Keeper of the Doves (6 page)

Now I noticed that new to the table were small boxes of pills and brown bottles of medicine. I knew that summers were difficult for Mama because of allergies that I did not understand. Sometimes it seemed I had two mothers, a reclusive summer one and a bright and spirited winter one. Still, I had never seen so many medicines.

My apprehension about myself and what I had done wrong now turned to concern for Mama.

“Mama, are you ill?”

A feeling of guilt came over me for thinking only of myself. The Bellas were right when they said my poems were stupid.

“Mama, what's wrong?” At this point I actually hoped I had done something wrong. Anything would have been better than for Mama to be ill.

Mama's smile softened. She took my hand and laid it on her stomach. I noticed with dismay that, as usual, I had ink stains on my fingers.

Then I felt something move. I tried to draw back my hand, but Mama covered my hand with hers.

“What is that?” I asked.

“That is your little brother or sister,” Mama said.

“A baby?”

“Yes.”

“You're going to have a baby?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“It's going to be soon now. That's why Grandmama's here. She's been here to welcome each of you into the world.”

“How soon?”

“A week or two. Maybe sooner.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, Amie, this will be my seventh baby, so I know what to expect. I'm counting on all of you girls to help me.”

“Have the baby?”

“No, no, I have plenty of that kind of help. I just need for you girls to be kind to one another and to Grandmama. Do what Aunt Pauline tells you. I'll be busy looking after the baby. You'll understand that, won't you?”

“Yes.”

Mama moved her hand, and I took mine back and put it in the pocket of my apron.

“I'll be good, Mama. I promise.”

“Thank you, Amie. I knew I could count on you.”

Just as Papa took out his pocket watch to signal our dismissal, Mama touched her fingers on the dressing table, as if she were playing one light, quick chord on the piano.

“I'm glad about the baby, Mama.”

“I am too, Amie.”

I walked back to the room in a sort of daze. “We know, we know,” the Bellas said together. “Mama's going to have a baby. Mama's going to have a baby. We knew that months ago.”

“I didn't.”

“Didn't you notice how fat she was getting?”

“No.”

“The baby's in her stomach.”

“I know. She let me feel it move.”

“She didn't let us, but we didn't want to, did we?”

“No, we didn't want to.”

“You stink,” a Bella said.

“Mama put some perfume on me.”

“She didn't put any on us, did she?”

“No, we didn't want any on us.”

“We didn't want to stink.”

I waited out the conversation and then said, “Why does Mama have to take all that medicine?”

“So it will be a boy!” one of the Bellas said. The other Bella gave her twin a quick look of admiration for the creative reply.

She added, “You don't think she wants another girl, do you?”

“Papa doesn't. You should have heard him yell his head off when you were born.”

One of the Bellas became my father bellowing out, “Another girl? Not another girl!”

Her imitation of Papa's dismay was good enough to hurt me. I had heard the story many times before, and I had gotten used to the hurt, but seeing it dramatized made me unhappy all over again.

“I just hope the baby will be all right,” I said.

“N
ever open an umbrella in the house.”

“Never sleep with the full moon on your face.”

“Break a mirror, you have seven years' bad luck.”

Those were some of Aunt Pauline's rules. She had a deep respect for bad luck and its prevention. She seemed to see life as a narrow and dangerous cliff, with charmed objects and correct action all there was to keep you from falling over the edge.

She made us throw salt over our left shoulders if we spilled some. She made us turn around three times if a hearse passed by. She made us promise never to look in a mirror at bedtime or the devil would come into our dreams.

“Never, never tell a bad dream before breakfast or it will come true.”

That was one of her favorite rules—I had been hearing it all my life. Now it was she herself who broke that rule.

She came into the kitchen where we girls were having breakfast at the table. The cook, Rose, was cutting us slices of bread. Aunt Pauline leaned heavily against the table.

“You all right, Miss Pauline?” Cook asked. We looked at our aunt. She did look a bit worse than usual.

Aunt Pauline put one hand to her throat, as if seeking the comfort of her brooch containing Frederick's hair, but in her agitation, she had forgotten to pin it on that morning.

She hesitated, took a deep breath, and then blurted out, “I dreamed I was in a graveyard.”

Cook's knife stopped in the middle of a slice. The bread and the knife dropped to the table.

“What does that mean, Aunt Pauline?” Abigail asked.

Aunt Pauline shook her head as if she couldn't bring herself to say the words.

“It means that someone's going to die,” Cook said in a hushed tone. Cook shared Aunt Pauline's belief in dreams and superstitions. A broom rested by the back door to prevent a spell from entering. Willow twigs by the window kept out the evil eye.

“Who's going to die?” a Bella asked.

“Could you see the name on the tombstone, Miss Pauline?” Cook asked.

“I never can,” Aunt Pauline said. “I've had this dream before. It's always the same. I come in the graveyard and I start running. I'm terribly afraid. I run and I run, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.”

We had stopped eating, caught up in the nightmare. For once Aunt Pauline had our complete attention.

“Finally I get to the empty grave and just as I lift my eyes to read the name, I wake up shivering.”

“I don't believe in that kind of thing,” Abigail said.

“It doesn't matter whether you believe or not,” Cook said. “It always comes true.”

“It won't be one of us, will it?” I asked.

“Yes, Miss Pauline,” Cook said, “had the grave been dug for an adult or a child?”

I drew in my breath. I remembered that Mama was going to have a baby. I remembered the tiny grave in our cemetery. I remembered how fragile a baby's heart was.

Aunt Pauline put out her hands as if to part a curtain.

“I couldn't see,” she said. “In the dream, there is always a lot of fog. As I run, I stumble again and again.” She looked through the fog, her sharp eyes turning from stove to table, but the size of the grave was not there.

Papa appeared in the doorway. “Are you ill, Pauline?”

“Albert, I dreamed of a graveyard,” she said, turning.

Papa's face hardened. “Whatever you do, Pauline, don't bother Lily with your voodoo and mumbo jumbo.”

“But, Albert,” Aunt Pauline began, “she would want to know. She asked me if I had dreamed whether the baby would be a boy or a girl. If there is trouble ahead, she would want to prepare.” Plainly Mama had been next on her list.

“I mean what I say. I don't want Lily upset. She's very fragile right now.”

Aunt Pauline didn't respond.

Cook said, “He's right, Miss Pauline. We need to keep this to ourselves. Miss Lily needs her peace.”

“I won't tell,” Aunt Pauline conceded. “I didn't want to tell in the first place. I came in the kitchen and everyone could see I was upset and asked what was wrong. . . .” She trailed off.

“We won't tell either,” Abigail said. “We don't believe in mumbo jumbo.”

“I wasn't worried about you girls,” Papa said.

After Papa left the room, Augusta said, “Aunt Pauline, you know what's going to happen now. You told the bad dream before breakfast.”

“Yes,” the Bellas said in unison, “now it's going to come true.”

“O
nce upon a time . . .”

My sister Abigail had started a story. It was hard to be interested. Mama was having her baby.

The five of us had been sent to bed early. We were in our nightgowns, as Grandmama had instructed. “This may take a long time,” she had warned us.

It was now seven o'clock in the evening. For two hours we had been sitting on the big bed Abigail and Augusta shared.

Although my sisters had been through this before, I had not. The visions that flitted through my mind like moths were troubling ones—Aunt Pauline's dream of the graveyard that she had told before breakfast, the little stone lamb in our cemetery, the bottles of medicine and pills Mama was taking.

The Bellas seemed untroubled by moths. One of them asked for the second time, “Did we have any supper?”

“I don't think we did. Let's go to the kitchen.”

“Grandmama told us to stay in our room and not come out till she called us, and yes, we did have supper.”

Abigail, sensing she did not have our attention, started over.

“Once upon a time there were five sisters.”

“I don't like stories about us,” one of the Bellas said. “I like stories about giants and wicked witches and dragons that eat people.”

“Each sister,” Abigail continued, “was known for a particular trait.”

She made a point of glancing at herself in the mirror. She must have been pleased by her image, for she smiled. She had once said that the difference in people was that some of them smiled when they looked in the mirror, and the others didn't.

“The older sister had beauty.”

“She means herself,” one of the Bellas said scornfully.

Augusta, smiling, said teasingly, “And was the beautiful older sister in love with the prince of a neighboring land?”

Abigail blushed, and she did look beautiful in her pink nightdress, pink ribbons in her hair, pink roses on her slippers.

She paused to see if there were any more interruptions, and then went on with her story.

“One sister could play the piano like an angel.”

“That's supposed to be you, Augusta.”

“One sister knew all the words in the world.”

“I wish I did,” I said, beginning to enjoy the story.

“And two of the sisters were imps.”

“Imps! Imps! We don't want to be imps!” The Bellas cried this in perfect unison. To this day, I don't know how they managed it.

“Let me finish. The imps had special power.”

“What kind of power?”

“If you would quit interrupting, I could tell you.”

“Make it that we had the power to become invisible.”

“Yes, if we were invisible we could leave this room and go downstairs and get something to eat.”

“Yes, and then we could walk into Mama's room and see what's happening.”

“The imps had the power to . . .” Abigail paused for emphasis.

At that moment, the door opened abruptly and Grandmama stood there, beaming.

“Girls,” she said, “your new baby brother has arrived.”

“A brother?” Abigail asked.

“Yes. You can see him now, but just for a minute.”

We followed her down the hall to Mama's room, as usual in the order of our births. On the way, we passed our father. He was sitting in a hall chair, his face in his hands. He was weeping.