The Unwelcomed Child Read online

  “Mr. Edwards,” my grandfather said to the hostess.

  I could tell from the way my grandmother was smirking at her that she didn’t approve of her short skirt and tight bodice, with just a little too much of her bosom revealed in the V-neck collar. Grandmother Myra looked at me and nodded as if to say, “See what happens when young girls are given too much freedom, missy?”

  The hostess led us to one of the booths. I sat across from my grandparents and could view most of the restaurant. I couldn’t help but be fascinated with all of it, the activity of the waiters and waitresses, the vibrant conversations being held at the various tables, some of which seemed to be occupied by families. I saw a few young couples, one of whom appeared involved in a very serious, intimate discussion. For me, it was a bigger visual feast than the food I would enjoy.

  The waiter brought us our menus and took orders for our drinks. My grandmother ordered mine, a lemonade, before I could even look at the choices, which included sodas I had never tasted.

  “These prices aren’t that reasonable,” my grandmother told my grandfather.

  “Compared with what is being charged in other places, they are.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I remember going out to eat, Myra, and Sam tells me about places he and Trudy go.”

  “They were always careless with a dollar,” she replied. “Just lucky you were paying him that good salary.”

  “He was worth it.”

  She grunted and looked at me. “You should have the chicken dish,” she said. “You’re not used to eating rich meats or these Italian foods. We’ll get you a salad, of course. Twelve dollars for mixed greens and tomatoes,” she added, shaking her head.

  The waiter returned with our drinks and took our orders. My grandfather looked as if he wanted the steak, mumbling about it, but he chose the chicken dish instead. My grandmother did the same.

  “I never enjoyed eating with all this noise around me,” my grandmother told me. “Even when I was as young as you. It’s not good for digestion. People eat too quickly in restaurants, because the waiters are told to rush them along so they can get someone else to sit at the table and the restaurant can make more money.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course, really. Would I tell you something that was untrue?”

  “Why do people put up with it?” I asked, looking at the other customers, none of whom seemed particularly unhappy being there.

  “They’re too stupid to realize it, that’s why,” she replied. She began to examine the silverware.

  “I’m sure everything is clean, Myra,” my grandfather said. “They have an A in the window for their inspection.”

  She pursed her lips and looked at the fake flowers in the vase disdainfully.

  My attention was drawn to a couple coming in with two children, the older one a boy who was probably eighteen or nineteen. He had wavy, long light brown hair and reminded me of an illustration in one of the biblical storybooks my grandmother had given me. He looked like a young Judah Maccabee pictured in my book. Although I was intrigued with him, I was also very interested in his sister, who looked about the same age. She had the same light brown hair and features so similar that I wondered if they could be twins.

  Although I was drawn to watch every move they made, I was very aware of the way my grandmother was studying me, probably trying to determine if what I saw and heard was influencing me badly. That was always her concern whenever I went anywhere with her and my grandfather. What effect would it have on me? It was as if she believed I could look at something for only a few moments or overhear some conversation and immediately turn into some evil creature.

  So I shifted my gaze back to the fake flowers and then sipped my lemonade. My grandfather started to talk about some of the nicer restaurants he had gone to when he was a young man in business college. He described foods I’d never heard of, much less tasted. We never had lobster or clams or oysters. Grandmother Myra was always very careful about her food budget. I think the truth was that she didn’t know how to prepare seafood.

  The waiter brought us our salads, and we began to eat.

  “How you could afford to go to a restaurant while you were attending college is a mystery to me,” Grandmother Myra told him.

  “It wasn’t easy,” he said, smiling. She looked at him with such disapproval he stopped smiling immediately and changed the subject to the new development he saw being done in the area.

  “All this modernizing,” Grandmother Myra said. “For what? Things were good as they were. All it’s doing is bringing in too many people.”

  “Have to improve and build your economy,” Grandfather Prescott said. On this, he wasn’t going to back down. Whenever she saw there was a topic he wouldn’t avoid, she simply grew quiet or directed her attention elsewhere. Right now, she was criticizing the way some of the waiters and waitresses served food.

  “I see how their fingers touch the potatoes or the pasta,” she said.

  I looked again at the family who had drawn my attention when they entered. They were waiting for a table, and the one they were brought to was only two tables from us. When they were seated, the young man was facing me. After their waiter took their drink orders, he looked at the menu, but then his gaze shifted toward me, and I quickly looked away.

  Our food was brought to our table, and I tried to concentrate only on that while Grandmother Myra went through her litany of complaints about it all. Nothing was made the way it should be, the way she would have made it. She couldn’t believe it was clean enough. There was dust under the table. Eating out never was worth the money.

  “It’s Elle’s birthday celebration,” my grandfather said softly.

  “I could have made her a better dinner.”

  “Tomorrow night,” he replied.

  She pursed her lips the way she always did when her thoughts bounced around in her head and were shut down before getting to her tongue. I thought my food tasted better than what she would do with a chicken dish, but I kept that to myself and even tried not to look as if I was enjoying it so much. When I ventured to gaze toward the young man again, I saw he was still looking at me, with a small smile on his lips as if something about me amused him. Despite my attempts to avoid any response, I could feel my face heat up.

  “What’s wrong?” Grandmother Myra asked immediately. “You look flushed.”

  I shook my head. “I think there’s something too spicy in mine,” I offered.

  “See?” she said, turning on my grandfather. “They’re sloppy about how they prepare. They put in too much salt, for sure.”

  He didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes locked on my food. Even though I was really enjoying it, my excuse for the blush that had come over me forced me to leave the remaining portion. There were tears in my eyes, but they weren’t from any hot spice.

  “Maybe we should order her something else,” my grandfather said. He started to raise his hand to catch our waiter’s attention, but she stopped him.

  “She’s eaten enough,” she said.

  “Elle?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, Grandfather.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to get her a piece of cake with a candle anyway,” he said. “I made sure of that.”

  “Oh, how ridiculous. One piece of cake and one candle for a girl this age.”

  “It’s symbolic. I didn’t want fifteen candles on it,” he said, smiling.

  She shook her head, but she didn’t put up any resistance. When the waiter returned, my grandfather ordered a cup of coffee and told him it was my birthday. Grandmother Myra said she was fine with her water, even though it tasted as if it had come out of someone’s pool. I sat back, actually trembling. They were going to bring me a piece of cake with a candle. For something like this to happen in a public place with so many people around us made me very nervous. I glanced at the young man.

  He was talking to his father, who wore a light blue lightweight sports jacket wi
th a dark blue shirt opened at the collar. They seemed to be in a very serious conversation. I thought the young man’s good looks were even more highlighted when he was serious. His eyes, which I could see now were a bit lighter than sea blue, brightened with his intensity. I wished I could hear what they were saying. He looked so serious, so intelligent. It intrigued me. What did other people talk about? Certainly not hell and damnation, I thought.

  When the young man and his family had entered, I hadn’t looked very much at the parents, but I thought the young man’s father was as good-looking as anyone I had seen on television. I didn’t get a close enough look at the young man’s mother, but now that she was seated next to her son, I could see she had the same shade of light brown hair, styled beautifully around her face. Her eyes were more of a gray-blue. She had soft, exquisitely small facial features, with lips that looked a little puffed. Her daughter’s hair was as long as mine but brushed freely around her shoulders. I always wanted to wear my hair like that and couldn’t wait to untie it before going to bed.

  Not only our waiter but two others came with my piece of birthday cake, the candle lit. They stood by our table and sang “Happy Birthday” when I blew out the candle. I felt like crawling under the table. My grandmother didn’t look as upset as I thought she would, however, and my grandfather was smiling brightly. After they finished singing, it seemed the whole restaurant applauded. I gazed at some of the other customers and saw them smiling and nodding at me. I didn’t know how to react, so I just swallowed hard, forced a smile, and lifted my fork. The waiters clapped. One handed my grandfather his cup of coffee, and I gingerly put my fork into the cake. Would anyone here realize I had never had a piece of cake, only a practically sugarless piece of pie?

  “Don’t eat it too fast,” my grandmother warned. “It will give you a bellyache.”

  I took the smallest piece I could. Anyone watching would think I was afraid the cake might be poison.

  “Well?” Grandfather Prescott asked.

  “It’s delicious,” I said.

  “You make sure you brush your teeth well when we get home,” Grandmother Myra told me. “Sugar will rot your teeth.”

  I nodded but cut a bigger piece. Then I looked at the young man again. His smile was wider and brighter. He nodded at me. What do I do? If I acknowledged him, my grandmother might see, but if I didn’t, I would look snobby, I thought. I took a chance with a very small nod and a flash of a smile. Fortunately, my grandmother’s attention was elsewhere. She was complaining about some woman wearing a dress that was so revealing she should be naked and get finished with it. My grandfather said nothing, but the moment I finished my cake, he signaled the waiter for the check.

  “You don’t leave more than fifteen percent,” my grandmother told him, “and that’s based on the net with the tax removed.”

  “I think I know how to leave a tip properly,” he replied, which stunned me, because it was one of the first times I had heard him snap back at her so aggressively. “And if the service is very good, you should leave twenty percent.”

  “Ridiculous. There was nothing particularly good about the service anyway.”

  She pulled herself in and looked at the wall as if she couldn’t stand looking at the bill when the waiter brought it to us. Grandfather Prescott studied it and put down the cash. Grandmother Myra was against having credit cards. She said it only encouraged reckless spending, and the interest rate, should you forget to pay on time, was downright legalized theft.

  “Well, shall we go?”

  “You’ll have no argument from me,” Grandmother Myra said.

  “Thank you,” I told them.

  Grandmother Myra just sighed, but Grandfather Prescott nodded and smiled. “You’re very welcome, Elle.”

  I waited for them to get up. I thought that if they walked ahead of me, Grandmother Myra would not see me look at the young man. There was no way I could walk out and ignore him. As we passed their table, he leaned toward us and said, “Happy birthday.”

  I smiled at him but said nothing. Grandmother Myra hadn’t heard it. When we reached the door, I looked back. He was talking with his father again. I was disappointed. I wanted one more smile.

  My first thought as we walked out was, was that an evil thing to want? Was this the beginning?

  3

  Something significant had happened when I reached my fifteenth birthday, and I don’t mean my grandparents breaking all their rules and taking me out to a restaurant for dinner. There was something more going on. I could feel it in the house, especially in the way my grandfather spoke to me and stood up for me at times. I knew from some of my reading that some Hispanic people celebrate the quinceañera to mark a girl’s fifteenth birthday, but there was nothing remotely Hispanic about my grandparents. I think Grandfather Prescott just took a longer look at me right before my fifteenth birthday or right after it and concluded that they should loosen the bonds that chained me so tightly. My little-girl days had ended.

  Finally, one night, I overheard a somewhat heated conversation about me going on in their bedroom. Their bedroom and what had been my mother’s were upstairs, but the house wasn’t insulated enough between rooms to keep all conversations and other sounds muted. At times, I could hear the murmur of their voices seemingly raining down on me through the ceiling, but if I was close to the stairway and their bedroom door was open, as I think it almost always was, I could hear their conversations more clearly, especially if one of them raised his or her voice.

  “You should ease up on her,” I heard my grandfather say with more volume and emphasis than he usually had when speaking to my grandmother. Immediately, I knew I was the “her” he referred to. I carefully took a few steps up on the stairway to listen better. The banister was just a little shaky, so I avoided putting any weight on it. So many places in this house creaked and moaned. If a house could get arthritis, this one would definitely qualify. Maybe it had been cleaned and scrubbed too much.

  I wasn’t formally forbidden to go upstairs. I was often sent up there to fetch something, and, of course, I was up there a number of times during the week to wash floors, windows, and bathroom fixtures. I polished furniture, made beds, changed the linen, and collected used towels and washcloths, returning with the ones washed and dried to stack them neatly in the bathroom closet. I also had to be sure the soap and toilet paper were replaced. I supposed if I had to go out and work for a living, I could easily get a job as a hotel chambermaid.

  I never was permitted to go into what had been my mother’s bedroom. That door was kept locked and the room never used. Maybe it was another one of their ways to keep the memory of her away. Even the windows in the room had their white curtains drawn tightly shut. I didn’t even wonder why I wasn’t eventually moved into it. That certainly wasn’t because it had been turned into a shrine. It was simply forbidden territory, a place where something immoral or evil once dwelt and encouraged my mother’s bad behavior. I didn’t know too many incidences illustrating what my grandmother considered her bad behavior. She would mention something in general occasionally, as if she was slowly building a case for why my mother’s fate was her own fault.

  “Evil goes first where it’s well received,” she would say, and then tell me about my mother violating curfews, drinking alcohol with her friends, or getting in trouble at school. I imagined it was something like smoking in the bathroom or talking back to her teachers, but I was afraid to ask. It could show an innate interest in evil things.

  The truth was, my grandparents had removed all traces of her, so it didn’t surprise me at all that they would ignore the existence of her room. I wondered if my grandmother went into it at least to keep it clean, since cleanliness was so sacred. If she did, she did it without my knowing. Maybe she did it very late at night when I was fast asleep and when my grandfather was also asleep. I easily could imagine her mumbling in there, cursing at dust webs.

  Whenever I was in their bedroom alone, I would timidly search for any sign o
f anything that had to do with my mother. Just like downstairs, there were no pictures of her displayed, but I always wondered if I might come across something in a dresser drawer, maybe under some clothing, or in one of their closets. There were cartons all taped up on the floor of Grandmother Myra’s closet. I felt certain that any and all of my mother’s things that were once very visible in this bedroom and downstairs were in them, but I was afraid to pull away any of the tape to look. My grandmother would surely discover it and punish me for it.

  My grandparents’ bedroom wasn’t much to look at. They had the same queen-size bed that they had when they had first moved into the house. The only thing I knew that they changed regularly were the mattresses, thanks to Grandfather Prescott’s business. Stacked in their garage were four new mattresses in boxes that he had taken for them when he had sold his business. Based on their own calculations from when they operated their manufacturing plant, they changed their own mattress once every five years. But the cherry-wood headboard with posts and embossed vines and leaves was never replaced. That and the footboard were polished and kept so well that anyone who didn’t know their vintage might think that they were relatively recent acquisitions.

  Listening hard on the stairway, I didn’t hear my grandmother react to my grandfather’s comment, but this time, it appeared he wasn’t going to settle for her silence.

  “I mean, what has she done seriously to disappoint you, Myra?” my grandfather persisted. I took another step up to hear her answer this question as clearly as I could. What would she say? She wasn’t coming after me these days because I asked or said something wrong. She was pleased with my schoolwork. She had even stopped criticizing my housework.

  “It’s not what she has done, it’s what will she do? You never expected Deborah to be as loose with her morals as she was, did you?”

  “Deborah was not as good a child as Elle is.”