sage drifted downstairs. I opened a window to let out the herb-filled smoke that overpowered even Bud’s cigar.
When they finished, Tula came downstairs, stood at the landing and said, “You can come up now.” Not smiling, she looked sad, resigned to the fact that she had to leave Solomon’s and stay with Imogene not just a night or two, but permanently, whatever that would mean.
“Theo,” she said. “Solomon says you should say a prayer.”
“Let’s go then,” I said.
We all ascended the stairway to Imogene’s apartment. Not much had changed since Mamaí bought the building in the 1940s, except that Imogene had wallpapered the hallways in jade green with cream-colored flowers and painted the dark doors a soft cream. Tula entered her new room. Imogene had originally wallpapered Christina’s room with pink ballerina paper and pink curtains, but that was all gone. It was now painted the color of a spice: saffron with white curtains. Our Tula wasn’t a pink kind of girl. The Humpty-Dumpty lamp had been replaced with a brass lamp. Brass and spice. That pretty much summed up our “just Tula.”
“Look,” Pearl said, pointing to Solomon’s dream catcher hanging over her small bed. Then she opened the closet door and said, “See?” and pointed to the two dresses she’d made for Tula. I couldn’t imagine our little pant-wearing newspaper reporter ever wearing a dress. “For you.” Pearl then pointed to a small wool coat, red-and-brown-plaid Pendleton, matching hers and Imogene’s. It was a grand attempt but, I feared, doomed to fail—ruffles and pretty coats didn’t speak to this child born on and of Neahkahnie Mountain.
Pearl leaned down and hugged her tightly. Tula’s eyes bulged. Her body stiffened. She wriggled out of Pearl’s clutches and climbed up on the bed, sat cross-legged, and looked up into her dream catcher, then to Solomon, who nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, almost forced, and certainly practiced. With one look he assured her she was strong enough to move ahead. Listen for the whispers of your guide, he would have said. He nodded to her bucket in the corner. She looked at Newt and Starfish. “Thank you for our room,” she added, her eyes red and crestfallen.
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” said Imogene, pale as a ghost, as she sat beside her.
I wished Tula didn’t have to leave Solomon, but the world dictated otherwise. Besides, she needed a mother, a regular home, not a hut carved from a hundred-year-old tree and a ninety-two-year-old man who spoke his dead language to animals, trees, and phantoms.
“You gonna say a prayer?” Tula asked looking up at me with those questioning brown eyes and a freckled face that hadn’t yet found a reason to smile.
“Of course,” I said. To my astonishment Imogene didn’t roll her eyes at the mention of prayer. Pearl scooted off the chair by the door and sat on her knees next to the bed, folding her hands—always the best Catholic in the room. Bud stepped out into the hall, never wanting to be in any room with practicing Catholics. “Let’s say the Guardian Angel Prayer.”
Tula sat on her bed gazing up at me as if I was going to pull a rabbit out of my pocket. Solomon sat cross-legged and closed his eyes. Even Imogene closed her eyes.
I cleared my throat and said, “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom His love entrusts me here, ever this day be at my side to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.”
“Amen,” Tula said, surprising us all.
“Amen,” everyone except Solomon said in unison.
“Did you see the aquarium?” I asked pointing to the five-gallon aquarium I’d set up in her corner with a makeshift pond, some driftwood, and rocks inside for the salamander who, with winter coming, would either up and die or need a place to hibernate. “That way you can put him in his own bed at night.”
“Newt has a room, too?” Tula’s velvety eyes popped. She jumped down, took the salamander from the bucket, and laid him inside the shallow tank. Stroking him, she leaned close to the glass container and whispered, “It’s better than the bucket.”
After we all celebrated Tula’s new home, during which Imogene was uncharacteristically quiet, we went downstairs. Oz and Netty joined us. Despite worrying when or where Toreck and Genghis would show up, it was good to be together with family, and the Rounders were family.
While they talked, I watched my sister with Tula. How would this end for them? Mamaí wrote to me in Korea, explaining how at three o’clock one morning the whole town was awakened by Imogene’s screams. How the baby had fallen asleep and never woken up—a “crib death,” Mamaí wrote. And how for many, many nights Imogene snuck out of bed and ran in the rain, carrying a blanket, to cover her three-month-old’s grave to keep her warm.
Imogene lowered the snicker-doodle jar so Tula could take a cookie and ran her fingers gently along the curve of Tula’s soft cheek as if she touched too hard, the little girl would disappear. “Take as many as you want, honey,” she said. Her eyes watered. She patted Tula on the head, then turned to the window and said, “Look at that rain come down.”