Portable Childhoods Page 3

  “You gonna lay there in the laundry all day or help me make this bed?” Ruby asks, laughing.

  Mary Louise takes one side of the big flowered sheet and helps Ruby stretch it across the bed and pull the elastic parts over all four corners so it is smooth everywhere.

  “Are we going to do a lot more magic?” Mary Louise asks. “I’m getting kind of hungry.”

  “One more bit, then we can have us some lunch. You want tomato soup?”

  “Yes!” says Mary Louise.

  “I thought so. Now fetch me a hair from Miz Kitty’s hairbrush. See if you can find a nice long one with some dark at the end of it.”

  Mary Louise goes over to Kitty’s dresser and peers at the heavy silver brush. She finds a darker line in the tangle of blond and carefully pulls it out. It is almost a foot long, and the last inch is definitely brown. She carries it over to Ruby, letting it trail through her fingers like the tail of a tiny invisible kite.

  “That’s good,” Ruby says. She reaches into the pocket of her uniform and pulls out a scrap of red felt with three needles stuck into it lengthwise. She pulls the needles out one by one, makes a bundle of them, and wraps it round and round, first with the long strand of Kitty’s hair, then with a piece of black thread.

  “Hold out your hand,” she says.

  Mary Louise holds out her hand flat, and Ruby puts the little black-wrapped bundle into it.

  “Now, you hold this until you get a picture in your head of Miz Kitty burnin up your pretty picture book. And when it nice and strong, you spit. Okay?”

  Mary Louise nods. She scrunches up her eyes, remembering, then spits on the needles.

  “You got the knack for this,” Ruby says, smiling. “It’s a gift.”

  Mary Louise beams. She does not get many compliments, and stores this one away in the most private part of her thoughts. She will visit it regularly over the next few days until its edges are indistinct and there is nothing left but a warm glow labeled RUBY.

  “Now put it under this mattress, far as you can reach.” Ruby lifts up the edge of the mattress and Mary Louise drops the bundle on the box spring.

  “Do you want me to say my prayers again?”

  “Not this time, Miss Mouse. Prayers is for protectin. This here is a sufferin hand, bring some of Miz Kitty’s meanness back on her own self, and it need another kind of charm. I’ll set this one myself.” Ruby lowers her voice and begins to chant:

  Before the night is over,

  Before the day is through.

  What you have done to someone else

  Will come right back on you.

  “There. That ought to do her just fine. Now we gotta make up this bed. Top sheet, blanket, bedspread all smooth and nice, pillows plumped up just so.”

  “Does that help the magic?” Mary Louise asks. She wants to do it right, and there are almost as many rules as eating in the dining room. But different.

  “Not ’zactly. But it makes it look like it ’bout the most beautiful place to sleep Miz Kitty ever seen, make her want to crawl under them sheets and get her beauty rest. Now help me with that top sheet, okay?”

  Mary Louise does, and when they have smoothed the last wrinkle out of the bedspread, Ruby looks at the clock. “Shoot. How’d it get to be after one o’clock? Only fifteen minutes before my story comes on. Let’s go down and have ourselves some lunch.”

  In the kitchen, Ruby heats up a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, with milk, not water, the way Mary Louise likes it best, then ladles it out into two yellow bowls. She puts them on a metal tray, adds some saltine crackers and a bottle of ginger ale for her, and a lunchbox bag of Fritos and a glass of milk for Mary Louise, and carries the whole tray into the den. Ruby turns on the TV and they sip and crunch their way through half an hour of As the World Turns.

  During the commercials, Ruby tells Mary Louise who all the people are, and what they’ve done, which is mostly bad. When they are done with their soup, another story comes on, but they aren’t people Ruby knows, so she turns off the TV and carries the dishes back to the kitchen.

  “I gotta do the dustin and finish vacuumin, and ain’t no way to talk over that kind of noise,” Ruby says, handing Mary Louise a handful of Oreos. “So you go off and play by yourself now, and I’ll get my chores done before Miz Kitty comes home.”

  Mary Louise goes up to her room. At 4:30 she hears Kitty come home, but she only changes into out-to-dinner clothes and leaves and doesn’t get into bed. Ruby says good-bye when Mrs. Banks comes at 6:00, and Mary Louise eats dinner in the kitchen and goes upstairs at 8:00, when Mrs. Banks starts to watch Dr. Kildare.

  On her dresser there is a picture of her mother. She is beautiful, with long curls and a silvery white dress. She looks like a queen, so Mary Louise thinks she might be a princess. She lives in a castle, imprisoned by her evil stepmother, the false queen. But now that there is magic, there will be a happy ending. She crawls under the covers and watches her doorway, wondering what will happen when Kitty tries to come into her room, if there will be flames.

  Kitty begins to scream just before nine Friday morning. Clumps of her hair lie on her pillow like spilled wheat. What is left sprouts from her scalp in irregular clumps, like a crabgrass-infested lawn. Clusters of angry red blisters dot her exposed skin.

  By the time Mary Louise runs up from the kitchen, where she is eating a bowl of Kix, Kitty is on the phone. She is talking to her beauty salon. She is shouting, “This is an emergency! An emergency!”

  Kitty does not speak to Mary Louise. She leaves the house with a scarf wrapped around her head like a turban, in such a hurry that she does not even bother with lipstick. Mary Louise hears the tires of her T-bird squeal out of the driveway. A shower of gravel hits the side of the house, and then everything is quiet.

  Ruby comes upstairs at ten, buttoning the last button on her uniform. Mary Louise is in the breakfast nook, eating a second bowl of Kix. The first one got soggy. She jumps up excitedly when she sees Ruby.

  “Miz Kitty already gone?” Ruby asks, her hand on the coffeepot.

  “It worked! It worked! Something bad happened to her hair. A lot of it fell out, and there are chicken pox where it was. She’s at the beauty shop. I think she’s going to be there a long time.”

  Ruby pours herself a cup of coffee. “That so?”

  “Uh-huh. “ Mary Louise grins. “She looks like a goopher.”

  “Well, well, well. That come back on her fast, didn’t it? Maybe now she think twice ’bout messin with somebody smaller’n her. But you, Miss Mouse,” Ruby wiggles a semi-stern finger at Mary Louise, “Don’t you go jumpin up and down shoutin ’bout goophers, hear? Magic ain’t nothin to be foolin around with. It can bring sickness, bad luck, a whole heap of misery if it ain’t done proper. You hear me?”

  Mary Louise nods and runs her thumb and finger across her lips, as if she is locking them. But she is still grinning from ear to ear.

  Kitty comes home from the beauty shop late that afternoon. She is in a very, very bad mood, and still has a scarf around her head. Mary Louise is behind the couch in the den, playing seven dwarfs. She is Snow White and is lying very still, waiting for the prince.

  Kitty comes into the den and goes to the bar. She puts two ice cubes in a heavy squat crystal glass, then reaches up on her tiptoes and feels around on the bookshelf until she finds a small brass key. She unlocks the liquor cabinet and fills her glass with brown liquid. She goes to the phone and makes three phone calls, canceling cocktails, dinner, tennis on Saturday. “Sorry,” Kitty says. “Under the weather. Raincheck?” When she is finished she refills her glass, replaces the key, and goes upstairs. Mary Louise does not see her again until Sunday.

  Mary Louise stays in her room most of the weekend. It seems like a good idea, now that it is safe there. Saturday afternoon she tiptoes down to the kitchen and makes three peanut butter and honey sandwiches. She is not allowed to use the stove. She takes her sandwiches and some Fritos upstairs and touches one of the nails under th
e carpet, to make sure it is still there. She knows the magic is working, because Kitty doesn’t even try to come in, not once.

  At seven-thirty on Sunday night, she ventures downstairs again. Kitty’s door is shut. The house is quiet. It is time for Disney. Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. It is her favorite program, the only one that is not black-and-white, except for Bonanza, which comes on after her bedtime.

  Mary Louise turns on the big TV that is almost as tall as she is, and sits in the middle of the maroon leather couch in the den. Her feet stick out in front of her, and do not quite reach the edge. There is a commercial for Mr. Clean. He has no hair, like Kitty, and Mary Louise giggles, just a little. Then there are red and blue fireworks over the castle where Sleeping Beauty lives. Mary Louise’s thumb wanders up to her mouth, and she rests her cheek on the soft nap of her Bankie.

  The show is Cinderella, and when the wicked stepmother comes on, Mary Louise thinks of Kitty, but does not giggle. The story unfolds and Mary Louise is bewitched by the colors, by the magic of television. She does not hear the creaking of the stairs. She does not hear the door of the den open, or hear the rattle of ice cubes in an empty crystal glass. She does not see the shadow loom over her until it is too late.

  It is a sunny Monday morning. Ruby comes in the basement door and changes into her uniform. She switches on the old brown table radio, waits for its tubes to warm up and begin to glow, then turns the yellowed plastic dial until she finds a station that is more music than static. The Marcels are singing “Blue Moon” as she sorts the laundry, and she dances a little on the concrete floor, swinging and swaying as she tosses white cotton panties into one basket and black nylon socks into another.

  She fills the washer with a load of whites, adds a measuring cup of Dreft, and turns the dial to Delicate. The song on the radio changes to “Runaway,” as she goes over to the wooden cage built into the wall, where the laundry that has been dumped down the upstairs chute gathers.

  “As I walk along…” Ruby sings as she opens the hinged door with its criss-cross of green painted slats. The plywood box inside is a cube about three feet on a side, filled with a mound of flowered sheets and white terrycloth towels. She pulls a handful of towels off the top of the mound and lets them tumble into the pink plastic basket waiting on the floor below. “An’ I wonder. I wa-wa-wa-wa-wuh-un-der,” she sings, and then stops when the pile moves on its own, and whimpers.

  Ruby parts the sea of sheets to reveal a small head of carrot-red hair.

  “Miss Mouse? What on God’s green earth you doin in there? I like to bury you in all them sheets!”

  A bit more of Mary Louise appears, her hair in tangles, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.

  “Is Kitty gone?” she asks.

  Ruby nods. “She at the beauty parlor again. What you doin in there? You hidin from Miz Kitty?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mary Louise sits up and a cascade of hand towels and washcloths tumbles out onto the floor.

  “What she done this time?”

  “She—she—” Mary Louise bursts into ragged sobs.

  Ruby reaches in and puts her hands under Mary Louise’s arms, lifting the weeping child out of the pile of laundry. She carries her over to the basement stairs and sits down, cradling her. The tiny child shakes and holds on tight to Ruby’s neck, her tears soaking into the white cotton collar. When her tears subside into trembling, Ruby reaches into a pocket and proffers a pale yellow hankie.

  “Blow hard,” she says gently. Mary Louise does.

  “Now scooch around front a little so you can sit in my lap.” Mary Louise scooches without a word. Ruby strokes her curls for a minute. “Sugar? What she do this time?”

  Mary Louise tries to speak, but her voice is still a rusty squeak. After a few seconds she just holds her tightly clenched fist out in front of her and slowly opens it. In her palm is a wrinkled scrap of pale blue flannel, about the size of a playing card, its edges jagged and irregular.

  “Miz Kitty do that?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mary Louise finds her voice. “I was watching Disney and she came in to get another drink. She said Bankie was just a dirty old rag with germs and sucking thumbs was for babies—” Mary Louise pauses to take a breath. “She had scissors and she cut up all of Bankie on the floor. She said next time she’d get bigger scissors and cut off my thumbs! She threw my Bankie pieces in the toilet and flushed, three times. This one fell under the couch,” Mary Louise says, looking at the small scrap, her voice breaking.

  Ruby puts an arm around her shaking shoulders and kisses her forehead. “Hush now. Don’t you fret. You just sit down here with me. Everything gonna be okay. You gotta—” A buzzing noise from the washer interrupts her. She looks into the laundry area, then down at Mary Louise and sighs. “You take a couple deep breaths. I gotta move the clothes in the washer so they’re not all on one side. When I come back, I’m gonna tell you a story. Make you feel better, okay?”

  “Okay,” says Mary Louise in a small voice. She looks at her lap, not at Ruby, because nothing is really very okay at all.

  Ruby comes back a few minutes later and sits down on the step next to Mary Louise. She pulls two small yellow rectangles out of her pocket and hands one to Mary Louise. “I like to set back and hear a story with a stick of Juicy Fruit in my mouth. Helps my ears open up or somethin.

  How about you?”

  “I like Juicy Fruit,” Mary Louise admits.

  “I thought so. Save the foil. Fold it up and put it in your pocket.”

  “So I have someplace to put the gum when the flavor’s all used up?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe we got somethin else to do and that foil might could come in handy. You save it up neat and we’ll see.”

  Mary Louise puts the gum in her mouth and puts the foil in the pocket of her corduroy pants, then folds her hands in her lap and waits.

  “Well, now,” says Ruby. “Seems that once, a long, long time ago, down South Carolina, there was a little mouse of a girl with red, red hair and big blue eyes.”

  “Like me?” asks Mary Louise.

  “You know, I think she was just about ’zactly like you. Her momma died when she was just a little bit of a girl, and her daddy married his-self a new wife, who was very pretty, but she was mean and lazy. Now, this stepmomma, she didn’t much like stayin home to take care of no child weren’t really her own and she was awful cruel to that poor little girl. She never gave her enough to eat, and even when it was snowin outside, she just dress her up in thin cotton rags. That child was awful hungry and cold, come winter.

  “But her real momma had made her a blanket, a soft blue blanket, and that was the girl’s favorite thing in the whole wide world. If she wrapped it around herself and sat real quiet in a corner, she was warm enough, then.

  “Now, her stepmomma, she didn’t like seein that little girl happy. That little girl had power inside her, and it scared her stepmomma. Scared her so bad that one day she took that child’s most favorite special blanket and cut it up into tiny pieces, so it wouldn’t be no good for warmin her up at all.”

  “That was really mean of her,” Mary Louise says quietly.

  “Yes it was. Awful mean. But you know what that little girl did next? She went into the kitchen, and sat down right next to the cookstove, where it was a little bit warm. She sat there, holdin one of the little scraps from her blanket, and she cried, cause she missed havin her real momma. And when her tears hit the stove, they turned into steam, and she stayed warm as toast the rest of that day. Ain’t nothin warmer than steam heat, no siree.

  “But when her stepmomma saw her all smilin and warm again, what did that woman do but lock up the woodpile, out of pure spite. See, she ate out in fancy rest’rants all the time, and she never did cook, so it didn’t matter to her if there was fire in the stove or not.

  “So finally that child dragged her cold self down to the basement. It was mighty chilly down there, but she knew it was someplace her step-momma wouldn’t look for her, cause the basement
’s where work gets done, and her stepmomma never did do one lick of work.

  “That child hid herself back of the old wringer washer, in a dark, dark corner. She was cold, and that little piece of blanket was only big enough to wrap a mouse in. She wished she was warm. She wished and wished and between her own power and that magic blanket, she found her mouse self. Turned right into a little gray mouse, she did. Then she wrapped that piece of soft blue blanket around her and hid herself away just as warm as if she was in a feather bed.

  “But soon she heard somebody comin down the wood stairs into the basement, clomp, clomp, clomp. And she thought it was her mean old stepmomma comin to make her life a misery again, so she scampered quick like mice do, back into a little crack in the wall. ’Cept it weren’t her stepmomma. It was the cleanin lady, comin down the stairs with a big basket of mendin.”

  “Is that you?” Mary Louise asks.

  “I reckon it was someone pretty much like me,” Ruby says, smiling. “And she saw that little mouse over in the corner with that scrap of blue blanket tight around her, and she said, ‘’Scuse me Miss Mouse, but I needs to patch me up this old raggy sweater, and that little piece of blanket is just the right size. Can I have it?’”

  “Why would she talk to a mouse?” Mary Louise asks, puzzled.

  “Well, now, the lady knew that it wasn’t no regular mouse, ’cause she weren’t no ordinary cleanin lady, she was a conjure woman too. She could see that magic girl spirit inside the mouse shape clear as day.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Ruby smiled. “Now, the little mouse-child had to think for a minute, because that piece of blue blanket was ’bout the only thing she loved left in the world. But the lady asked so nice, she gave over her last little scrap of blanket for the mendin and turned back into a little girl.

  “Well sir, the spirit inside that blue blanket was powerful strong, even though the pieces got all cut up. So when the lady sewed that blue scrap onto that raggy old sweater, what do you know? It turned into a big warm magic coat, just the size of that little girl. And when she put on that magic coat, it kept her warm and safe, and her stepmomma never could hurt her no more.”