Keeper of the Doves (3 page)

“F
ee Fi Fo Fum.” The game was beginning.

One of the Bellas and I sat at the table where we had our lessons. The other Bella had disappeared into the hallway.

“When is the game going to start?” I had whispered again and again. “How will we know when the game starts?”

The Bella beside me had been twitching with excitement. “When the game starts, you'll know it!”

Now, apparently it had.

“Fee fi fo fum!” It came again, and this time the door was flung open. “I am old man Tominski and here I come! Be ye black! Be ye blue! You'll be both before I'm through!”

The Bella stomped into the room. She smiled, and her grin was terrifying. She had blacked out her front teeth with black paper, and the effect was so startling that for a moment I could not move.

Beside me, the Bella screamed and ran for the closet.

Now the heavy stomping feet were headed for me, the outstretched arms grasping for me.

“Run!” Bella cried at the closet door.

I jumped up so fast my chair fell to the floor. I ran, and Bella closed the door behind us.

The footsteps came closer and closer. In the closet we trembled. The footsteps stopped at the closet door. There was a silence, and then the door was flung open and the toothless Bella fell upon us with a roar.

I was genuinely afraid, but the Bellas laughed with success. “Let's do it again,” the closet Bella said. “Only this time I get to be Mr. Tominski, all right? And you and Amie have to run from me. Only this time, Amie, run! You're supposed to run!”

“I will,” I said.

“Give me the teeth.”

Bella disappeared into the hall with her black paper, and the other Bella and I took our places at the table. We were pretending to read when we heard from the hallway, “Fee Fi Fo Fum! I'm old man Tominski and here I come!

“Be ye black! Be ye—”

She didn't get the second color out because a hand fell upon her shoulder. Papa stood in the doorway behind her.

For the first time I saw the resemblance between Papa and Aunt Pauline, because as his frown grew, so did his nose.

“What is going on here?”

“We were just playing,” the Bella said, trying unsuccessfully to shrug off his hand.

“What's that on your teeth?”

“This? Oh, paper. I don't know how it got there.”

“What were you doing?”

“Playing a game.”

“I don't care for the game.”

Silence.

“There's nothing funny or playful about making fun of a person.”

“It was just old man—I mean, Mr. Tominski,” the Bella beside me said.

“Mr. Tominski has been a member of this family longer than you have.”

I was startled. I had never before thought of Mr. Tominski as a member of the family, but I said nothing.

“Not only has he been a member of this family, but he saved my life.”

Now I could not keep quiet. “How, Papa?” I asked.

“I thought you knew the story.”

“No, Papa.”

“But you two did.”

The Bellas didn't answer. Although the black paper had been removed from their teeth, it had left their front teeth gray.

He released the nearest Bella's shoulder. “Sit down, girls,” he said. We sat at our table, as we did for lessons, and Papa stood in our tutor Mr. Trudeau's place.

“I was hunting by myself,” Papa began. “My father had told me never to do that, but I had disobeyed. When I was climbing the Wilsons' fence, my gun went off and shot me in the shoulder.

“Mr. Tom was at the train tracks. He heard the gunshot, heard my yell, and found me. He picked me up and carried me in his arms three miles home.

“If Mr. Tom had not done that, I would have died.” He looked at us, one by one. “You would never have been born.” Another look. “All of us owe our lives to Mr. Tominski.”

“I really didn't know that, Papa,” I said.

“He laid me on the porch, beat on the door, hid until he saw the door open, and then ran. Later my father discovered he had taken refuge in the old chapel.”

“That's why we don't go back there,” one of the Bellas told me. “So we won't disturb him.”

Papa nodded.

“The only thing my father ever asked of me was to look after Mr. Tom. I promised him on his deathbed that I would do that, and I intend to keep my promise. That's why I look in on him every day, why I make sure he's fed and clothed.”

Papa's voice softened slightly as he said, “I am sure you and the twins will find another game, one that doesn't make fun of people I value.”

“We will, Papa.”

Papa gave us one final look, turned, and left the room. The three of us sat as if rooted in place.

Finally one of the Bellas said, “I still don't like him. He's not . . .”

She searched for the right word, couldn't find it, and borrowed a phrase of Aunt Pauline's. “He's not all there.”

“G
randmama! I am the first to see Grandmama,” I cried.

I had learned from the Bellas the importance of being the first, the last, the best, even the worst.

“You don't see Grandmama, you see the carriage,” Augusta corrected.

My sisters and I stood on the front steps waiting to greet her. We wore pinafores of white dotted swiss over pale blue dresses of lawn. Dotted swiss . . . lawn . . . Even cloth has lovely names.

Mama was not going to come downstairs, so we had gone into her bedroom for approval. She had us turn around, and as our skirts swirled about us, she called us her white butterflies.

“I see the bird on her hat,” I said. Grandmama was fond of big hats with colorful flowers and birds that looked ready for flight.

Papa was driving the carriage. He had gone into town to meet Grandmama, who arrived on the noon train. As he pulled up to the steps and stopped the horses, one of the Bellas said, “So where's this bird you saw?”

“Maybe it flew away,” the other answered.

But I was too happy to see Grandmama to care about my mistake.

We went down the steps together, and starting with the oldest girl, Grandmama kissed us on our foreheads.

“Where's your mother?”

“She's upstairs,” Abigail said. “I think she's resting at the moment.”

“She needs her rest.” Grandmama looked at Papa and then smiled at us. “Then I have time to take the girls' photographs. Albert, my camera is in my port-manteau.” She pointed to a bag.

“Grandmama, you have a camera?” Augusta cried. “I didn't know ladies could take photographs.”

“Nor I,” my father replied.

“Nonsense, Albert,” Grandmama said. “Ladies are far better at arranging photographs than men. They have an eye for beauty and composition.”

She took the camera from Papa. “This, girls, is a Kodak.” It looked like a leather-covered box.

“It's small, Grandmama,” Abigail said. We were accustomed to large cameras with men behind them hiding under a black cloth.

“It unfolds.”

She opened it. One side sprang down, and the lens moved forward. Now it did look like a camera.

“Now I want you on the steps in the sunlight. Abigail, here. Augusta, here. No, move in a little closer, Augusta. Arabella and Annabella here. And you, Amen, will be in front, turned slightly sideways. Smooth your skirts over your legs, girls. Perfect.”

She glanced at my father. “See, Albert, how easy it is for a woman to arrange an attractive photograph. Oh, I imagine when cameras were big heavy things, women never had a chance, but soon no woman will be without her camera.”

She took several pictures of us on the stairs, then one of Papa sitting on a lawn chair with his pipe in his mouth and Scout at his feet. Although Papa had protested that he didn't want his photograph taken, he looked pleased about the whole thing, as did Scout.

“All dogs,” Grandmama told us, “like to be photographed. And, girls, as a treat I have brought cameras for each of you, a Pocket Kodak so you can learn to take your own photographs.”

“Can we have them now?” one of the Bellas asked.

At that moment Frances, Mama's maid, came out on the porch. “Mrs. Lily's awake now,” she said.

“Ah, I'll go to her, but first, let me get a picture of you, Frances, over by the azaleas. Someday, I imagine, they will have cameras that will take pictures in color.” She paused to take the picture and set the camera back in her bag.

As she went up the steps, she said, “Later, girls, I will give you your cameras and instruct you in how to use them.”

She went into the house.

Grandmama's arrival, her energy, made it seem to me that The Willows had been like one of those castles in fairy tales with all the occupants sleeping their lives away. Now we were stirring, awakening to life.

It was months before I was to see the actual photographs Grandmama took that day, but then the photographs confirmed my feeling.

We were girls waiting for something to happen, girls whose lives were soon to be changed in a way we could not imagine.

“H
ands!” Grandmama tried to make her voice sound like Papa's.

We were at the dinner table, and Grandmama was relating one of her favorite stories about me.

“He made you and your sisters line up in front of his desk. On his desk was a sheet of paper stained with ink. Your papa's face was very stern.” She made a stern face of her own.

“Hands!”

As she said the word a second time, I was back in Papa's study, holding out my hands. My sisters' hands were steady and clean. My own hands trembled and were stained with ink.

Papa looked at our hands and said, “Abigail, Augusta, Annabella, Arabella, you may go.”

“Thank you, Papa,” they chorused.

I could hear that they stopped just outside the door to listen. “And close the door behind you,” Papa said.

When the door closed, Papa looked at me. “What have you got to say for yourself?” Over his head was a portrait of his father wearing the same stern expression.

“I was trying . . .” I began but trailed off.

“Speak up! What were you trying to do? You know you are not allowed to touch anything on my desk. What was so important? What were you trying to do? Speak up!”

“I was trying to make a poem.”

“A what?”

“A poem.”

My father now looked puzzled, but over his head his father was still stern. “How old are you, Amen?”

“Six, Papa.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Can you write?”

“Yes.”

“What was the poem?”

“It wasn't very long.”

“Good, there are enough long poems. Let's hear it.”

I said my poem.

“Go on. What's the next line.”

“That's the whole poem.”

“It doesn't rhyme, Amen. A poem ought to rhyme.” My father began to recite his favorite poem.

“Tennyson was writing about an eagle.”

“I know.”

“That's my idea of a poem.”