The Unwelcomed Child (10 page)

He stared at me a moment and then laughed. “I think Claudine has underestimated you. She thinks that just because you’re being homeschooled, you’re not very smart, but I think she’s wrong. How can you be homeschooled now? Who’s homeschooling you?”

“My grandmother was a teacher,” I said.

“Aha. I knew it. It’s like continuous home tutoring, not that I would want that. Don’t you want to go to a school where you’re with other kids your age? Being homeschooled makes it hard for you to have friends, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Why do they want you to be homeschooled so long?”

“They wanted to avoid any trouble,” I said.

“From what?”

I stopped walking. Surprised, he stopped and looked at me.

“From everything,” I said. How could I tell him that my grandmother once believed that if I was permitted to attend public school, I would corrupt other little girls and bring disdain and blame on them?

“Everything?” He thought a moment. “Something terrible happened to you or your parents, and that’s made them cautious?”

I shook my head.

“Well, what are they, crazy paranoids?”

I knew that word from my vocabulary list and had thought that about them myself often, but it wasn’t something I dared even suggest. “I’ve got to get back. Sorry,” I added, and turned around.

“Hey.”

I paused to look back at him.

“It’s supposed to be really nice tomorrow. Come to where you were yesterday by the lake, and I’ll pick you up and give you a rowboat ride, okay? Can you be there?”

“Maybe.”

“When?”

“After lunch.”

“When’s that?”

“Two o’clock.” I didn’t want to explain about cleaning up before I could go out.

“Long lunch. I’ll be there waiting for you,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. Better not promise him, I thought, even though the whole idea excited me. I walked back to the house carefully. My shoes were still stained by the wet grass. After I stepped up onto the back porch, I turned and saw that he was still there, smiling.

“Be there or be square!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

I hurried inside, afraid that he would stay there too long and my grandparents would return and see him. Luckily, they weren’t here when he came. My grandmother would have heard him for sure.

Once inside, I caught my breath and then pulled off my shoes quickly. Just wiping them wasn’t going to be enough, so I threw them into the clothes dryer. It worked, and I slipped them on just minutes before I heard my grandfather turn into the driveway. I went out to help them carry in the groceries.

Grandmother Myra looked me over. I could see she was anticipating some evidence of my disobeying her and walking off the back porch. Finding none, she nodded her approval at me.

“Turning out to be a nice day,” Grandfather Prescott said. “Looks good for tomorrow.”

I smiled to myself as I carried in two bags and helped my grandmother put everything away. While we worked, she went on and on about a girl they had seen at the supermarket.

“Not a day older than you, I imagine, and with a ring in her nose! Where are her parents? Do you see why I’m nervous about you attending a public school? It’s like the end of the world out there.”

“Did you add anything to your drawing?” my grandfather asked, coming into the kitchen to get her off the subject, I imagine.

“No. It’s harder not being in the woods, where I saw her.”

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. “When you find something good to mine in yourself, something beautiful you feel, you go at it fully. Isn’t that right, Myra?” he said, deliberately, to make her comment. She just grunted, but he smiled and nodded at me.

Whenever I could during dinner preparations, I glanced out the back windows to see if Mason had returned. I feared that he would think he could come knocking on our door to see me again so he could be sure I would show up tomorrow at the lake. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell him he should never do that. It would either drive him away, because he would think I didn’t want him to, or cause him to see me as so strange that he’d better stay away.

Later, after dinner and cleanup, my grandparents wanted me to sit with them in the living room. I knew this meant something serious was going to be discussed. It usually turned out to be one of my grandmother’s lectures about the immoral behavior young people committed these days. I anticipated that, especially fresh off seeing the girl with the ring in her nose. The way she talked about what she witnessed “out there” when she did go shopping made it seem as if there was a time once, probably when she was my age, when the devil was close to going bankrupt. People were so much better behaved.

“While we drove to and from the supermarket, your grandfather and I talked more about your attending a public school now,” my grandmother began. “I’m going to speak with the administrators first myself, and then, if I’m satisfied, we’ll talk more seriously about it.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll be satisfied,” my grandfather assured me. “She’ll get them to make promises in blood.”

She gave him one of her sharp glares, but he just held his smile. Then she turned back to me. “Your grandfather insists you’ll need some new clothes, so we’ll do some shopping soon to buy you what’s appropriate. After that, we’ll talk about how you should conduct yourself. In the beginning, I don’t want you getting involved in after-school activities. You’ll attend, do your work, and come right home.”

“It’s like getting into a hot bath,” my grandfather said, smiling.

“No, it’s like navigating through a swamp of poisonous snakes,” she corrected. “Anyway, for now, that’s our decision.”

“So you’re sending me to public school?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying, missy. You’re not going to turn stupid on me all of a sudden.”

“No, Grandmother. I was just . . . just wanted to be sure.”

“The first weeks will be a test, of course. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’ll do the best I can, Grandmother.”

“You’ll do better than that,” she insisted. “Your mother used to wail that she was doing the best she could. I’ll decide if you’re doing the best you can. You can’t decide that for yourself.”

“Your grandmother will see if there is an art class you can take,” Grandfather Prescott said. “How would you like that?”

“Very much. Thank you.”

Grandmother Myra shook her head. “You can go do your work. I want you to be so far above the others when you get there that there’ll be no question you had good preparation at home. You should give your room a good going over, too. It’s been a while,” she said. “Vacuum under the bed.”

“Yes, I will,” I said, and rose. Before I left the room, I turned and said, “I won’t disappoint you. I won’t be my mother.”

Neither replied, but for a moment, I thought they looked as if my words had added years to them instantly. Surprisingly, it made me sad.

Most of my young life, from when I was capable of giving it deep thought, I wondered if I had any affection for my grandparents. From what I had read and seen whenever I did watch television with them, I knew I should feel something more than the fear of disappointing them. The weight of what had happened to my mother and the added burden of caring for a baby, then a little girl, and now a teenager was probably heavy enough for people their age, but the fact that at least half of who I was came from someone brutally evil darkened all these days, months, and years.

Sometimes I hated them for their dreadful expectations. From the moment I took my first breath until now, they, especially my grandmother, were waiting for me to prove that something sinister was inside me. I was told so many times and in so many ways that Satan was just waiting for the right moment that I found myself looking for him, especially when I did gaze at myself in the bathroom mirror. I half-expected he would be standing right behind me, smiling, his long, thin red fingers on my shoulders, burning through my clothes and into my skin.

No matter how they had treated me and how unhappy I was most of the time, I fought hard to find some way to love them. They were all I had as family. I think I worked harder, tried harder, so that I could win their love, just so I could love them in return. Their decision to permit me to attend public school was almost a graduation itself. I had passed some great test in their minds.

The satisfaction and the excitement I felt at this moment seemed suddenly to be in terrible jeopardy. Just when they were showing me how much they trusted me, I was conniving to meet secretly with Mason Spenser, a boy I hardly knew, who wasn’t ashamed about being seen naked. There was no doubt that they would rescind the decision to permit me to attend public school if they found out. Was it worth the risk?

As I left them in the living room, I was thinking it wasn’t and that I would not go to the lake tomorrow. For the rest of the evening, I was in a wrestling match with myself, one part of me still very excited about seeing Mason and learning more about him and his sister and another part of me forbidding it. I worked on my room until I exhausted myself, practically scrubbing every inch of it. Grandmother Myra came to my doorway and watched me for a while and then said I had done enough.

“Go to sleep,” she said. “As I told you, I’m going to visit the school tomorrow to speak with the principal. I want him to understand that you are special.”

What does that mean?
I wondered. Would she tell him how I came to be? How would she explain I was special?

“Special?”

“I’d like him to be sure he’ll have your teachers look after you a little more than they do the other students, if they do at all. If everything looks good and proper, we’ll take you shopping the day after. Don’t forget your prayers,” she added, and left.

I had been working so hard that my body was trembling. It didn’t stop until I had prepared for bed and slipped under my blanket. I heard their voices, a low murmuring from the living room, and then I heard them go up to bed. The house fell into its own silence, imperfect because of the way some of it creaked.

All the washing, polishing, and dusting of this house couldn’t wipe away the shouting, the cries, and the moans with the tears that fell within it, I thought. The walls were surely marked with all of it. To me, since it had been my world for so long, it was truly a living thing. It held all the secrets, but maybe those secrets were getting to be too stressful for it. Sometimes I felt the house spoke to me. I was embraced by it the moment I was born. What it wanted was for me to be able to throw open the windows and let the fresh air wash away its scars and wounds. I was its hope.

Despite the conflict raging inside me, when I awoke, dressed, and went out to breakfast, I saw how beautiful a day it was going to be. Grandfather Prescott talked about going to buy me paint and brushes again. He was taking Grandmother Myra to meet the school principal, and then they would stop at a department store that carried everything I needed. She didn’t object.

“Why don’t you make yourself a sandwich and have a picnic, too?” he suggested. “We’ll be gone until the afternoon.”

I looked at Grandmother Myra quickly, expecting some sort of objection, but she said nothing until they were preparing to leave.

“Don’t be out there later than four,” she said. “We’re having the Marxes over tonight, and I’m doing a roasted chicken, and I want to have homemade potato salad.”

“Okay, Grandmother,” I said.

Ironically, they were the ones pushing me out now. How could I go into the woods and not be drawn to the lake? I had told Mason I wouldn’t be there until two, but since Grandfather Prescott had suggested I take a picnic lunch, I could be there much earlier. How would I let Mason know?

I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took an apple and some milk. Then I gathered my pencils and pad and left just before they did. Grandmother Myra warned me once again to be back no later than four.

“Not that I know what you could do out there all that time,” she added.

“Artists lose track of time,” Grandfather Prescott reminded her. He gave me his watch again and leaned over to whisper, “I’m looking into getting you your own watch. Maybe today.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Grandmother Myra asked. Nothing got past her. She seemed to have ears and eyes working for her everywhere in this house. From what I was able to understand about my mother, I was positive she couldn’t wait to get out every day and escape the scrutiny.

“For us to know and you to ponder,” he told her.

She grunted. “I remember enough of that between you and your daughter,” she said.

Whenever she referred to my mother when talking to him, she never failed to call her my grandfather’s daughter, as if she had nothing to do with her. A few times, I actually wondered if that could be possible, but then thought that she was certainly not anyone who would care for a child who had no blood relationship to her. She couldn’t possibly forgive my grandfather for something like that anyway. It was stupid even to think about it.

He just winked at me, and they left.

I listened to the silence for a few moments, as if I expected the house to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. I heard nothing, of course. This was one question I had to answer for myself: risk being permitted to get into the world, mixing with girls and boys my own age, become unchained and able to explore everything, or stay away from the lake and Mason and Claudine?

I still wasn’t sure what I would do when I stepped out of the house. My first thought was go to the clearing, draw, and have lunch, but when I came to that point in the forest where I could make a turn and head for the lake, I paused. My interest in Mason and Claudine was too strong to ignore now that I was out there. To my surprise, when I reached the place on the shore from which I had first seen them, I saw that they were both in the rowboat, but both looked asleep, the boat gently rocking. Were they asleep or getting a suntan? I waited and watched.

Suddenly, Mason opened his eyes and turned his head in my direction, as if I had called out to him. Maybe I had. Maybe I didn’t realize it. He sat up quickly and nudged Claudine. They looked at me. I wasn’t going to hide myself this time. Mason seized the oars and turned the boat in my direction. Claudine sat back, her arms folded over her breasts, looking like a queen being rowed about. At least they were both dressed, I thought.