The Umbrella Lady Read online

  Even though she wasn’t very affectionate, I felt Mazy had come to love me or, if not to love me, to need me. I was filling gaping holes in her life just as she was filling holes I had in mine.

  Nevertheless, it took nearly two weeks before Mazy’s silent treatment began to weaken, even with something as simple as the tone of her voice. She would give me my orders for the day, leave me to work, and then eat with me in relative silence. She would go to sleep before I did, after she proclaimed her usual limits on my watching television. I ended up not watching any most of the time. I had become so accustomed to her sitting with me, laughing at the things I laughed at and being just as amazed as I was at some of the shows about animals.

  It was that silence, that loneliness that came as a result of her pouting, that brought me finally to break down and tell her I was sorry, even though I didn’t believe I should be apologizing for talking to a neighbor, especially a girl my age. Why was she so intent on keeping me on the house grounds and not making any friends, anyway? What did she fear? Would someone take me away? Would she be arrested for all the lies?

  A day after I apologized, which brought things back to the way they were, at least, I asked her those very questions. We had eaten dinner, and I had just cleared the table. She had the teakettle on. I tried to sound not bitter or upset but only curious.

  At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She stirred some honey into her tea. Even before all this, she could get that far-off look sometimes and for a while seem not to know I was there.

  “Mazy?”

  She blinked and looked more attentive. “I’ve always feared someone with authority would appear to take you away. Although you have never said it, I know that you, as well as I, have lost faith in your father ever coming for you. Even before that last phone call telling me about the expected new baby, he had sent notes from time to time, excuses for why he hadn’t come for you.”

  “Notes? Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

  “Because I knew all it would do was upset you. I received another, a little longer note, yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? What did he say?”

  “You now have a half brother and, something I never knew, a half sister about your age.”

  “About my age?”

  “He didn’t mention their names,” she quickly added before I could ask. “And he finally did get married.”

  “But… how could there be a half sister about my age?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t think you’d need to ask how. You’ve had your period recently, and I gave you more to read about sexual intercourse and what can result.”

  “Yes, but…”

  My mind drifted.

  A half brother just born and a half sister about my age, I thought. I had always wanted a sibling, but from the way Mazy was talking now, I might never see them or even know their names.

  “Did he say anything more about me?”

  She drank some tea. For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she put the cup down.

  “Nothing that will please you, I’m afraid. I believe what’s happened is he has settled into his new life and new family and would rather forget his past, which, I’m sorry to say, includes you. I think you’ve always anticipated this.”

  She was right. In my heart of hearts, I already knew this was very possible. I had continually smothered the little voice inside me telling me the same things, and I deliberately avoided asking questions about my father for fear of what the answers would be. But hearing Mazy say it aloud now in such a coldly matter-of-fact way sent me reeling back to that lost little girl who was truly never far away, the little girl who sat on a bench working on her coloring book and looking up occasionally, hoping to see her father hurrying back. In her dreams, she screamed for him desperately. What else could she do?

  “But,” Mazy continued, getting up to pour herself another cup of tea and sitting back down at the table, “I suppose there is always the possibility that his conscience will drive him to appear at our door suddenly—full of apologies, of course. He is still your father, and I certainly would understand you wanting to leave with him, regardless of what lay ahead for you in such a new home or how he has treated you up to now. Who looms higher in the mind of a little girl than her daddy?” She looked so sad I wasn’t sure she’d continue. “And when that adoration is not returned, your heart doesn’t break; it shatters. I’m not unfamiliar with that feeling. Unfortunately.”

  I saw that her sadness was not only for me but for herself as well.

  “As I said, I haven’t told you because I knew it would hurt you very deeply, but I think you’re old enough now to deal with it. Anyway, look at all you would have to explain if you made friends here. Children your age are particularly curious about each other. They’re going to ask you personal family questions, and if they should ever learn the truth about your father and how you came to live with me… it wouldn’t be pleasant. They call it bullying now, but in my day, it was plain and simple jealousy that comes from insecurity. Three years ago, an eight-year-old girl was so upset at how her classmates were treating her that she jumped off the roof of her house and broke her neck. She lived only four blocks away from us.

  “Young children can become a vicious pack of rabid wolves. Inevitably, they would talk about you behind your back and call you even worse names than they call you now. Believe me, I know how venomous young people can be toward each other, especially young girls. I saw it in my classrooms years ago. I have no doubt you would make friends quickly and even become quite popular. You’re a bright, attractive young lady already, but you’d surely deliberately or even innocently threaten a best-friend relationship, and one of the girls would peck away until they all treated you like a freak because of your family history. Children are often blamed for the things their parents do. It’s not fair, but it’s how people often think of them.

  “So you see, to answer your question, I’m simply trying to protect you from all that could come at you. Believe me, I know about this. I wasn’t oblivious to what went on around me when I was teaching, like some of my associates were. They walked through the halls with their eyes shut. Cowards carrying chalk. Half the time these days, children like you are left to sink or swim. Everyone’s afraid of being blamed. It’s easier to pretend it’s not happening, but I could never be like that. The truth is that if I hadn’t left teaching, it eventually would have left me.”

  She sipped her tea and studied me. I was sure she saw that she had given me too much about my father to swallow. I felt I could choke to death on the rage of tears raining down inside me. Everything I had feared but had kept restrained was true. My father had literally abandoned me and gone on to have a new family. What possible misery at a public school could be more intense, more difficult to bear, than that?

  Now that my fears were confirmed, anger and rage quickly overtook sorrow. I will not wail and rage about my pain, I thought. I will not cry like some infant left sniveling in a corner. I didn’t cry at the train station; I won’t cry today.

  “I’m not afraid of any of that stuff at school,” I said, eager to change the topic. “Whether you want to believe it or not, someday I will leave this house and have to depend on myself. If you keep protecting me like this, I’ll be too weak, and they will torment me and trample me. But I promise you, I’ll scratch and claw. They won’t hurt me without my hurting them.”

  She widened her eyes at the fire I was sure was blazing in mine. “Will you, now?” She smiled. “You’ve become such a little tiger.” She nodded. “Yes, I believe you might be a formidable adversary. Anyone growing up in the shadow of Mazy Dazy would be.”

  “I’m not afraid, especially of children my age,” I emphasized.

  She smiled as if she really could see something that she had never seen. “What I’ve enjoyed the most about you, Saffron, is how you surprise me all the time. You are a deep thinker for a girl your age. I do think you will find yourself.”

>   “I already know myself better than anyone could, but it won’t help to keep me in a cage.”

  “A cage, is it?”

  “You restrict how far I can go out of the house. I feel like I’m on a leash whenever I do. I’m not afraid of what some children my age would say to me,” I insisted. “You don’t have to protect me anymore.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  She sipped her tea. I could feel her resistance softening.

  “Okay,” she said. “Maybe you are ready. Let me think about all I have to do in order to enroll you in the public school.”

  I could feel myself nearly bursting with excitement and joy. Was this really finally going to happen? Public school? Real classrooms? Friends? Parties?

  “When?”

  “Give me time to do what has to be done,” she said. “There are i’s to dot and t’s to cross before we can send you out safely.”

  “Safely?”

  “You can’t simply be a little girl I found at the railroad station, Saffron. We’ve told people you’re my granddaughter, but we’ll need some documentation to satisfy the busybodies. Be patient,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I apologized again for betraying her trust. We almost hugged, but she turned away before I could even approach her. The mixture of sad and happy feelings felt like I had a tornado going on inside me. My father might be gone forever, but I could go to school. I could have friends. I could become something more than a shadow or the Tree Girl.

  I went to my room to start on the new reading she had assigned me, but I had trouble concentrating. I was too excited. Mazy never said things she didn’t believe or promised anything she wouldn’t do or deliver. I was confident that she wasn’t simply making me feel better. Still, she could change her mind if I did something to feed any doubt she had that I could manage and survive out there in the world she sometimes made sound more like a jungle.

  As soon as I rose the following morning, I was the perfect little mother’s helper. What I didn’t want her to believe was that the truth about my father had left me in any way helpless and full of self-pity. I went directly to my chores after breakfast, and I didn’t nag about her enrolling me. As hard as it was, I kept it wrapped tightly and acted as if she had never mentioned it. I watched her fiddle about the house all morning, wondering if she had either forgotten or changed her mind. She was constantly distracted, talking to herself more. Was she debating with herself, changing her mind? It went on like this for two more days. It took all my self-control to keep from asking.

  Finally, she told me she had to leave to get some important things done in order for her to proceed with signing me into the public school. She still had an old leather bag she called her teacher’s luggage. In it, she would put evidence that I’d had my inoculations and of the exams I had taken, and her diary of all the work I had completed, including my reading list. Having been a teacher so long, she knew how to maintain my record and organize every moment of my homeschooling. Truthfully, I was surprised at how well she had done it. I regretted ever having doubted this was her intention from the start.

  Moments after she had left the house, I was tempted to rush out and sneak over to Lucy’s again. I knew her brother would be at school. I paced about, trying to decide if I should take the risk. Lucy would be so excited, I thought. Maybe she would get better faster so she could be at school with me, even go to school with me every day. But if Mazy found out… she could stop the process. I knew her temper.

  What convinced me to do it, however, was the realization that if I was at Lucy’s porch, I would have a clear view of the street and see when Mazy was on her way home. I could rush back and be there before she had entered. She’d never know, as long as Lucy’s nurse and mother didn’t see me. Lucy would not give me away, and I wouldn’t stay long. Surely she was so sorry her mother had called Mazy. She probably thought I was gone forever.

  I put a blue light cotton sweater over my blouse and slipped on my running shoes. I was very excited, but I still stepped hesitantly out the rear of the house. I hadn’t realized until I was outside that the sky was completely overcast, with some of the clouds looking so bruised and angry that I thought it would surely start raining in a rage soon. I couldn’t stay long at Lucy’s, anyway. I shot off into the woods. I had been so anxious about telling her what Mazy was going to arrange that I hadn’t even bothered to look out the classroom window to see if she was on the porch.

  As carefully as I could, I cut in between trees and bushes. I had to be extra careful, because I would have no way to explain a scratch on my face or neck, and I had to avoid any mud or guck that would splash on my pants and stain my shoes. I imagined I looked like a weird ballet dancer, twisting and turning to slip past branches. When I reached Lucy’s backyard, I paused to catch my breath. Then I moved quickly toward the front, hovering close to the wall as I went. I stopped and peered through the spindles, ready to whisper.

  She wasn’t there. The disappointment nearly brought me to tears, but then I thought they most likely wanted to keep her out of any bad weather. I would just come back the first nice day. I had started to turn to make my way home when something caught my attention. Taking a few steps out and away from the porch so that I could see more clearly, I looked at the driveway.

  If I had been stabbed through the heart with an icicle, I wouldn’t have felt more chilled. There was no doubt in my mind what the vehicle parked there was. I brought my closed right fist up to stuff in my mouth, turned, and fled. I was nearly home when the tears came, and so did the rain, hard and fast, a good minute before I charged through the door. It was one of the biggest downpours I had seen.

  Soaked, I stripped as soon as I entered. I went into the laundry room to get the mop and hurriedly wipe up any evidence of my having been outside. Then I grabbed all my things and rushed to my room to put on fresh clothes. Mazy could see my wet things if I put them in the washing machine, so I hid them in the closet, leaving them there until they dried. I quickly used the hair dryer.

  After I caught my breath, I walked slowly up the stairs to the classroom and stood by the window watching as Lucy’s family followed the paramedics carrying her to the ambulance. She was sitting upright and looking around, but clearly they had decided she had to go to the hospital. She was weak and pale when I had last seen her two weeks ago, but I never permitted myself to think she was so ill that she would end up in an ambulance with what was clearly an oxygen mask over her face.

  Her brother stood beside their parents as they carefully placed her in the vehicle. I saw her mother start to crumple and her father quickly embrace her. As the ambulance backed out of the driveway, they all got quickly into their car, her father practically carrying her mother to it. The nurse was on the porch, watching them drive off to follow the ambulance. My memory of her brother, Stuart, embracing Lucy brought harder sobbing. Could I somehow find a way to visit her, maybe after I began school? If she knew, she might try harder to get better and come home.

  For a few moments, I stared at the street, and then I saw Mazy walking back, her umbrella open. She was going slower, looking like it was suddenly a great effort. Was that because of the rain?

  I retreated to sit and stare at the new assignments she had placed on my desk. Anger and sadness wrestled to control my heart. I lowered my head to my arms folded on the desk, but I did not sob anymore. I think I was more frightened now than anything. I was afraid that somehow people would blame me for making Lucy sicker and sicker until she had to be rushed to the hospital.

  How silly, I told myself. But still, I sensed this would be a thought that would haunt me every time I left the house.

  If he came, my father would surely be standing shyly at the door, hoping I would forgive him… for everything. Would I? Sometimes forgiveness wasn’t up to us, anyway, I thought. Sometimes we had no choice but to forgive. If we didn’t, we’d only suffer ourselves. I should tell Mazy that. She would add it to her li
st of wisdom quotes.

  I raised my head when I heard her enter the house and soon after slowly start up the stairs. Mr. Pebbles had come up and sprawled out beside me. I believed he could feel when I was happy and when I wasn’t, just like he could for Mazy. He raised his head to look up at me, and I touched him.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Pebbles three,” I whispered. He began to purr again. Maybe people should purr so others would know when they were happy and content.

  I opened the science text and stared down at it until Mazy appeared. I really didn’t read a word and looked up quickly. She looked tired and gray.

  “I’m sure you’ve been looking out that window,” she said. “And have seen it all just now.”

  “I…”

  “Don’t deny it.”

  “Maybe they’ll make her well again in the hospital,” I quickly suggested instead of confessing.

  “Make her well again? If you want to go out there in that rough-and-tumble world, you had better learn not to fool yourself. The worst lies are the ones you tell yourself, Saffron. That little girl’s been in the hospital often. I might not seem like I know what’s going on out there, even on my own street, but I do. These days at home were expected to be her last. She won’t be back.”

  I bit down on my lower lip. I was shivering inside, but I was afraid to show her any weakness. She’d say I was still a little girl; she’d want to keep me more locked up than ever.

  “The problem with living in a smaller community is you see and share tragedy more vividly. It’s why I kept to myself most of my life. Hermits don’t cry very much. Not even for themselves.

  “Anyway, as I said, what happened today was expected. It’s part of why I was so upset about you going over there and making friends with that poor girl. You probably thought me mean, but I was just trying to protect you a little more, a little longer. It’s why parents, good parents, don’t want their children to grow up so quickly. Well, that’s going to be much harder to do now when it comes to you. I realize that.”