The Margarets (31 page)

On the day of the birthday party, we loaded the food into the wagon and drove across the bridge toward Billy Ray’s farm.

“How many of ’em this year?” Jimmy Joe asked me.

I sighed. “The only ones left at home are Benny Paul, Sue Elaine, Trish, and the two little ones, plus Mayleen and Billy Ray.”

“Humph,” said Jimmy Joe. “Seven of them and six of us. Thirteen. Suppose that’s an omen? I suppose their contribution to the festivities is hamburgers? Someday I must taste one.”

When Mayleen and Maybelle were little, I had mentioned that hamburgers were an old Earth tradition for summer gatherings. I had never tasted a hamburger on Earth, nor had I at Mayleen’s, even though she provided “hamburgers” at every birthday party.

This year would be no different, I saw as we approached, for Billy Ray was lighting the fire, using lots of coal oil. Mayleen, standing among billows of ugly, smelly black smoke, slapped the meat patties on the grill. They both came over to help us unload the food we’d brought from home, leaving the smoke and the flames to sort it out between them. Later, we each took one of the resultant “hamburgers,” covered it with a bun, then lost it over where Uncle Billy Ray’s dogs waited with their tongues out.

Maybelle had made salads; I’d brought fried chicken and two birthday cakes. The two little ones ate like starving creatures and went to sleep under the picnic table, icing all over their faces. As soon as the food was gone, Benny Paul pulled Til away, and Jeff followed them, his feet dragging. Trish and Sue Elaine sneaked off after. I watched the departure with some anxiety. The hangdog look on Jeff ’s face did not bode at all well.

Billy Ray started his usual after-food tirade. It seemed Joe Bob, the oldest boy, had threatened to call the placement people and get Benny Paul sent to some other Walled-Off. “Got no right to do that,” Billy Ray shouted. “There’s nuthin wrong with Benny Paul!”

Except killing the Conovers’ prize bull out of meanness. Except pimping his sister, Trish. Plus many other barbarisms I only suspected.

“You gotta go speak to Joe Bob,” he said to me. “Get him to tell ’em there’s nothing wrong with Benny Paul.”

I said. “I wouldn’t feel right getting involved in a family argument, Billy Ray. That’s between you and him.” I got up and went over to the picnic table to pour a glass of berryade.

I heard Maybelle say, “Please don’t get Mother involved.”

“I just said…”

“We know what you just said,” James interrupted very quietly. “Just please don’t fuss Grandma over it.”

Billy Ray gave him a nasty look. “This is my place, and I’ll fuss who I damned well please, Jimmy Joe. You all don’t like it, you can leave.” He got up and stamped off to the house before I got back with my glass full.

Glory was peeking through the branches, waiting for the usual sequence to play itself out. Since Billy Ray had stomped off mad as soon as he’d stuffed himself with food, it was about time for Mayleen to do likewise.

“Don’t see why Mother ought to be left out of family things,” said Mayleen in a nasty voice. “It’s her fault, all these Mackey twins. It’s bad enough being pregnant all the time without having two babies to bury or take care of at the end of it.”

Maybelle said sharply, “Mayleen, I know Papa talked to you just like he did to me. You didn’t have to get pregnant all the time.”

“That’s my business! And I don’t thank you for butting in!” She got up and stamped back to the house.

James looked at his watch, the little muscles at the corners of his jaw jumping around like water on a hot skillet. He walked off and came back with Jeff, who looked relieved to be going.

“New record for the shortest time,” said James, as we drove off. “Total elapsed time, arrival to departure, including the unpacking of and setting out of food and the collecting of leftovers, one and one-quarter hours, not counting travel. Half an hour shorter than last year. Keep workin’ at it, we’ll get it down to where we can just drop off the food and turn the wagon around in the driveway.”

Since our teatime had been cut short, when we got to Maybelle’s, I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Outside, Jeff was giving Glory the ringroot bracelet he’d carved for her birthday.

“What was Benny Paul up to?” Glory asked him when she gave him a thank-you hug.

“Him and Trish,” he said, making a face. “They were going to do a sex show for us, and Til said we’d get to…take part.”

“Jeff, you’ve got to stay away from him.”

“We’re brothers, Glory.”

“You’ll be roommates in another Walled-Off if you’re not careful! Billy Ray said Joe Bob threatened to call the Placement Board about Benny Paul, and if Til’s been part of his nastiness, Til may have to go, too.”

The shock on Jeff’s face as he went by the kitchen door told me he’d never thought of that. The look on my face, mirrored in the door, said I’d never thought of it, either. I stood there, dazed, wondering what other important things I’d missed.

I certainly wasn’t missing anything about Falija, for by this time, she was staying at my house most of the time. Glory came up to see her and said her living with me was a good thing, to keep her away from the boys.

“But I like Jeff,” said Falija.

Both of us froze. I thought I had misheard, or maybe Glory was playing a trick on me, but Glory was staring at Falija, as surprised as I.

She said, “You’re talking!”

“Umm,” said Falija. “Yes. But it’s not quite right.”

“It sounds perfectly fine to me. How long…”

“Oh, a while. I practice at night when everyone’s asleep.”

Well, there was no nonsense about my being asleep this time! Fully awake, I’d heard it with my own ears. I heard more of it after Glory left, so it was no trick of hers. I had to believe it. By late summer, Falija was talking a lot, though only to Glory and me, and she was walking on her hind legs whenever she couldn’t be seen.

“It’s a good thing nobody else sees her,” Glory said. “It’s getting harder and harder to believe she’s just a cat.” She looked up to find my eyes fixed on her, but I forbade myself to ask the question. Glory shrugged, as though to say, “Either you believe me or you don’t, and so far, you haven’t.”

James came home from work one night, shaking his head. “Grandma, where’d you tell me Billy Ray’s oldest girl went?”

“You mean Ella May? She joined the Siblinghood a long time ago, when she was only about fourteen. Why?”

“I just wondered if we ought to let her know…”

“Know what?”

“Her twin sister, the one who moved up to Repentance last year…”

“Janine Ruth.” Somehow, I knew what was coming. Ella May’s twin was Mayleen all over again. “She hurt somebody.”

He nodded. “Placement Board sent her to Hostility. I thought somebody ought to tell the family…”

“James, if you don’t want to be blamed for causing it, you forget you ever heard about it.”

He thought about it for a moment. “You’re right, Grandma. They’d figure someway it was my fault, or Maybelle’s.”

Falija talked more clearly every day. She was able to get out of sight very quickly, so I stopped worrying about her going places with Glory. Whenever Glory went fruit-picking, Falija helped her. There was scarcely a branch too thin for her to climb out on and scoop fruit off the tree quick as anything. Glory could spread out a blanket and Falija would drop the fruit onto it fast as Glory could put it into baskets.

One night the two of them wakened me in the middle of the night. Glory said, “Falija found something she thinks we ought to see, Grandma.”

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll go see it in the morning.”

“No,” she said. “Falija says it has to be now.”

I wavered between outrage and curiosity. Curiosity won. I put on shoes and a big sweater. Falija led the way down to the road, up the valley, until we got to the rise before the cemetery.

Glory said, “I don’t go in there, Falija.”

Falija said, “I’m not taking you in there. We’re going up the hill.”

So we clambered up the ridge of the rise, past the cemetery fence, and onto a big flat rock between two thimble-apple trees. Beside the rock was some deep grass where we could sit in the moon shadow of the trees, and the fiddlebugs were making a noise so much like a ringing in the ears you couldn’t tell if it was inside or outside your head.

“There,” whispered Falija.

Down the hill two little girls were running stark naked, hand in hand, along the meadow, and behind them some other children, all naked, some of them paired off and some alone. Along behind them came Lou Ellen.

That’s when I realized I was dreaming again. I had that same, misty feeling I’d had down at the ferry pool. The naked children gathered around Lou Ellen. Glory started to get up, and Falija put a claw into her arm. “Don’t,” she said. “They’ll run away if you go down there.”

Some older, familiar-looking children came through the trees. They were as tall as grown-up people, but they had no breasts, and there was no hair on their bodies. I thought I should know them, but I couldn’t remember who they were.

“They’re all children,” Glory said in confusion.

“Well,” Falija said, “not so much children as just young, and they’re all the same person, really. Some grown larger, some not.”

“Why not?” Glory whispered.

“Oh,” Falija whispered. “Where they are, they don’t need to be old. They’ve already learned everything they can.”

I was dreaming again. I had to be. A woman wearing red robes that billowed and flowed around her like a rosy cloud came out of the woods. She stood for a time, watching the children until they wandered into the trees on the far side. Lou Ellen was with them. I had never seen her with that expression of joy on her face. Bliss, I’d call it. Absolute bliss.

“Who is that woman in red, Grandma?”

“I can’t quite remember,” I said.

I remembered when I wakened in the morning, though. It was the woman who had taken Wilvia away, and it had all been a dream. Even after I found my big sweater there on the bed, I told myself I’d just been chilly in the night, that was all.

School started the next week. Glory, Bamber Joy, and I went down to Ms. McCollum’s store to buy school supplies. I always went in first and paid Ms. McCollum for the children’s supplies while he and Glory sat on the stoop enjoying a cold drink. This time, I heard heavy footsteps coming onto the front stoop, and two men came slamming in, walked up to the counter, and asked Ms. McCollum if there was anybody in town who had a new cat.

Ms. McCollum looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. It was a silly question, but at the same time, it sounded threatening. She had to swallow before she answered, very slowly. “I guess everybody in the valley has a new cat at least once a year. There’s kittens everywhere you look.”

“Not a kitten, ma’am. This is a dangerous kind of cat from another world.”

“There’s a lady over in Remorseful who sort of collects cats, but they’re just ordinary cats. I sure haven’t heard about anything like that.”

I knew she meant Dorothy Springer, a retired schoolteacher who had a barnful of cats and spent her whole pension feeding them and having the vet fix them. The two men didn’t react; they just stood there for a minute, silent. They sounded so mechanical, I had the strange idea that maybe they were shifting gears, or waiting for instructions. Then, with not so much as a thank-you, they turned around and left.

When we got home we told Falija about it, and the hair on her neck rose until she looked like a lion.

“They didn’t come from your people,” Glory said to Falija. “Your people know where you are.”

“Her
people
?” I asked, with lifted eyebrows.

“She means my parents,” said Falija firmly. “Anyone sent by my people would know exactly where I am.”

“We’ve got to be sure no one else in the family says anything,” Glory said in a worried voice.

All this was extremely upsetting. I had spent months sorting out what I chose to believe was real from what I had dreamed from the fictional stuff that was left over. At least, I thought I had. Now this new thing! A threat from who knows what from who knows where against someone who shouldn’t exist in the first place!

I cleared my throat, turned toward Glory, and said in my most portentous voice, “You had a cat earlier in the summer, but it went away some time ago, didn’t it?”

Glory stared at me for a minute before she caught on. “Yes. Of course. The lady who left it with me came and got it.”

I said, “The family hasn’t seen it for some time.”

Glory shook her head and grinned at me. “No, ma’am.”

I was invited to supper that night, and at the table, Glory said, “I kind of miss the cat I was keeping for that lady. None of the barn cats are very friendly. Maybe Ma Bailey’ll give me one of her kittens.”

I said wonderingly, “The cat you were taking care of. Is it gone?”

“The lady came along the road when I was riding my bicycle. She told me thank you and let me keep the rest of the money.”

“I thought it ran off,” grunted Til.

“You gave it enough reason to,” muttered Jeff.

After the dishes were done and the chickens shooed in, Glory walked back up the hill with me. We sat down on the porch, and I said what I’d been thinking about for days, “Glory, I’ve cultivated blindness as long as I can. I’ve always congratulated myself on being a realist, but it’s getting so I can’t tell the difference between what’s real and half real and mostly supposition. I want you to tell me everything, whether you think I’ll believe it or not.”

Glory gave me a look.

“I won’t doubt you,” I said firmly. “Whatever you say.”

She took a deep breath and started in. The cat-people. The money bag. I have never believed in telepathy, not really, even though one of my childhood imaginary people was supposed to be a telepath, and
the only alternative to having seen it myself was to think I had read it from Glory’s mind. Believing I had seen it was easier. It had not been a dream, it had been real, but I had suppressed the reality of it.

Surprisingly, to me at least, when I finally took it in, things made more sense than they had up until then. Falija was not just an anomaly. She really was a treasured creature of some other race, and we really had to keep her safe.