Heaven (Casteel 1)

Why, look at all that food stacked there. Where had it come from, when last night our cupboard had been bare? I picked up an apple and bit it as I went to call Sarah and tell her that Pa had come home during the night and brought us food. In the doorway, holding back the flimsy curtain, I froze, my teeth deep into the red apple, my eyes wide and shocked . . . no Sarah. Just a rumpled bed with a note left on the mattress.

During the night while we slept, Sarah must have slipped out into the dark, leaving a note we were supposed to pass on to Pa when he returned--if ever he returned.

I shook Tom awake to show him the note. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, and read it over three times before comprehension dawned. He choked, tried not to cry. He and I were both fourteen now. Birthdays came and went without parties or any kind of celebrations to mark our years.

"What y'all doin up so early?" grumbled Fanny, grouchy as she always was when she came out of sleep and found her bones stiff from hard floorboards and not enough padding between her skeleton and the floor. "I don't smell no biscuits bakin, no bacon fryin . . . see no gravy in t'pan."

"Ma's gone," I said in a small voice.

"Ma wouldn't do that," said Fanny, sitting up and looking around. "She's in t'outhouse."

"Ma don't leave notes to Pa when she does that," Tom reasoned. "All her things are gone--what little she had."

"But t'food, t'food, I see food on t'table!" screeched Fanny, jumping up and running to grab a banana. "Bet ya Pa came back an brought all this here stuff . . . an he an Ma are out somewhere fightin."

When I gave it more thought, it seemed very likely that Pa had slipped into the cabin at night, left the food, then drove off without a word to anyone; and perhaps finding the food there, and knowing Pa hadn't bothered to stay or even greet her, had given Sarah the final motivation to leave, thinking now we had food to provide for us until he came back again.

How oddly Our Jane and Keith took the absence of Sarah, as if they'd always lived on unstable ground and Sarah had never given either one enough loving attention to make any difference. Both came running to me, staring up into my face. "Hey-lee," cried Our Jane, "ya ain't goin nowhere, are ya?"

How fearful those big aqua eyes. How beautiful the small doll face that looked up into mine. I tousled her reddish blond hair. "No, darling, I'm staying. Keith, come closer so I can give you a big hug. We're going to have fried apples and sausage for breakfast today, with our biscuits . . . and see, Pa brought us margarine. Someday we're going to eat real butter, aren't we, Tom?"

"Well, I sure hope so," he said as he picked up the package of oleo. "But I'm glad right now we have this. Hey, do you really think Pa came in the night, like Santa Claus, and left all this stuff?"

"Who else would?"

He agreed. As hateful and mean as Pa was, he did try to see that we were kept fed, and as warm as possible.

Now life got down to basics. Sarah had run out and Granny was dead.

Grandpa couldn't do anything but sit and stare, and whittle. I went to his rocker where he'd slept bent over and miserable-looking all night, took his hand, and helped him to stand. "Tom, see that Grandpa visits the outhouse while I fix breakfast, and after he's eaten, give him more wood to whittle, for durn if I can stand seeing him doing nothing at all."

I guess that breakfast on such a heartrending day made it somewhat easier, when we had hot sausages to eat and fried apples and taters, and biscuits with what had to taste as good as butter.

"Wish we had a cow," said Tom, who worried about none of us drinking enough milk. "Wish Pa hadn't gambled away our last one."

"Ya could steal one," contributed Fanny, who knew all about stealing. "Skeeter Burl's got t'one that used t'be ours. Pa don't have no right to gamble away our cow so steal it back, Tom."

I felt hollow inside, beset with worries far too heavy for my years; when I gave it more thought, I realized there was many a girl my age with a family of her own. Still, those girls didn't desire a college education as I did. They were happy to live out their lives being wives and mothers, and living in shacks, and if their men beat them once a week, they thought it their due.

"Heaven, aren't ya comin?" Tom asked as he readied himself for school.

I glanced again at Grandpa, at Our Jane who was feeling poorly. She'd barely tasted the best breakfast we'd had in weeks.

"You go on, Tom, with Fanny and Keith. I can't leave Our Jane when she's not feeling well. And I want to see that Grandpa doesn't just sit and rock and forget to walk around."

"He's all right. He can take care of Our Jane."

I knew, even as he said that, he didn't believe it; he blushed and bowed his head and looked so miserable I felt like crying again. "In a few days we'll all adjust, Tom. Life will go on, you'll see."

"I'll stay home," Fanny volunteered. "An I'll take kerr of Our Jane an Grandpa."

"A perfect solution," Tom agreed happily. "Fanny's not ever going to finish high school. She's old enough to do somethin simple."

"Okay," I said as a test. "Fanny, first you'll have to give Our Jane a cool bath. You'll have to see that she drinks eight glasses of water a day, and make her eat a little food off and on, and walk Grandpa back and forth to the outhouse, and do what you can to clean up and keep this place tidy."

"Goin t'school," stated Fanny. "I ain't no slave t'Grandpa, ain't no motha t'Our Jane. I'm goin where t'boys are."

I might have known.