Rush Home Road (10 page)

 

Split-Pea Soup

SHARLA HAD NOT SEEMED
as troubled by Collette's disappearance as Addy thought she might be, but children were good at coping and Sharla'd learned the skill early. She had to go to school, Addy thought. Take the bus to Chatham like the rest of the children from the trailer park. Addy'd have to see to that somehow, without arousing too much suspicion about where the child's mother had gone or what all arrangements had been made. As much as Addy'd been sure she couldn't keep Sharla, she knew now that she had to. A homely little girl like that'd end up in a foster home and never get any attention. Strange as it was, Addy felt a rush of love for the child.

Sharla had run ahead of Addy and was skipping in a funny way with her fat splayed legs. The strawberry patch at the end of the lane would be fruitless soon, but there were still a few berries reaching for the sun. Sharla squeezed through a hole in the gate and bent to pick them.

“Don't be picking them berries, Honey,” Addy called.

Sharla stood, puzzled. “Why?”

“They don't belong to you.”

Sharla looked at the berries in her palm. “But I wanna eat some.”

“Don't matter what you want. They don't belong to you.”

“I already got them though.”

Addy coughed. “Well, eat the ones you got in your hand but don't go in that field again. If you want berries, you go to the Loblaws and you buy some.”

“My Mum don't get them at the Loblaws, though.”

“Them berries belong to a farmer, Child. That's stealing same as if you go in the store and put a thing in your pocket without paying.”

Sharla stuffed the berries into her mouth before they could get taken away.

“Ain't right to steal, Sharla.”

Sharla left the berry patch and scuffed back to Addy's side. They walked in silence. As they rounded the corner onto the mud lane, Addy became aware of the neighbours watching from their yards and windows and the way their eyes judged Sharla. She looked down at the girl, dusted with dirt, too small shorts, top stained and torn at the shoulder, her face grim and grimy. She reached for Sharla's hand but the child pulled away. “What's wrong, Honey?”

Sharla's voice was small. “I stolt them coconut cookies this morning. Them ones in your tin.”

“That right?”

Sharla nodded and waited. “You gonna smack me?”

“I'm not gonna smack you. But you know you did wrong, don't you?”

Sharla shrugged.

“You want something, you ask me.”

Sharla reached up for Addy's hand. Addy nodded to Bonita Berry, sitting on a broken chair in her yard. “Fine day, Bonita.”

Bonita gestured at Sharla. “Got yourself a new friend there, Mizz Shadd?”

Addy squeezed Sharla's hand. “Yes. Yes I do.”

Addy had decided on the walk back that the first thing they needed to do was get Sharla Cody into the bath. She wondered how long it'd been and the picture of Collette's filthy tub made her shudder. She liked to make her own tub sparkle, and though it hurt her arms, she took out the rag and baking soda after every soak and wiped the porcelain to gleaming.

Sharla sat on the toilet seat, watching Addy draw the water and sniffing a little rose-shaped soap from a dish on the sink.

“Let's get them clothes off you.”

Sharla stood and pulled her top over her head. Addy tried not to make a face when she saw the dirt on her plush breasts. She helped the little girl pull down her shorts and winced at the pee and shit smell. The elastic on her underpants was broken and the crotch was streaked and soiled. Addy cursed Collette.

Sharla swung her arms from side to side, feeling
awkward to be naked. Addy thought, looking at her round stomach and full thighs, she looked like an overgrown baby. Addy ached to rock the poor child, sing her a lullaby, and let her drift off to sleep. But Addy knew she had to teach Sharla what's right. She held out the soiled underpants and made her voice go soft. “Honey, you got some stains here on your unders. You see that?”

Sharla stopped swinging and flinched as she looked at the shit streak on her underpants.

“You wipe your bum clean, you won't get no leftovers here.” Addy reached for the toilet roll and tore off a long strip.

“You take this much, Sharla. Look at me, Child. You take this much and you have a good hard wipe at your bum. You wipe where the pee comes out, too. All right?”

Sharla nodded.

“Then you take another piece, 'bout this much, and you have another wipe. Then one more, and you look at it, see did you get everything, and if you did, then you're clean.”

Sharla counted in her head. “Three?”

“Three. Or many as it takes. Don't your Mama teach you about that?”

Sharla remembered something and said, “My Mum got blood come out where she pees.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I don't got blood though.”

Addy looked at the child, not knowing what to say. She was only five years old and couldn't understand the
mystery of her body. Addy decided the best thing to do was tell the truth and try not to scare her too much.

“A lady gets blood come out when she gets nearly grown-up, Honey. You don't have to worry about that for a long, long time.”

“It hurt?”

Addy thought it was best not to be
too
truthful. “No. Don't hurt at all.”

“It come out your bum too?”

“It come out your privates, Honey. You know why it's called privates?”

Sharla thought, then shook her head.

“Private means it's just for you. Means you don't let nobody see and you don't let nobody touch.”

“Not even Claude?”

Addy tried not to be shocked. “Claude touch you there between your legs?”

“Just after supper when he give me my bath.”

Addy ground her teeth, telling herself to be calm. “Sharla, Claude was bad to touch you like that.”

“I like Claude.”

“Don't matter that you like him. That's a bad thing what he done. You're just a little girl and no grown person needs to be touching a little girl in your private place. You don't let nobody do that again.”

“I say I'll tell my Mum Addy?”

“That's right. Now come on. Let's get you in the tub.”

The tub was not freezing like the baths at Collette's
where there was always a boyfriend to use up the hot water. Sharla slipped into the warm water and showed the little rose soap in her hand, which she'd thought to steal, then remembered what Mum Addy had said. “Can I use this, Mum Addy?”

Addy nodded, watching Sharla dunk the rose soap and run it over her arms. Addy took the soap from Sharla, rubbed it into a wet washcloth, and handed it back. “Most important thing is to get all the smelly parts, Honey. Like your feet and your privates. And when you get older, under your arms here.”

Sharla reached over her tummy and rubbed the cloth between her dirty toes. Then, glancing at Addy, she tucked the cloth between her legs and moved it back and forth. “Like this?”

“That's right. Few more times.” She added, “Best to do your toes last though.”

When the water turned brown and cloudy and Sharla looked clean enough, Addy pulled the plug and started the water again. She guided Sharla's head beneath the tap, soaked her hair, and squirted shampoo into the curls. Gently, and carefully avoiding the goose-egg spot, she scrubbed her scalp clean and rinsed out the shampoo.

Sharla stepped out of the bathtub. Addy wrapped her up in a big soft towel and held it around her body. Sharla felt like she could stay there, wrapped in the towel and in Addy Shadd's arms, for the rest of the day. But too soon, Addy let go the towel and reached for the baking soda under the sink.

Naked, feeling sweet and clean and precious, Sharla watched Addy bend her old bones over the tub to shake the white powder over the dirty porcelain. Addy's arm worked the rag for a moment, then she had to stop to cough. She turned to Sharla, thinking she looked like an entirely different child.

“Get another rag out from under the sink, Sharla. You can help me.”

Addy showed Sharla how to make circles with the rag and scrub at the dirt ring. They worked side by side, naked Sharla and old Addy Shadd, until the tub was clean and sparkled. Sharla was pleased with herself. “Want me clean something else?”

“First we got some errands to do.”

Sharla clapped her hands. Addy Shadd might have said they were going to Disney World for the way Sharla felt.

It was not possible to put Sharla's filthy clothes back on that clean body, and Addy only thought about that now as she dumped the shorts and top into the trash. Or maybe she'd thought about it sooner and not let herself dwell. The fact was she did have something in her closet that the child could wear, a little white dress, which it pained her to think of, for she hadn't laid eyes on it in decades.

The box was at the back of her closet beneath bags of winter sweaters and extra blankets. Addy pulled it out, flicking off a mothball that was stuck to the side. She sat on the bed with the box in her lap. She'd told Sharla to wait in the bathroom, not wanting the child to see her see the dress.

She opened the box slowly and removed the old sheet in which she'd wrapped the dress for protection.
Oh
, was all she could think,
Oh.
The dress was not yellow with age as Addy had expected and the cotton looked as fresh and white as the day she'd selected it at the dry goods store. The eyelet lace, which she'd thought too dear and then gone back for later, trimmed the collar prettily, and the pink ribbon around the empire waste and hem was as shiny as when she'd sewed it on. Addy'd been late finishing the dress and worried she wouldn't have enough to trim the hem too, but there'd been six inches left to fashion a little bow for her six-year-old daughter's hair.

Addy'd been proud of the dress and the neat stitches and the way it hung just right. She'd shown it to her husband half-finished and said, “Look here. Who's gonna be the prettiest little girl on her birthday?” He had whistled long and low, though she'd told him time and again she didn't care for the sound of whistling, and said, “And you say
I'm
the one spoils that child, Adelaide.” He was teasing her, she knew, and she also knew he was impressed with her skill and her good taste.

The dress had been wrapped and folded so nicely before she set it in the box all those years ago that when Addy shook it out, it looked almost like it had just been pressed. She thought of Laisa and the hours at the kitchen table with the sewing basket and how her mother'd made her rip stitches till she got them right. Addy couldn't sew well any more, with her crippled claw hands, but she
wished her mother could see this dress and know her teaching had counted.

Addy dug further into the box and was relieved to find the matching bloomers, for she couldn't recall if she'd saved them and she couldn't think what all she might put on Sharla's bottom. Sharla was peering around the doorway, her damp hair coiled tight against her scalp. She looked at the dress like it was a princess gown and couldn't imagine that Mum Addy meant for her to wear it. Addy said, “Come here, Honey.”

Sharla walked into the room slowly, her finger pinching her belly button.

“Put your hands up, Sharla.”

Sharla did as she was told, and Addy pulled the dress down over her naked body. Addy turned her around, fastened the little pearl buttons at the collar, and turned her around again.

“Mmm-hmm.”

The dress was too long, as she'd expected, and tight across the waist. Her own daughter, Beatrice, had been stick thin with long legs and knobby knees. Her husband had called Beatrice “Chicken,”
Chick
for short, because of her skinny chicken legs, but also because of the peculiar web of skin that joined her big toe to the second toe on both feet. Addy'd laughed when her husband remarked on their daughter's chicken feet and told him, “Chickens don't have webbed feet! You're thinking of ducks!” He'd had to think about that and she'd teased, “I can't believe I married myself such a city boy!”

Sharla caught sight of herself in the mirror over Addy's dresser. She walked toward it, watching herself like she was meeting a stranger. “Whose dress is this?”

“That belonged to a little girl a long time ago,” Addy said, knowing she could not say
my
little girl without breaking into a thousand pieces.

Sharla twirled and watched the pink ribbon on the hem. Addy smiled and held out the bloomers for her to step into.

“Them shorts?”

Addy nodded, pulling the bloomers up on Sharla's waist. They were a little tight, but they'd do. Addy went to her dresser drawer. She found some elastics and gathered Sharla's hair into two fluffy black pigtails on top of her head. Sharla couldn't look away from her reflection.

There were no shoes in the box. Addy couldn't recall what Chick wore on her feet that day of her sixth birthday. But she could remember the three-layer white cake with buttercream frosting she'd made and decorated with candy rosebuds. And she remembered that Chick's father brought the blonde Shetland pony from the farm so the children could have rides. “You have to wear your old shoes, Honey. Let's clean them up a bit and get ourselves going.”