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  our heads nearly hit the ceiling of the car.

  "Sorry," I said. "I forgot."

  "It's all right. I think. Are my eyes still where

  they were before I made the turn?"

  "Yes," I said. laughing.

  When we stopped. Uncle Simon stepped out of

  the barn and looked our way.

  "Wow, he's big."

  "He's a very gentle man. Chandler. All those

  beautiful flowers you see are his doing."

  "I guess that's what brings him out."

  "Exactly. We all have something."

  "You have more." he said. "I'm looking forward

  to Saturday night." "Thanks for the ride home. Bye," I

  said, closing the door.

  I watched him back up, turn around, and leave.

  When I looked at the barn. Uncle Simon was gone,

  but standing on the porch and looking down at me

  was Grandad. He looked angry.

  "What?" I asked.

  "You should be in the henhouse,"

  "Not this soon. Grandad. I wouldn't have been

  home this early if I had taken the bus."

  "You watch yourself," he warned. He looked in

  Chandler's direction.

  "The devil has a pleasing face."

  Anyone or anything that does is the devil to

  you, I wanted to tell him. but I didn't.

  Instead. I lowered my head and walked into the

  house, away from the fear and the threat that came

  from his distrusting eves.

  I knew what his trouble was. I thought. He has nothing to bring him out of the

  darkness. His only companions were the shadows that

  lingered in the corners of our home.

  I wasn't at all like him. Rather. I hoped and

  prayed I wasn't. His blood flowed through Daddy's

  veins and mine, but Grandma Jennie 's and Mommy's

  surely overpowered it.

  Or else I would face each dawn with just as

  much distrust and just as much dreadful expectation. When he lay his head down for the final sleep,

  he would finally come out of his darkness only to

  enter another. That was what loomed ahead for him. I thought about what Daddy had said about

  Uncle Peter and Grandad, how Uncle Peter felt more

  pity for him than he did anger toward him.

  He might not like it, but I pitied him, too. Even

  without Daddy's having told me, I just knew it was

  better not to let him know.

  6 Transformation

  I couldn't remember when I was as impatient with the clock as I was waiting for the days to pass until Saturday. Even filling my time with farm chores, homework, and violin practice didn't make those hands move any faster. Chandler was no longer avoiding me at school. The hens had their reason to cackle, but we both avoided them. I learned how to keep my eyes in tunnel vision, something at which Chandler had become expert.

  "Why did you lie about you and Chandler?" Karen Jacobs came forward to ask me at the first opportunity. "You were ashamed after all, weren't you?"

  "I'm only ashamed of you. Karen. You're so frustrated, you're pathetic," I shot back. Her mouth fell open wide enough to attract flies,

  Later. when I told Chandler, he burst into a roar of laughter that drew everyone's attention to us. We were beginning to enjoy our notoriety.

  After school on Friday. Daddy took Mommy and me to the mall, where she helped me find a new dress and matching shoes. While we were there. I bought Uncle Simon his birthday present. He was going to be forty-five on Sunday. Mommy had decided to make him dinner and a cake, and had thrown down the gauntlet as soon as Grandad began to utter some opposition. She announced it at dinner Thursday night.

  "Making a big thing out of a grown man's birthday is heathen," Grandad started.

  "We're going to have a nice party nevertheless," Mommy flared.

  I never saw her fill so quickly with what Daddy half-humorously referred to as her Russian fury. The veins in her neck rose against her skin, her shoulders lifted, her hands pressed down an the table, and her eyes looked like they were on springs and would come popping out to shoot across the table at Grandad's face.

  Whenever she flew into a high rage. Mommy never turned crimson as much as she developed these two milk-white spots at the comers of her lips. She spoke slowly, taking great care with her words the way someone just practicing the language might. In any case. whatever Grandad Forman saw in her at Thursday night's dinner was enough to close the door quickly on his objections. He shook his head and returned his attention to his food.

  Mommy's body slowly receded, losing the swollen shoulders and neck. She threw me a confident smile of satisfaction and talked about her cake. She was planning on making Uncle Simon's favorite: strawberry shortcake.

  At the mall I found him a beautiful new set of gardening tools, and then a card specially designed for an uncle. I never called him anything else and never viewed him as a step-uncle, even after I was old enough to understand what that meant. To me he was as much a part of our family as Uncle Peter had been. Love bound us closer than blood.

  It had been some time since Mommy and I had gone shopping together. By watching television, she had seen the changes in fashion, but it was still a bit shocking and curious to her. I ended up choosing a round-neck sleeveless shell top in all-over paisley print with shades of fuchsia, burgundy, and black. To wear with it I bought a stretchy, pull-on, knee-length skirt with one-inch ruffle at the hem. To complete the outfit. I chose platform shoes that had crocheted uppers with stretch elastic ankle straps and a ridged sole. Daddy joined us just as I was trying the outfit on, and when I looked back at him standing beside Mommy, I saw an expression of pride on both their faces,

  "You look very nice,," Daddy said. "Makes you look older."

  "Makes her look her age," Mommy corrected. "She's no longer a tomboy farmhand. She's my young lady."

  "Mine, too," Daddy said.

  "Grandad's not going to like this. He's always saying women are practically naked these days," I said.

  "Don't you worry about him," Mommy said, a little of that fury coming back into her eyes. "It's not his business."

  She threw Daddy a look, but he turned his eyes away and then said he would bring the car around and meet us at the mall's main entrance.

  My heart was thumping with joy and excitement as Mommy and I walked out with my packages piled in my arms. I couldn't help wondering what Chandler would say when he first saw me. Most of my clothing, especially the clothes I wore to school, was so plain and unflattering,

  "We'll fix your hair nice. too," Mommy decided.

  I smiled to myself, imagining what most of the other girls my age would say or think if their mothers suggested such a thing. I had no fear about Mommy cuffing, brushing, and styling my hair for me. Without any sort of formal education, she had come from Russia carrying an unofficial, unwritten degree from the school of common sense and everyday skills. Her grandmothers and her mother had taught her how to cook, create and mend clothes, clean any kind of surface, provide first aid and generally make do with so much less than we had now. They taught her all this before she was ten years old.

  What's more. Mommy didn't need Grandad Forman looking over her shoulder to be sure she didn't waste a morsel of food. She knew how to turn leftovers into a fresh new meal. I knew the mothers of my classmates would criticize and ridicule her for being a slave in her own home or something, so I rarely, if ever, bragged about her abilities.

  Once. when I had an English assignment to write an essay about someone I considered heroic. I wrote about Mommy. It was before I knew she had come here specifically to marry Daddy without ever having met him. Still. I had often wondered and thought about the courage it had to have taken for someone so young to enter an entirely different world, where people spoke a different language, had different customs and st
yles, and whole new ways of living. I knew she had come with very little in her possession. What sort of faith in herself did that demand?

  Today, my classmates and their mothers moaned and groaned about an hour or so delay at an airport or a traffic jam on a major highway. Girls my age, who were only a year or so younger than Mommy when she had arrived here, thought the world was coming to an end if their CD players broke. The stories they heard about their own grand-and greatgrandparents were akin to fables and science fiction. I knew if I told them about Mommy they would look at me as even more of an outsider. weird.

  I told them next to nothing.

  On Friday night. Mommy worked on my hairdo. She surprised me by having had Daddy buy some recent fashion magazines, so she could study some of the current styles.

  "I used to do my mother's hair," she explained after I had washed mine and sat at her small vanity table with a towel over my shoulders. "She handed me a brush when I was no more than five and I would spend hours stroking her hair while she sang or did some needlework. Her hair was the color of dark almonds and she had hazel eyes with tiny green specks. I wondered if I could ever be as beautiful.

  "I used to think we would remain forever as we were. I would be forever five and she would be forever a young woman who, when she strolled through our village, wearing that angelic soft smile on her lips, captured the imaginations of every man who saw her, no matter what age. Wives glared angrily at their husbands. I saw it all, walking beside her, holding her hand. I felt like a princess with the queen."

  She laughed.

  "Why do you laugh. Mommy?"

  "Me, thinking I was a princess. We were so poor. My father was a cobbler. He worked very hard to put food on the table. We made use of every crumb, believe me."

  "Why did you have to leave Russia. Mommy?" I asked.

  "For years my father lived with an imperfect heart. He had a valve problem that, here in America, could be repaired, but we had no money for such a medical procedure. When he died, my mother struggled by taking in other people's wash, mending, doing housework. I was working side by side with her. She aged so quickly it broke my heart."

  She stopped working on my hair and stared at herself in the mirror. but I knew she was looking back at a stream of memories instead.

  "When I was sixteen, she collapsed one day and was taken to hospital. They said she had to have her gallbladder removed. It was a botched operation in a hospital with poor sanitary conditions. A staph infection was what finally sucked the life out of her. I had to watch the health and beauty drain away every day. It was almost as if... as if she was evaporating, disappearing right before my eyes.

  "One of the last things she said to me was 'Get away from here whenever you can, whatever way you can.'

  "I went to live with my aunt." She took a deep breath.

  "The rest you know."

  "No. I don't. Mommy. I never knew you came here deliberately to marry Daddy without ever seeing him. How could you do that?"

  She smiled.

  "Well. I did see a picture of him, but it was a poor picture of a man standing next to a tractor. I thought a man who works with the earth, who makes things grow, has to have a respect for life. I saw kindness in his eyes when we first met, and kindness, my darling daughter, is a rare jewel where I come from, believe me.

  "When you look at a young man with whom you think you might become romantic, search for that. Search for a love of living things. You want someone strong, but strong doesn't mean cruel, doesn't mean ruthless. You don't want a conqueror. You want a strong arm around you, yes, but you want soft eyes. You want someone who doesn't love you as a thing possessed, but someone who possesses him."

  "How did you get so wise. Mommy?" I asked. I was looking at her in the mirror.

  "Pain," she replied. "Unfortunately, that can be the best teacher. But what good is it all if I can't pass the wisdom on to you, my darling daughter? I know your generation is fond of ignoring, even ridiculing their parents and grandparents. I suppose every younger generation is guilty of some of that, but those of you who don't, who take in some of it at least, are far ahead of the others.

  "But enough of this serious talk. You're going on a nice date. Let's make you beautiful."

  "Can I be beautiful. Mommy?"

  "Of course you can. Look at you. You have a face that makes the angels jealous and this hair... its so rich a miser would choke with envy. I could sell these strands we cut," she kidded. "I should put them in little plastic bags and set up a roadside stand."

  I laughed and looked at myself with wonder. Afterward, I thought my mother was truly an artist. When she had finished cutting, blow- drying, and styling my hair, it took my breath away. My whole look had changed. I thought I had suddenly been thrust onto that stage of sophistication I believed belonged only to girls like Susie Weaver. It was as if Mommy had waved a magic wand over my head and turned me from the farm girl with calluses on her hands into Cinderella, ready to go to the ball with her prince.

  Would some ugly demon take joy in striking the clock at midnight and turn me back, or would Mommy's magic be too strong even for the evil that Grandad saw looming everywhere in the world around us?

  He didn't see me until I sat down for dinner. Before that. I brought Uncle Simon his hot plate. He wasn't waiting at the barn door. so I called to him and started up the stairs. He was sitting under his lamp, trimming a bonsai tree. It was something in which he had just recently become immersed. Mommy had raved so much about his first attempt, he went on to a second and now a third. Grandad thought they were simply silly things, but I saw the way he stared at the two Uncle Simon had given Mommy. He stole looks when he thought no one noticed. but I did, and it brought a smile to my face. If he caught me watching him, he would mutter some ridicule about them again.

  "That's beautiful. Uncle Simon." I said. He'd been so intent, it made him jump in his seat.

  When he set eyes on me, his mouth opened a little and he just stared. I put his tray on his table.

  "What is that one?" I asked.

  "What? Oh.. It's an incense cedar. Smells good. Here," he said, holding it toward me. I sniffed.

  "Yes." I said with delight.

  "You look different," he said.

  "Mommy did my hair. I'm going to a show tomorrow night with my friend Chandler."

  "Oh." He looked at his bonsai plant and then at me. "This will be yours," he said. "When it's finished."

  "Thanks!"

  "It needs music," he warned. I laughed. "Okay, Uncle Simon."

  "Watching you grow up is the same as watching a flower blossom," he said. He didn't smile or have an impish gleam in his eyes, as some men might when they said such a thing. It was a simple statement from his heart, and it brought tears to my eyes.

  "Thank you," I said. He looked at his food.

  "I'd better get back to the house. Grandad hates waiting for anyone when he's ready to eat."

  Uncle Simon nodded. I glanced back at him as I left to descend the stairs. He was gazing at me with such a different expression, almost as if he wasn't completely sure I was who I claimed to be, almost as if he wondered if he had seen an apparition.

  Only me, Uncle Simon, I thought. It's really only me.

  Grandad's reaction was just about what I had expected. He took one look at me and turned to Mommy to declare that I looked like a cheap girl of the streets with my hair cut and styled this way.

  "What do you know about such women?" Mommy snapped back at him.

  Grandad actually turned a shade darker than beet red. "I know what I know," he stammered.

  "Well, you don't know what is in style and what is not," Mommy said simply and shrugged.

  Daddy's lips softened as his eyes turned to her with appreciation.

  Grandad looked from one to the other and then at me. He lifted his thick right forefinger.

  "Remember. There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."

  "Beware, old man," Mommy shot back at him, her eyes b
lazing. "He without sin cast the first stone."

  She and Grandad fixed their eyes on each other in such a lock, it took my breath away. I felt an icy hand on my back as the clock ticked.

  Then Grandad looked down at his food and Mommy continued serving dinner.

  It was the quietest meal I could remember. My ears were filled with the pounding of my heart.

  I felt as if I had opened another door in the mansion filled with mysteries when I stepped out of childhood into a woman's world. I had changed right before everyone's eyes.

  And soon I would see that they had changed. too.

  7 The Wages of Sin

  We had no door chimes, no buzzer, only a stein of cast iron with a small ball of iron welded to it to drop against a metal plate. Grandad Forman made it himself. With so few visitors to our home, no one lobbied him to improve upon it. Waiting for Chandler's arrival, I was so nervous it felt like a small army of ants were parading up from my stomach to march around my drum-pounding heart. I debated going downstairs early and sitting by the front window, watching for his car coming up the drive, and then I thought that would look tacky or make me seem too anxious.

  Instead. I remained in my room, staring at myself in the mirror, fidgeting with my hair, my clothes, alternating holding my breath with taking deep breaths, and listening hard for the sound of that metal doorknocker reverberating through our hallway. Grandad and Daddy were still out in the west field with Uncle Simon. Mommy was downstairs working on their dinner. I looked at the clock and remembered one of Mommy's favorite expressions: "A watched pot never boils." The hands of the clock indeed looked like they hadn't moved since my last glimpse.

  "You're being foolish, Honey," I told myself, "You're acting like a child. It's just a date, just dinner and a show."

  Just dinner and a show!

  I've never been taken by a boy in my school to dinner and a show, I thought. What was this restaurant he was going to take me to? Would it be some fancy place, where all the other patrons would take one look at me and know I had never been there or anywhere like it before? Would they whisper and smile and laugh at the "girl just off the farm"? And then would they watch my every move to see if I knew which fork to use, did I talk with my mouth open or keep both elbows on the table? Would I eat too much or too little?