This new building is definitely a medical facility, but it feels a lot less like a hospital than the one I just left. Good heavens, but they work you like a field hand here! I’ve had all kinds of therapy and activities of daily living and who knows what else.
It’s now four o’clock and I’m finally back in my room, sipping from an enormous water bottle, when Quinn walks in. She kisses me on the cheek and sits in a chair beside mine, smiling. “You look like you’ve been working out.”
“Worked over is more like it.” I blot my upper lip with the end of the sweat towel looped around my neck. “I’m just getting back from cardiopulmonary therapy.”
“What does that involve?”
“Well, among other things, lifting weights.”
“Sounds like a good way to build up your strength.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but back in my day, weightlifting was strictly for men. A woman lifting barbells would have beenconsidered unfeminine.” I take another sip of water. “My father used to say, ‘Men know women are the stronger sex, but they still don’t want a girl to beat them at arm wrestling.’”
Quinn laughs. “Were you and your father close?”
“Oh, yes. I trailed around after him like the scent of his Old Spice.” I can almost smell it as I remember him. “I helped out in his locksmith shop whenever I could. I learned the names of all his tools and handed them to him like a nurse handing scalpels to a surgeon.”
Quinn smiles. “What was he like?”
“He was kind,” I say. “He loved me and my little sister, and oh, he loved my mama. I thought he was going to die himself when Mama passed away of cancer.”
“How old were you?”
“I had just turned ten, and my sister was eight.” I feel my eyes grow moist. “She was in terrible pain at the end, but she was worried about us, not herself. One of the last things Mama told Papa was that she wanted him to marry again. She wanted Junie and me to have a mother. She said, ‘You can do a lot of things for them, but you can’t teach them to be ladies.’”
“Did he remarry?”
I nod. “About a year later. Mama Betsy was a widow with two girls of her own who were a little older than me.”
“What was she like?”
The years seem to roll back, like a window shade going up. Instead of pulling it down as I always have, I decide to look at the past straight on.
“Mama Betsy was a pretty little thing with real nice manners,” I say, “but she didn’t like to deal with anything unpleasant. She favored her daughters, but Papa favored us, so things weren’t too bad. But then, when I was fourteen, Papa died; he just keeled over of a heart attack while installing the locks on the new bank.”
“Oh, how terrible!” Quinn murmurs.
I nod. “I thought the world had ended when Mama died, but ithadn’t, not really. When Papa was gone, though—well, that’s when the floor was yanked out from under us.
“Mama Betsy didn’t know what to do about anything. Why, I had to make all the decisions about Papa’s burial. I called my aunt Kathy—she was Papa’s sister who lived in St. Louis, who’d stayed with me and Junie when Mama was sick—but she was in poor health, and couldn’t even come for the funeral.
“It turned out Papa had left most of his assets, including the house, in a trust for Junie and me. Mama Betsy and the girls could continue to live there on the condition that she kept us and cared for us. Papa had arranged for her to receive a monthly allowance to pay for our care until we were of age, so we stayed where we were, but things were very different.
“Without Papa there to stop them, her daughters started raiding Junie’s and my closet and taking our things. One day when everyone was out, I got Papa’s toolbox and a dead bolt, and I installed it on our bedroom door. Her girls tattled on me—told their mother I was ruining the house—but I said it was mine to ruin.
“Well, that must have gotten Mama Betsy to thinking she’d best prepare for the future, because a few months later, she married an oilfield supervisor who had a teenage son. Oh, that boy was a hellion! He learned quick as the devil to leave Mama Betsy’s precious daughters alone, but oh, he’d harass Junie and me something fierce. He’d grab us and flip up our skirts—he was just indecent.
“Mama Betsy did nothing about it and her husband, Mr. Earl, would just laugh. Half the time Mr. Earl wasn’t home anyway; he’d spend days at a time away at work. We kept our bedroom door locked when we weren’t in it and every night while we slept.
“Good thing we did, too, because lo and behold, a few months later, Mama Betsy’s younger daughter turned up pregnant. I thought for sure the son was responsible—but the oldest girl, she piped up and said it was Mr. Earl. Said he’d been in her bed, too. Mama Betsy refused to believe her. Said she was a liar.”
“Oh, no!” Quinn says.
“The boy was sent to live with one of Mr. Earl’s relatives, and both girls were sent to Alabama to a home for wayward girls. A month after they were sent away, Mama Betsy was at a Wednesday night church meeting and Mr. Earl was supposed to be away overnight in the oil patch. I came home from the library, and I heard Junie screaming from the bathroom.
“I ran in, and Mr. Earl had Junie on the floor, as naked as the day she was born. I broke a glass bottle of bubble bath over his head and knocked him out cold. I thought for a moment I might have killed him, but at the time, I didn’t even care.”
“Oh, Miss Margaret!” Quinn’s eyes are full, and her hand covers her mouth.
