"Youve got a fine young lad there," the UPS man told Mommy when he delivered our order of seeds and I carried the boxes to the barn.
"Yes" she said proudly. He is going to be quite a young man soon.
"He7s my salvation," she would add, and whoever it was would nod and understand. Mommy needed salvation. Like some fire that had been smothered by tragedy, she needed rekindling.
For well over a year or so after the tragedy, she moped about in a faded housedress and old shoes. Her hair was straggly and unclean and her face pale. She did her best to avoid leaving the farm, but when we went to the supermarket or did some shopping, she made little or no attempt to fix her appearance. People seemed to expect it anyway. She was wearing the cloud of gloom around her like some dark robe. In their eyes and whispers was the reminder that she had suffered a terrible loss. Her little girl had been snatched up and taken away, and who knew what had eventually been done to her or who had taken her, although the suspicions circling our unfortunate neighbor. Gerson Baer. lingered,
However, the stronger I became, the more work I accomplished, the healthier and happier Mommy looked, The compliments I received chipped away at her darkness. Eventually she began to wear pretty clothes again, take care of her hair, even wear some makeup when we went shopping. I saw the way men looked at her. and I knew that there were even some who called and tried to get her to go out on dates, but she brushed them all off like so many annoying flies.
She was content taking care of our home, reading, knitting or doing her needlework, baking, and cooking our dinners, and working beside me in the vegetable garden and having me help her in her herbal garden. I would work and listen to her stories about her younger days, her grandmother's endless stories about Hungary and gypsies, and her mother's wonderful remedies for every problem. Once again she told me about Daddy's coming to the house to fix the roof. I had to remember not to ask the questions Celeste always asked. Then she talked about her and Daddy's courting and his proposing marriage.
She said I shouldn't mind if she repeated things because he liked it when she told me stories about him.
"The dead want to be remembered. They wait for the sound of their names," she assured me. "It's like the ringing of a bell to us. Wherever they are, they perk up and come to us, come to hear us talk about them."
She leaned toward me and whispered with a wink. "I do it deliberately for that purpose sometimes, to get him to appear. He knows, but he doesn't mind."
This reminiscing was something she did more and more as the years went by with only the two of us managing the property, comforting each other. Our days were always full and busy. We were like two bees doing the work of an entire hive.. If something broke, we made every effort first to fix it ourselves. Nothing seemed more important to Mommy
than keeping strangers off our land and out of our lives. She said they filled the air with static and kept our spiritual world away. So I learned how to fix a leaking pipe, snake out our septic system, clear the gutters on the roof of leaves, and even splice broken wires. What we didn't know from Mommy's experience, we read about in books she acquired either at the county library or at bookstores.
With every turn of a wrench, rap of a hammer. I felt my arms tighten and my shoulders thicken. Despite my slight frame, my diminutive facial features, my small hands, eventually presented a tight fist of a figure, wiry perhaps more than muscular, but certainly tougher and thicker than most young people my age, and quite different from any girls my age. That was certain.
Sometimes Mommy would stand aside and look at me for the longest time. I would catch her lips moving and her head turning to someone beside her. I was being admired, and that admiration was strengthening her ties to all she loved and cherished.
At night after I had gone to bed, exhausted half the time. I could hear her muffled conversation below. Most of the time, she was talking to Daddy. I was tempted to get up to see if I would see him as well, but she had once warned me about spying on her and how that would displease the spirits. so I just lay there, listening and looking forward to the day or the night when I would finally see Daddy beside me again and finally hear him talk to me the way he talked to her.
From time to time. I was sure I saw him standing to the side, watching me work, a smile on his face, but when I started to talk to him, he would disappear. I told Mommy, and she said it was normal.
"One day he'll just start talking to you," she predicted. "You'll see."
It was all going so well that I had no doubt she was right. Even birthdays went smoothly, birthdays when there was once doubles of everything and now there was only one. For the first few birthdays after the tragedy, she said Daddy and Celeste were there, and he was holding her hand. I didn't see either of them. I believed I had seen Daddy at my birthday party once, but that was when Celeste was alive in our world. I'm Noble. I reminded myself. There were still miles to go. I complained about it, and again, she promised me I would very soon.
"Patience and faith." she would tell me. "Patience and faith. Just do as you are doing, my darling boy," she told me. It will all come true."
And then, like a lightning bolt from the reality that hovered around us and over us. I was struck with a realization one morning that burned fear through my body, singeing my very soul. It came with a small, almost unrealized ache. I yawned and ran the palm of my hand down my chest. The bump surprised me. and I sat up quickly. I felt for it again, on both sides. Then I stood up and went to the mirror. It could not be denied.
My breasts had begun to blossom.
I was eleven by now, actually only months away from being twelve. When we were five. Mommy had insisted on teaching us about human anatomy. Daddy thought we were too young to learn about such things. but Mommy insisted the public schools were wrong to treat the human body as if it were an X-rated movie,
Up until the end of that year, Noble and I did many things together that we wouldn't do again. We took baths together. We went to the bathroom in front of each other and put our under-things on in front of each other. I think we were like Adam and Eve before they tasted knowledge.
After the lessons, we began to avoid each other's eyes whenever we did any of these things. If one of us looked at the other, we would scream. Both of us denied peeping, but Mommy told us that it was a natural and good thing to be modest by then.
"Shame in, sin out," she would say, but we didn't quite understand the meaning of it. We only knew we felt uncomfortable doing things we had never thought much about before she had given us the lessons in anatomy and porn' ted out how different we were and would be.
When Noble learned about the female producing eggs, he thought it was so funny. He teased me often by checking my bed in the morning to see if, like the hens. I had laid one. I would moan and cry. I know Mommy was considering separating us soon before the tragedy. She was going to convert the sewing room into a bedroom for one of us. But that never happened.
Now that I discovered the bumps growing on my chest, I suppose what surprised and even frightened me the most was the fact that I had forgotten what was coming. It had been so long since I had done what we knew as girl things. I don't think I gave a second thought to myself being pretty or goodlooking. Not long after Noble recuperated from his broken leg, Mommy had disconnected the television set and moved it into the back of the pantry. where it was covered by a small tarp. We had no magazines. The only time I ever thought about girl things was when we went shopping and I could catch glimpses of magazines or see girls in the stores or streets or once a year at the school.
I looked at girls the way someone would look at something very foreign, almost extraterrestrial. I was afraid Mommy might see some longing in my eyes. so I tried not to stare or let her catch me looking at any of them. The truth was. I was so different now, caught somewhere in between, floating, waiting to land and become someone.
Sometimes girls in the stores looked at me with something more than just simple curiosity. I could see it in their faces. What did they see when they looked at me? I wondered. Was there something about themselves that they recognized in me. something I couldn't change or cover? It was terrifying. I imagined some girl or even some boy looking my way, pointing and laughing.
"Exactly what is that?" they would scream. "She's not a boy and she's not a girl," they would chant, and I would flee. Mommy would be devastated.
The best way to avoid it was to look away, and never, never think about it. For a long time, it worked, and then... this. I couldn't but help feel my body was betraying me, betraying all of us.. How could Celeste insist on returning to this body? Hadn't I had not only seen her buried in the old cemetery, but buried her as deep down within myself as possible? I wouldn't even permit Celeste's dreams into my mind anymore.